X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So I've gotten back to The X-COM Files, some KKKs:

- Is it just me or has the pace of missions increased? I last played 2.something, and I don't remember the first month being this mission-filled. Quite an interesting variety of missions too, I got Suspect Apprehensions, Crop Circles, Exobiological Contamination, Strange Creatures and Lunatic Madman.
- Is earlier research slower as well? Took me almost a month to research the van. I actually like how I got more time with the Car and the low-level crap gear.
- I noticed more events, especially early on in the game. I like how the events tie things better, lore-wise. I like how some of those events also bring bonuses, like the gun box you get at the start. I got the Mauser lol, which is pretty much a better Colt .45 (but only if your agents have like 70 ACC)
- I started in South America because I never did that lol, always US or Europe start. I must protect what is most important for us - eight-years old me!

 

[lightbane]

It's a shame that XCF inevitably becomes repetitive, and the endgame takes longer than Piratez' one, arguably, as there are no shortcuts.
Has anyone tried that mod that makes the game into a fantasy vs modern weapons one? Don't recall the name but it had a Stargate as a symbol. What about the Halo one? I don't like Halo but there's a submod that adds elements from Marathon, which is interesting.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Do those annoying Cult Aprehension mission stay longer than before, or am I just not hitting the right research? I swear that before they would be gone within like a month or two. Now I keep having to go chase two useless assholes with barely info or risk a -150 penalty. I'm just treating these as target practice for rookies now.

Also, what's with dog bark being treated like a ranged weapon for CQC purposes? I've had cultist goons straight out deflect barks, wtf how do you deflect a dog bark sound, do these people have sound-manipulation powers? Are people really wrestling a dog, so the dog won't bark in their face? Because that really cuts down on how useful the Dog Bark is.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, XCF really has a massive amount of slog. Both in number of missions and in the length of missions. Doing 6-10 missions a month is common and its not at all uncommon to have them involve 40-80 enemies once you're past a year in. It's a shame because I rather like the low squad size risky 4-6 man missions against like 15-20 enemies but those only stay around for a small snapshot in time.

There's also the problem that several of the mission threads seemed to peter out, and I was never sure if it was just unfinished, I missed some unclear thing I was supposed to do to trigger advancing to the next stage, or whether it was just a % chance of missions being scheduled for each month and I was getting unlucky. So you kind of get stuck grinding some of the same missions over and over not knowing what to do. This happened to me with both the ghost investigations and the hybrid stuff.

I don't know about research time for stuff, but there's definitely a "correct" research line in the game to get your researcher cap increased ASAP and then speed through everything else, and much/any deviation is just limiting your long term progression since research is king. Basically you want to get your transportation and armor upgrades (which is basically required to start finishing missions reliably) and then beeline all the research improvements and skipping all the fluff.

Do those annoying Cult Aprehension mission stay longer than before, or am I just not hitting the right research? I swear that before they would be gone within like a month or two. Now I keep having to go chase two useless assholes with barely info or risk a -150 penalty.

My experience is that whatever "stage" your cult mission progression is on, you'll still get missions that are 1 or 2 stages earlier in the progression. This is to ensure that if you advance too quickly that you aren't stuck with only missions that are impossible slugfests against 50 enemies when you have 4 dudes in suits with pistols.

Good thing though is that those missions are still easy and once you get real armor you can pretty much yolo it. Maybe one agent takes a shot and has to spend some time in a medbay but those pistols they have a weak, inaccurate, and your agents have a ton of HP by that point.

 

[Average Manatee]

btw, protip for XCF. Can't remember if I posted this before, but don't research the farmers you find on the crop circles investigation. You get way more score for capturing them unresearched compared to researched. There's probably other missions where this happens but the crop circle missions are consistent and very easy to handle capturing on once you've got some decent equipment.

 

[lightbane]

Yeah, XCF really has a massive amount of slog. Both in number of missions and in the length of missions. Doing 6-10 missions a month is common and its not at all uncommon to have them involve 40-80 enemies once you're past a year in. It's a shame because I rather like the low squad size risky 4-6 man missions against like 15-20 enemies but those only stay around for a small snapshot in time.

Don't forget alien engineers locking some precious tech behind a random number of possible interrogations, forcing you to farm them over and over. Piratez had the same issue, but you have more stuff to use there, and there's no strict timelimit as in XCF.
Also, I found the Halo and the fantasy mods, as well as some extras!

https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/reach-the-fall-a-halo-mod
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/x-chronicles
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/start-early-for-mod-x-com-files
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/x-com-chronicles-fantasy-music-pack
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/brave-piranha
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/halo-submods

 

[Average Manatee]

Gave X-Chronicles a try since I noticed its version hit 1.0. It's... interesting.

