Could I provide you a few lines of code to enable adding a maximum stack config?

You'd really think there would be some sort of cap on the maximum armour & shield generated to prevent it getting ridiculous, but the idea is great :)

Decided to uninstall this mod after a haven assault in which I was forced to use all of my grenades to murder the surviving resistance fighters, who would NOT. STOP. SHOOTING. the faceless.

This mod is good if you want difficulty. If playing with Beta Strike they become extremely tricky to deal with in early missions. Since they can't dash and attack on the same turn you need to keep your team very mobile to avoid their reach. Though if the Lost show up and start attacking them you're going to be hitting the evac button.

I'd fix this myself because you don't exactly seem like you take issue with players having to fight an immortal Faceless during the early game haven missions, but I know jack shit about editing these kinds of things.

This mod is great, but damn, if you have ANY missions with resistance allies sitreps, the Faceless is just going to be literally immortal, why is this a problem? First off, resistance allies that attack the faceless, deal no damage at all and add to it's apparently limitless armor cap, then there's the fact he showed up EARLY game, so that means I don't have ANY high damage weapons capable of piercing the armor that he's going to add onto anyway, not to mention, explosives only destroy ONE armor pip, it stops being scary and challenging, and just frustrating when the AI keeps attacking the Faceless and making it immortal because they deal too little damage and the Faceless has a limitless armor cap, if it's ability was ONLY able to stack up, to 3, or even 5 it'd be more acceptable, at least it'd be more fair during those early game missions when you're dealing with them and you have resistance sitrep mods.

I've upped the armour and shield degrade to -99 per turn, my reasoning being that in order for it to move again it needs to take a less solid form, so reverts to its previous state... that and resistance fighters make it damn near invincible as soon as my turn arrives, which is both frustrating and hilarious

Just wanted to add praise for this mod - really adds to the horror action feel of it and stresses the importance of research choices. Love that it creates this potentially invincible foe you have to run away from. I was able to take down the first one I encountered on a commander level playthrough with a 10 man squad, but two died and it cost majority of my grenades. Four more immediately showed up, set off by a mobile task force group. Those a-holes quickly made the faceless invincible as it teared through their squad, providing me just enough time to rescue the bare minimum number of civilians and get the eff out of there. Awesome addition to the game, can't recommend enough, and can't wait to get armor shredding ammo.

Hello Joul. I have been using some your mods and I like them all. I like this one as well, which I only recently started to use, but it is clear that the new Faceless has a presence on the field that the older version did not have !
I think I'll probably increase the loss of shield to -2 instead of -1. It should keep the Faceless scary and powerful enough, but it should possible to kill them with the right strategy. Excellent mod in any case...

So your solution to making them 'scarier' is to turn them into bullet sponges? LMAO

This mod is amazing, thank you!
I had a sit rep that added friendly Reapers; they fed it to 18 armour before it finally killed them off ;)

This makes the faceless in the first rescue mission immortal. The one I just played had 12 armor, meaning conventional weapons can't ever penetrate him.

The mod play is broken with default settings. Here's my suggestion: Cap how much armor can stack - no more than 3. This cap could be available in the config ini. Under no circumstances, no matter how hardened their flesh can become, should a Faceless ever have more armor than a Metal Sectopod. Consider by the time sectopods come into play we have plasma weapons to deal with that armor.

With your faceless, they come up in the first rescue mission vs low lever soldiers and lowest tier of weapons.

3 faceless in first retaliation mission.... it's basically a boss fight.

That, or maybe give them shields which don't degrade—I forgot to say thanks for the config so we can try out this stuff for ourselves!

So I've discovered a slight issue with the default config, namely on Haven Assault missions. Once you get to the end and any remaining Faceless reveal themselves, the resistance fighters will start pouring shots into them on their turn. And since they basically never miss, the Faceless start racking up the armor pretty quickly. Scary, but not that bad yet. The problem is once the Faceless has more armor than the resistance can do damage, the shield it gets soaks up the one point of damage that goes through armor, rendering it functionally immortal: you get an unkillable monster rampaging around as resistance fighters continue increasing its armor.
I still enjoy the mod, though, as it definitely lives up to its name. I might just tweak it to remove the shielding on hit and have armor decrease by 2 per turn—I'd like them to be scary, not literally unkillable. :)

I'm a big fan of non-Newtonian fluids (ketchup in particular) and think Faceless are a pretty cool idea but are generally not too big a threat, so I'm genuinely both excited and terrified to try this out.

Great mod. Can you consider adding specific character name in addition to group name? May want to give it to a specific tier 2 or 3 modded enemy but not tier 1 (e.g M2 Sectoid Abductor vs all Sectoids).

This is incredible.

