I want to thank everyone who has played, taken the time for feedback, and endorsed XAI! Thank you! It is important to keep endorsing it, so the mod's status makes it easy for people to find by popularity sorting. If I can still enjoy it after 5000 hours of play and over 3000 hours of modding then the mission has been accomplished! I look at XAI as the Battletech game that should have been released, and I want others to easily find it and enjoy it as much as we do! Please spread the word.
Important information for YOU is Below!
1) READ THE README in the 7zip files, I update them regularly, and they have valuable information for you.
2) Install XAI, BattlePack, Mald Flashpoints, if you want Wartech install it, then go get Colorful FP and install the XAI Settings File.
(NOTE 1) To change Friendly fire modes, you MUST do it manually on this line because it does not work in difficulty menus.SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\Mods\XAI Battletech\StreamingAssets\data\constants\CombatGameConstants.json
THEN in the "ToHit" section change this line "StrayShotValidTargets": "ENEMIES_AND_NEUTRAL" Pick ENEMIES ONLY for easier play, or EVERYONE for a thorough challenge."ENEMIES_ONLY" or "EVERYONE" Lastly, XAI is FULLY STEAMDECK compatible, unlike other mods. (I need someone to write an installation guide for the Steamdeck, as I do not own one.) This comments area is for GENERAL comments only! Long discussions should be placed in Discord. As RoboCop would say, "Endorse this mod, thank you for your cooperation!" If you play Endless Space 2, I have started a Beta to fix the issues. Located on STEAM
To save some of you a bit of time, on deciding whether or not you should try XAI, here are some things people have recently said about XAI! Many thanks from me, as it is greatly appreciated.
Xeryx, thanks for the great work. I've played a lot of BEX, tried BTA, BTR, and 3094 but XAI is now my go-to mod overhaul. It offers rich gameplay without the feature bloat. A tight package that deserves more attention.
--- Metathiax7
Hey, Xeryx wanted to drop by and say that I recently installed your mod and have found it to be the most enjoyable of the big overhauls I've tried in terms of general gameplay. I love how XAI lets me play the campaign! Keep up the great work !
--- enemymime
Hi Xeryx, I'm really enjoying XAI Battletech 3025, you've improved on the original Battletech experience in many ways!
--- jecunningham
I just wanted to say great work Xeryx. It's a shame this mod doesn't have more eyes on it because it certainly deserves it. The work you have put in since the beginning is quite amazing. I remember playing with this a few months after your first release. If people are looking for a mod that fixes everything they don't like in vanilla, adds some much-needed challenge, gets rid of some of the game's quirks, and curates some of the best community mods while making sure they all integrate well and compliment each other... this is the mod. Thanks for making this work with the campaign as well. I think this mod would actually be good for a first playthrough as long as the player is willing to deal with not being able to load a save that was saved inside a battle."
--- Eleazar72
First, forgive my bad English...Second, great job with this mod, amazingly nice. The changes and the AI improves a lot, making hard times at the beginning hehehe
--- Ednax
this mod is awesome. Never had so much fun with Battletech. Would it be possible to include the latest ScorechedEarth Version 3.0.4? So the carnage stays visible during combat. However, this mod is great. Thank you!
XAI 3025 V3.042 Please see the description page and version number update as XAI3 and Smart Lances has now been released.
XAI BATTLE PACK 3025 V1.06 (separate pack) This battle pack adds 50+ 3025 ERA COMMUNITY mechs to XAI, bringing the total up to 228 mech variants! No CAB is needed.
XAI Flashpoints v1.039 (separate pack) Three new multi-mission Flashpoints for use with XAI by Mal-D, enjoy!
Wartech IIC for XAI (add-on) This heats up the map with boarder raids and skirmishes. The map boarders can actually change. Make sure to read the README.
Happy Hunting, keep your head down and your allies in front! Make sure to give some feedback and spread the word!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, XAI BATTLETECH 3025!! A new version for 3025 is now released. What's left? not much, just grammar or descriptions issues, please report them to my Discord, for the final version in the fall. Unless I have another epiphany, XAI is done, in fact TODAY is the 6th birthday of this amazing mod. It blows my mind, I have almost 6500 hours of just playtime and double that for modding time for just my portion, imagine if we added in all the other modders times of play and modding time!! Then factor in all the time you guys have played and given feedback... BOOOM the world would stop spinning.
Thanks for the feedback! Currently, on hiatus from modding or monitoring the boards. Having some fun this summer, and you should do the same and get outside more, fellow nerds ;)… I will answer questions when I have some time. Also, my gaming computer had an issue where I couldn't restore a back-up, so I lost a lot of data due to corruption of that back-up. I will be back in the late fall to do a final update.
