This mod has been updated.

- I have been asked to make the final mission great again. The final mission is now great again.

- Better Pods is now compatible with the upcoming ABA2.0. The only change i had to do for that is swapping the Warden on Gatecrasher out for a Riot Control (No Wardens in ABA2.0, they get merged with the Riot Control). Everything else is unchanged.

All right, thanks!

Better Pods does NOT work with ABAI only. It needs the extra enemies for some of the special mission specific pods.

The best (only?) alternatives i see to increase the numbers of enemies per mission are "Increased Enemy Squad Size" (works perfectly fine, but the author abandoned the mod. Still, i checked it, the mod is still fully functional) and "Grimy's Attrition Mode" (unlimited reinforcements --> extra pods). Or both IESS and Attrition.

In addition to that, if you also want the "No rulers in council mission" part of Better Pods, you can use "Restrict Rulers".

Does this mod work with A Better AI instead of A Better Advent? If not, would you suggest a similar mod for A Better AI?

I haven't got mid to late game, I keep resetting a bunch of stuff, but the early mid balance is good, especially because I've got a roster of like, 18+ troops

I play with 6 man starting squad, scanning sites plus (Dropped the chance of getting a mission to 60%, as you get heaps more missions=enemies/xp), fatigue, aba+, captains call reinforcements (Rapid reinforcements and editing the ini for 2 turns delay is awesome (As well as evac delay mod to make sky ranger take 2 turns)), and the mod that lets soldiers get xp even if they don't run the missions (Because they would still be learning and talking tactics (Although I dropped the bonus they get right down to like 10%)), also realistic armor and armor as cover are awesome :)

RequiredKills[0]=0, \\
RequiredKills[1]=1, \\
RequiredKills[2]=12, \\
RequiredKills[3]=30, \\
RequiredKills[4]=58, \\
RequiredKills[5]=100, \\
RequiredKills[6]=150, \\
RequiredKills[7]=210, \\
RequiredKills[8]=300

I don't know. Like i said, i play with Fatigue, so this particular issue doesn't apply to me and i have no experiences with it.

Better Pods doesn't even add all that many enemies to early missions. Like 2-4 at first maybe? That ramps up to about +12 in the endgame (5 pods + reinforcements, +2 enemies each). Divided by number of soldiers, that's 2 extra kills per soldier and mission in the endgame. Less than that early and midgame.
Since Better Pods scales its increase, you'd have to scale the increase to required kills (or XP? or both? Not sure, actually!) as well...

I would probably only do subtle changes, not more than 20% increases to the numbers. But that's a complete shot in the dark that would need to be playtested, i guess.

Thank you for the response. Makes sense what you decided. If you were to edit it though, how much would you increase it by? Just curious. I was just a bit concerned when I just got the second tier armor and weapons and already had a Major Ranger.

But yes, soldiers absolutely level fast with Better Pods in the mix. I use both Fatigue and Notoriety, so it never bothered me. I figure, if i have to punch back pods of 6 instead of pods of 4, i might as well get some reward for it.

Well, aside from the piles of extra bodies which can translate directly into cash... i think those are a much more important balance concern than the extra XP. It's not quite the piles of money that you can get from Grimy's Loot Mod, but it's very noticable how much more money you can make by selling corpses by the dozen.

If that is an concern for you, you could edit the progession of needed kills per rank up fairly simple.

In XComGameData_XpData.ini, there are the numbers for RequiredXP for ranks 0-7 and the required Kills for rank 0-7. The required Kills are different for the 4 difficulties as well and have seperate lines.

Note that if you use the LW PerkPack, that mod already changes some stuff to these lines by adding the rank 8 to these lists. So if you run LWPP and want to change something here, don't do it in the vanilla ini, but do it in the XpData.ini of LWPP.

I was asked before (months ago, before Perk Pack was even a thing) if i would change something here with Better Pods and decided against it. Preferences for how fast soldiers level vary from player to player and with the class mods they use. And wether they use Fatigue/Notoriety! In the end, I decided to stay out of it for compatibility reasons.

