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Anti-materiel rifles

Yeah, I agree vith you on the balancing. As I had finished my X-division run when I made this mod and did not test the mod much past making shure it worked.
If you would like to publish your own version you have my premission, or if you would like to provide the changes to this mod I'll add you as a contributor.

On a small side tangent: As far as such rifles existing at the time period, it was less rifles as we know it and more recoiless rifles, which as shoulder mounted weapons are still in use today in a lot of countries, including the US. During the time period a good guess would be the M67, a 3 crew weapon system. Making it man portable would be a feat with alien tech, but you must remember these weapons are NOT like a .50 cal. We're talking the equivalent of a late era WW2 tank firing it's main gun. With ammo types to match, including fragmentation shot. X-Division does have cannon's for troop use for such a methodology, but they don't quite get them right.

For reaction fire, you need enough TU's to make the shot. So in my mind, your already setup looking for target with the rifle braced against something, making a reaction shot far more feasible. Having high dmg is fine though I did lower it a touch so, while stronger the regular sniper, the regular sniper getting 2 shots off kept the damage somewhat similar for a tier 0 tech tree.

However, I either kept or increased armor mitigation across the board. So they still had a place as a ballistic high armor pen rifle. Unfortunately, I didn't see the need for the cannon tiers you added that are all single shot. This is due in part to me knowing how to get decent access to magnetic weapons and be only wave 1..5 in-game. Mag weapons whole purpose is ballistics with armor pen, just as an entire section of the tech tree, and it does it more meaningful then the cannons. (X-division alien bases, since they tech up on their own, can have better troops then in your regular UFO waves, so getting tech unlocked by beating down with batons is doable, just incredibly risky.)

Reaction fire: I can see the argument that the basic rifle would have reaction fire, but given that the real life counterparts of its time are heavier than a rocket launcher It felt like it needed to be less flexible. The bigger ones are breach loaders that need to be reloaded every shot so you would not want them to waste the shot anyhow. I even considered removing the lower tu fireing options to make it take 2 turns per shot in all cases.

Range: The ranges of weapons in the game are silly short to begin with. I understand it is so to make the gameplay work on the small maps and limited sight range the game has. Given that the enemy allways has a bigger sight range than you and any manuvering you do leaves unable to do an aimed shot. I did not see a unlimited range as an isssue. Accuracy would limit the range in most cases effectively enough.

Damage: I am an amature programmer so I gave up on developing a realistic conditional damage system. So I ended up just having high damage. I would have liked for it to deal high damage to armored targets but pass through only dealing low damage to unarmored targets and cover (like real life aircraft cannon AP rounds that anti-tank rifles used). Would have done the same for suppression as AP rouds don't impart much enegy going throug soft materials, like vood or sheet metal, thus low noise for most surfaces in game with the exeption of armored targets, solid concreat and alien craft hulls.

Balance:I tried to balance them with high tu cost to fire, making them hard to use without exposeing your soldiers to retaliation. Unless an andron just conveniently leaves itself exposed or you have your scout spot an exposed enemy from afar.
You could use it standing behind a door opening and fireing but if there are more than one enemy nearby you would still be exposed as you can't close the door after and having a different soldier as a dedicated door operator would be balanced enough in my mind.

As far the idea of the mod was conserned it was as follows. The knowlage i had of anti tank rifles existing at time the game is set in made X-devison early game break my immersion by making the vanilla veapons way too limited for the threats you face. For example early game androns. I did not want a fantasy heavy cannon like the original X-com so I made this.

I am flattered by the attention. I haven't touched this mod for years. I don't mind anyone making smthing similar. I'd even give you a refferral on this page.