Here's some feedback from the first few hours, coming from someone who's only played vanilla.At the beginning, it's more efficient to stand still and shoot. My rookies are more accurate standing still outside their optimal weapon range than when moving a few meters to shoot from optimal range. That feels like a problem to me. Since the enemy has the same issue, the best strategy is to camp your mech in a bush with Bulwark and just shoot. The AI will run around you and miss most of their shots. You'll miss a lot too, but less.I also got the impression that some vehicles might not have the right accuracy values. Maybe RNGesus was just being generous, but I saw an 18-SRM missile carrier barely miss a shot.Coming straight from vanilla, the AI doesn't feel any better. Not worse either, just about the same.I'm not a huge fan of the many weapon variants for each type, but I guess you BattleTech nerds love microing every bolt and barrel.I wish you'd aimed to stick closer to CBT balance. All I really wanted was a clean port of CBT rules into the existing content while still being able to play the campaign. That said, your mod is otherwise well done! Not a bug in sight ! thanks for your amazing work !(Also, did you mod X2: The Threat a long time ago? I remember learning to mod from someone with a similar nickname.)
Keep playing, the AI is DEFINITELY better in XAI for MANY reasons, #1 they are more accurate and are now at least equal to the player with pilot skills, in vanilla they were much worse. AI values in vanilla were all hosed up and there were many choice paths that were never used, because in late versions of the AI HBS changed values of certain choices to override everything else. Trust me, you need to play for a while to actually feel the difference.
Hi, first of all, thanks for the great mod, i've been enjoying it a lot!
I would however, request a feature if it's okay, a manual deployment would be nice to have. Mission Control sometimes drop me in a cliff that has no way to pathing to the objective, a manual deployment would be a great way around it.
I kinda like the BTA3062, but they bloated it with a lot of stuff, that made it kinda unplayable -- don't even get me started on RogueTech. Like seriously where's the Medium Lasers in store? The engines are rather rare and hard to find, you're basically stuck to a certain speed for a certain mech, might as well not have the engine moddable.
That being said, I'm hearing some bad things about this as well, like maybe the tanks are too strong, and the early game is hard? Could probably turn me off once I try it. Turned me off in Mechwarrior 5 when the tanks got harder -- and I think a lot of the balancing HBS done initially was tailor made to get players further invested into the game.
Might want to add a version that turns vehicles back into squishy targets, so at the very least we have options.
EDIT:
Did you have something equivalent to Engine Initiative? That would have been nice.
Sorry, no squishy vehicles in XAI. I want it hard at the beginning and to mid-game because the later part of the game was far too easy, now it is balanced properly. You will see what I mean after playing for 6K hours.
The reason there are more vehicles is due to the economy of scale, vehicles would be much more prevalent in battle because they are cheaper to make, and they would also be more available. Mechs have always been special and rare in table-top, at least that was the way me and my friend played over 40 years ago. WOW.......OMG I feel old now!
Don't know if it will reach anyone but every time I'm trying to play the game, the timeline just won't advance. I played a bit long years ago, maybe about halfway through the campaign and it ran fine. Now, no matter what I do, it's stuck at January 1st. Output log is stuck at (Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Runtime/Export/Debug.bindings.h Line: 45), although today it changed to (Filename: <4184af8dbeb44635831353f4d349631c> Line: 0) when I tried starting a new campaign again. This is bullshit, I've already spent two days trying to unfuck this and I just can't find any solution.
EDIT: Nevermind, I used my eyes and read the readme.
Please read the directions, if the timeline does not advance you have installed something that is incompatible with story mode. That is Wartech 2C or Flash Point mod "The Barrons War" which requires the Map Randomizer and is incompatible with story mode!
The only way you can do that is to disable Mission Control and then activate the options. I know it seems insane, but there are still bugs in the game. The benefits of Mission Control far outweigh being able to save a game in battle.
I come back to HBS Battletech about once a year and try out another mod pack, and invariably the game plays like shit. Thus all the features and mechs and whatever goes to waste because the core experience of playing the game feels worse than vanilla so I quit after a handful of missions. This year I decided to try XAI. What a breath of fresh air it is that this s#*! just fin' works and runs on par or faster than vanilla. Maybe nitpickers will decry that its missing some kludged together, barely functioning feature that other mods offer, but for me that is trumped by the fact that the game actually runs the best it ever has, and still there's plenty here to enjoy. TLDR: love the mod, best HBS Battletech experience I've had in years.
What version of BTSimplemechassembly is required? The Github version fails to load because of there being no .dll, however older versions, while active in the mod loader aren't working in game, does it require a new save perhaps?
Yeah, don't update the mods in the XAI Packet, there are specific reasons I am using certain versions of certain mods. Especially, that one, it is explained in the README.
