X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

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

How about The X-COM Files?
IF you want something shorter, try Final Mod Pack.

 

[Jaedar]

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.

That's about vanilla x-com length, isn't it?
I thought rosigma was the continuation of base 40k, but I might be way off.

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 thing to remember is that xpiratez has more content variety in the first month than x-com has in the entire game, and it just keeps going. I think this holds for most of the megamods and total conversions as well?

 

[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.

That's about vanilla x-com length, isn't it?
I thought rosigma was the continuation of base 40k, but I might be way off.

I believe so, other mods take years.
40k mod still gets updated just very rarely, the Rosigma submod is developed by a handful of other guys and plays a lot more loosely with lore and the game design.

 

[Luka-boy]

At some point I want to check this mod because I find the War of the Worlds sequel premise and the WWI aesthetic pretty cool:
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/the-great-war-of-the-worlds

Has anyone here played it?

 

[Gumsmith]

At some point I want to check this mod because I find the War of the Worlds sequel premise and the WWI aesthetic pretty cool:
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/the-great-war-of-the-worlds

Has anyone here played it?

I played a little, the start of the game is trivial. The maps are big, the AI is dumb, your weapons are accurate and have no LoS penalty so just have your armor shredding machine gunners mow down greys while you advance or shoot mortars from the back of your dirigible if you like.

 

[Average Manatee]

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

How about The X-COM Files?
IF you want something shorter, try Final Mod Pack.

I would really not recommend X-Com files to anyone who hasn't played a lot of X-Com mods already. There's a half dozen points in the mod where you either have to really understand the tech tree (and the tech tree viewer is shit), enemy stats (basically need to cheat), and how missions work, or you die horribly and have to start over. It's also really grindy with all those cultist and monster missions, and there are massive RNG gates in the form of tech that is random to get from captives or missions that are just rare and block essential stuff.

This is all true to some extent for Piratez as well but at least in Piratez you're not on a strict timer to beat a cult and get advanced tech before a specific date or you're hosed.

 

[orcinator]

It's also really grindy with all those cultist and monster missions, and there are massive RNG gates in the form of tech that is random to get from captives or missions that are just rare and block essential stuff.

Christ, they still make you do that?

Need to go find the ancient /v/ threads where someone breezed through those by memorizing the move values of all the melee shit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Christ, they still make you do that?

Need to go find the ancient /v/ threads where someone breezed through those by memorizing the move values of all the melee shit.

The melee monsters are really easy, basically free points and XP. Your soldiers will quickly reach like 90 firing accuracy and 60 reactions and with daytime vision being 40 tiles the ideal way to play most of them is to form up a Napoleonic-esque square and spam end turn as you slowly react to every enemy on the map eventually wandering in your FoV with rifles that have >80% snap shot accuracy. The only difficult melee monsters are zombies who can just overwhelm you through sheer HP bloat, they basically require shotguns or miniguns to fend off.

Either way its annoying though because the rewards are pretty minimal and there's only so much stat/point grinding you can do before you hit very diminishing returns.

 

[Serus]

Oh well, maybe i'll start X-piratez and never finish it. I'm sure i'll have a lot fun anyway (no pun).

 

[AgentFransis]

Oh well, maybe i'll start X-piratez and never finish it. I'm sure i'll have a lot fun anyway (no pun).

That's how all of my piratez runs go. I start a new one every few years and inject it directly into my veins. I have a blast until it slowly grinds away my will to proceed. Usually around the school graduation tech level.

The latest run is still open on my desktop in the background, waiting patiently for my resolve to blast xenos and manage warehouse logistics to return.

 

[Average Manatee]

Was spending time planning on playing an XComFiles game where I check my two previous attempts and make notes of everything important to get and what to do beforehand so I don't get stuck on something, decided I might as well share it:

XcomFiles strategy:

