A mod on top of a mod. Acts as a major overhaul on LW, with significant balance adjustments, bug fixes, quality of life features, and game play improvements.
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Changelogs
Version 1.52.17
LW Rebalance v1.52.17 - Unicorn
Strategic:
- Bonus stats for MEC augmentation from rank/hp are now visible - QoL
- If you can't research anything, but techs are available, the "Commander to the research labs" voice over will no longer play, you'll instead just see a yellow "!" on the tab - QoL
- Jump start (second wave option) now has an infilitration automatically occur just like normal games - QoL
- The Gollop Chamber base assault has a much higher chance of high level leaders and champions now but the base defense research works on it - Makes sense
- Air game DR is capped at 95% DR (from 90%) - Prevents low DR weapons from being too all powerful, specifically supercapacitors
- Deceased pilots no longer decrease cost of new recruits - It never worked anyway and I couldn't get it to work
- The minimum repair time of an item is now 1 hour (from 3 days) - Makes campaign length variations more reasonable and variations in repair times more accurate
- Anytime the aliens launch an attack on XCOM, any unit that did not participate in the defense has a 30% chance of being fatigued and 20% chance of being injured in the attack - Makes the final Temple Assault roster more variable and makes it more difficult to field an ideal roster right before Temple, also makes sense that the rest of the crew would be fighting and taking injuries elsewhere
Tactical:
- New hotkey "." (period) which when pressed fast fowards the game and when released stops fast forwarding - QoL, much easier to manage speeding up and slowing down while playing (note the key can be changed in defaultinput.ini)
- Overseer pod sizes increased to 4 (from 3) - Boost in difficulty
- Exalt Base Raid only has Iago and UHIV as a champions on easy and classic and brutal - Makes it less of a spike on lower difficulties
- Ready For Anything grants +2 ammo - Balance vs other perks on the tree, works now with only gunner getting it and the saw/lmg higher ammo capacities makes it less OP, helps make LnL less necessary
- Plasma Shield absorbs 10/30/50/70/90 HP (from 30/45/60/75/90) - Slight nerf mostly directed at lower difficulties
- Field Medic grants 2 medikits (from 3) - Was a little too much, the +1 healing and the 2 free is likely a good balance point vs other classes and other sources of healing
- Master Mechanic no longer grants an additional repair charge - Nerfed so they aren't as mandatory end game or as effective in multiples
- Opportunist grants +10 aim (from +15) - Slight tone back in bio OW strength (and aliens)
- Hit and Run grants 2/2/4/4/6 extra crit damage (based on weapon tier) instead of +2 crit damage - Significant buff on later game hit and run builds
- Seraph armor HP to 12 (from 8) and defense to 30 (from 20) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed a bug where you could crash if trying to retire more than 1 soldier
Version 1.52.16
LW Rebalance v1.52.16 - Cruising Balance
Strategic:
- When you build the Gollop Chamber the aliens will also attempt another XCOM base assault: This one is deadlier and the risk of failing is game loss - Makes the ending more dramatic
- Overseers will now preferntially target countries with a satellite (instead of countries that left XCOM) - Significant improvement in ability to find and shoot down overseers
- Added reminders to the AL popups that the aliens also increased the air game strength - QoL
- Gollop Chamber activates in 5 days (from 10) - The clicking away missions was more annoying than intense if you were already doing well in the strat game
- Pack Missions are now MUCH more uniform in their enemy composition (e.g. a thinman pack will likely be 100% thinmen) - QoL
- Jump Start second wave option now starts with higher level soldiers, more tech, and more equipment - Buffed
- Added a visual indicator that there is a limit to how many retired soldiers can be displayed in the OTS - QoL so you can tell that there are some retirees you can't see
- Assault Carrier armor tier increased from 8 to 9 - Makes it VERY difficult to ever down
- Telekinetic Field does will/10 damage (from will/5) - Toned back in strength as it was too impactful
- Telekinetic Field now has a cursor indicator when you attempt to move a unit into such a field - QoL
- Mechanic (and Combat Technician) heals adjacent mechanical units for 25% (and 35%) of damage taken (from 30% and 45%) - Nerfed
Equipment:
- SAWs no longer have the bulletstorm ability - It was always slightly bugged and they are strong enough
- SAW/LMG aim malus progresses through weapon tiers: -10/-10/-15/-15/-20 and -30/-30/-35/-35/-40 (from just -10 and -30 always) - Tones down later game gunner strength
- Scope grants 10 aim and 10 crit (from 10 aim) but weighs 0.6 (from 0) - Nerfed slightly as it was a little too ubiquitous
- MEC1s lose damage control and body shield - It's more of a nice upgrade on MEC2s and MEC1s were a little OP
- MEC1 HP to 14 (from 12) - Buffed to help accommodate Body Shield loss
- LMEC2/LMEC3/ULMEC3 grant 10/15/20 aim - Buffed
- Reaper Ammo grants 30 crit (from 10) - Buffed
- Combat Stims grant 20 aim (from 10) - Buffed
- Breaching Ammo grants 4 pen vs hardened units (from 3) - Buffed
- Tac Vest weight to 2.6 (from 2.0) - Slight nerf
- Ghost Armor grants +15 aim - Buffed offensively
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some code where multiple damage boost abilities were applying to weapons that they shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where reaper ammo wasn't granting any crit
- Fixed a bug where sentry was also granting 2 ammo
- Fixed a bug where the perk screen on the right was not working in the barracks
- Fixed a bug where you wouldn't always get the bonus xp if you brought less than max soldiers on a mission
- Fixed a bug where Alloy and Hover SHIVs were still getting bonus aim
- Typos
Version 1.52.15
LW Rebalance v1.52.15 - Not So Greater MM
Strategic:
- Difficulty Drop second wave option also reduces injury and fatigue by 10% and increases home country funding by 10 per day - Makes it a little closer to a half-way point between 2 difficulties
Tactical:
- Battlescanners will reveal all targets within 12 tiles that are hiding (from just ones that could see the battle scanner) - QoL
- The number of aliens to trigger off guard and unprepared on large missions is now 11 and 14, respectively (from 12 and 16) - Reduced to as larger alien counts stack more in alien favour
Perks:
- Absorption Fields also cuts penetration of cyberdisc weapons by half - Kind of a bug fix as it's really a beam weapon as well
- Greater Mind Merge no longer grants 75 extra aim and crit over normal mind merge - The greater version is strong enough with TK Field
- Rapid Fire grants -40 aim normally and -20 aim for shotguns (from -30 always) - Nerfs Jaeger RF while buffing medic and assault RF
Quirks:
- Perseverance grants 40% reduction in injury and fatigue (from 50%) - Slight tone back for KK and Cadre starts
Equipment:
- Ghost armor defense to 40 (from 30) - It's quite high, acting like a stronger version of light cover wherever this unit goes, but I think it's not THAT abusive and Ghost armor needed some more umpf
Aliens:
- Level 1/3/6 Exalt SHIV leaders gain 2/4/6 HP (from 5/10/15) - Significant nerf as they were quite strong
- Level 3/6 Exalt SHIV leaders lose 10 aim - Same as above
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where indomitable would make a unit with 1 HP invincible
- Fixed a bug where Berserkers still lsited as having bullrush
- Fixed a bug where Combat Technician wasn't working
- Fixed a bug where Sectoid Commanders, Muton Elites, Heavy Floaters, and Chryssalids were all gaining too many leader levels
- Fixed a bug where council missions would have off-guard working at levels reserved for larger missions
- Fixed a bug where research times were not being modified by difficulty (only affects Easy, Classic, Brutal, and Pain campaigns as Impossible did not modify - only affects new campaigns I think)
- Fixed a bug where rarely bulletstorm would trigger more than it should for XCOM reaction fire during an alien turn
- Maybe fixed a bug where the display on the squad select screen could overlap - Thanks to szmind for the fix
- Typos
Version 1.52.14
LW Rebalance v1.52.14 - Sentry Fire
Tactical:
- Offguard occurs on 9/12 or more active aliens (from greater than 9/12) - Makes multipod activations easier
- Unprepared occurs on 12/16 or more active aliens (from greater than 12/16) - Makes multipod activations easier
Perks:
- Outsiders will no longer have a Rapid Growth if it's still before the time when they should be growing (first 4 turns) - Makes them easier to take down early
- Psychic Tether effectiveness tapers down to 0% from 20 to 40 tiles away (instead of just being max right up to 30 tiles) - Makes it less oppressive at 30 tiles and not be this sudden drop in effect
- Sentry grants 50% DR when on overwatch (from 30% regardless of overwatch but only on 1st damage per turn) and also grants 3 overwatch shots (from 2) - Significant buff
- Rapid Fire will now only reveal a unit that is cloaked after the second shot
Equipment:
- Ghost Armor will now wait until after the 2nd shot of rapid fire before ghosting (so that it doesn't unghost itself) - QoL
Bug Fixes:
- Maybe fixed a bug where units that were slow could still scamper really far
- Fixed a popup bug when a enemy was unprepared it sometimes said off guard
- Fixed a bug where you could get the Mess Hall Brawl event multiple times
- Fixed a bug where laser sniper rifle and strike rifle had swapped 5 aim
- Fixed a bug where predicted Mind Fray damage could be inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where post-mission stats weren't working
Version 1.52.13
LW Rebalance v1.52.13 - Multipod Control
Installation:
- New dgc.ini variable: EXALT_LOOT3=10 - Affects the chance of gaining post-mission stats where the lower the value the less likely a unit will gain stats (min 1, max 255)
Tactical:
- Off Guard now occurs anytime an enemy activates and that enemy makes the total number of active enemies more than 9 (12 for UFOs, DLCs, and Assault Missions) - Less RNG, more consistent difficulty during missions
- Unprepared is the same except 12/16 instead of 9/12
- All damage can now break OW (from just shots) - QoL
- Stun chances for capturing aliens are now increased by ~15% allowing 100% stun chances - Slight buff but more of a QoL
Perks:
- Absorption Fields reduces penetration on laser/beam weapons by half (from complete elimination)
Equipment:
- Stun Rifle weight to 4.6 (from 4.0) - Accommodates for higher stun accuracy
Bugs:
- Fixed a bug where EMP Weapons still took too long
- Fixed a bug where arc weapons couldn't penetrated absorption fields
Version 1.52.12
LW Rebalance v1.52.12 - Hot KKC
Strategic:
- Kiryu-Kai Commander grants Active and fatigued soldiers gain xp each day equal to 2x the number of months passed (from 3x) - Slight nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all missions were granting xp as if they only had 3 soldiers sent
- Fixed a bug where squadsight wasn't working as intended
Version 1.52.11
LW Rebalance v1.52.11 - Refraction Action
Perks:
- Absorption Fields prevents any penetration from beam/pulse weapons - Nerf to laser/pulse against mech/sectopod and buff of MEC tanks vs drones
- Kinetic Dampening renamed to Dampening Shield - Makes it more obvious it works against beam weapons as well
Equipment:
- Neural Scope aim/crit to 10 (from 15) but gains Psiscopic Vision: +20 aim if a psionic ally in vision can also see the target - Feels a lot more appropriate
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where squadsight still wouldn't work at close range
- Fixed a bug where bonus XP for brining less soldiers on a mission wasn't working correctly
- Typos
Version 1.52.10
LW Rebalance v1.52.10 - Gollop Assault
Installation:
- Fixed a bug with the installer - Thanks to Caplian
Strategic:
- Friendly Skies and Elite XCOM aim bonuses default at 30 (from 15) - Makes them more significant at helping really soften the difficulty of the strat and tac layer, respectively
- Once the Gollop Chamber is built, the device takes 10 days to come online and be useful during which XCOM must fight off the hoards of alien assaults - Makes the ending more interesting and requires some staying power
- High Capacity Pistols requires 50 weapon fragments (from 105) - Make it more attainable to gain extra ammo on pistols making pistols overall stronger
- Bonus XP for bringing less men also is increased by 10% per month passed, is quadruple instead of double, and the minimum is 3 soldiers, and is also modified by campaign length now - Makes it competitive throughout the game and not somewhat abusive on covert op missions
- EMP Weapons research time to 150 (from 350) and weapon fragments required to 150 (from 350) - Makes it easier to acquire earlier
- EMP Cannon damage to 420 (from 350) - Increase in damage to keep XCOM more competitive into the mid-late game
- Super Capacitors increases damage to 800 (from 600) - Increase in damage to keep XCOM more competitive into the mid-late game
- Destroyers upgrade at AL 7 (instead of 5) - Makes them a lot more reasonable until XCOM gets stronger firepower
- Difficulty Drop lowers alien level increases by 10% (from 5%) - makes it a more reasonable fit inbetween difficulties (as there are so many other things that difficulty affects)
- Skeleton Key cost in outsider shards now scales with campaign length - QoL
Tactical:
- The Chance for off guard is lowered to 20% per active enemy over 5 (from 3) and unprepared is 30% per active enemy over 10 (from 8) - Makes it less advatageous to activate multiple pods as it should be ideal to try to activate single pods
- Modification of Alien Level up bonuses per difficulty changed to 25/50/75/100/125 (from 50/67/83/100/116) - Makes easier easier in the later game and alleviates some truncation problems
Perks:
- Squadsight now grants 3 bonus aim per ally that can see that target (from 5 bonus aim per spotter) - makes turn order a lot less important on squadsight units
- Plasma shield now takes 1:1 damage on all difficulties (from 50/100/150/200/250% dmg based on difficulty) but instead the shield HP is modified by difficulty (30/45/60/75/90) - More intuitive and not so useless on Easy and ridiculous on Pain
- Distortion now blocks mind control attempts - Makes the volunteer a lot more effective the in the final room of the Temple Ship
- Double Tap now also grants 25 aim/crit on the 2nd shot on the same target (from 20 aim) - Buffed
- Mechanic grants +10 aim vs all mechanical units - Buff to shooter engineer
- Will To Survive grants 70% DR (from 65%) in cover but no longer has pen resist - Tweaked to make it less abusive
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifle base aim to 15 (from 10) - Accommodates lower aim but easier to use squadsight
- Flak Ammo has a -5 aim malus now - Nerfed
Units:
- Chryssalid defense to 30 (from 20) but base HP to 6 (from 8) - Makes them more resilient to straight shooting and less resilient to other methods of damage
- Ethereal defense to 70 (from 60) - Increase in later game difficulty
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where squadsight spotter aim bonus was only working at long range
- Fixed a bug where taunt could work against hidden units
- Fixed a bug where the Arc Thrower ammo counter was inaccurate in the tactical game
- Typos
Version 1.52.09
LW Rebalance v1.52.09 - Mo Damage Mo Problems
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all damages were way too high
Version 1.52.08
LW Rebalance v1.52.08 - Squadsight Flex
Perks:
- Squadsight grants +5 aim for each spotter - Significant buff to snipers, fits the perk well
- Magnum grants 70% damage (from 60%) and also works on pistols - Opens up snipers to be more effective with pistols
- In The Zone grants 10 aim to regular shots (from 20) - Nerf
- Executioner grants +50 aim (from +15) when using a pistol - Buffed and encourages pistol use
- EMP damage to 2 (from 4) - Tone back to put more focus onto the OW clear aspect
- Thumper no longer grants Melee Slayer but instead grants +16 damage (from +10) - Addresses a bug where Melee Slayer never actually worked, I guess technically a significant buff
- Sniper Rifle aim to 10 (from 20) - Accommodates new strength of squadsight
- Marksman Scope aim to 0 (from +10) - Accommodates new strength of squadsight
- Arc Rifle no longer has snapshot - Makes it more challenging to get the automatic OW clears
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Bulletstorm would trigger repeatedly
- Fixed a lot of bugs with plasma shields not taking enough damage
- Fixed a bug where base adjacencies could be inaccurate in the corners of the base
- Fixed a bug where you couldn't take out loans sometimes even when you had sufficient credit
- Maybe fixed a display bug when plasma shield units would die
- Maybe fixed a bug where the council could still request corpses/captives you haven't seen yet
Version 1.52.07
LW Rebalance v1.52.07 - Sizzler Fix
Perks:
- In The Zone no longer grants low profile - Nerfed
- Fixed a bug where you couldn't recruit soldiers sometimes despite having room in the barracks
- Fixed a bug where you could still get corpse / captive requirements of enemies you haven't seen
- Fixed a bug where loans would sometimes require indefinite repayment
- Fixed a bug where regeneration levels of aliens was inaccurate (sometimes wildly)
- Reworked bulletstorm coding so it should work now
- Typos
Version 1.52.06
LW Rebalance v1.52.06 - Sizzle Fix
Bug Fixes:
- The previous upload may have had some corruption
Version 1.52.05
LW Rebalance v1.52.05 - Cizash
Strategic:
- Non-satellite countries that have not left the XCOM project provide 50% of their funding to XCOM (from 40%) - Significant buff to early game (~20 credits/day), also makes it more rewarding to slow aliens down
- Home country bonus lowered to 45->25 credits / day (from 50->30) - Accommodates non-satellite funding
- Improved the Finance Screen - QoL
- New Second Wave Option "Jump Start" that starts the XCOM campaign 3 months into the campaign with an horrible attempt at giving XCOM various things to make the campaign doable - It's rough, but it's there and has been asked about a lot
- The council will now no longer request corpses of enemies that you have not killed yet - QoL
Tactical:
- Deploying less than the max number of soldiers increases experience gained by all soldiers on that mission (Specifically double the percent decrease from max soldiers in flat xp gains to all soldiers) - Creates more tactical decision on easier missions
- Maim no longer prevents regeneration - Was bugged and tricky to fix and I felt that not preventing regen was actually probably a better situation
Perks:
- Field Medic grants 3 medikits (from 2) - Increases the strength of medics on longer missions and overall slight buff
- Taunt now requires the unit to attempt to move twice while still selected in order to break and resets upon selecting another unit - Allows the player to click around and not have to memorize if they already tried to move the unit
- Taunt no longer affects units that have already moved - Makes it so you don't have to play the 'game' of don't move too close and accidentally trigger the taunt
- Telekinetic Field deals will/5 psi damage to all enemy mechanical units that enter it (from will/20) - Massive boost to it's damage, makes it a serious contender for damage to mechanical units
- Opportunist grants 15 aim (from 20) - OW was a little stronger than ideal
- Inner Fire grants 10 aim (from 20) - Was a little too strong
- Sentry reworked now to: Fire an additional reaction shot during overwatch. Grants +30% DR against the first instance of damage each turn - Fixes a bug and make it a lot less convoluted to use.