If you dislike X-Piratez or X-Com files giving you super soldiers and throwing you against impossible odds, well this is the opposite. Everyone's stats are nerfed across the board. Soldiers can start with as low as 30 TUs, accuracy and reactions are awful, and health starts around 5. Weapon damage and armor is scaled down to compensate (e.g. guns deal 5-8). I'm not sure why they went this way with health, I guess maybe we get some kind of fantastical abilities/bonuses eventually that bring us back up to at least 50s? Or its a way to make things like fire and fatal wounds more deadly?

Either way its certainly an exhaustive thing to need a whole turn of massed firepower 20% shots to take down something as simple as a dog, but at least accuracy eventually improves. Now I need only 4-5 characters with autofiring 40% accuracy SAWs to take down an orc.

 

[Jaedar]

Gave X-Chronicles a try since I noticed its version hit 1.0. It's... interesting.

If you dislike X-Piratez or X-Com files giving you super soldiers and throwing you against impossible odds, well this is the opposite. Everyone's stats are nerfed across the board. Soldiers can start with as low as 30 TUs, accuracy and reactions are awful, and health starts around 5. Weapon damage and armor is scaled down to compensate (e.g. guns deal 5-8). I'm not sure why they went this way with health, I guess maybe we get some kind of fantastical abilities/bonuses eventually that bring us back up to at least 50s? Or its a way to make things like fire and fatal wounds more deadly?

Either way its certainly an exhaustive thing to need a whole turn of massed firepower 20% shots to take down something as simple as a dog, but at least accuracy eventually improves. Now I need only 4-5 characters with autofiring 40% accuracy SAWs to take down an orc.

What's the scope of it? 100s of hours and 1000s of techs?
Or more like original x-com ?

 

[Average Manatee]

No idea right now, I'm going in blind. Going by the number of options I saw equipping soldiers in quick battle it's much more than standard xcom but much less than mega mods like piratez. Also not getting insane amounts of mission spam so far like xcom files does, it's a fairly standard 3ish missions per month

Another unexpected change is it seems you don't get monthly income increases from score in x chronicles, only a lump sum. I made a lab and hired scientists immediately in January but now I can't really support them and don't have the money to build alien containment. Gotta play lean.

 

[Jaedar]

No idea right now, I'm going in blind. Going by the number of options I saw equipping soldiers in quick battle it's much more than standard xcom but much less than mega mods like piratez. Also not getting insane amounts of mission spam so far like xcom files does, it's a fairly standard 3ish missions per month

Another unexpected change is it seems you don't get monthly income increases from score in x chronicles, only a lump sum. I made a lab and hired scientists immediately in January but now I can't really support them and don't have the money to build alien containment. Gotta play lean.

Gave it a try. One month in, 2 missions down, negative score on both because I keep losing soldiers. Quite hard not to when the enemies are basically immune to bullets and your tus are way too low to allow for effective melee strats.

 

[Average Manatee]

They don't have much armor just like 50 shields vs your 6 weapon damage. The knife does work pretty well once they get into melee range but you really want to train accuracy and reactions I'm finding.

The better weapons and armor you get from progression do make things a lot better. Start is just like the xcom accuracy meme taken to the next level

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished first year and the economy just feels badly wrong. My income isn't increasing and maintaining 30 scientists (and 1 engineer) has been enough to close to bankrupt me every month to the point where I have to sell most of my alien artifacts that I feel I should keep. Research is slow, I've unlocked new stuff (default skyranger/interceptor) that I have no way of affording their upkeep, and missions are popping up around the globe that I can't reach with my current craft range. What's weird is I did get a very small income increase in two months when I had ~2k points. Feels like they decided to recalibrate how score contributes to income growth and accidentally put the decimal point in the wrong place or something. I could dismiss like half my scientists in order to afford these better ships but I've also got an absolute ass load of stuff to research still so doing that seems wrong.

Think I'll put this on the backburner for now, the missions are getting kind of simple and grindy since unlocking the better weapons.

 

[Jaedar]

