About this mod
This mod is meant to be played on Marathon Impossible, its purpose is to make the game as challenging as possible but equally as rewarding and allow it to las as long as the OG. After playing the game furiously on Classic and Impossible i\'ve come to the decision to make significant changes to make the game more interesting and challenging while
- Permissions and credits
This mod is meant to be played on Marathon Impossible, its purpose is to make the game as challenging as possible but equally as rewarding and allow it to last as long as the OG.
After playing the game furiously on Classic and Impossible i've come to the decision to make significant changes to make the game more interesting and challenging while pretty much fixing the balance of classes and equipment to make all classes stand out as they should.
General Changes
- Country monetary rewards have been reduced by about 20% to lessen the impact of satellites on cash flow which can become excessive at later stages in the game, i recommend playing with "War Weariness" and "Results Driven" turned on in Marathon mode to further scale down the rewards to account for a longer game.
- Slight changes in engineer/scientist rewards for satellite coverage, this allows for a more balanced distribution of satellites, necessary when panic levels determine satellite distribution, this evens out the engineer/scientist ratio. On marathon scientists are almost as relevant as engineers since technology improves troop survivability by a lot
- Increased experience required to level up soldiers, it gets steeper for higher levels while lower levels are slightly changed, this is to account for the substantial improvements on the level up stats.
- Increased experience required to level up psionic abilities to account for improved chance of psionics
- Lab adjacency bonus is 20%, building labs is very important on marathon
- Workshop rebate bonus is 15%, doubled to become more meaningful and relevant
- Panic from ignored UFO is the same as Escaped UFO, now that more UFOs of various sizes showup and they can't be shot down at the early game this makes it exceedingly difficult to keep countries in the council
- Interceptor cost increased, it was too cheap at first, especially on marathon, as a side effect North America bonus is more relevant.
Level up modifications
(between level and weapon improvements all classes are now on par with one another imo.)
- Sniper aim bonuses evened out for each level up after squaddie, instead of a sudden drastic boost at Colonel.
- +1 will for assault and sniper at squaddie and colonel ranks
- Heavy gets +1 HP every level for a total of +7 (while assault still gets a total +4 and sniper +3)
- Heavy gets a +1 defense bonus at each rank for carrying heavier armor
- Heavy aim increased substantially to assault levels (it was just ridiculous how their aim used to be less than half of assault/support)
- Heavy gets +1 mobility at the ranks of Sergeant and Major, no more staying behind and not being able to set up for double fire or rockets
- Heavy gets 5 points more Will than assault/sniper, he is a veritable Tank on all fronts now.
- Support gets an extra +2 hp, only 1 less than Heavy.
- Support gets +10 aim spread out evenly through level up, its now only less precise than sniper which should make him far more reliable in combat.
- Support gets +12 will over Assault/Sniper, this should also help it get Psionic powers as they are the best fit for them.
- Support gets +3 defense, half as much as Heavy, because... why the hell not, its now a jack of all trades on top of being a combat medic.
Weapon modifications
- Pistols and assault rifles still have the lowest damage but now get increased chance to Crit to make up for it 20, 25 and 30 for both on each tech level, using the sidearm may get good results for a change, and Support will also get to bring enemies down from time to time.
- Light plasma rifle crit chance increased to be the same as that of the plasma rifle, the aim bonus is still good enough to make up for consistently lower damage.
- Heavy's guns also get a boost to their crit chance, although 10 points less than assault rifles and pistols.
- Frag Grenade damage increased to 4, they simply weren't as deadly as they should be, and now they are very useful (and necessary) to kill those pesky sectoids on impossible.
- Alien grenade damage is now 8, they used to be terrifyingly deadly on the original game, so now they are almost as they were then, beware of Mutons.
- Rocket launcher damage increased to 9, this also increases Shredder Rocket damage to 6, Heavy1s are now as good as the other classes and they are the key to survival when facing Chrysalids and Mutons.
- Blaster launcher damage increased to 15, blasters were the most powerful weapon in the original game so now hopefully they are back to their former glory.
- Arc Thrower now is set to go in the pistol slot to allow other stuff to be used by the characters wielding them, which is only fair as equipment slots are a very important resource now.
Armor modifications
- Nanofiber vest is now actually useful, it adds +3 to life instead of a meager +1. If you want your rookies to live, this is the way to go.
- Chitin Plating is slightly improved at +5hp instead of +4, it still grants 50% protection against melee damage which is pretty good by itself.
- Skeleton armor gives +5 hp now instead of just +3, its simply superior to carapace as a natural evolution of design.
- Skeleton armor cost increased to account for improvements
- Titan armor now gives +12 hp instead of +10, it is now significantly superior to ghost armor on the survivability department except for not making soldiers invisible.