Equipment:
- Stun Rifle has 2 charges (from 3) - Makes capturing en masse more challenging (still can be upgraded with elerium batteries)
- Restorative Mists heal 3 HP (from 4) - Nerfed
- Skeleton Key credit cost to 420 (from 40) - Makes it less rewarding to do multiple alien base assaults
- Fixed a bug where old campaigns (maybe newer ones too?) have inconsistent income values from countries
- Fixed a bug where difficulty alterations of alien level growths was slightly inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where Marauders would turn off enemy Close Combat Specialist indicators inappropriately
- Fixed a bug where Taunt could act out of sight sometimes
- Fixed a bug where Surgical Targeting appears as Mayhem on the Medic F1 perk list and on the bottom left perk icons
- Fixed a bug where Aerial Tracking wasn't working (Flak, Plasma Carbine)
- Fixed a visual bug in the displayed cost when hiring new soldiers
- Fixed a bug where a loan repayment screen could soft lock the game
- Fixed a bug where Bulletstorm wouldn't trigger sometimes
- Typos
Version 1.52.04
LW Rebalance v1.52.04 - Cashing In
Strategic:
- Panic from having a satellite shot down reduced to 16 country / 12 continent (from 24 country / 16 continent) - A little less punishing
- Fear No Evil has countries that left provide 1 credit daily (from 2) - Was overtuned at 2
- Home Country bonus income increased by 10/day - Buffed
- Advanced Tier Weapons are much easier to acquire as their cost has been put into the basic components - Shrinks the gap between advanced and basic a LOT more
Tactical:
- Sneak mode will only occur on Impossible and Pain - QoL for lower difficulties
- Ram will no longer deal melee damage (now just regular damage) - Felt bad if a unit had melee counterattack and you couldn't move close
- Maim now disables regeneration - QoL
Perks:
- Taunt now allows a move after the taunt occurs, but will panic the unit: both steadfast and neural damping prevent this - Significant reduction in overall effectiveness of taunt and makes it much more reasonable to deal with
- Grenadier grants +1 damage to destructive grenades but no longer affects mines - Buffed and slight nerf on later game mines
- In The Zone grants 20 aim on regular shots (from 25) and provides low profile - Buffed for balance on the tree
- Squadsight (on snipers) no longer provides low profile - Accommodates new balance
- Psi Inspire reduces psionic damage by 50% - Significant buff to the ability, and relative nerf to enemy psionics
- Psi Overload (volunteer supped version of Psi Inspire) renamed to Psi Surge - Stops overlap with the 'overload' ability on arc weapons
- Telekinetic Field now only damages mechanical units and deals straigth up will/20 psi damage - Makes it easier to avoid as XCOM
- Surgical Targeting grants 70% damage (from 40%) - Significant buff as the ability is restrictive to use
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifles grant 20 aim (from 15) - Buffed
- SAW/LMG ammo to 6/8 (from 4/5) - Grants a lot more up-time and makes using suppression/burst a lot more reasonable, overall gunner buff
- Regenerative Plating heals back 1 HP for every 3 or more damage taken (from 4) - Significant buff
- Plasma SAW grants +4 pen vs mechanical units (from 2) - Significant buff
Aliens:
- Uber Ethereal will to 140 (from 200) and gains 20 will per alien level (from 40) - Significant nerf
- Uber (Uber Ethereal perk) gains 100% DR until all other aliens are dead - Stops focus on the uber and prevents some cheezy luring tactics (just like in LW 1.0)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Strict Screening starting recruits had 3 less will than intended
- Fixed a bug where some strategic events would play multiple times
- Fixed a bug where South America Fear No Evil bonus was giving more credits than intended
- Fixed a bug where countries that left XCOM would still grant daily credits
- Fixed a bug where surgical targeting wouldn't work after using a medikit
- Fixed a bug where breaking a Plasma Shield would re-enable Psychic Tether
- Maybe fixed a bug where you sometimes couldn't target your own invisible units
- Typos
Version 1.52.03
LW Rebalance v1.52.03 - Fast Nades
Installation:
- We have a new installer in the .zip for LWR - Thanks to Caplian for his hard work creating it
Strategic:
- Militarization no longer decreases cost or arrival time of new recruits - Nerfed
- Vigilis grants +15 will (from +13) - Buffed
- Pack Missions occur 20% of the time (from 33%) - Were suplanting regular abduction missions too much
- Pack Mission rewards are similar to Heavy (instead of swarming) - More appropriate
- The obssessive scientist event will no longer trigger if you have less than 10 days remaining of a research
- Home country credit bonus is 40/35/30/25/20 per day (from 60/55/50/45/40 per day) - It was too of a buff and needed to be significantly toned down to make credits more impactful
- Loans have half the interest rate - Due to requiring repayment immediately they are significantly worse and needed a buff
- Advanced Beam Lasers requires 30 elerium (from 50) - Makes it a little easier to acquire and less of an elerium trap
Tactical:
- Actions within a mission no longer have an effect on post mission attributes - QoL
- MSGTs gain 100% more post mission attributes (from 50%) - Buffed
- Throw range of soldiers is modified by 4% per base HP above/below average (from 2%) - Makes it feel significant
Perks:
- Will to survive grants +3 armor HP - Buffed so that tanks can survive better and take advantage of their increased cover DR and pen resist without the need for platings/armors
- Light 'Em Up grants 5 aim per instance of damage (from 10) and no longer buffs aim on reaction shots (from +10 aim) - Nerfed as aim is quite strong and this made LeU too much of a buff vs other classes/perks
- Opportunist grants +20 aim (from +15) - Buff to overwatch classes, helps accommodate LeU nerf
- Bullseye grants 25 aim/crit (from 30) - Balance on the scout tree, opens up HnR and Support scout a little more
- Field Medic increases healing from medikits by +1 - Slight buff to medics overall
- Grenadier no longer grants +35% throw range if in OfA - Accommodates longer range on launchers, allows grenades to be more effective on non-grenadier MECs, simplification
- Grenadier grants +1.3 mobility - Significant buff, grenades are both heavy and require good positioning to use twice with grenadier which means mobility is essential to being effective
- In The Zone grants +25 aim (from +20) - Slight buff
- Dense Smoke no longer grants crit immunity - Nerfed
- Master Mechanic grants an additional repair charge - Buffed
- HEAT Warheads grants +6 pen (from +4) - Buffed to push them even further at being great against heavily armored targets
- Psychic Storm hit chance is now based on the caster's will minus 3% for each tile away the target is (from just straight up 50% of target's will) - Allows running away to be effective and long distances to be less oppressive
- Telekinetic Field now deals (Caster_Will - Target_Will)/20 damage to enemies that enter the field - Buff to sectoid commanders, the ability on the tree (vs inner fire), the benefit of higher will psionics, the benefit of will overall
Quirks:
- Green lung increases fatigue time by 30% (from 50%) - Makes it less debilitating
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifles give +15 aim (from +10) - Buffed
- Gauss/Pulse Carbine grants +15 aim (from +10) - They were in a unique situation where the crit bonus for less damage wasn't as significant as intended so they needed a little more strength
- Grenade Launcher and Advanced Launcher range to 10 (from 8) - Buffed to accomodate grenadier change and make them more effective on non-grenadier MECs
- Skeleton keys require 1 outsider shard per successful alien base assault (from 0.5) - Makes it harder to do multiple and tones down the number of ABAs in a campaign
- Battle Rifle penetration to 1/1/2/2/2 and mid tier weapons lose their crit bonus for truncation (similar to strike rifles) - Was a little strong with so much pen
- Arc Rifles now have innate snapshot - Buffed and allows them to be effective for clearing enemy overwatch
- Overload (from Arc Rifles and Arc Pistols) now also always clears overwatch on all enemies and can disorient on all enemies (from just mechanical) - Gives another tool to break enemy overwatch