Is there a way to turn off all the extra difficulty bullshit? I go bankrupt almost immediately after Weldry every time and had the redo the tutorial mission multiple times with my newest play through attempt, with my to-hits being consistently below 50% and the enemies literally having 100% hit rate even with 3 evasion pips.
Vanilla, maybe more your "flavor". You can change things at the difficulty menu just fine, and they can affect your overall missions, but when it comes to Story missions, they are going to be tougher. You cannot just breeze through the story campaign now. Not only that, but you need to spend more time leveling up your pilots and mechs.
I understand that you were upset when you wrote this post and are not used to losing in missions or the actual campaign, but it is made to be realistic and tougher than even Table Top BattleTech, so it may not be your "Cup-o-tea"
872 comments
1) READ THE README in the 7zip files, I update them regularly, and they have valuable information for you.
2) Install XAI, BattlePack, Mald Flashpoints, if you want Wartech install it, then go get Colorful FP and install the XAI Settings File.
(NOTE 1) To change Friendly fire modes, you MUST do it manually on this line because it does not work in difficulty menus.
SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\Mods\XAI Battletech\StreamingAssets\data\constants\CombatGameConstants.json
THEN in the "ToHit" section change this line
"StrayShotValidTargets": "ENEMIES_AND_NEUTRAL"
Pick ENEMIES ONLY for easier play, or EVERYONE for a thorough challenge."ENEMIES_ONLY" or "EVERYONE"Lastly, XAI is FULLY STEAMDECK compatible, unlike other mods.
(I need someone to write an installation guide for the Steamdeck, as I do not own one.)
This comments area is for GENERAL comments only! Long discussions should be placed in Discord.
As RoboCop would say, "Endorse this mod, thank you for your cooperation!"
If you play Endless Space 2, I have started a Beta to fix the issues. Located on STEAM
Please see the description page and version number update as XAI3 and Smart Lances has now been released.
XAI BATTLE PACK 3025 V1.06 (separate pack)
This battle pack adds 50+ 3025 ERA COMMUNITY mechs to XAI, bringing the total up to 228 mech variants! No CAB is needed.
XAI Flashpoints v1.039 (separate pack)
Three new multi-mission Flashpoints for use with XAI by Mal-D, enjoy!
Wartech IIC for XAI (add-on)
This heats up the map with boarder raids and skirmishes. The map boarders can actually change. Make sure to read the README.
Happy Hunting, keep your head down and your allies in front! Make sure to give some feedback and spread the word!
A new version for 3025 is now released. What's left? not much, just grammar or descriptions issues, please report them to my Discord, for the final version in the fall. Unless I have another epiphany, XAI is done, in fact TODAY is the 6th birthday of this amazing mod. It blows my mind, I have almost 6500 hours of just playtime and double that for modding time for just my portion, imagine if we added in all the other modders times of play and modding time!! Then factor in all the time you guys have played and given feedback... BOOOM the world would stop spinning.
I would however, request a feature if it's okay, a manual deployment would be nice to have.
Mission Control sometimes drop me in a cliff that has no way to pathing to the objective, a manual deployment would be a great way around it.
Thanks again!
I kinda like the BTA3062, but they bloated it with a lot of stuff, that made it kinda unplayable -- don't even get me started on RogueTech. Like seriously where's the Medium Lasers in store? The engines are rather rare and hard to find, you're basically stuck to a certain speed for a certain mech, might as well not have the engine moddable.
That being said, I'm hearing some bad things about this as well, like maybe the tanks are too strong, and the early game is hard? Could probably turn me off once I try it. Turned me off in Mechwarrior 5 when the tanks got harder -- and I think a lot of the balancing HBS done initially was tailor made to get players further invested into the game.
Might want to add a version that turns vehicles back into squishy targets, so at the very least we have options.
EDIT:
Did you have something equivalent to Engine Initiative? That would have been nice.
are there any better instructions to be found on how to install correctly. I am using gog to play the game.
Thank you
EDIT: Nevermind, I used my eyes and read the readme.
Cause not being able to save & quit in a game with battles this long is insane.
This year I decided to try XAI. What a breath of fresh air it is that this s#*! just fin' works and runs on par or faster than vanilla. Maybe nitpickers will decry that its missing some kludged together, barely functioning feature that other mods offer, but for me that is trumped by the fact that the game actually runs the best it ever has, and still there's plenty here to enjoy.
TLDR: love the mod, best HBS Battletech experience I've had in years.
I understand that you were upset when you wrote this post and are not used to losing in missions or the actual campaign, but it is made to be realistic and tougher than even Table Top BattleTech, so it may not be your "Cup-o-tea"