- Titan armor gives +2 mobility, it is true PowerAarmor and improves movement, this also means that characters wearing it won't stay so far behind those with other armor types as well
- Titan armor has +10 defense, which is now the baseline for advanced armor designs, although Ghost is still superior with its 20 defense bonus.
- Titan armor cost and materials required increased to account for improvements
- Ghost armor is unchanged, it was already more than fine as it was.
- Archangel armor now has superior mobility with +4 to move instead of meager +2, it now has a +10 defense bonus as well and its base fuel is 8 instead of just 6.
- Psi armor now has some of the best features of all others, +10 hp instead of mere +6, Poison immunity like Titan, Grapple like skeleton and ghost, +30 defense instead of its meager +10 as its truly unique Special Property, +3 to mobility, its bonus to will is unchanged, but now it is hopefully good enough to compete with other armor designs which is only fair since it can only be equipped by Psionic soldiers so it pretty much should be on a higher tier than the others.
- Psi armor cost lowered slightly to be more on level with other armors and its research time has been increased for the same reason
Alien modifications:
While aliens on impossible were already fearsome foes, as soon as the soldiers level up and the new equipment gets into play the late game still suffers, especially with the boosts added so far. In order to make up for it, late game enemies will also get some serious love.
- Sectoids get a 5 defense bonus to account for their smaller size. (used to be +10 on the early stages of my mod, but playtest revealed it to be a tad too high to face them with rookies)
- Thinmen are unchanged from regular Impossible difficulty, they are a bit weak compared to the other aliens but on the early game they are still a significant threat as they were
- Floaters get +3hp instead of +2hp, a modest increase compared to what xcom soldiers get but then again they show up pretty early
- Outsiders get +10 to defense, dealing with them will not be as simple anymore
- Chrysalids are unchanged from regular impossible since now they zombify at 100% and that is sufficient to make them a problem
- Cyberdiscs get +9 to life instead of +4, they were a bit on the weak side, now they are a considerable threat
- Mutons get +5 to life instead of just +2, they are back to being the dreadful machines of destrucion as they were in the original game
- Berserker gets +10 to life instead of just +5, this should help them get to do something other than dying in a hail of bullets
- Sectopods were unchanged on impossible, now they are true death machines with 50 hp instead of mere 30hp, teamplay is the key to survival.
- Drones get +10 to life instead of just +4, they will not be cannon fodder any longer and researching the hacking improvements for the arc thrower will actually make some sense now
- Muton Elites get +8 to life instead of +4, slighty improved crit chance at +15 instead of +10 and a boost of +20 to will, you should definitely fear them.
- Ethereals get +10 defense and +10 life instead of just +5 life as before, now they are truly the Master race even if they still show up less than other aliens
- The Uber ethereal is now Truly Uber, not simply a slightly improved threat, now he is a true Boss and it will be smart to deal with his cohorts before targeting him or else you may get overwhelmed.
These changes are in addition to some of those made in Sean's Marathon Mod so it unlocks marathon mode and makes it work properly, so check it out at http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/35.
While his mod is great, its based on Classic so it was as satisfying for those who desire a greater challenge and a longer game after a basic play-through of Classic difficulty.
Since this was pretty much designed to change and balance play at Impossible difficulty i did not make any versions for other difficulties as there would be no point to it.
I recommend playing with the subsequent Second wave options turned on:
- Marathon (obviously)
- The Greater Good (it just makes sense)
- Results Driven (its much more reasonable)
- The Blitz (its not as terrifying as it sounds really)
- Total Loss (Personally i really like this one, its just like the OG! But i can see how some people may get a problem with it, especially if they lose a lot of soldiers, if you don't let your soldiers die every now and then it becomes unnecessary... its mostly a personal choice)
With all these options the game will be much more satisfyingly challenging in all stages of play as far as i can tell, honestly this is what i believe it should be like from the get go.
I'd advise against:
- Damage Roulette (enemies have a lot more HP for you to be dealing 1 damage on unlucky shots that Hit)
- New Economy (doesn't add much and nullifies the economy changes made here)
- Not Created Equally (turns out this will always make you hire more soldiers to get better stats and give those priority over others, i realize that's sort of the point but its silly, its better to have everybody being average than a few super heroes and a lot of useless sidekicks.)
- High Stakes (Its your choice really, but Panic management on Marathon is hard enough as it is)
- Diminishing Returns: (While it sounds great, Marathon already doubles the cost of satellites so this would double it again and then progress geometrically which can get quite crazy, don't think its even possible to finish the game this way, but you are welcome to try if you want ofc...)