Aliens:
- Floater/Heavy Floater will to 5/10 (from 10/20) and growth to 3 per level (from 6 per level) - Makes them much easier psi targets throughout an entire campaign, buff to offensive psi
- All Heavy Floater leaders lose 10 will - Same as above
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where country of a soldier stats were inaccurate and not always reflecting what was listed in the dgc.ini
- Fixed a bug where ranger/ace was removing the long range penalty on SMGs as well as pistols
- Fixed a bug where enemies could skitter against hidden XCOM units
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where having a new genemod, armor, or psi ability complete and another ability complete shortly after during the animation would cause a softlock
- Fixed a bug where squadsight units could see and target hidden units
- Typos
Version 1.52.02
LW Rebalance v1.52.02 - Practice Makes Perfect
Strategic:
- Added 2 more events to the strategic game - QoL
- South Africa country bonus 'Fear No Evil' makes countries that left the council provide 2 credits per day (from 20% of their normal credits) - Prevent truncation problems, slight buff
- Added some notices that explain that psionic training, genetic modification, officer promotion, and MEC augmentation are all mutually exclusive - QoL
- Fixed a bug where loadouts would sometimes not work on recent installs - Thanks Lafiir for finding this one
Tactical:
- Doubled the rate of post mission stat gains - They were insignificant enough that an increase is reasonable just for player fun
- Steady aim now doubles base aim (instead of granting +70 aim) - Feels better as it makes sense higher aim units would have stronger steadies
- MSGTs gain 50% more growth of post mission stats - QoL as they can't gain perks
Perks:
- Acid Tech also upgrades acid grenades and spit to clear steady, overwatch, and suppression on biologic units - Buffed, but was already doing this, can't fix the bug
Equipment:
- Reinforced plating grants 30 base DR (from 25) - Buff due to decreased defense
- Aurora armor HP to 6 (from 8) and weight to 2.0 (from 2.6) - Makes it more of a light armor and slightly nerfed
- Holo Charger back to 1.3 weight (from 0.6) - It's quite good now, especially with reduced aim values, and was replacing the strength of other holo sources too much
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
Version 1.52.01
LW Rebalance v1.52.01 - Good Fixins
Strategic:
- Pain no longer reduces the number of soldiers deployed by 1 - It was too extreme and the difficulty serves it's purpose fine without it
Tactical:
- Melee units are disoriented instead of out of ammo on Off Guard - Fixes a bug where they could never attack
- The chance to be off guard and unprepared is changed: Off Guard = 20% chance for each enemy over 3, Unprepared = 30% chance for each enemy over 8 - Makes the mechanics less luck-based and more consistent helping flatten out the difficulty spikes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where light 'em up was granting aim on non-reaction shots (instead of reaction shots)
- Fixed a bug where off guard was triggering too often
- Fixed a bug where alloy plating had -10 def instead of reinforced plating
Version 1.52.00
LW Rebalance v1.52.00 - Painful Packs
New Difficulty:
- New difficulty setting: Pain - Acts as a higher difficulty level that I think might be actually impossible
- Pain is a hidden difficulty and is not listed on the difficulty options. to select it you have to click down when you are on impossible difficulty
- Pain difficulty is a step up from impossible with the addition of 1 less soldier to deploy on all missions
- Second wave option "Gentle Aliens (#27)" and "Elite Aliens (#28)" combined and renamed to "Difficulty Drop (#27)" as just one setting - More aptly describes the effect as it is intended to act as a halfway step on harder difficulties, the two options were also overlapping too much
- Brutal difficulty aliens do +0 damage (from +1 damage)
- Brutal difficulty aliens have 100% of HP (from 90%)
- Impossible difficulty aliens do +1 damage (from +2 damage)
- Impossible difficulty aliens have 125% of HP (from 100% +3)
- Impossible difficulty aliens increase base defense to 125% (from 100%)
- You can no longer change difficulties mid-campaign (necessary evil)
Pack Missions:
- Pack missions are special types of abduction missions where all pods are of a single type (e.g. all sectoid pods, or all outsider pods)
- You will be notified of the pack mission at the abduction selection screen, as well as the enemy type
- Pods can still contain other enemy types if they naturally do
- Pack missions are always swarming and have associated high level rewards
- The goal of pack missions is to give the player an opportunity to build a squad to counter a specific enemy type in a difficult mission. This should hopefully give players a new experience with new tactics and new thought patterns.
Base Stat Growth Elimination:
- Classes no longer gain stats on promotions
- Post Mission Attributes are more common and based on how a unit performed in the mission and their class and is no longer tied to rank
- Alien Leadership is removed
- All psionic training requirements reduced by 10 will
- Augmenting a soldier to become a MEC has increased failure chance below 7 and increased MEC stats above 7 (from below and above 8)
Daily Income and Maintenance Costs:
- Income now is gained daily
- Maintenance and Salary costs all adjusted
- Air Superiority now reduces Skyranger maintenance costs to 0 (instead of reducing all maintenance by a %)
- Ring of Fire grants 7 credits per day (from 220 per month) for each thermogenerator
- Baumeister no longer reduces upkeep of facilities but reduces contruction time by 90% (from 80%)
- Loans now occur over a 30 day period (instead of until month end)
- Home Country bonus to 60/55/50/45/40 per day (on easy -> pain)
Strategic:
- New second wave option "MECs Galore (#28)": Removes the 2 MEC restriction per mission - QoL
- New Second Wave Option: Wild West (#3): All shots deal triple damage (replaced Predictable Potential #3) - Gives a version of the game where things die very quickly, defense is a lot more important that DR, and shots from weapons reign supreme
- Your home country now reduces any panic applied to it by 5% for each country that is in the XCOM project (from 65% flat) - Prevents holding out indefinitely with 1 country left, a little stronger with full support
- The chance for a country to leave is now 0.25% per panic over 79 (from 1% per panic over 80) - Makes it a lot more reasonable to hold countries in the red and a lot more effective to perform combat patrols to hold onto countries
Tactical:
- Aliens will no longer hunker when prepared - Was causing bugs that I couldn't fix
- Outsiders will now triple growth trigger when prepared - Gives them something unique to do, minor buff but helps them be a challenge if you hit them early and they are alone
- Drones will now start an orbital ray sequence when prepared - Gives them something unique to do, shouldn't be too strong as even if you don't break it's just holo and you're fighting a group of drones solo so holo is pretty much a given
- Suppressive Fire deals 35% of weapon damage (from 45%)
- Aliens no longer fail to scamper on off-guard/unprepared - The scamper was massively bias towards units that used cover and did very little for units that didn't, so now off-guiard is just no ammo and unprepared is no-ammo and skip a turn, should make the effects of these still significant while not setting the aliens up for easy alpha strikes
Perks:
- New Perk: Ace - Grants +2 damage to all weapons and equipment, +1.3 mobility, and +20% throw range. For sidearms: No long-range aim penalty and reloading costs only 1 AP. - Acts as an upgraded version of Ranger for the Infantry class
- Pursuit and Skitter no longer works if the unit moving/throwing unit is in smoke - Gives another tool to avoid them
- Strangle (seeker perk) deals 25% of the seeker's max HP in damage (from 1 + 20-50% of the unit's current HP) - Makes it better to happen on tankier units (as opposed to worse) and scales better with stronger seekers (e.g. leaders). Not as much of a problem on VIPs and such as you can now detect with combat readiness on anyone if you need to protect someone.
