Over the past few weeks I have been working on a sequel modlist to this one, featuring a focus on balance and a seamless (glitch and hopefully lag free) experience. After much testing and tweaking, I can now announce that this modlist is complete. It comes in two parts, one for gameplay and the other for soldier cosmetics for those who want to utilize one but not the other, additionally offering an alternative for cosmetics that follows vanilla armor customization rules. For those looking for a more coherent experience or who have had problems with this list, I hope you might enjoy these revised collections.

NevikTheStoryteller's XCOM 2023 Modlist - Gameplay
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933752583

NevikTheStoryteller's XCOM 2023 Modlist - Cosmetics
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933754177

NevikTheStoryteller's XCOM 2023 Modlist - Cosmetics (Alternative)
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2933968068

I really like the concept, but it's too much. My PC can't keep up, It takes 15 minutes to start the game and my PC freeze for 5~10 minutes n mission launch. Even worse, balance is completely out of scale early on. First mission I get SCP spawning right next to my troop, second mission I get an advanced Muton (from harder advent) that in the same turns it detects me (he moved into us, not the other way around) shoot once and bleed out two full hp operatives.

It's an amazing feat to have managed to load so many mods, but it cause too much break and also too much feature bloat. Too many weapons, to many equipments, too many classes. I wish I could love it because it's clear a lot of time went into trying to make it work, but it doesn't. Not for me at least.

What's the mod that adds in the animal faces and tails? I want it gone but can't find it

So I spent half a day downloading this collection and the game laggs like hell

@Apple Juice for the Merry
Please :)

Can you please share your XComModOptions.ini file?
It is somewhere in my games/XCOM2 War of the Chosen/XComGame/Config/ directory
I cannot use ALM, because I am on macOS :(

I am playing with this modlist but even after destroying facilities the countdown does not seem to stop, after it reaches 0 is it over?

@Xilr Ctrl-A to select all then enable one. It will enable the selection.

@Grim
Facilities pop up in all regions around the world, all working toward the Avatar project, but only some have made progress. Progress is indicated as it is in the vanilla game, through red squares under the facility's map token. Destroying an empty facility does however slow down Avatar project progress temporarily.

I'm getting 30 missing dependencies with this collection. Is it normal?

Is there some trick with the Avatar program with this pack? I'm not familiar with Covert Infiltration so I don't know what's supposed to be different but I can't seem to bring the progress down. Like 6 facilities revealed all at once after it introduced the mechanic and shot the progress way up, and getting a lead and unlocking then sieging the facility doesn't remove it. Bugged or am I missing something?

Did anyone ever make an exported list for AML? Or do I have to enable everything one at a time?

@.puddi
Any mods which mark themselves as additions to Covert Infiltration, which the mod manager should help you find in the mod's dependencies tab. Most of the associated mods tag themselves in the title with SCI or Strategy Overhaul Bridge.

Small question, what mods would I need to remove to get rid of covert infilitrations?
I like this modpack, and played with it for a bit. But I really don't want to deal with the infilitrations honestly.
Can I just remove that one mod or do I need to uninstall a bunch more?

Nevik!!

I'm using your modlist with a couple of additions and I am loving it. Amazing job.

I've got a a weird issue though, one I've never seen before. None of the default voice sets are showing as available (uk english, australian english, french, etc etc). I'm basically only seeing modded voice sets, I think.

Ever seen anything like this before? Any ideas on what could be causing?

It appears the soldier stance visual bug was caused by the mod Combine Intervention overwriting some XCOM soldier behaviors in the creation of its added enemies, making soldier stances occasionally glitch out as well as making XCOM soldiers sometimes taunt in combat like Advent soldiers. In addition to certain Combine soldiers having the wrong animations (holding an invisible rifle instead of their carried pistol), I have decided to remove Combine Intervention from this modlist (as well as all dependent costumes, though voice packs have been kept).

I just tried this mod list, and it is very CPU intensive. Tried minimum graphics, but it is not my GPU, that is idling along at under 20% then. But a single core on my 12 core Ryzen is maxed out constantly. I suspect that is the issue. Anyone got a suggestion?

Thankyou for a quick answer, will defiantly try that. Besiddes this problem, i have really been enjoying this mod list

@Bruce Venture
I got something like that long ago with the MOCX mod, even though the mod itself did not have any problems with causing crashing. If I remember right, it was some sort of conflict between ini files causing the problems. Try removing all mod and game ini files for XCOM 2 and allow them to regenerate themselves over a few startups. This may solve the problem for you.

I keep almost consistently ctd when I try to enter a Retalation strike and the one time i got inn. I got inn after 6 attempts, but i ctd when i try to leave

@Biggus Dickus
I think that is something even the game without mods does when putting all its effort into loading. Given the number of mods, the game will also be slower to start than normal due to having to load the mods. Allow up to 10-15 minutes of loading for the game to start, it might not need that long but if that time is exceeded then that is a sign of something going wrong.