Not mentioned:
Absolutely Critical - (this makes for a bit more strategic game where positioning might be the key to win or your undoing, but considering that crit chances are already high enough to encourage better positioning, this is sort of unnecessary imo, but i can see the value in it, since you may get out of a tough spot without failure if you take the risk of shooting an alien in its face)
I don't mind if anyone decides to take this mod and change a few things, feel free to do with it as you will.
After playing the game furiously on Classic and Impossible i've come to the decision to make significant changes to make the game more interesting and challenging while pretty much fixing the balance of classes and equipment to make all classes stand out as they should.
General Changes
- Country monetary rewards have been reduced by about 20% to lessen the impact of satellites on cash flow which can become excessive at later stages in the game, i recommend playing with "War Weariness" and "Results Driven" turned on in Marathon mode to further scale down the rewards to account for a longer game.
- Slight changes in engineer/scientist rewards for satellite coverage, this allows for a more balanced distribution of satellites, necessary when panic levels determine satellite distribution, this evens out the engineer/scientist ratio. On marathon scientists are almost as relevant as engineers since technology improves troop survivability by a lot
- Increased experience required to level up soldiers, it gets steeper for higher levels while lower levels are slightly changed, this is to account for the substantial improvements on the level up stats.
- Increased experience required to level up psionic abilities to account for improved chance of psionics
- Lab adjacency bonus is 20%, building labs is very important on marathon
- Workshop rebate bonus is 15%, doubled to become more meaningful and relevant
- Panic from ignored UFO is the same as Escaped UFO, now that more UFOs of various sizes showup and they can't be shot down at the early game this makes it exceedingly difficult to keep countries in the council
- Interceptor cost increased, it was too cheap at first, especially on marathon, as a side effect North America bonus is more relevant.
Level up modifications
(between level and weapon improvements all classes are now on par with one another imo.)
- Sniper aim bonuses evened out for each level up after squaddie, instead of a sudden drastic boost at Colonel.
- +1 will for assault and sniper at squaddie and colonel ranks
- Heavy gets +1 HP every level for a total of +7 (while assault still gets a total +4 and sniper +3)
- Heavy gets a +1 defense bonus at each rank for carrying heavier armor
- Heavy aim increased substantially to assault levels (it was just ridiculous how their aim used to be less than half of assault/support)
- Heavy gets +1 mobility at the ranks of Sergeant and Major, no more staying behind and not being able to set up for double fire or rockets
- Heavy gets 5 points more Will than assault/sniper, he is a veritable Tank on all fronts now.
- Support gets an extra +2 hp, only 1 less than Heavy.
- Support gets +10 aim spread out evenly through level up, its now only less precise than sniper which should make him far more reliable in combat.
- Support gets +12 will over Assault/Sniper, this should also help it get Psionic powers as they are the best fit for them.
- Support gets +3 defense, half as much as Heavy, because... why the hell not, its now a jack of all trades on top of being a combat medic.
Weapon modifications
- Pistols and assault rifles still have the lowest damage but now get increased chance to Crit to make up for it 20, 25 and 30 for both on each tech level, using the sidearm may get good results for a change, and Support will also get to bring enemies down from time to time.
- Light plasma rifle crit chance increased to be the same as that of the plasma rifle, the aim bonus is still good enough to make up for consistently lower damage.
- Heavy's guns also get a boost to their crit chance, although 10 points less than assault rifles and pistols.
- Frag Grenade damage increased to 4, they simply weren't as deadly as they should be, and now they are very useful (and necessary) to kill those pesky sectoids on impossible.
- Alien grenade damage is now 8, they used to be terrifyingly deadly on the original game, so now they are almost as they were then, beware of Mutons.
- Rocket launcher damage increased to 9, this also increases Shredder Rocket damage to 6, Heavy1s are now as good as the other classes and they are the key to survival when facing Chrysalids and Mutons.
- Blaster launcher damage increased to 15, blasters were the most powerful weapon in the original game so now hopefully they are back to their former glory.
- Arc Thrower now is set to go in the pistol slot to allow other stuff to be used by the characters wielding them, which is only fair as equipment slots are a very important resource now.
Armor modifications
- Nanofiber vest is now actually useful, it adds +3 to life instead of a meager +1. If you want your rookies to live, this is the way to go.
- Chitin Plating is slightly improved at +5hp instead of +4, it still grants 50% protection against melee damage which is pretty good by itself.
- Skeleton armor gives +5 hp now instead of just +3, its simply superior to carapace as a natural evolution of design.
- Skeleton armor cost increased to account for improvements
- Titan armor now gives +12 hp instead of +10, it is now significantly superior to ghost armor on the survivability department except for not making soldiers invisible.
- Titan armor gives +2 mobility, it is true PowerAarmor and improves movement, this also means that characters wearing it won't stay so far behind those with other armor types as well
- Titan armor has +10 defense, which is now the baseline for advanced armor designs, although Ghost is still superior with its 20 defense bonus.