- Light 'Em Up grants +10 aim per hit the target has taken and +10 aim to reaction fire - Buffed
- Reinforced Plating has a -10 defence malus - Balance in early game platings, makes it more of a tank centric item
- Marksman Scope crit to 0 (from 10) - Tone back on predictability of scout strike rifle crits to make more room for other weapons on scouts
- Strike Rifles gain 1/1/2/2/2 pen (from 0) but no longer gain additional crit for lower damage truncation on gauss/pulse - Trades more crit for pen helping it be more well rounded and stronger overall
- Sniper and Strike Rifles grant 10 aim
- Aurora/Vortex armor grant 20/30 will (from 10/15)
- Shotgun aim malus to -20 (from -10)
- Tac Vest, Kestrel, Banshee, Corsair, Seraph, Ghost armors are all 0.6 weight lighter - Buff to light armors and helps accommodate for mobilty loss
XCOM:
- MECs start with 19.3 mobility (from 18 mobility) - Accommodates lose of base stat gains
- Infantry loses Ranger and gains Ace at TSGT - Buffed
- Infantry have Impact and Snapshot swapped and then Snapshot replaced with Pistolero - Gives infantry a strong close range build
Aliens:
- Chryssalid base defense to 20 (from 30) - Makes them easier to hit
- Ethereal base defense to 60 (from 80) - Makes them easier to hit
- Exalt Heavies lose Light 'Em Up and gain 10 aim - Significant nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where UFO sightings were more rare than intended
- Fixed a bug where maybe prepared enemies on overwatch would try to hunker and bug out
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes spawn on missions with pod ratios that were all of one type (but should have been mixed)
- Fixed an uncommon CTD when loading the barracks after a mission
- Fixed a bug where people in the psi tube could double equip some one-time only equipment
- Typos
Version 1.51.03
LW Rebalance v1.51.03 - Unguard Works
Equipment:
- Bulletstorm (SAW perk) now only works if it hits the same target a second time - Nerfed, required for code to work
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a typo on Meld Healing
- Fixed a bug where you could sometimes target invisible enemies
- Fixed a bug where aim in the F1 panel was not always correct
- Fixed more bugs with bulletstorm
- Fixed a bug where sectoids could use TK Field
Version 1.51.02
LW Rebalance v1.51.02 - Unguard
Strategic:
- All air game starts start with 5 planes (from 6) - Toned down in strength
Tactical:
- Off Guard is now: If there are 3 or more already active enemies, new pods revealed have a 10% chance per already active enemy to be caught Off-Guard and start with no ammo and not be able to Scamper
- Unprepared is now: If a pod is Off-Guard and there are 6 or more already active enemies, each active enemy above 5 grants a 15% chance for the enemy pod to be unprepared where they start with no ammo, do not scamper, and skip their first turn
- Prepared aliens that do not overwatch can now hunker or hide - Slight boost to prepared strength
- Melee enemies can again gain combat readiness on prepared - The difference between triggering them with and without another pod is HUGE and the difficulty needs to be accommodated for
- Melee enemies can now be off-guard (no scamper) and unprepared (skip first turn) - Important as adding extra melee enemies to a fight can be very dangerous
Perks:
- Burst once again has -50 crit - Reduces strength on SMGs
- Will to Survive changed to: All cover DR increased to 65% but grants 15 less defense. Enemy penetration is reduced by 1. Grants Steadfast. - Buff to tanking, especially early game
- Steadfast reduces injury time by 50% - Buff to alien trophy and makes Will to Survive a little less complex
- Mind Merge and Greater Mind Merge grant 5% of caster will in bonus HP (from 10%) - Makes them heal less
Equipment:
- Strike Rifle ammo to 2 (from 3) - It was always overpowered vs other options at the level, also encourages the player to use other weapons and ammo boosting items/perks (though the strike rifle is still probably a little OP vs other regular weapons)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where when using F1 on a unit that was steadied it would look like the aliens had a lot more pen than they actually did
- Maybe fixed an issue where redfog was appearing on units it shouldn't when loading a save game
- Hopefully fixed a bug where Bulletstorm would still trigger too often and sometimes not enough
- Fixed a bug where aliens could still have over 100 HP
Version 1.51.01
LW Rebalance v1.51.01 - Debuggin the Barracks
Strategic:
- Updated which perks appear on the Training Roullette list ala NOBU's work - QoL
- A Few Good Men doubles the decrease in soldier cost when a soldier dies - QoL, thanks snack
- A Few Good Men doubles the IS decrease when you lose a soldier - QoL, thanks snack
Tactical:
- The "Home Ground" bonus grants 10 aim, 20 will, and 1.3 mobility (from 20 will and 1.3 mobility) - Buffed to make it a more impactful strategic decision
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Cover defense would not show in the F1 (visual bug only)
- Fixed a bug where hunker was not providing the accurate amount of defense
- Fixed a bug where bulletstorm wasn't working properly
- Fixed a bug where new OTS project popups were causing CTDs
- Typos
Version 1.51.00
LW Rebalance v1.51.00 - Barracks Blitz
Strategic:
- Their finest Hour (country start) no longer grants armored fighters - Nerf to it's strength
- You can now only take a maximum of 2 MECs to any mission - Encourages more diverse rosters and prevents 8 MEC missions on difficult missions
- Players now start with 12 preset soldiers (3 of each supra class, 3 LCPL, 4 SPECs, 5 PFCs) and 1 soldier from their country (from 17 starting soldiers)
- New recruits cost 180 (from 140)
- SHIV costs increased to 400/530/660 credits (from 300/400/500) [but resources required left alone]
- Soldier salary formula changed from [x(x+1)/3] credits to [x(x+1)/2] credits
- Base Fatigue Time is +12 hours of fatigue per turn on a mission (from 16)
- Base Injury Time is % of Base HP Lost x 60 days (from 80 days)
- Extra fatigue per mission complete reduced to 8% (from 10%) [BARRACKS_CAPACITY=8 in the dgc.ini]
- XP rewarded for a normal/long mission reduced to 90/120 (from 120/160)
- XP rewarded for no deaths on a mission to 30 (from 40)
- XP rewarded for a leader kill/capture reduced to 8/10 per leader level (from 10/12)
- Psi XP rewarded after each battle reduced to 70 (from 100)
- Gene Mod costs and times increased by ~30%
- MEC Augmentation credit/meld cost to 70/90 (from 50/70) [but no increase in time]
- Meld Healing cost to 70 (from 50)
- Soldier rewards occur 20% less often
- A Few Good Men decreases barracks size by half (instead of 66%)
Tactical:
- Air Strike can now be used if the unit trying to use it is hidden - QoL
- The first area in the Temple Ship will no longer have the second wave of aliens occurs as soon as someone dies and will require all but all aliens to die before the second wave occurs - Makes the first section of the Temple Assault a lot more reasonable/easier
- The Blitzkrieg timer now stays apparent at all times - QoL
- Blitzkrieg mode now gives a base of 10s on every turn regardless of number of units/active aliens - It's important because you need some time to decide what you want to do that turn, regardless of number of active units
- Chopping a soldier with higher ranks now has twice the effect - Makes it more viable to chop higher ranked soldiers
- Experience required for SPEC rank reduced to 100 (from 150) - Makes it easier to level up
Perks:
- Neural Damping no longer resists mind control but instead decreases host neural resistance allowing nanobots in medikits to work more effectively increasing healing from medikits by 4 - Tweaks as MC resistance was too strong on an engagement-level
- Smart Macrophages no longer increases healing from medikits (from +1 healing) - Accommodates Neural Damping
- Leadership (def and crit resist from aliens leaders) now works on alien leaders as well - It's important to have defense and crit resist on aliens scale with XCOM aim and crit growth, also accommodates for much easier temple due to both the significantly weaker plasma shield and first room
- New Perk: Surgical Targeting - Grants +30% damage dealt to autopsied targets affected by red fog. Automatically enters overwatch at end of turn if this unit consumed a medikit this turn.
