Known issues:

- CCS on Strikers still triggers when they are frozen.
*shrug* Who uses Frost Bombs on Troopers?

Next patchnotes

(2019-12-01)

AI shooting at explodables
- Thanks to the heroic efforts of RedDobe, we can now teach enemies how to shoot at explodey barrels and similar things when that would cause damage to their enemies. This behavior has been integrated into ABA now.

Encounterlists
- Under certain rare circumstances, the vanilla spawn ranges for units in certain sitreps could lead to cases where there are no valid units to spawn, leading to empty missions. For example, this could happen if a mod reduces the effective forcelevel of a mission (A Better Missions can do that) and that mission also happens to be a very low level Savage sitrep. The mission would turn up empty because at FL1 and 2 there are no savage units to spawn.
This update extends the valid spawnlevels for some units down to cover these cases.

Boas
- The Bind animations for Boas were messed up for a while. To this day i am not really sure what ended up breaking them from one day to the next. To fix it, i had to discard my old Boa model and make a new one. So that's what i did for this update. The Boa is still a yellowish, bigger than normal, Snek. I based her off the LW Naja textures, so she has the same markings on her hood.
Here's a pic showing the Boa next to a standard Viper for comparison and while binding a soldier to demonstrate that the anim is now working correctly: Click.[cdn.discordapp.com]





Last patchnotes

(2018-11-24)

Skirmisher finetuning

- Improved the AI with regards to Run And Gun use. I am still not fully satisfied, but you should no longer see them activate RnG and just pass the turn.

- Improved the visuals. Removed the shoulderpads with the symbol for the free Advent from them. Gave them Torso decorations instead, to differentiate the Skirmisher tiers. Advanced Skirmishers will have the fur trimmings on their armor, Elite Skirmishers will have a cape.

- Also, the Skirmishers now carry an ADVENT SMG instead of the Bullpup. This is a purely visual change, their weapon is otherwise identical to the Bullpup used by vanilla Skirmishers.

(2018-11-16)

AI changes

This version improves a couple of things all over the AI. So uuuh, i failed to make notes while doing so and now i am not quite sure on the specifics anymore -.- but it was like 7 to 10 different things. Stuff i remember off the top of my head are:
- making Sectoids and Vipers more defensive, they should be more eager to stay back and use their powers.
- Mk2 MECs no longer use their Micro Missles against single targets all the time. They are still able to, but will do so with a lower priority.
- I fixed a few things around grenade use.
- I made Shieldbearer less likely to use their Shield on only few targets.

Some other things, too. Sorry, i don't remember all of it right now, but it was all nothing huge and flashy, just more like the examples above.
To the important part then:


New enemy unit: ADVENT Skirmisher

Advent has Skirmishers now :) They can appear in the place of Captains, leading ADVENT pods into battle. Like most Advent units, they exist in three tiers: ADVENT, Advanced and Elite Skirmisher.

Skirmishers use exactly the same weapons as players do, the Bullpup and the Ripjack. They also carry a Flashbang Grenade, like the other Captains.
Tier 1 Skirmishers have these perks: Marauder, Grapple, Total Combat and Reckoning.
Tier 2 Skirmishers also have these perks: Justice
Tier 3 Skirmishers also have these perks: Zero In, Run And Gun

Their stats are identical to Captains and they can only be followed by ADVENT units.

Note that Skirmishers use dirty tactics, one of their signature moves is using Justice on already impaired soldiers to isolate them.



(2018-11-10)

Enemy Ability Change

Reworked the Gatekeeper's Call ability on Gatekeeper Prime to make it less prone to stacking up with other reaction abilities in a bad way, possibly locking up the AI turn.

Here's how it used to work:
- Whenever a unit able to be turned into a Zombie dies in Line of Sight of Gatekeeper Prime, the Prime's Call ability would immediately trigger and reanimate the fresh corpse as a Zombie.

Here's how it now works:
- Gatekeepers Call no longer triggers instantly when a target is killed. Instead it will now trigger together with any Prime Reaction. Gatekeeper's Call doesn't replace the Prime Reaction, it triggers in addition. That means whenever GK Prime is dealt damage, it will get to reanimate a corpse, then take its reaction to either move or shoot.

This puts the timing of the reanimation into the player's hands. Most importantly, it will stop the ability from triggering right in the middle of already busy ability stacks, like in the middle of Overwatch traps.