- Initial bases should be around Afghanistan and Panama. This is to get close enough to reach most missions early and for early range-limited craft to cover most of the important areas. Start base 2 either in January or February. This is kind of dumb from a radar coverage basis but radars are irrelevant until aliens show up and by then you can have bases everywhere.
- As long as you manage around 1-2k points per month you're golden. Income should increase by roughly 10% per month which eventually leads to basically infinite money. If you can't do a mission then just reaching it and leaving turn 1 is almost always much better points-wise than just ignoring the mission. More points helps only very marginally with income so skipping missions with stuff you know you don't need is generally OK.
- Initial tech should be Logistics (4 person vans), Personal Protection (kevlar vests give a good chance to survive shots from the front), then Medicine->Advanced Medicine->Bio Lab (adds 5 scientist slots, also picks up sick bays for faster recovery. From there an autopsy and cultist interrogation gets you the promotion. Keep a car even after you've unlocked vans in order to reach far away missions even if you just abort on turn 1.
- Initial best weapon loadout is IMO Colt .45 and the pump action shotgun. Upgrade to the Hunting Rifle + Colt .45 once you get your 1st promotion, though you can also rely on scavenged weapons and ammo well at this point. If you're doing a monster mission that could have zombies though, better to start with shotgun and pistols.
- Promotion 2 is a big chokepoint, you need mid level captures from all of the cults. Which can just decide not to spawn by RNG, or you start a mission and its a suicidal map layout or something.
- Easiest way to do cult bases is to go at night and just spam grenades and later dynamite/high explosives. This is the key to bypassing the scout/sniper mechanic. Weapons that cause AoE damage also avoid spotter/sniper if you avoid directly impacting anyone. For captures shotguns with baton rounds can eventually pummel enemies to death, and incendiary grenades are a good way to make them panic and surrender, but there's no clean way to ensure safe captures unfortunately. EDIT: Stun grenades from Milkor MGL probably works well, or knockout grenades on humans.
- BlackOps and UAC weapons tend to be the best for all purposes by this point. BlackOps autosnipers, spypistols (for spy missions), CAWs, and UAC rifles/pistols/shotguns for close combat missions.
- Dragonfly (8 capacity transport) is locked behind promotion 2. Osprey (16 capacity) is behind ops level research on all cults.
- Promotion 3 requires a successful HQ assault of at least one cult. Black Lotus are the easiest and are a traditional base layout, you can camp the elevator room and snipe down hallways for 30 turns to mostly clear them out. EXALT is a much tougher mansion that you can't withdraw from. Red Dawn is a base similar to Black Lotus but you start on the surface facing tanks and pillboxes and its extremely difficult to handle unless your craft spawns next to the entry point and you can rush in. Church of Dagon is a fairly nightmarish jungle. Black Lotus is the only one that is sensibly doable with an 8 man group, which may be all you have since Osprey can take a long time to get.
- Once you've gotten promotion 3 things are fairly chill, with better armor (heavy tritanium) and larger dropships the cults are a piece of cake and repeatedly farming their manors for XP, titles, and points becomes valid. This also unlocks mortars which pretty well trivializes anything you can use them against. For outdoors missions the only difference between a mortar and a blaster bomb is that the mortar takes a turn to set up in the open.

Other random tips:
- Webwear will reduce damage of kinetic attacks and requires capturing each spider type then processing corpses for spider silk. Carapace plate will reduce damage of concussive attacks and requires beetle autopsy for chitin, durathread and a zombie parasite. Having one of these active in your backpack at all times is very helpful.
- The ghost arc missions offer a very powerful item, the Thanatonautian Manus. It provides a psi-scaling AoE attack with decent range that bypasses most armor (though mechanical units are immune to psi). It also preserves loot on the ground. You can get this fairly early and while its uses per battle are limited by stamina and sanity a team armed with lots of these can go nuclear on large groups of enemies. It conveniently fits on the belt and won't trigger sniper/spotter if you don't directly hit the enemy. Great panic weapon. Once you unlock the tech to view psionic ability I recommend hiring a few hundred soldiers, firing everyone below 75 or so, and having the rest train up in gyms. You should have the money for this by this point if you've been doing good on score.
- Capturing a deep one unlocks underwater missions. Underwater missions are pretty easy for high-skill soldiers and provide tons of aqua plastics. Aqua plastic armor is good in general for the early game and are required for underwater or other dimensional missions so good to get started on making them early.
- Capturing rats and bats lets you train them to serve X-Com. They are fantastic night spotters and can see through smoke 70% and 100% respectively. They will allow you to utterly break the intended gameplay vs. cults if you can safely occupy a corner in smoke, spot with them, and spam dynamite to kill all enemies well before they can run up to you and spot you. They also let you spot the f**king black lotus assassins from a further distance.
- Since scientists are capped per base getting research going in a second base some time around promotion 1-2 is helpful. Doing it in a third base can help research all those random extra techs but more than that probably isn't that useful. Though by the time you get to 1999 you should have the money to build as many research bases as you want.
- The early sporting/beach missions are near-suicidal, you have no armor and the best ranged weapon you probably have is the sporting bow/rifle which literally do no damage. No need to do them early, eventually you will get the blackops spypistol. If you do want to do them early then you'll want to have characters with maxed TUs and decent melee weapons like switchblades.
- Stacking transformations is the way to make your agents absurdly OP. Early good ones are obtained by capturing the highest ranking cult members. The martial arts one requires 65 but gym only trains to 60.
- Have some suit upgrades for missions where standard armor isn't allowed. Anzug is pretty easy to make from mongorns early. Bulletproof coat eventually makes you close to invulnerable to weak small arms attacks.
- Missions to avoid unless you're brave: Monster missions with snakes, muckstars, or Spikeboars, or anything else that is ranged unless its a terror mission where you'll take a huge score hit. Also mass Chupacabras should be avoided unless you have a ton of space to work with since they have like 150 TUs. Werewolfs/Werecats are similarly fast but capturing an alpha of one is a way to unlock psionics early.
- MIBs take forever to interrogate and don't provide anything that you need early on. Fighting them can unlock some nice BlackOps weapon upgrades that they drop though, and the higher tier ones provide high tier armor.
- There's a fairly early mission where you have to save a city from spiders. It's secretly a two parter and the 2nd part is an underground CQC mission with more spiders. Be sure you have shotguns to swap out to.