- Lowered the growth cap on leader outsiders - It was allowing them to scale too high
- Critical System Targeting grants +50% damage (from +80%) but also +2 pen vs Mechanical units - Buffed
- Plasma Shield HP to 60 (from 100) but difficulties have a x1/1.5/2/2.5 damage modifier to them (from 1/2/3/4) - Nerf to strength of plasma shields
- Master Mechanic increases healing of repair by 3 (from 4) - Slight nerf, makes mechanical healing a little less strong in the mid-late game
- Savior increases healing of medikits by +3 (from +2) - Buff to mid-late game biologic healing
- Ready For Anything no longer grants +2 ammo - Was overpowered (even on aliens)
- Bullseye Grants 30 aim/crit (from 35) - Slight nerf, it's damage output was a little too high
- In The Zone grants 20 aim on regular shots (from 10) - Makes it more competitive vs other sniper builds
- Inner Fire now has the soldier regenerate 2 base (non-armor) HP each turn - Buffed
- Combat Drugs grants 20 aim and 10 crit (from 30 and 20) but heals 2 HP (from 30% of lost HP min 1 max 3) - Makes it more reliable for topping units up with healing but less offensive
- Strength in Numbers (Officer Perk) grants 2 will per squad member (from 1) - Significant buff
Equipment:
- SMG base crit to 50 (from 30) and gain the Burst perk - Significant buff as their aim malus at a distance is a significant negative. This makes them more competitive on crit focused builds (e.g. Hit and Run, Shadowstep, reapear ammo), or just close range builds that need some more mobility but still want to pump out damage. This also makes them more distinct.
- Stun Rifle weight to 4.0 (from 3.3) - Makes using the stun rifle more challenging and more of a handicap
- Bulletstorm (SAW perk) rework: Hitting a target that this unit already fired at this turn deals an additional round of damage equal to their weapon damage. - Makes it a lot less RNG and synergizes better with Double Tap and now also works with reaction fire
- Drum Mags no longer grant Burst but have a -5 aim malus and 0.6 weight (from 1.3) - Tweaked, makes it feel less mandatory to go with Battle Rifles and stops soldiers from feeling so sluggish
- Seraph armor cost to 200 credits (from 600) and Archangel cost to 800 credits (from 1500) - Makes them more affordable
- Seraph and Archangel armor no longer auto-graze all shots when flying - It was less of an avoidance and more of a tank perk, which is not the intention for flying armors
- Battle Rifles gain +2/2/3/3/4 pen and -10 aim - Makes the more distinctive vs other options
- KSM damage to 20 (from 16) and Thumper damage to 10 (from 14) - Puts more of the KSM damage earlier and makes it scale better with Melee Slayer, overall buff
- LMEC2/LMEC3s lose 2/4 HP - Tone back in strength as they were encroaching too much on the HMEC design space
- Mists heal for 4 (from 5) - Slight nerf
- Electropulse now deals 4 damage that bypasses all damage resistance and clears overwatch from all enemies within 14 tiles of this MEC (from 14 damage to all mechanical/outsider units) - Gives it a unique function
XCOM:
- Medic has Ready For Anything replaced with Lock N' Load - Important for their uptime, more distinct from gunner, more similar to Infantry
- Medic has Impact replaced by Surgical Targeting - Unique to make them more distinct
- Rocketeer gains +0.6 base mobility - Slight buff overall, helps offset the negative of having heavy rockets
Aliens:
- Thinman damage, aim and crit growth to 1, 6 and 6 per alien level increase (from 1.5, 10 and 10) - Makes later game thinmen less deadly
- Uber Ethereal will to 200 (from 120) - Increases it's offensive potential
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where bulletstorm would trigger from flak
- Fixed a bug where Temple units seeking cover at the same time could lead to a CTD
- Fixed (skipped) some AI that would sometimes bug out and cause a CTD on Temple Ship due to the Temple Ship map not being perfectly designed
- Fixed a bug where units hit by disabling shot could prevent Ready For Anything from triggering
- Tweaked some code to hopefully help the injury status of units not disappear during mind control
- Fixed a bug where Exalt Heavies and Exalt Elite Heavies didn't show Bulletstorm on their F1 list
- Fixed a bug where OTS unlock notifications would occur at incorrect times
- Fixed a bug where non-shots were not getting extra penetration from every 10 damage dealt
- Fixed a bug where the presented meld healing cost for soldiers was different than the actual in A Few Good Men campaigns
- Fixed a bug where pursuit and brute who ignore mobility reduction penalties
- Fixed a bug where AP ammo was granting 5 pen (instead of 2)
- Fixed a bug where save games with LOTS of enemies on the screen would sometimes crash to desktop when trying to reload
- Fixed a bug where disorient wasn't reducing Brute damage
- Fixed a bug where smoke would clear taunt
Version 1.50.36
LW Rebalance v1.50.36 - Bugs Bugs Go Away
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where you could still air strike when scampering
- Possible fixed a bug where fatigue wasn't being calculated correctly
Version 1.50.35
LW Rebalance v1.50.35 - A Few Good Fixes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where viewing a fatigued soldier in the barracks would cause a CTD
Version 1.50.34
LW Rebalance v1.50.34 - A Few Good Patches
Tips:
- Updated the loading screen tips - QoL (thanks AWEIRDGUY)
Strategic:
- Balanced Soldiers (#31) Second Wave option replaced with A Few Good Men (#31): Fight with one third as many soldiers, but each soldier can do triple the number of missions - Thanks to Chicken for the idea and some of the coding
- Born to Fly starts with 3 extra interceptors (from 0) - Buffed
- Sightings on UFO estimates of number of aliens are now the exact range that's possible - QoL
- Deus Ex no longer reduces gene modification costs/time - It actually already does by allowing you to pick the cheaper of the options and the recent gene mod buffs made this start a little stronger than intended
- Alien Containment costs 40 elerium (from 30) - More unpredictable early timing
- EMP cannon cost to 90 (from 140) - Makes them a little more reasonable
- Phoneix cannon cost to 220 (from 110) and Alloy cost to 35 (from 10) - Makes it harder to mass them quickly
Tactical:
- Added new functionality to detect possible AI soft-locks (hangs) and fix them - QoL
- Adding some audio cues when playing Blitzkrieg to let the player know when they are low in time - QoL
- Blitzkrieg defaults to 5s (from 10s) - Seems more appropriate
- Quick mission rewards are no longer doubled on council missions and only 5% per turn less than number of aliens (from 10%) - With the new formula they didn't need to be boosted on council and they were more frequent than intended, the real advantage of going fast should be acquiring meld
- Spotters (for squadsight) can no longer spot if they are being suppressed - Makes sense
- Enemy HP is now capped at 100 - Reasonable limit anyway
- Hunkering grants 30% more cover defense (from double) and prevents the unit from acquiring combat readiness - Nerf to hunker strategies
Perks:
- Shred only applies during your turn - Tones back strength of late game OW class shred application, consistency with holo
- Psi Inspire radius to 6 tiles (from 4), no longer grants combat readiness, instead grants 20 def and will, and only lasts until the beginning of their next turn (instead of the end of their next turn) - prevents psionic effects from not working next turn, acts as a defensive tool that still works if combat readiness is active, also boosts offensive psionic actions
- Mind Merge increases mobility by +2.0 tiles (from +50%) - Long overdue nerf, especially on aliens taht would all of the sudden move across the map to flank you
- Tactical Mobility no longer works if a unit is disoriented - QoL
- Ram now works at 4 or more tiles (from 6 or more) grants +1 damage for every 10 max base HP the rammer has (from +1/-1 for every 5 max base HP difference between the rammer and the target) - Makes it stay more relevant later game, slight buff overall
- Breaking mind merge deals half of the HP gained back to the target (so 5% of caster will instead of 10% of caster will on sectoids, and 10 HP instead of 1 HP on Mechtoids) - Makes breaking actually affect mechtoids (instead of only doing 1 damage), also makes breaking not so strong against sectoids
- Mind merge also grants +1 pen to the target - Buffed on both XCOM and Aliens