Does anyone else find their soldiers promoting perhaps a bit too fast with this mod? I love the mod and added difficulty, I just don't want my troops getting good too fast.

They aren't hardcoded, i just chose to not edit them so far. Like Gatecrasher, they don't use randomly generated pods. Like Gatecrasher, i could edit them if i wanted to.

@ Ser Lancelot , You can't have it appear on the final mission. I do believe those pods are hard coded in the game.

Then I'm not editing this guy out...just going to expect him again on the final mission against the Avatars in the 2nd area of the mission.

Forging ahead with the Forge mission...yet again! Report back with results...or casualties.

It only has a forced appearance in the Forge. It can appear randomly in any other mission once you hit forcelevel 20, which you probably won't do in a speedrun.

Do you have the Prime Sectopod appearing on any other mission by default? I wouldn't want to edit *that* out, only the Forge one.

Thanks.

I am also contemplating tackling another speed run with the Prime Sectopod in mind, being fully aware that I should have Bluescreen Protocol unlocked by then, which totally changes around my early game plans of Shadow Chamber going up by mid-April to getting the Proving Grounds up *much* sooner...

Well, if anything, thanks for the challenge!

I can't balance around speed runs. The Forge Sectopod Prime is absolutely going to stay as a default. I want it to be hard, i want it to be punishing. The way i see it, if you can do the Forge in April, i didn't do my job ;)

If you want to change it yourself, you can do that, though:
- Open missions.ini
- Ctrl + H (Find and Replace)
- Search for "StealthSectopod"
- Replace with "Sectopod"
- Close and save.

That'll do it.

I only think that the Forge Sectopod *should not* be the ADVENT Prime Sectopod as it's usually the first Secotopod we run into and on a speed run, that's mid-April and easily a squadwipe. Or two. Or few.

I cannot get past the Forge as is. As is = Exquisite Timing run, I'd have to really stall off the game quite a bit just to tool up and get past Julian, Jr. Hell, I think this is worse than Julian, this practically a ruler-level Sectopod, with what, Annihilation Protocol kicking in on every little ding.

Mid-April, no less.

Can you please spawn this Sectopod elsewhere but the Forge? Or is the .ini editable? If so, tell me where

I finally decided to install ABP after refining my mod list and I wished that I had done it earlier. The missions are way more interesting and intense. Thank you!

@DerBK - A wise choice. ;) I was just dipping my toe into an ABA L/I campaign to see if it was plausible, aannnd I pulled back a stump . . .

I've said numerous times in the last half year that i don't really balance anything with Legendary in mind... you are simply hurting yourself :D

Start Legend Ironman campaign. Squad wipe on my first mission after Gatecrasher. Restart campaign. Squad wipe on my first mission after Gatecrasher. "Edge of Tomorrow" achieved.

Perfect DerBK balance. ;D

Seriously, I really love how the combined ABA mods force me to rethink how I approach every mission. Back to the drawing board . . . sorry Rookies.

no wondeer my last mission was so hard, Thanks for the challenge! ^_^

Yikes, I'm starting a new a campaign tomorrow. Gatecrasher with a gunslinger and a warden will be for sure a challenge =)

This mod has been updated.

Changes in a nutshell:
- Minimum podsize of 3 has been introduced.
- Facility Sabotage missions are now harder than other missions. They have an extra pod and the boss pod gets a forcelevel bonus and an additional member.
- A few more "scripted" appearances by ABA units at different parts of the campaign. Take special note of the Sectopod Prime on the Forge mission and the modifications to Gatecrasher.

I am going to start some bigger rework on some of the things in Better Pods and Better Pods Plus. If there's something you want me to add, this would be a great time for it. Use this thread: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/686642883/361798516941337168/

Thank you, that clears up some confusion.

Two is the standard pod size in the beginning for vanilla. Better Pods raises some of them to 3 right from the start, but pods of 2 can still come up, especially early and on missions tagged as "Easy".