If anyone has any further tips, or any vital information for the aliens once they've arrived tell me and I'll add it.

 

[Gumsmith]

Was spending time planning on playing an XComFiles game where I check my two previous attempts and make notes of everything important to get and what to do beforehand so I don't get stuck on something, decided I might as well share it:

...

If anyone has any further tips, or any vital information for the aliens once they've arrived tell me and I'll add it.

I'm playing the early game for Xcom Files right now as it happens.

Osprey is a 16 capacity transport, the 8 capacity transport is the Dragonfly which you get soon after promotion II.
Knockout grenades are my favorite stun weapon, most humans are extremely weak to choking and even if they aren't you can carry heaps of the things. You unlock them by progressing down Mutant Physiology.
Black Ops weapons are very good but special shout out to Red Dawn's SVD sniper which can make 3 snap shots in one turn, good weapon for elite agents.
Aside from destroying a cult you need to fufilll one out of four prerequisites to reach promotion 3, interrogate an alien, interrogate a deep one, learn out the underground, or progress through the Cyberweb quest chain. Interrogating a deep one is the easiest imo, since they appear in Dagon missions. You just need to research a deep one corpse first so you can build the alien containment.
You need 65 melee skill to train ninja arts, which is a hassle to train in missions, so what you should do is leave an agent in gym training until they reach the maximum melee skill they can train, which is 60, and then you give them the tactical neural implant which bumps them up to 65 so you can do ninja training without ever swinging a melee weapon.
I don't have a lot of experience with the alien invasion but if you can unlock X-com sonic weapons early-ish they are fantastic for dunking aliens, definitely get on underwater missions to get the materials.

That's most of what comes to mind, gonna head off.

 

[Average Manatee]

I remember trying knockout grenades but didn't have much success. It's really annoying when you throw like 3, end turn, it doesn't work and they decide to shoot you. Though... it says in the description that the grenades are an ideal way to capture live aliens, but isn't it aliens that only have 100% damage from choke while humans have 400%? So the description is a lie, and I think when I was using them before it was because I was having trouble capturing one of the hybrids.

Re: SVD, it doesn't get the huge accuracy increase from squaring the accuracy stat along with +25% of the reactions stat that the blackops autosniper does. Quick test with one of my old saves shows a 108 firing accuracy sniper has 56% accuracy on autofire with autosniper and 75% with SVD, so 3 75% shots vs. 6 56% shots. The SVD does have more range at that and it'd be better with lower accuracy snipers though. For my <90 accuracy characters I generally give them something like a rifle or shotgun.

Also should probably mention nitro express rifle, 73 damage at 100 accuracy. Good for punching through heavy armor, like on cyberweb robots.

Good point on the martial arts thing. All my soldiers were well gymed up. Punching farmers on the cattle mutilation type missions works to gain a few points once its safe to do so.

Getting Deep Ones and rushing underwater stuff is definitely a really good idea, the rewards are high for minimal risk. It's also a pretty good way to farm melee since some of those missions are entirely melee deep ones. Aqua plastic armor is also probably the best suit you can get pre-promotion 3 aside from very limited tritanium vests.