(2018-06-11)

Localization
- Added french localization file that has been given to me by NoLiMiT. Thanks :)
- Added chinese localization file that has been given to me by 希望的観測. Thanks to you as well :)

Bugfixes
- Fixed an unintended interaction between Chryssalids, Mindcontrol and Acid Blood.

Numberwang
- Increased spawnweight of Shoggoths by a lot.

AI change
- Until now, Primes would ignore any active Beacons when using abilities as part of their reactions. This has been changed, Prime Reactions will now respect Mimic Beacons.





(2018-05-13)

Bugfix
- Fixed a faulty line in the AI.ini that was causing redscreens/error logs when those are enabled. It wasn't a line that is actually used by the mod at the moment, so no big deal. But anyways, it's gone now.

Numberwang
- Increased Spawnweight for Spectre Prime.
- Increased Spawnweight for Medi Drone, especially the Advanced and Elite version.

New Enemy
- The Shoggoth, one of the more iconic enemies from ABA2, is finally back in action.
- Shoggoth Troopers are Tier 3 units and will not appear before ADVENT fields Elite Troopers.
- Shoggoths are Faceless that are disguised as ADVENT Troopers. These look and behave exactly like Troopers, meaning they are called Elite Trooper, they have a rifle and a grenade and will shoot at XCOM.
- However, when they are damaged, they will change into their true form, which is a black, oily Faceless.
- This Faceless acts like the vanilla unit, but has more life and some armor.
- In non-Terror missions, they are about half as frequent as any other single Trooper variant. So if a Striker has a Spawnweight of 6, the Shoggoth Trooper will have a Spawnweight of 3.
- In Terror missions, they are A LOT more frequent. However, there is a maximum of 1 Shoggoth per pod in place.

Chryssalids
- Removed Burrow from all Chryssalids, including the vanilla one.
- For ABA2, i removed Burrow for being a timewaster and generally annoying ability. When i ported the mod over to WotC, i wanted to give Burrow another chance.
- I think it's still terrible, so away it goes once more.
- As a result of this, the "Chryssalid Lurker" has been renamed to "Chryssalid Hunter". One less Starcraft reference in the game makes me sad, but oh well.




(2018-04-15)

Gatekeeper Prime nerf
- The triggered resurrection ability of the Gatekeeper Prime has been restricted to activate only once per turn. This was done to prevent infinite loops where resurrected enemies die as soon as they pop up (due to Bladestorm etc) just to be resurrected again over and over.

Prime Reaction nerf:
- When shot by resistance soldiers, Primes will either skip their reaction or do only movement. This was done to prevent Prime activations that are out of the players hand.

Korean translation:
- The korean translation has been updated for the last patch with drones and the like.





(2018-03-18)

AI changes
- Melee enemies will now prefer to attack non-Lost over Lost. They are still able to attack Lost, of course. This was in ABA before, but i had to remove it a while ago due to buggy behavior. My thanks to LeaderEnemyBoss for finding the cause of those bugs so i could put this back into the mod.

Korean translation
- Included a korean translation as provided to me by NewBie, originally done by 엑린이.

New Enemies
- ADVENT Drones are back. The annoying flying roombas are deployed by ADVENT as support units that can heal their allies.
- Drones have three abilities: Melee Shock, Drone Laser and Healing Ray.
- There are three tiers of Drones called ADVENT Medi Drone, Advanced Medi Drone and Elite Medi Drone. They can take the place of a Trooper in an ADVENT pod. There will only be one Drone per pod.
- Medi Drones can not spawn on the Automated Defenses sitrep, but they can appear on Show of Force.
- Medi Drones can use their heal ability on reveal.
- My thanks to RealityMachina for fixing the graphical issues with the projectiles that i failed to fix myself when i tried a while back.





(2018-02-23)

Bugfixes
- Fixed Purifier AI. Again. No seriously. I did. This time for real.... Probably! I hope so, at least.

Visuals
- Viper Prime now uses the texture of the Naja from Long War 2. I might still get a custom skin in the future, but for now the excellent work by Pavonis will make sure that the Viper Prime will no longer have to slither around looking like any bland vanilla Snek.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/927050595305994912/15CDB71D8F87856DEBCF44C4C3D875150C71101A/

New Enemy
- Spectre Prime: The Spectre Prime is a highlevel enemy, on a similar tier as the Codex Prime. They use the same abilityset as normal Spectres, with the usual addition of Prime Reactions. They can Vanish, Shadowbind, Horror, Move or Shoot on reaction, which is a very potent set of abilities. For that reason, their 'gimmick' is a bit less impactful than what other Primes got: Spectre Prime has permanent wall phasing, as if he was wearing a Wraith Armor with unlimited duration. Already a very mobile enemy, the wall phasing will allow Spectre Prime to easily get around on the battlefield, either to get in close for a Shadowbind, or to stealth up and move away afterwards.
Note: Spectre Prime uses vanilla Spectre visuals for now.