New patch for xpiratez a couple of days ago

Spoiler

v.N8 28-Apr-2024 Labyrinthus Noctis
- OXCE upgrade to 7.12.5 15-Apr-2024
- Fix: Sunken Treasure Mission
- Fix: Red Mage's disappearing ammo
- Fix: car-racing Spiderdemons
- New Arc Progress: Gudrun the Bride (1 new mission, deployable unit, other stuff) related My arc progress
- New Arc Progress: Mystery Patron, some progress related to before (2 armors, 1 new weapon, story)
- New Arc Progress: Gudrun the Knight: Labyrinthus Noctis (1 mission, major lore)
- New Mission: Defend the Fort!
- New Enemies: Stygian Gargoyle, Stygian Guardian, Dreamer Medusa, Raider Mudder, Raider Sludgebringer (paperdoll by Wolverin)
- New Facilities: Non-Profit Lab
- New Armors: Blood Dragon (gfx by Brain), Gnome Feuerteufel (gfx by Brain)
- New Weapons: Stygian stuff (x2), BM Light SMG (gfx by RSSWizard)
- New Items: Backpacks (x2)
- New Trainings: Wholesome, Military Drill, Captain's 11
- New Map for Commercial (by Solar & Brain)
- Bandit cars and trucks now hurt your Infamy, but less of them is appearing on months 1-2
- Green Raiders now can appear on Raid missions, especially later on
- Trucks have an extra GR/HAND weapon slot now
- Rebalances (mostly buffs): LACC, Battle Laser, Missile & Fusion Defenses, Sadomaster Training
- Expanded the Captain Personality Test (more types, more complexity, and related stuff)
- New Events
- Added 'Hellerium Trails' theme song (Lyrics by Solar, composed & performed by AI)
- Various minor gfx and sound improvements (thx to Brain, RSSWizard and others)
- Removed all dogfight icons for non-weapon equipment (except STCs)
- Assorted minor fixes (special thx to VDBomber & his OXC FPS project)

Seems the captain personality tests are now way more complex, and will restrict your Dr.X resolution branches. Some good progress on various arcs as well.
And an AI created piece of soundtrack apparently.

 

[lightbane]

How long until this is complete again? It's close to a decade of updates...

 

[Jaedar]

How long until this is complete again? It's close to a decade of updates...

I don't think dio is that interested in "complete" considering the kind of stuff he keeps adding instead of finishing existing quest arcs. Like the redesign of captain personality this patch: the system worked completely fine as it was. It is kind of a shame, but you can only ask for so much from free.

 

[lightbane]

I guess he'll keep updating until he retires then. Or somehow there's a miracle and Western games become good again, and someone decides to make a full game from Piratez.

 

[Average Manatee]

Updated my openxcomex and mods after a long time not playing, and I can't figure out how to get the indicators above enemy heads that tell you which way they are facing. Anyone remember how? I swear it used to be the alt key but that does nothing now.

 

[AgentFransis]

It is the alt key in my next to latest Piratez version, which uses oxce from about six months ago.

 

[Average Manatee]

For some reason it requires CTRL+Alt held down for me now. Kind of annoying, not sure why they changed it.

 

[Serus]

Which good X mods would fellow Codexers recommend? Something smaller/shorter than X-Piratez? Something that you can actually hope to finish one day.

 

[Average Manatee]

Unfortunate fact of the matter is it seems most big total conversion mods that are popular aim for X-Piratez length of campaign, just with less content which means more dragging things out. If you want a vanilla-esque expansion then try Final Mod Pack, if I had to hazard a guess its calibrated for a game length of 50ish missions where piratez is more like 500.

I'd be very welcome too to hear about any TCs that break this mold.

 

[Jaedar]

Which good X mods would fellow Codexers recommend? Something smaller/shorter than X-Piratez? Something that you can actually hope to finish one day.

It's not about the destination, but the journey.

I haven't actually played enough of anything else to know how long they are. But "shorter than xpiratez" is also a pretty wide range, I sincerely doubt any mod is actually longer.
Fwiw, there's an official mod portal here. X-chronicles seems pretty cool, as does rosigma 40k, but I have no idea how long they are, although the former seems to be finished at least.

if I had to hazard a guess its calibrated for a game length of 50ish missions where piratez is more like 500.

Seems on my win save of xpirates it has a record of 607 missions.

 

[Gumsmith]

ROSIGMA is very "mod" in design and has a lot of dogshit terrains but the base 40k mod seems well put together. I've heard the campaign takes around 6-8 in-game months but I haven't played much of it personally.

 

[Serus]

That's insane. The original game was already on the lenghty side. I understood X-Piratez being excessive because, well, that was at time THE mod. Why make other like this, especially if you put less work in them. Oh well, moders gonna mod.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's insane. The original game was already on the lenghty side. I understood X-Piratez being excessive because, well, that was at time THE mod. Why make other like this, especially if you put less work in them. Oh well, moders gonna mod.

The community seems to share all the assets so whenever something new is made everyone has to implement it somehow. If you play any of the big mods you'll recognize a ton of duplicate terrains repurposed for different use cases. In particular I dread the god damn mansion map. I will download and exhort any TC mod that states in the readme that it doesn't use the mansion map.

For the record I'm not saying all the big TCs are 500 missions but they are like 100-200ish missions minimum, just going by how many techs and stuff I've seen in them. Unfortunately they are all very linear progression affairs, nothing like OG x-com where you could fight a landed battleship on month 2 and if you somehow won the spoils set you up to win the whole game.