 

[Gumsmith]

Yeah knockout grenades work on hybrids but you need lots. Two grenades will usually down a Red Dawn Coordinator and most other cultists. Deep ones too. And spiders. Basically anything except aliens.

Where the SVD comes in handy is how cheap the TUs are, auto-sniper shoots 6 shots but you can only fire at two targets while the SVD can choose 3, similarly it costs 80% of your TUs to snap shot the auto-sniper twice while the SVD only costs 64% which leaves you with 36% of your TUs for movement, making it a less accurate but more agile sniper rifle. I do also use auto-snipers though.

Nitro express has a 50% armor penalty which leaves it a little worse off than other snipers I think.

Another gun I find useful is the OICW which can make two aimed shots with its direct-fire grenade launcher per turn, making it better than the actual dedicated grenade launchers you get early on.

 

[Average Manatee]

I find that grenades seem to be just a little too weak to kill mid level or higher cultists, and firing them with grenade launchers means risking spotter/sniper. Dynamite is usually a one shot kill though and is my preferred explosive.. And if you are OK with a range limit of 20 then the Thanatonautian Manus is actually insane, 2 shots of 50ish-80 damage psi bomb attack that ignores armor completely. I'm not kidding when I say that a team wielding these can absolutely holocaust a wide swath of enemies. Also causes huge morale penalties so even if you only barely clip something it's gonna panic.

What do you think best weapon to knock out aliens is? Stun darts from a dart pistol/rifle? Pistol gives you about 12 range and you can carry it as a sidearm. Strangely enough the stun attack from Milkor MGL isn't even a bomb which was... surprising. Probably still worth trying though.

 

[Gumsmith]

Yep grenades do barely enough damage, it's only worthwhile on the OICW which can shoot twice to finish the job...dynamite is good too, or napalm. I don't do night missions or smoke bombs so sniper/spotter isn't my concern. I got the Manus once but it was late and didn't use it too much, it does look savage.

Alien capture was something I was trying to come to grips with in my last long playthrough. Indoors I think tasers are still ideal, you can get bioelectric taser ammo from muckstars which does extra damage and has 3 shots giving the taser even more kick, massive 1-turn damage. You can buy them later, also. Maybe flashbang the aliens or bark them with dogs as well.
Outdoors nothing is good, dart guns get you killed with reaction fire. What I tried to do was wound the aliens and knock them out with large amounts of knockout grenades but this is obviously bad. Klein bottle grenades? Those do stun damage but you can't make them. You might be onto something with the rubber grenades, regular grenade launchers have them so they can be fired from far away.

 

[eXalted]

Oh well, maybe i'll start X-piratez and never finish it. I'm sure i'll have a lot fun anyway (no pun).

This is the way and how I've been doing it. Playing it with knowing that I will not complete it ever and I am having a blast.

 

[Average Manatee]

Looking at the numbers, I do like the SVD, but for weaker firing accuracy soldiers rather than the elite. It's 30 + 20% of firing accuracy damage but without the 0.01*acc^2 thing of real sniper rifles, so its got a similar damage to real sniper rifles but can be used without the skill.

But I now remember that the rifle I settled on for this role previously was the Arasaka 3000 which has a similar damage boost (though its 20% of reactions so a little worse), but with about 50% better accuracy snaps at a little higher TU cost. I want my lower accuracy soldiers to be more mobile so I don't think I'd shoot 3 times in one turn with them often, that's for my dedicated snipers at max range. SVD is definitely pretty competitive though and comes much earlier.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Fuck, I got to get back to X-COM Files. Did you guys download the music mod? Its great.

Re: Early Game weapons in X-COM Files, I think the Colt sucks and trade up to Magnums as early as possible. You can get some insane mileage out of that gun.

Glock is great for capture missions, excellent plinking weapon. It gets new life with the Extended Mag and becomes a useful weapon for missions with loads of weak enemies.

If you know what you are doing, melee weapons can be very useful. I remember practically solo'ing a zombie mission with that big ass sword, don't remember the name, just let the zombies come and reacted them to death. Another cool use of melee is to get into the face of gun-totters and mog them with your CQC into dumping their mags uselessly into the wall or empty space.

MP5 is a great "Rifle-lite" gun for when you need an automatic rifle but you don't want to use the limited ammo of your scavenged rifles (which should only be used for early-game raids on cults). AFAIK its useless once you can finally buy propa assault rifles.

Dogs are fantastic btw, barking is great to weaken and TU-deplete cultists, priming them for capture. They can 1-shot or 2-shot cultists. Excellent night vision, very fast. I haven't used Rats yet tho, dunno how they compare to doges.