- Titan armor cost and materials required increased to account for improvements
- Ghost armor is unchanged, it was already more than fine as it was.
- Archangel armor now has superior mobility with +4 to move instead of meager +2, it now has a +10 defense bonus as well and its base fuel is 8 instead of just 6.
- Psi armor now has some of the best features of all others, +10 hp instead of mere +6, Poison immunity like Titan, Grapple like skeleton and ghost, +30 defense instead of its meager +10 as its truly unique Special Property, +3 to mobility, its bonus to will is unchanged, but now it is hopefully good enough to compete with other armor designs which is only fair since it can only be equipped by Psionic soldiers so it pretty much should be on a higher tier than the others.
- Psi armor cost lowered slightly to be more on level with other armors and its research time has been increased for the same reason
Alien modifications:
While aliens on impossible were already fearsome foes, as soon as the soldiers level up and the new equipment gets into play the late game still suffers, especially with the boosts added so far. In order to make up for it, late game enemies will also get some serious love.
- Sectoids get a 5 defense bonus to account for their smaller size. (used to be +10 on the early stages of my mod, but playtest revealed it to be a tad too high to face them with rookies)
- Thinmen are unchanged from regular Impossible difficulty, they are a bit weak compared to the other aliens but on the early game they are still a significant threat as they were
- Floaters get +3hp instead of +2hp, a modest increase compared to what xcom soldiers get but then again they show up pretty early
- Outsiders get +10 to defense, dealing with them will not be as simple anymore
- Chrysalids are unchanged from regular impossible since now they zombify at 100% and that is sufficient to make them a problem
- Cyberdiscs get +9 to life instead of +4, they were a bit on the weak side, now they are a considerable threat
- Mutons get +5 to life instead of just +2, they are back to being the dreadful machines of destrucion as they were in the original game
- Berserker gets +10 to life instead of just +5, this should help them get to do something other than dying in a hail of bullets
- Sectopods were unchanged on impossible, now they are true death machines with 50 hp instead of mere 30hp, teamplay is the key to survival.
- Drones get +10 to life instead of just +4, they will not be cannon fodder any longer and researching the hacking improvements for the arc thrower will actually make some sense now
- Muton Elites get +8 to life instead of +4, slighty improved crit chance at +15 instead of +10 and a boost of +20 to will, you should definitely fear them.
- Ethereals get +10 defense and +10 life instead of just +5 life as before, now they are truly the Master race even if they still show up less than other aliens
- The Uber ethereal is now Truly Uber, not simply a slightly improved threat, now he is a true Boss and it will be smart to deal with his cohorts before targeting him or else you may get overwhelmed.
These changes are in addition to some of those made in Sean's Marathon Mod so it unlocks marathon mode and makes it work properly, so check it out at http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/35.
While his mod is great, its based on Classic so it was as satisfying for those who desire a greater challenge and a longer game after a basic play-through of Classic difficulty.
Since this was pretty much designed to change and balance play at Impossible difficulty i did not make any versions for other difficulties as there would be no point to it.
I recommend playing with the subsequent Second wave options turned on:
- Marathon (obviously)
- The Greater Good (it just makes sense)
- Results Driven (its much more reasonable)
- The Blitz (its not as terrifying as it sounds really)
- Total Loss (Personally i really like this one, its just like the OG! But i can see how some people may get a problem with it, especially if they lose a lot of soldiers, if you don't let your soldiers die every now and then it becomes unnecessary... its mostly a personal choice)
With all these options the game will be much more satisfyingly challenging in all stages of play as far as i can tell, honestly this is what i believe it should be like from the get go.
I'd advise against:
- Damage Roulette (enemies have a lot more HP for you to be dealing 1 damage on unlucky shots that Hit)
- New Economy (doesn't add much and nullifies the economy changes made here)
- Not Created Equally (turns out this will always make you hire more soldiers to get better stats and give those priority over others, i realize that's sort of the point but its silly, its better to have everybody being average than a few super heroes and a lot of useless sidekicks.)
- High Stakes (Its your choice really, but Panic management on Marathon is hard enough as it is)
- Diminishing Returns: (While it sounds great, Marathon already doubles the cost of satellites so this would double it again and then progress geometrically which can get quite crazy, don't think its even possible to finish the game this way, but you are welcome to try if you want ofc...)
Not mentioned:
Absolutely Critical - (this makes for a bit more strategic game where positioning might be the key to win or your undoing, but considering that crit chances are already high enough to encourage better positioning, this is sort of unnecessary imo, but i can see the value in it, since you may get out of a tough spot without failure if you take the risk of shooting an alien in its face)
I don't mind if anyone decides to take this mod and change a few things, feel free to do with it as you will.