(left at gameboard.ini to continue updating)



-----Campaign / Extension

Force Level is what determines how powerful the enemies are, normally scaling from 1-20, it currently scales from 1-60. This allows the enemies to scale in more linear function instead of getting large jumps, it also mean we keep enemy types in play longer by increasing their power by allowing more version of them with better stats and abilities longer into the game.

The length of the game is currently being adjusted to accommodate an extended game where on Veteran level (for example) it should last approximately 3 years. Since that's the cases everything is slowly being balanced to allow for adjusted times and costs to for everything, including research, facilities, upgrades, purchases, and mostly everything you can think of. The increase varies but it generally set around to 2X to 4X the base levels. This doesn't make things more expensive overall, since there is more time to acquire resources and more time to research and build, it's just over a longer time.


-----Combat / Abilities

Hunker Down can be done anywhere, provides less of a bonus, and also puts out fires.

Steady Aim from Long War returns. Action to increase Aim for next turn.


-----Enemies / AI

AI is completely redone to be more intelligent sometimes this is a gradual change as the enemies learn, other times this occurs in other ways. Enemy units will consider better how to use cover, the best range to be, the best abilities to use, and when to fire or choose alternative options. Usually more aggressive, but when things are going poorly for them will try and regroup. On discovery they scatter better and will occasionally fire when discovered or over-watch.

Enemies have no restrictions on how many can fight XCom at once. They are not prevented from fighting XCom (AI will not hide pods when XCom is already fighting).

Extended Enemies allow for more granular increases in strength instead of larger jumps. For example, there are 9 levels of Advent Officers instead of 3. Instead of gaining larger HP boots and aim boosts and all the rest, the enemy has multiple small jumps that work in coordination with all other enemies for a more smooth and logical game. Also, most enemies get upgraded or additional abilities and options.

Expanded Enemies are additional variant enemies that have unique characteristics, for example Advent Officers have (and lead variant teams of followers) a S.W.A.T. version, a Riot Control version, a Heavy Weapon version, and so on. The stats are completely changed up as well as the abilities, making for a unique engagement style.

Enemies include Advent Psi OP, Mech Breacher, Riftkeeper, Sectoid Prime, Sectoid Puppeteer, Viper Elite,


-----Weapons / Grenades

New AP (anti-personeel) grenade that causes more damage to organic enemies and in general, that is poor against armor and cover. Larger radius.

New HE (high explosive) grenade that causes a little less damage but has more environmental damage, piercing, shredding. Smaller radius.

New Micro grenade that is small and light so soldiers carry 3, damage is very minor, typically 1-2 with pierce, good for safely targeting enemies to finish them off.

General Grenade tweaks and adjustments.


-----Weapons / Primary

This section is expected to have wildly swings as there is a lot of adjusting and balancing to do still.

New Weapon Category- Gauss, after Magnetic.

Future Weapon Category Tier- Lasers, after Gauss before Plasma.

New Standard Weapons- SMG.

New Specialized Weapons- Flecette Shotgun.

Weapon changes by Tier;
;Tier 1 Conventional 1 Mod, Aim ±0, Crit Chance +1, Crit Damage ±0, Clip +1, Pierce ±0, Shred ±0.
;Tier 2 Magnetic 2 Mod, Aim +9, Crit Chance +2, Crit Damage ±0, Clip ±0, Pierce ±0, Shred ±0.
;Tier 3 Gauss 2 Mod, Aim +3, Crit Chance +3, Crit Damage +1, Clip -1, Pierce ±0, Shred +1.
;Tier 4 Laser 3 Mod, Aim +6, Crit Chance +4, Crit Damage ±0, Clip -1, Pierce +1, Shred ±0.
;Tier 5 Plasma 4 Mod, Aim -6, Crit Chance +5, Crit Damage +1, Clip -2, Pierce +1, Shred +1.

All weapons have their own adjusts including Mob and Detection.


-----XCom / Soldiers

Additional Soldier Classes; Combat Engineer, Cyber Tech, Field Medic, Mobile Infantry.

Additional Soldier abilities; 100's. Also additional AWC abilities.

Hidden Potential; each soldier level random bonuses to various stats based on the soldier class.