 

[Average Manatee]

Fuck, I got to get back to X-COM Files. Did you guys download the music mod? Its great.

I have quite a set of mods

Re: Early Game weapons in X-COM Files, I think the Colt sucks and trade up to Magnums as early as possible. You can get some insane mileage out of that gun.

So, some numbers:

Colt .45 DPT: Snap 125 (range 15), Aimed 75 (range 20)
Glock 18: Auto 95 (range 14), Snap 105 (range 15), Aimed 79 (range 20)
Magnum: Snap 126 (range 13), Aimed 98 (range 16)

Glock is just worse than Colt, especially considering even weak enemies have about 5 armor which will hurt it much more. Magnum is kind of only good against heavy armor but also more close ranged, I'm not a huge fan.

If you know what you are doing, melee weapons can be very useful. I remember practically solo'ing a zombie mission with that big ass sword, don't remember the name, just let the zombies come and reacted them to death. Another cool use of melee is to get into the face of gun-totters and mog them with your CQC into dumping their mags uselessly into the wall or empty space.

I agree, problem is that to train melee you have to use melee and using melee when untrained can quickly lead to death. But definitely melee is better than some of the shit ass weapons you have to deal with on restricted equipment missions.

Dogs are fantastic btw, barking is great to weaken and TU-deplete cultists, priming them for capture. They can 1-shot or 2-shot cultists. Excellent night vision, very fast. I haven't used Rats yet tho, dunno how they compare to doges.

Dog: 15 visibility at night, 20% thermal vision (seeing through smoke), 2 anticamo at night and 3 by day (important for those shitbag black lotus assassins who can otherwise only been seen at like 5 tiles)
Rat: 18 visibility at night, 70% thermal vision, 5 anticamo at night and day
Bat: 20 visibility at night, 100% thermal vision, 3 anticamo at night and day.

Rats and Bats can't be armored like dogs though, they are strictly spotters. Seeing through smoke is hilariously powerful though.

 

[Gumsmith]

Didn't know there was a music mod, I like that every cultist faction and others have their own distinct track but it wouldn't hurt to look.

At the start of the game I use glocks while agents who can shoot straight trade up for colts. Magnums are okay but they're pretty slow for pistols, by that point I'd take a shotgun or rifle.

Having a melee specialist sounds cool but it's too sketchy for me, most armors have ass CQC scaling and melee isn't 100% reliable usually. Most engagements are solved by shooting from the maximum range possible. Now that I have a helicopter it wouldn't hurt to have a dog though, they're actually good at melee. Too bad they die in one hit...

 

[Average Manatee]

Having a melee specialist sounds cool but it's too sketchy for me, most armors have ass CQC scaling and melee isn't 100% reliable usually.

Sort of what I was saying before, it feels like all Xcom mods must eventually implement everything ever invented for Xcom mods. Melee focus makes sense in mods like Piratez but feels badly out of place with how XComfiles is balanced. It's definitely theoretically huge DPS but you never level those stats the way firing accuracy quickly skyrockets to 100 or so just taking potshots at things in safety.

Too bad they die in one hit...

Yeah, that's what makes me shy away from using them. Soldiers can usually take a hit and get out, at least vs. human weaponry. And with the amount of missions you do soldiers get stats and can carry various things to be good at everything. Bats/Rats are good because they are completely disposable and only need to spot things before hiding for the turn.

Actually doing absurdly good myself, got the Osprey before December which is unheard of for me, previously I was always getting unlucky with missions and had to wait well into year 2 for it. Did screw up my base plan though, gonna take a million or so to fix. Also surprisingly haven't found a ghost mission yet, either they are year two or I missed the trigger somehow. And naturally the crashed alien event spawned in australia so I wasn't able to get those delicious alloys, but oh well, Osprey early makes all HQs doable.

 

[Gumsmith]

Getting a high level dog feels more like a player challenge than something that would normally happen. I like the scout drones, they're good at spotting, have a big gun and AI units can be resurrected usually. AIs start with terrible stats so it doesn't hurt having them run around before drone tanks become a thing.

 

[Average Manatee]

FWIW I checked and dog stat caps are:

      tu: 100
      stamina: 130
      health: 50
      bravery: 40
      reactions: 110
      firing: 10
      throwing: 10
      strength: 2
      psiStrength: 40
      psiSkill: 0
      melee: 140

That is a pretty nice amount of TUs if you want to use dogs primarily as scouts with a bark once in a while. Of course this doesn't include transformations or awards either.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I have quite a set of mods

Oooh, I use Resound too!
What does Hyper & Trajectory, Facility Expansion and Super Bughunt do?