- Advanced Perception grants 25% graze (from 35%) - The buff was a mistake, graze is really strong, especially on tanks due to truncation and maxing out DR
- Shadowshot reduces 20% of armor HP (from 10% of total HP) - Tweak to make it more about armor stripping. Overall slight nerf, but makes it more effective against anti-tank and less effective when units are damaged
- Regenesis grants 20% fatigue/injury reduction (from 25) - was a little strong
- Plasma Shield rework: Any turn this unit takes more than 30% of its max HP in damage it gains a shield of pure plasma. The shield can absorb 100 damage and prevents all negative effects until the end of the current turn. Melee attacks deals triple damage to the shield. Damage to the shield is further increased on Brutal(x2), Classic(x3), and Easy(x4). Breaking the Plasma Shield resets any instances of damage control. - Less RNG and more consistency of when to break
- Will to survive grants 4% DR per enemy in sight (from 2%) - Makes it better for getting swarmed
- Heat Warheads to Double shred (from triple) - too strong at triple, even double is really strong
Equipment:
- Reapear ammo grants +10 crit (from 0) - Buffed
- Aurora armor Psi Boost reduces fatigue by 20% (from 35%) - was a little too strong
- Shred ammo weight to 0.6 (from 1.3) - Buffed, accommodates not working on OW
- Marksman Scope to +10 aim/crit (from +15) - Toned back
- Walker Servo alloy cost to 180 (from 60) - It's a really strong item
- Laser sight to +10 crit (from +15) - As a free infinite weightless item it was still too competitive on some builds, especially high crit damage builds
- Anti-Armor Module weight to 0.6 (from 1.3) - Buffed as it was a little weak when it came online
- Burst-Fire Module gains +10 crit - Buffed
- Auto Tracking Module renamed to Infrared Module and grants Vital Point Targeting (instead of Ready For Anything) and weight to 1.3 (from 2.0) and cost to 140 credits (from 40) - RfA was odd how it increased ammo so much
- Retaliatory Sensor weight to 1.3 (from 2.0) - Buffed
- Platings no longer grant crit resist - Toned back in strength, accommodates for W2S buff and makes crit resist (e.g. OfA/Fort) more important on MECs
- Gravity Well no longer affects movement (from -20%) - Would mess with alien AI too much
- Grenade Launcher damage to 8 (from 9) - Slight nerf, makes other options more viable
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV natural crit resist to 50 (from 30) - Helps accommodate for loss of crit resist on plating
Aliens:
- Drone aim to 60 (from 55) - Slight buff
- Thinman aim to 60 (from 65) - Slight nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some pod sizes on Brutal difficulty were being reduced as if they were on Easy
- Fixed a bug where Ram was doing less damage than intended
- Fixed a bug where the combat readiness button would still be available when suppressed (you can't activate CR when suppressed)
- Fixed a bug where Hesitant and Maladroit didn't do anything
- Fixed a bug where smoke could 'linger' and give inaccurate readings on F1 defenses
- Fixed a bug where sightings on a UFO could change based on refreshing the list
- Fixed a bug where Dash and Bash didn't appear on the right soldier quirk/perk list in the barracks lists
- Fixed a bug where dead sectoids could sometimes still cast psychic storm
- Fixed a bug where the new OTS project available popups would occur at incorrect times
- Fixed a bug where combat patrols would not show accurate alien resource removal
- Hidden units can no longer taunt you
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where you couldn't remove workshops if you didn't mean certain engineer requirements
- Fixed a bug where dead seekers would still appear on the proximity sensor radar
- Fixed a bug where the blitz timer message stays apparent in top left of screen while empty and keeps flashing
- Fixed a bug where cluster bomb warnings were not showing on units flags
- Fixed a bug where aiming a grenade or weapon would pause the blitzkrieg timer
- Fixed a bug where the crit damage on fragmentation was not showing correctly
- Typos
Version 1.50.33
LW Rebalance v1.50.33 - Oh Oh My
Strategic:
- Supercapacitor research requires 50 research time (from 210) and power sources to 8 (from 16) - Opens up stronger laser cannons earlier to make them a stronger option for campaigns
- Advanced Power Armor research requires 600 reserach time (from 180) - As an opening to end-game armor tech it was too short and made skipping prerequisite tech too strong an option
- XCOM again starts with 10 engineers and scientists - The engineer nerf had unexpected consequences that I didn't like
- Alien Containment now requires 30 elerium to construct - Makes it so early game is more variable and it is less ideal to just rush captures
- Added multiple more events - QoL
- Raider HP to 3000 (from 5000) but gain 750 per month (from 500 per month) - Makes them more challenging late game, easier earlier
- Harvester HP to 5000 (from 7000) but gain 1250 per month (from 700 per month) - Makes them more challenging late game, easier earlier
- Aircraft take 33% longer to repair - Increase in air game difficulty
- XCOM now starts with 3 interceptors (from 4) - Nerf to overall XCOM difficulty
- Their Finest Hour, Jai Jawan, and Dare Devils now grant +3 interceptors (from 0/2/2) - Buffed
Tactical:
- Steady Weapon no longer grants bonus crit - With the reaction fire immunity and pen it is strong enough, and those are both important for it's more regular use, it was just a little overtuned
- Combat Readiness no longer reveals a unit if they are hiden - QoL
Perks:
- Mind Control no longer reduces the AP of victims by 1 AP but also only deals 20% mind deterioration damage (from 35%) - Slight nerf in the ability overall, more mind control aspect to it, less pure damage
- Renamed Fleet to Skitter - More intuitive, QoL
- Tactical Mobility no longer grants explosive graze - Made floaters too strong and rockets a little too weak
- Dash and Bash also grants +4 damage to Kinetic Strikes (+8 if the unit has a Thumper) - Further buffed
- Kinetic Blast has a 2 radius aoe (from 3) and 2 turn cooldown (from 1) - Nerfed
- Executioner aim to 15 (from 25) - Units under half health is quite common now days in LWR and it makes this perk way too strong at 25, there wasn't a build on the sniper that didn't go executioner cause it was so strong (partly cuase the competition isn't that strong)
- Rapid Fire no longer grants +1 ammo - Extra shots are just really strong, encourages more ammo conservation strategies on medic/assault/jaeger as well as using ammo boosting items
- Blast grants 1 damage (from 2) - Tone back on explosive strength
- Fragmentation no longer grants bonus pen (from 2) - Tone back on explosive strength
- Payload increases explosive damage by 50% (from 70%) - Tone back on explosive strength
- Hit and Run no longer allows psionics and command - Was strong enough without the added benefit, and wasn't really hit and run; also made psionic or officer scouts feel more obliged to go hit and run
- Shock and Awe no longer increases rocket damage but reduces scatter by 30% - Tone back on explosive strength but increase in consistenty
- Absorption Fields no longer grants additional HP - Goliath and MEC tanks are strong enough without this
- Kinetic Dampening no longer grants 1 pen resist - Tone back on strength of Goliath tank against weaker units
- Shadowshot (thinman perk that prevents reaction fire when shooting) also strips 10% of the current HP of any target hit - Makes thinmen much more effective at dealing with tanks, especially in the late game
- Platform Stability no longer works when flying - Makes sense
- Snapshot requires no movement in order to trigger the 20% chance of a free shot - Nerf to it's strength for developing combat areas, tone back on infantry and Hit and Run Scout
Quirks:
- Readjusted the strength of dozens of quirks - Balance and impactfulness, most were buffs
Equipment:
- Auto Tracking Module weight to 2 (from 0.6) and aim to 0 (from 5) - Accommodates for the +2 ammo on RfA
- Shielding Module now grants Absorption Fields instead of just 30% DR - Just a tweak for consistency
- Corsair armor to 350 credits (from 250) and Titan armor to 400 credits (from 300) - Increase in cost of late game armors to make the earlier armors more viable and the late game armors more rare
- Proximity Sensor radar now shows all seekers (from just cloaked seekers) - Prevents a bug which can lead to a CTD
- AP Grenade radius to 1.5 (from 2) - Further distinguishes it from other grenades, helps balance early game grenade strength