(2018-02-17)

Bugfixes
- Archon Prime had very low Will, even lower than regular Archons. This has been corrected. It now has 110 Will (up from 50).
- Andromedon Robots will no longer flee when they are the last guy in a pod.
- Lightning Field is buggy in vanilla. For that reason, i'll remove it from Sectopod Prime. Not much of a bugfix, but on the other hand it's not my bug to fix. Fix your game, Jake :P

AI improvements
- Prime Reactions should now lean more towards shooting than moving than before, thus leading to fewer situations where a Prime would just derp around from place to place. This change especially affects Sectopod and Gatekeeper Prime.
- Removed the "DoIfFlankedMove" node from all AI trees for second actions. This should reduce the amount of double moving going on, especially for Sectoids.
- Fixed a bug in my Purifier AI that caused excessive double moving. Ooops, my mistake. Should be good now -.-

Alien Rebalance
- Sectoid Soldier no longer gains an additional hp over the vanilla Sectoid. Not being vulnerable against melee makes him dangerous enough for appearing as soon as the first terror mission.
- The introduction of Berserker and Firestarter Primes is now less abrupt. Previously there would be a hard cut at forcelevel 14 where the regular Berserkers and Firestarters would no longer spawn as pod leaders at all, being 100% replaced by their Prime version. This would be especially noticeable on a specific terror mission setup that heavily features Berserker pods and would usually spawn right after the switch to Primes was made. To soften this difficulty spike, the introduction of Prime Berserkers (and Firestarters) now works RNG-based, with the chance to get a Prime instead of a regular unit getting higher from forcelevel to forcelevel. At FL 14, the chance will start at ca 30%. At FL18, the chance will reach 100%.
- Viper variants now more clearly fall into tiers. Tier 1 are the vanilla Vipers, Tier 2 is the Wyvern, Tier 3 are Boa and Mamba. This comes with a few defensive buffs to the Mamba and the Wyvern. The buffs to the Mamba were significant enough to bump her up to a Forcelevel 14 unit (up from FL11).

ADVENT Rebalance
- Starting with tier 2, ADVENT Gunslingers and ADVENT Snipers no longer spawn. Instead, they merge into the ADVENT Sharpshooter Sergeant who has all the perks and equipment that were previously associated with the two base Troopers: Sniper Rifle, Light Pistol, Smoke Screen, Lightning Hands, Faceoff.
- ADVENT Wreckers are no longer a thing. Their attributes (armor pierce, armor shred, environmental damage) are inherited by the Gatling Trooper. Starting with Tier 2, Gatling Troopers get promoted to Gatling Sergeants.
- Sergeants have 2 more health than other Troopers of their tier.
- Tier 1 Lancer health pool was nerfed on all difficulties. This includes the vanilla Lancer. New health values are 3/4/5/6 (down from 4/6/7/8) for Rk/Vet/Com/Leg. This nerf is specifically aimed at kicking the dreaded Priest + 2 Lancer reinforcement pod into the teeth.
- Buffed tier 2 and tier 3 ADVENT Officers. Tier 2 gains +1 hp and +1 armor. Tier 3 gains +2 hp and +2 armor.


Other New Enemies
- Codex Prime: Codex Prime has more life and dodge than vanilla Codices. On reveal, it immediately splits into two Codices, but will then never again split. Instead, it will do Prime Reactions. These are mostly defensive, but it will gladly take a flank shot if you are offering. Codex Prime uses Empowered Psi Bomb, which works just like the vanilla thing, but without a cooldown. As one of its defensive actions only, it can deploy a 5 point personal energy shield. It uses the vanilla Codex Rifle, so its danger largely comes from the Psi Bomb. On a final note, you should know that Codex Prime has an obscene amount of Dodge. You can easily recognize Codex Prime by its blue appearance. Codex Prime starts appearing as pod leader beginning with forcelevel 17.

Changes in next patch (not yet released)


TO DO

Fix: Chryssalid attacking un-active VIP in sewers.
Fix: Visual bug with Boas using Grab.