For those who are interested I have put out "A Better Start" for Chimera Squad.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077831303

If you have XCS then give this a try. I'll be coming out with a Lite version and then A Better Agent and A Better Arsenal all with Lite versions here soon.

@Scuba Steve can you make a lite version just for the normal game?

<3

WOTC Compatible versions of my A Better' MODS have been released!!!

A lot of additions were made by WOTC that made upgrading a few of these a bit more tedius.. I'm looking at You, A Better Arsenal!

Thank you all for your patience. In the interest of getting these out ASAP I didn't get to do the full amount of play testing that I would like. Please send me your feedback. (please refrain from commenting that these mods are too OP as that is their intent. That said, if I didn't dile back the LITE versions enough then pass those notes along.)

--- A special thanks to reCLUsive7 for sponsoring this work.

Links to new mods:

+ A Better Start for WOTC | A Better Start for WOTC(LITE)

+ A Better Rookie for WOTC | A Better Rookie for WOTC(LITE)

+ A Better Arsenal for WOTC | A Better Arsenal for WOTC(LITE)

Wow, really cool to have such friends. Nice to hear that there will soon be a new mod of you.

Just had awesome subscriber gift me the DLC so that I can get these mods updated. You can thank, reCLUsive7 for his sponsorship of the update of these mods. What a crazy cool XCOM gamers community we have!

An additional shout out goes to Spartan A291 and Force2reckon for their generous offers to pick up the DLC for the cause as well.

I expect to get WOTC compatible version of this mod within the next 2 weeks.

need a lite Version for WOTC

awesome, thanks

not a stupid question... Yep the LW2 lite version will work without LW2.

Stupid question, I see this says it's the LW2 version, is there a non LW2 lite version or will this by chance work without LW2?

I tested the non lite version, but it was too much for me. The lite version seems to be just enough to be slightly OP but not game breaking, base and resource management still exist. Thank you for making a lite version!

Yep, works without LW2. Just the LW2 unique items won't show up in your non LW2 modded game. Everything else should work just fine.

When he says in the description that it's LW compatible, I asume he means that i will give you no trouble, but it's not required. I'm going to try it now without LW anyway

Is LW2 required for the light versions?

No offense taken. I copied them from the structure of LW2's version of the file then merged it with the default ini. So it got a bit messy.

Don't mean to be rude, just wanted to adjust some values and it was a little hard to find.

Is there any reason that the file info is all jumbled up in just a few lines, instead of all spaced out? Like this. [i.gyazo.com]

Got it.

Lite = Not OP as much -- closer to the balanced game with a little help on starting out.

Without Lite = OP ... you will never know of want for supplies, intel, etc. and waiting for research and facility building is a thing of the past.... you can have fully researched armor and weapons' trees and built out the base within the first week (assuming you pick up an engineer in the first six days of that week.) ;-)

Whats the different between with Lite and without Lite?

Additionally I have found that I am even further tweaking A Better Start for LW2 (lite) in the workshop folder so I can play exactly how I want. I ofcourse know when I'm going to push a new update to the mod so I'm not worried about my settings being lost. However for mods that i'm not the mod owner on that I tweak in the workshop folders I'll keep a backup copy of the file I change so that I can just reapply the changes after I hear an update has been pushed.

Technically yes, pulling the the LW2 into your local mods area would keep it from trumping other workshop mods. When I did this I found the game got really buggy. Forexample in all of the LW2 infiltrations the mission loading in screen is your squad standing in some room around a door way. After I moved the LW2 mod to my local space all of my missions were launching from the skyranger like the vanila game. It could have been some other of mods making this happen but I haven't tried it again after building all new versions of my A Better' ___ mods which by default get loaded after LW2 due to release date in the workshop.

Would it be good to have LW2 in local and have the better start, arsenal, and rookie in workshop if they load last? If they are in the workshop file, will changes to ini stay the same? I dont know if this applies to this, but would I have to unsubscribe from the mod for it to keep my changes? Thanks in advance for answering.

XComHeadquarters_StartingValueSupplies[3]=10000 ;Impossible
XComHeadquarters_StartingValueIntel[3]=0 ;Impossible
XComHeadquarters_StartingValueAlienAlloys[3]=0 ;Impossible
XComHeadquarters_StartingValueEleriumCrystals[3]=0 ;Impossible
XComHeadquarters_StartingPowerProduced[3]=0 ;Impossible
XComHeadquarters_StartingCommCapacity[3]=0 ;Impossible

awesome.. i'll check it out as soon as I get that far in my game as well.

Elerium Grounds is supposedly LW2 compatible (Janah updated both mods for LW2 on the 24th of Jan), although I have yet to get the Proving Ground in my LW2 campaign so I haven't been able to test it.

its an awesome mod or Elerium Grounds is one similar to it. Only problem is that its not LW2 compatible.. at least Elerium Grounds isn't.

I found a mod that should fill the gap, it's Janah's Elerium Core Crafting mod which allows you craft Elerium Cores in the proving ground (haven't tried the mod yet).

Of all the things I wished I could boost with these mods was the starting count for Elerium Cores. There isn't even a parameter for starting count of cores in the vanila game. If there is then I've missed it from day one. It is clear to me that this was very intentional so that cores were a high value commodity and a throttle to your equipment development pace.

Please correct me if I am wrong and you know that starting count on cores is adjustable. I'll update all 3 versions of my mods to include them.

* I also wanted to give myself a couple of extra advent trooper corpses to make jumping to plate armor on this first two days was possible, albeit the idea of that sounds a bit morbid. "Yes, commander we have also been keeping a trunk full of dead things just in case.., yes.. that is what you are smelling..."

Both versions of the mod appear to be missing Elerium Cores as a boosted starting resource, was this intentional.

Great. A better start was almost too OP.

keep up the great work man!

Thanks a lot for making these Light versions! Haven't tried them yet, but they appear to be just right for making LW2 playable at the highest difficulties.

Great work, thanks once again.

:D thx man, this is what a need you are awesome