Not Created Equally; Soldier stats randomized when created. This is also with a lower mobility and lower aim than might be used to, this is a balancing mechanic considering all the additional bonuses XCom has at the begining.

Will panic more intelligently, well, they'll "try" not to commit suicide or murder teammates.

reserved

Still have a big push coming but decided to deal with some nuisance redscreen issues as well as kill some bugs. Did a host of other behind the scenes things (reworking all the enemy strengths organization and granularity is 100's of hours, because that's not as exciting to me or anyone even though its a core part of the game, I'll be occasionally doing one enemy type at a time (usually) up to 5 levels instead of the 2-3, when all that's done I'll be increasing that from 5 levels to 7 then 7 to 9.

Should be adding all the Advent Troopers again to make sure they match the Force Levels.

Touching up the code organization for Riftkeeper.

A hearty thanks goes to LeaderEnemyBoss for his support with that.

Word is lsms has some evil plans for the Rogue and you'll love it, I'll be putting an earlier version of Rogue up while he finishes that. Divine Lubrication helped with getting the Smoke & Mirrors (et al.) ability for the Field Medic that [OBSI]Rumrunner nicely did, the Partisan version will have it replace the Heavy Ordinance ability.

More grenade tweaks coming as well with some new grenades. At some point this week I'll also allow choice of grenades projects instead of random. So for that I suppose I've got to increase the price because the accounting department will have to file more paperwork... nothing is free or easy you poor commanders.


And armour, yes, I'll stop putting it on the back-burner and at least update Tier 2 armours and finalize what Tier 3-5 will be on before release. Finished the current version of how the weapon tiers are going to look. Krakah has been a code monster getting that ready.

We've only conventional visuals (thanks to Yard1) for now and need the UI for attachments done, so future tiers for the Gauss and Lasers will temporarily (who knows for how long) still use the conventional look until we get it done or someone offers their help.

We're also going to need to redo sounds for the Gauss and Laser firing and anim.

As well as for the new weapons for magnetic and plasma tier.

Update coming soon, mostly to give you a heart attack on tech research. Not final of course but it's a step forward. Legend Difficulty might be crazy, probably will be, at least for now.

Keep in mind, since we're looking at least extending the game so far to triple the length...

that research times are roughly 80% to 120% more.

Remember, a single scientist cuts those times in half.

Also when the Facility Lab comes out there will be even more reductions.

They are balanced for DIFF 1, however DIFF 1/3 should be alright, I'm expecting to mitigate DIFF 1 in particular, and probably DIFF 2/3.

Side note, some new techs won't be out right away, though there will be a variety of weapons and associated techs coming out next week.

They're being reorganized into the main templates!

all the best, jonathan

Thanks to Yard for porting the models and Krakah for laying the groundwork on templates! :)


Conventional Models only (they will work across all 5 (yes, five) Tiers of weapons. We'll hopefully get some more help on models for other tiers. There are some weapon models we're still finalizing.


Standard Weapons Pistols (base, M1911, Desert Eagle, Machine Pistol*), Assault Rifle, SMG, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, LMG,, DM Rifle (HK417).


Specialized Weapons Battle Rifle*, Carbine (G36K), SAW (HK416IAR), HMG (m249) ,Flechette Shotgun ( 870MCS), Sniper Carbine (m21?), Heavy Sniper Rifle (L115).

*Not ready. ?Definitely Not ready.

So 17 Weapon types with a unique feel. Not overly specialized but the right tool does the job. Some of these are interesting variations like the Flecette Shotgun, others like the SAW and HMG are huge differences with entirely different concepts of use. The HMG is more like the Long War version, squad sighted and a beast to carry, massive spread of damage.


Stage I of new weapon integration is done... primary weapon stats, then Stage II will double check for issues, and adjust stats for weapon category and weapon tier and prep for weapon templates. You'll notice some things right off, some weapons do more damage, others less, but that's only the start, these are being finely tuned


The following things are being adjusted; ;Damage (plus spread and crit damage), Aim and Crit bonus, negative and positive Pierce and Shred... be careful when you are playing with ammo, some weapons, say the shotgun, are specifically having negative numbers on Pierce and Shred to mitigate any bonus from ammo, having said that, new ammo types in the future.

Most of these are implemented on a per weapon basis, but they've still got to be adjusted as well for ammunition count and mobility, new range charts and other things. Hopefully that'll all be done by Mon/Tue. But ±7 days.