For some reason when I use this mod and not better pods plus, alongside "All the enemies" and long war's alien pack, I tend to get pods of only one or two. For example an officer and drone or sectoid and mech, any ideas how to fix this?

Ok, DerBK, I did want a challenge. But 4 Archons and a Gatekeeper in one pod? You're spoiling me.

This mod has been updated with some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Got it. Thank you!

Pod size is defined by one value only and independent of the enemy type.

In XComMissions.ini, alle pods are listed seperately, their size is controlled by the value "MaxSpawnCount".

I mean, what parameters define the maximum amount of enemies. If there are many of them, is there a variable that increases this number for every enemy type. Let's say, maximum size = 7, minimum size: 2.

@Scorpy:
I don't understand the question.

Is there a way to control globally the number of enemies per mission? If not, it might be an idea for further versions or new mods.

Ok, I think I got it. AMT uses only Council_Dx_Standard for its missions (it has only those in the MissionSchedules array). Your modifications to mission schedules include the addition of "MinRequiredForceLevel=1, MaxRequiredForceLevel=5", so that there can be a bigger variety of schedules (hence the Council_Dx_Standard_[1,2,3] schedules). Now, at some point in the game, the ForceLevel will go above 5, and since all Council_Dx_Standard schedules have the "MaxRequiredForceLevel=5" restriction (in Better Pods), AMT has no viable schedule to choose from the array => no info how many and what enemies to place and that's why there are empty missions.
Seems like adding Better Pod's schedules to AMT's mission.ini should do the trick. But now it's too late into the night for me to check and I'll be off for the weekend :)

I have a question. What does "MinRequiredForceLevel=1, MaxRequiredForceLevel=5" do in your mission.ini changes to Council_D7_Standard (example)? Those are the only parameters ADDED to a MissionSchedule, not just changed. I think (long shot here) this might be messing with Additional Mission Types, as those Council_Dx_Standard schedules are used in that mod.

There is also this fix for VIP PR tour, located in AMT's mission.ini file:
;by default the PR tour mission type uses the council mission schedules to ensure compatibility with mods like Additional Dark Events
;however if you want a more customized mission schedule provided by bornity, comment out the below arrmissions
;and scroll down to [Bornity's Schedules]
I haven't had an occasion to test it though.

Never had an issue with the advent VIP tour using this mod.

I don't have plans of making further versions of the mod.
To adjust things to your own tastes, you can open up the mission.ini and change some stuff there yourself.

What you want to be looking for are the "MaxSpawnCount" values that come with the pod definitions. Make sure to only change lines that start with a "+".
DO NOT change any line that starts with a "-" or you will break things.

Once you are done, i strongly suggest making a backup of your edited file, because i will very likely update the mod in the next week which will overwrite your changes and you may want to c/p your lines back in.

Could you make an easier version that scales just to +1, or describe what needs to be changed in the ini to achieve this?

Maps by Vozati only edits stuff for the Avenger Defense mission, which i don't edit myself.

As for what's causing your empty mission, there seem to be multiple conflicts leading to the same result. The Evac All thing was certainly the cause for empty Neutralize Target missions.

Apparently VIP on PR has it's own problems when used with my mod. *shrug*

Well, I uninstalled Evac All but still got an empty "Capture VIP on PR tour" mission.
Maps by Vozati has a xcommissions.ini. Could it be the problem?

ok thanks again

My "All The Enemies!" plugin takes care of all compatibility between Better Advent and other enemy mods, so just use that and all should be well.

Great mods!! one question,this mod is functional with the mod Advent Sniper? I have the others two "ABA:BETTER ..." mods of you. thanks!!

Ah, didn't look in discussions. Cheers!

On my phone, so i can't link. Look at the Better Advent page, under Discussions. There's a thread about empty reinforcements. It's easy to fix, just look there.

Using additonal mission types, I was on a rescue VIP from rioting city mission and the reinforcements didn't spawn? The flare would appear and the dropship fly in like normal, but it didn't contain any enemies. Is that an issue from this mod, or something else?