I've played a couple of these missions now myself, one during the second month and one during the third (third one had a Lt). My experience has been good - the soldiers are as threatening as vanilla XCOM 2 units probably are to the aliens. I find myself focusing Sharpshooters wherever possible, flashbanging Grenadiers and suppressing Rangers, and now avoiding half-cover, in regards to the tactical battle.

I've increased the pods sizes to be 4-6 units in each pod depending on the force levels, to match my current mod setup, and I was actually scared of losing a unit in some situations, and even moreso in accidently activating more than one pod without having proper lockdown. I'm not sure how Vanilla <> Vanilla battles go, but Infanty, Escalation, & Sniper from Lucubrations gave a lot of options to combat the units (Sergeant/Corporals XCOM vs Corporals/Lieutenant enemies).

I think it would be good to be able to tell what abilties the Hostile's have, as looking in the .ini I can see that they are given some - this would also help in priority targets/lockdown, but I'm not sure if it's easy to implement. (Probably just a description would be good enough, I refer to ABA's documentation a lot anyway).

One big thing I did run in to though, and this was excaberated by adding more units to the pods, was the amount of loot on the map.
1) I did change original loot spawns to 2 per map instead of one. I am not sure if this affects HT significantly, or just adds an extra loot drop.
2) I am all for all of the loot - the danger of these Hostile units make moving forward to secure them risky. Out of 7-9 drops, I only secured 3 (or 4).
3) There may be a bug, at a point during the mission, one of my units was getting every single loot drop the moment the unit died, without having to walk there.
4) Loot timers don't seem to update, I've had (3) or (2) designated loot drops disappear.

Overall, I think balance is good! Double activation is very scary, unlike with Aliens, so battle scanners or vision control is really important, as well as flashbangs, suppression, and smokes. Battles go on for longer, making it feel like X1: LW Exalt missions.

I think the missions are volatile though, in regards to the health of your squad. I'm not sure if Partial Mission Completion or Neutralize Enemy Targets Optional were considerations, but I think allowing XCOM to retreat after getting the objective would be good, in X1:LW you had different variations - Covert Extraction, for example.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. The problem with loot drop timers and auto-looting is in the base game, and none of the modders have been able to figure out why. we think in vanilla, there is usually only one loot drop per mission, so they never noticed it. it's almost as if all the loots share one internal value of the timer, and who gets the loot. all mods with higher loot rates have this problem. we'll keep trying to figure it out.

I hadn't thought of specifically documenting the enemy abilities. an enemy ranger lieutenant has the same abilities as an xcom ranger lieutenant.

As far as missions, so far all five mission types are same as vanilla missions: rescue vip and neutralize hostile don't require killing everybody, but the other three do. i haven't customized these yet; working with the maps is a pain.

have you run into any elites yet?

Oh, so loot timers are a vanilla bug, okay. Maybe that's why they only had one appear by default, too :P

With the abilities, I do understand that they're the same as vanilla unit abilities of course, but I meant knowing which skills they took directly - or do they get both each level up? Is each Ranger randomized skillsets? That kind of thing. (Randomized would be painful given we can't see them like in X1 Perfect Information) Looking in the .ini is fine, and I'll memorize them all eventually, but yeah.

Nooope, no Elites yet. I set their max spawn size to 3 instead of 1, so I'll definitely know when I do :). How do they differ?

For each level I chose one of the skills; it isn't randomized. I'll publish the exact list in the next update. You haven't seen any enemies in red plated armor? Those are the elites. They drop nice swords, so I hope you would notice. They spawn automatically on neutralize target and rescue viper missions.

Rescue *vip * missions damn you autocorrect

Originally posted by dave:

For each level I chose one of the skills; it isn't randomized. I'll publish the exact list in the next update. You haven't seen any enemies in red plated armor? Those are the elites. They drop nice swords, so I hope you would notice. They spawn automatically on neutralize target and rescue viper missions.

I'll make sure to do some more HT's before I start work on my series campaign to see them then!

I think having the enemies take as much damage AND do as much as an XCOM soldier is a bit unbalanced, because you have 4-6 XCOM units against 7+ hostile units. It's like playing a multiplayer match against someone who has the same units as you, but has more of them.

As it stands, hostile enemies pose a bit too much danger, ESPECIALLY when reinforcements are called. Don't get me wrong, though; this mod has MAJOR potential.

My idea: Have two types of hostile enemies.

Frontline: Do as much damage as XCOM units, have less health
Support: Have as much health as XCOM units, do less damage

This way, the enemies are still a threat, but they're balanced for combat against 4-6 person squad. Plus, the player has to consider whether to take out the Frontline or Support types first. This also makes for interesting pod makeups; what if the player runs into a squad of Frontliners who hit hard? What if a Frontline sharpshooter is covered by a squad of Support units?

If you feel this wouldn't compromise your vision for the mod, I seriously recommend considering a balance like this.

Thank you for creating this mod!

thanks for the feedback. what is supposed to happen is that the pod leaders should be about the same level as you, and the followers should be less. this is based on "force level", which isn't exact. you can tweak the force level breakpoints as explained in the description. if you find a set of breakpoints you feel is much better, please let me know, and i may make them the default.