While that's going on I've got a back load of mod integration's to get off my plate and into Partisan War, a variety of things as well as constant balance tweaks. I've teleported in {OBSI}Rumrunner to help get the Field Medic working properly...

...while we were chatting we talked about his new Heal grenade and the new grenades I added into Partisan; Anti-Personel, High Explosive, Micro, and soon a CS (tear gas) grenade. He's volunteered to help with getting the CS working and all the UI models and particles for the rest. Currently AP, HE, and Micro are in Partisan, we'll add Heal and CS later.

They currently are available at the start but they will be stuck in a new 'Specialized Grenades' tech at game start, some weapons will also be in a 'Specialized Weapons' tech at game start as well as a 'Specialized Armor'.

As things like new techs come into being, other techs, say Magnetized Weapon tech for example, will become somewhat faster to research, that way you're still getting 5 Tiers of weapons but you aren't getting too many hugely massive research costs at once, just several large massive research costs.

all the best, jonathan

Really started to plow away at some deep AI tasking and A Better Advent helped with some interesting ways to get things working. Going to be awhile before it's all polished but it'll be fun.

Going to be launching my second kickstarter (unrelated to this), I'll post a link and if you like laser and/or Dice Towers you might want to check it out, I'll post something with a link later. :)

The last week was spent mostly learning, lots of evil things. However that means that I can start working on some of the additions I wanted to make but have just been exploring. May is technology month, you'll be seeing a variety of new techs that augment your armor, weapon, and item selection. Speaking of which in todays update I forgot to mention added the ability to craft Elerium Cores in the Proving Grounds.

What's coming up (at least the plan for)...

Well, Soldier Classes have been idle a bit, so getting the Field Medic updated and working correct is going to be priority one, Adding in Divine Lubrications Infantry class will be another, possibly getting the Combat Engineer to beta, touching up the Cyber Tech with some more custom abilities and other changes. Reevaluating Hidden Potential, and reintegrating Not Created Equally. Some new AWC abilities, as well as instead of a random choice there'll be three.

A lot of work on balance, always, constantly.

Re-organizing the entire Follower list for enemy pods. Adding in or updating all current extended and expanded enemies. More work specifically on SectoidMasters and SectoidMinions, and Officers. Related AI, and integration of more of A Better Advent.

Techs will have some significant changes;

Specialized Grenades (already done), with 3 new grenades (and eventually 3 more gas grenades Heal, CS, and a chemical gas grenade for Squad Upgrade in the Proving Grounds (medics get 2x the use of Heal Grenades).

I'm going to be adding two tiers to weapons and armor, plus a 'specialized weapons' and 'specilaized' armors Tech with will add more weapons to proving grounds and armor as well. Plus an adjusted way for grenade progression. That's about 20 techs worth of new techs, in some cases this will mean a proving ground project is removed, in others added. I"m not sure the speed of this progress but for now 2 new weapons will be reimplemented, the flecette shotgun and the smg, probably a machine pistol as well (and pistol ammo).

Anyway there are plans to be done, the main problem will be if any complicated bugs are encountered, those are what really slow things down. Speaking of which, you may occasionally see dropships with no enemy reinforcements, I know it's related to Missiona and pods changes so I'll get that sorted this weekend.

All in all things are going well. In May you'll see many more small changes than huge updates. Speaking of, I may well be adding all upk image files to a separate required mod so that graphical changes (which are more rare) won't require nearly as big for downloads when there are just code changes.

Lastly in regards to weapons, our main issue is that many of the created weapons are really great ports, however there are things missing like adequate UI and schematics. So any help with that is appreciated. Also we can use a new firing animations for Gauss weapons (new tier 3) and lasers (new tier 4, pushes plasma to tier 5)... plus sound too.

In the case with weapons you may see a conventional weapon appearance repeated for other tiers until we get new weapons to match that tier. Weird I know but it's the best solution to a complicated coding situation. ;)

all the best, Jonathan

Going to concentrate on the release of the SMG and Flecette Shotgun for now until after the May 12 patch and LWS new mod(s). Other than that just bug hunting and adjusting scalers for extended game, as well as Strategy Tuning for slower research.

all the best, Jonathan