Hi,

Not a complaint, but just to help out anyone else in future:

I recently installed the Bio Beasts mod, which adds a bunch of acid/poison-themed enemies. I think Bio Beasts and Scarier Faceless are incompatible. Scarier Faceless worked fine before, but now the regular Faceless no longer get their reactive armor bonuses, and neither do the Bio Faceless. There seems to be some stability problems as well.

Oh well! Just an FYI <3

Good mod, only problem is that faceless become virtually immortal if you're on tech level one, or if they catch on fire, 1 armour and shield every turn and 1 damage done from the fire every turn, 6 armour pips before he killed all my guys. The game's balance is kinda ruined If you find one while on tech level one.

Killed my dudes. 10/10 would die horribly again

Updated: Now you're able to put this ability on any enemy of your liking, as long as you know their character group name!

@An Arousing Avocado
Glad to hear, may your soldiers have sweet dreams about the time a 4 armored regenerating faceless slayed their teammates.

Jesus shit it works with bio troops just fine, and like holy fuck Im legit scared of them now, like they went from a annoyance to a high priority target

Thanks man!

@FlamingCheesepie
Removed the flyover for both mods just in case! You shouldn't see it now. =)

Thanks! I don't think your other mod affects sneks at least, since I've seen one since but I don't think it got the flyover.

@Flamingcheesepie
Damn didn't realise the flyover showed through the fog of war. Will remove it asap.

@Joul Fucking cool my guy, thanks!

Hey man, dunno if you know about this already, but when mission starts you can see a flyover for each faceless on the mission. I dunno if that applies to hidden faceless, or for your snek mod, but it is a concern in that it tells the player vague pod positions and compositions. Any chance you could remove that?

@An Arousing Avocado
Very likely as I checked its the same unit category. Let me know if it doesn't!

would this work with bio troops faceless?

@GargakOfTheEast it is correct - and also mean the first (powerful) strike; in this game, it's mainly when you leave concealment and killing the whole pod in one swift attack ...

If you're lucky and play properly, you can kill 2 pods by breaking concealment - that's about 40% to 50% of the aliens in most missions..

@JouL Can you explain what you mean by alphastriking? I do not understand what you mean. "Alpha striking" to me means, from magic the gathering, to attack your opponent with all of your creatures. I do not understand how this relates to the Faceless? :(

@Wiirlak
Thats my dream too, but sadly its beyond my coding ability to manufacture a whole new alien.
You might wanna beg DerBK or someone experienced at making enemies. Feel free to take this code apart if needed.

Oh I agree. I think this is a much better implementation. And lore friendly too.

Thank you ! :)

The vampiric claws could be an optional .ini config ?
Maybe could the skills (or stats) being added / altered with the force level ?

Like they unlock the shield power at force 4, then armor at force 7, then both get upgraded at force 10, vampiric claws at force 13.. Or something like that ?
If there was MK2 faceless those could have been use but there is only one type, I think..

@GargakOfTheEast
Interesting ideas, the Vampiric claws might be actually lore friendly as the faceless literally sucks through its straw claws your troops blood to build its organic matter. But I don't want to further encourage Alphastriking, already bad enough as it is.

@Wiirlak
I've just fulfilled your dream of adding shield to the faceless. Now to create your very own nightmare.

Yeah, the Faceless are rarely a problem with mods. To be honest, even in the base game they were rarely a problem except in big numbers with basic weapons. Mainly just because their health is so high.

Kudos for the cool perk name <3. We need more thixotropic and rheopectic aliens.

I'll add this mod to a future run.

Here's a few more quick brainstorm ideas on how to make the Faceless more scary (it's not necessary to do ALL of them, just some fun ideas <3):

-If a soldier "sets them off" by stepping in the civilian circle, the Faceless gets a special "surprise" attack that can render the soldier stunned or even unconscious.
-Give Battle Scanner and Scanning Protocol only an X% chance of unmasking them.
-Let them attack as a dash move.
-Vampiric claws.

Yeah, faceless buffs might be needed for mod users that have stronger gears which instant kills it

"which is a lonely 1 unit unless you mod in a friend." I love it! XD

Maybe have a look how "Kinetic Plating" from the Chosen strenght work ?
(Missed shots against the Chosen give them shields.)

@havokscorp
Yes WOTC ready.

@Wiirlak
I would like to do that, except shield point is not a base attribute like HP/Armour etc so I'll need some time to figure it out. Check out my Weapon Customisation mod for weapons specialised to kill armoured dudes. (Sniper, Sword and Vektor rifle)

Wotc ready?

I would have prefer the faceless to gain shield point instead of armor, as to be not so OP.

Thanks! Was also inspired by your mod to work on make the tactical choices based on enemies you deal with more interesting instead of alpha striking everything. But problem is just dragging fights out also isn't the solution due to the turn timer.

Hmmm... Interesting changes. If you need inspiration maybe check out the abilities / balance of Delta Strike mod https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1159730025&searchtext=delta+ , which seems broken now, but had some good ideas.

I love your idea though.