So, some numbers:

Colt .45 DPT: Snap 125 (range 15), Aimed 75 (range 20)
Glock 18: Auto 95 (range 14), Snap 105 (range 15), Aimed 79 (range 20)
Magnum: Snap 126 (range 13), Aimed 98 (range 16)

Glock is just worse than Colt, especially considering even weak enemies have about 5 armor which will hurt it much more. Magnum is kind of only good against heavy armor but also more close ranged, I'm not a huge fan.

You misunderstand me. Yes, Glock is worse than Colt... but in that case, that's a good thing! Because you see, the point of the first use for glock is not to kill enemies, but to wound, weaken and bleed them. You can literally plink a cultist once and then avoid them until they fall down on the ground, dying. You can decrease their HP, making it easier for the stunners to nab them non-lethally.

The other use for Glock is after getting the Ext. Mag: It's a pretty nice early 1h gun for shooting multitudes of weak low-hp enemies without running out of bullets mid-fight.

I agree that Colt is better than Magnum, range-wise, but you shouldn't be using either at long range for very long. At medium range and beneath, the Magnum owns because it has far better firepower.

I need to try the two Shotgun Revolvers sometime, I suspect they can be very good as 1h pistols for zombie missions.

I agree, problem is that to train melee you have to use melee and using melee when untrained can quickly lead to death. But definitely melee is better than some of the shit ass weapons you have to deal with on restricted equipment missions.

Yeah, melee on untrained agents is very hit-or-miss. Literally.

Dog: 15 visibility at night, 20% thermal vision (seeing through smoke), 2 anticamo at night and 3 by day (important for those shitbag black lotus assassins who can otherwise only been seen at like 5 tiles)
Rat: 18 visibility at night, 70% thermal vision, 5 anticamo at night and day
Bat: 20 visibility at night, 100% thermal vision, 3 anticamo at night and day.

Rats and Bats can't be armored like dogs though, they are strictly spotters. Seeing through smoke is hilariously powerful though.

Wow, that really looks worth it, looks like Rats are like Black Lotus Assassin-B-Gone. Always hated dealing with those sneaky ass mfers.

Didn't know there was a music mod, I like that every cultist faction and others have their own distinct track but it wouldn't hurt to look.

Yeah there is, I know the two authors myself, they're two brothers and pretty cool dudes. I even helped them with some good tracks from my stash.

Having a melee specialist sounds cool but it's too sketchy for me, most armors have ass CQC scaling and melee isn't 100% reliable usually. Most engagements are solved by shooting from the maximum range possible. Now that I have a helicopter it wouldn't hurt to have a dog though, they're actually good at melee. Too bad they die in one hit...

Yeah, most of the time, shooting from maximum range is the way to go, due to the fact you're out-numbered on most missions. But there are missions in which you pretty much need to be ready for melee fighting, like Arachnoquake.

Yeah, dogs are pretty fragile, but they're meant to be hit and run melee attackers. You can kill multiple cultists per turn with a single dog. Obviously, they have little chance against high-reaction melee shit like Chupacabras or fat stacks of HP like zombies.

Sort of what I was saying before, it feels like all Xcom mods must eventually implement everything ever invented for Xcom mods. Melee focus makes sense in mods like Piratez but feels badly out of place with how XComfiles is balanced. It's definitely theoretically huge DPS but you never level those stats the way firing accuracy quickly skyrockets to 100 or so just taking potshots at things in safety.

True, yeah.
To be fair, X-PirateZ is fairly different from X-COM Files in how melee is used.
Melee is great in PirateZ because the gals are way stronger, faster and tougher than X-COM agents, it takes a while until you actually get your hands on some good ranged firepower, and even then, PirateZ's morale system greatly rewards aggressive play and punishes cautious, methodical snipers. Melee is also excellent for can-opening against armored foes. Hell, once you get start getting stuff like Warrior Armor, you can ignore many guns the enemies shoot.

Melee in X-COM Files is usually a reserve weapon, desperate last-resort, protection against melee foes or for the odd forces trained in the stuff. You can't do mad gal charges in the dark with a fuck-huge axe in X-COM Files. Methodical sniper gameplay pays off more in X-COM Files, unless you're in one of those missions where you lose sanity every turn or the like.