As stated in a prior comment, add "-log" to your Active Arguments in Alternate Mod Launcher's Settings menu to see what's going on in the background while the game is launching, it will show a DOS box detailing everything it is doing leading up to the main menu.

i installed all mods, and using AML but my game keep not responding when start up

@jordboy
You could try combing through the modlist for graphical effect specific mods such as Post Process Status Effects and deactivate them. It depends on what is causing the lag, XCOM 2 sometimes lags more and more the further into the game you get with or without mods. Perhaps try turning graphics options all the way down just to test it out and see if that helps, if it doesn't then the lag is likely being caused by an overabundance of processing between whatever the game has going in the background plus the various modded systems being tracked.

@Wildly Unprepared
This is an intended effect. Facilities are something Advent can replace with ease, but research not so much. See Storyteller's Strategic Overhaul mod for more information.

Does anyone else run into the issue with infinite alien Bases? I destroy a base, and another appears in the exact same spot right after I load back to the main map.

Also Alien Bases everywhere in every country all at once right from the begining. I ticked the longer time, and longer Alien Mission Time when i started the game. Send Help, the Alien Progress is Growing so fast.

Absolutely love this collection by the way but I have an important question, is there ANY way to improve performance from the mid game onwards? Lag spikes right now are terrible and I will turn down/off what I can.

How do i unlock more customazation and why armour colours/facepaints/scars etc dont apply to my soldiers.
Thanks in advance for yout time.

Thanks you for this collection : It would be cool to at least add a comment with the name of the removed mods if you remove some.

@Skrangelben
No ini edits that are not made by default by the mods in this list. I have taken great care to attain a stability and harmony between all of the listed mods, and it has worked perfectly fine for me and some others. If you encounter any issues, describe them and I shall look into finding a solution for them.

Looks like a very unstable list unfortunately. What ini edits have you made?

@Onetruesempai
There is one conflict (a harmless one) and a few dozen missing dependencies which are also either harmless or supplemented by other mods. The conflicts and missing dependencies present in this modlist are all accounted for and pose no problem, you should be good to run the game.

installing this and loading it through AML, its telling me there are missing dependencies
and conflicts, is this due to an error on my part?

i solved it now, it was from a mod that change haven resistance that needs a pack dlc, my bad and great work, great modlist

@NotRussian
Load order should be taken care of by AML. Are you sure there are no conflicts shown? There should be at least one, a false alarm, if there are none at all then it is possible that something may not be set up correctly.

my game crash to desktop on first haven defense mission, any guess to correct this? also im using alternative mod manager and no conflicts shown, should i have some specific load order?

@jamesIelnen
That is a good question. You might be able to retain your modlists separately by saving them as text files, if I'm remembering correctly and AML still features an export, which can then be loaded without deleting any additional mods to activate only what you want. You could also try putting all of the mods from certain lists into categories, which I used to do by genre years ago, but I am no longer sure how it works. Hope this helps!

Looks awesome, cant wait to try. Is there a AML profile? How can I only activate the mods on your collection? probably a dumb questions. Thanks!

@Thalioden
Thank you again for the observations and suggestions! I had forgotten that Rusty's Recruits Redux was not exclusive for LWOTC after I had made a LWOTC modlist.

I'd recommend [WOTC] Rusty's Recruits Redux over [WOTC] RW Realistic Recruiting. It does the same thing, and much more.

More Effective Blast Padding is unnecessary because it is included in [WOTC] Full Padding.

@Thalioden
How did that get in there? Thank you for bringing that to my attention, Alien Base Counts as Subway for LWOTC has been removed from the modlist.

I don't see any reason to have "Alien Base Counts as Subway" in this list. It's really only applicable to LWOTC.

@Wildly Unprepared
Add "-log" to your Active Arguments in Alternate Mod Launcher's Settings menu to see what's going on in the background while the game is launching, it will show a DOS box detailing everything it is doing leading up to the main menu.

Hang on, I just waited 15 mins and then i made it to the Main Menu of the Game. GG, excellent collection

After Getting the Alternative Mod Launcher and having all this mods downloaded, I clicked on Run War of the Chosen button but the game just has the "Xcom: War of the chosen" Pop up load forever. Is there an extra step inside the Alternative mod launcher?

@Thalioden
Thank you very much for the optimizations, I shall imbue the modlist with these improvements.

Skulljack Mind-Controlled Enemies by Hot3looded includes (and is superior to) Codex Skulljack Fix by RealityMachina

kdm2K6's Random Enemy Movement has been incorporated into RedDobe's Yellow Alert Gameplay, so Random Enemy Movement is unnecessary.