- Recoilless Launcher pen to 0 (from 2) - Was overkill in strength, the 3 damage upgrade is big enough on its own
- Gravity Well (from Gravity Mines) reduces mobility by 20% (from 50%) - The severe reduction was messing with alien AI too much (due to the way it's applied), also a nerf
- Stun Rifle weighs 3.3 (from 2.6) - Makes it more cumbersome and captures more costly
- Psi Defender no longer grants 1 pen resist but DR and crit resistance to 35% (from 25%) - Makes them better at dealing with stronger targets and worse against weaker targets
- Recoilless Rifle and Blaster Launcher charges to 1 (from 2/3) - The extra charges were overkill and made the TSGT perk feel lackluster, slight tone back on rocketeer strength
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV base DR to 50 (from 60) - The extra HP and item slots was enough
Aliens:
- Mecthoid will increased to 50 (from 20) - Psi shouldn't be so effective at disabling mechtoids as they are central to the strength of their pods, small nerf to psi panic/mind fray
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where lab adjacencies were not providing the 10% reasearch bonus that they should
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would chain panic and it would break the HUD and some of the alien AI leading to some crashes
- Fixed a bug where Exalt was occcuring in pods at 4x the intended frequency in the late game (they were supposed to be rarer)
- Fixed a bug where Pursuit was not respecting the mobility of the unit that was pursuing
- Fixed a bug where unit loadouts would be empty on Exalt missions
- Fixed a bug where installations were overwriting unecessary files
- Fixed a bug where combat patrols were showing as destroying 3x as many resources as they actually did
- Typos
Version 1.50.32
LW Rebalance v1.50.32 - Bashing Bugs
Strategic:
- XCOM starts with 5 scientists/engineers (from 10) - Makes acquisition from council more important and hitting early breakpoints more challenging
- Xenological Remedies renamed to Xeno Market and increases cost of corpses and wrecks by 10x (from 8-11x) and captives by 25x (from 8-11x) - Significantly alters the style of game by encouraging a different strategy (i.e. capturing lots of aliens); also buffed
- Deus Ex reduces meld, credit, and time cost of genetic modifications by 50% (from 35%) - Buffed
- Militarization grants 9 units on UFO Site missions (from 8) but only reduces cost and arrival time of soliders by 50% (from 75%) - Buffed
- Bred Tough grants 15 DR (from 20) - Nerfed
- Ancient Artifacts starts with 350 meld (from 500) - Nerfed
- Ready For War starts with 100 alloys (from 200), 50 elerium (from 100), and 1 fusion core (from 2) - Nerfed
- Jai Jawan increases fire rate by 80% (from 50%) - Buffed
- Armored Fighters increases Interceptor and Firestorm HP by 30% (from 15%) but costs 450 credits (from 250) and 120 alloys (from 60) - Buffed
- Added a warning when attempting to build the gollop chamber that it will massively increase alien mission frequency - QoL
Tactical:
- Improved the sightlines mod to create less lag when calculating sightlines with non-cover using units
- Rocket Scatter increased by 66% - Rockets are now strong all game, but their scatter is almost an after thought or just a consideration when disabled somehow; this nerfs them and also makes CR and/or steady a more important consideration in rocket use
- The guaranteed unit on UFO site missions (cyberdiscs, mechtoids, scommanders, ethereals) now all occur 1 month earlier - Increase in both difficulty and access to corpses
- Council rewards for quick missions now occur with a 10% chance for each alien killed/captured minus the number of turns the mission took (from just 100 - 10 * number of turns a mission took) - Rewards being quicker on harder missions
Perks:
- Tactical mobility causes explosives to graze if the unit has not already been damaged - Buff to the resiliency of thinmen and floaters vs explosives and alpha strikes with explosives
- Dash and Bash doubles Ram damage - Buffed
- Iron Skin grants 15 base DR (from 10) - Further buff to gene mod tanks
- Dual Heart increases throw range by 15% (from 10%) - buff to gene modded throwing builds as they were sligthly overnerfed (when dropped from 20) and need this perk
- Advanced Perception grants a 35% graze chance (from 30%) - Slight buff to gene mod bio tanks
- Extra Conditioning grants 3 HP (from 2) - Buffed for balance on the tree
- Adapative Bone Marrow renamed to Regenesis, and decreases injury and fatigue by 25% (from 15%) - Much easier to remember, buffed
- Muscle Fiber Density renamed to Muscle Amp and also grants +0.6 mobility (from 0) - Easier to remember, buffed
- Kitted no longers grants 1 armor HP - Nerfed, balance on the trees
- Disabling shot can no longer be activated if in the zone or double tap was activated - Prevents some abuse
Equipment:
- Aurora and Vortex armor grant 10/15 will (from 20/30) - Tone back in late game will stacking
- AP Grenade radius to 2 (from 3) - It was a little too much of a complete package (range/pen/shred/radius)
- Grenade/Advanced Launcher radius to 3 (from 3.5) - Slight tone back in grenade strength on MECs
Aliens:
- Thinmen leaders gain Acid Tech - buff to thinmen leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where leader outsiders weren't growing off the bat
- Fixed a bug where if the engine skipped recording one of the sightlines units it would create a soft-lock on enemy turns
- Fixed some random log bugs (minimal overall effect)
- Fixed a bug where Psi Inspire would look like Psi Overload in the F1 perk info panel
- Fixed a bug where Fear of some aliens could leak over into fear of other aliens
- Fixed a bug where stunned alien leaders didn't grant bonus xp
- Fixed a bug where units that died from mind deterioration had no cause of death
- Fixed a bug where kinetic blast would still destroy some cover
- Typos
Version 1.50.31
LW Rebalance v1.50.31 - Down We Go
Strategic:
- Sandhurst reduces fatigue and OTS requirements by 20% (from 25%) - Nerfed
- For the Sake of Glory reduces injury and fatigue by 30% (from 35%) - Nerfed
- Yields of weapon fragments from missions reduced by ~20% - Campaigns were getting too many of these, probably mostly from a bunch of fragment nerfs from foundry projects
- Abduction rewards tweaks so heavy and swarming are more rewarding and light and moderate less so (see wiki for more details) - Makes sense
- Advanced Beam Laser research time to 10 (from 70) - Makes advanced beam lasers more reasonable to acquire
- Gauss research time to 200 (from 80) and Advanced Gauss reserach time to 20 (from 90) - Front loads gauss research, makes acquiring advanced weapons less of a gap
- Pulse research time to 300 (from 150) and Advanced Gauss reserach time to 30 (from 175) - Front loads pulse research, makes acquiring advanced weapons less of a gap
- Plasma reasearch time to 400 (from 190), but standard plasma weapons to 100 (from 220) - More of a gap between pulse and plasma
- UFO Analysis Scout research time to 100 (from 400) - Makes it much more reasonable to acquire early
Tactical:
- Suppressive Fire damage back down to 45% (from 50%) - It was bumped up because I thought it was going to be somewhat supplanted by concussion grenades and their new Close Combat Specialist interaction... that didn't really end up at the case and was a little too strong on alien suppression as well
- Corrosion now lasts for 3 turns (from 2) - It was reduced from 4 to 2 to helps with more challenging removal but at 2 it was minimizing the effect of corrosion reducing items and making it too insignificant; I believe 3 will be a happy medium
Perks:
- Will to survive reduces defense in cover by 15 (from 10) - Helps maintain attention of enemy attacks while also slightly nerfing strength of biotanks: slight nerf, slight buff
- Platform Stability again grants +2 damage to suppressive fire - Accommodates damage nerf
- Growth redesigned to incorporate alien level with the noticable change that leader outsiders start growing immediately - Makes early outsiders not grow to insane levels and late ones grow a little stronger
- Acidic (the acid application after lids move) no longer only applies on the aliens turn - This just means pursuit can now apply acid again, which is just leaders
- Pistolero no longer allows for a free reload - The free shots are strong enough on their own. This change keeps the power level high but makes keeping that power level up more challenging and demanding. Mostly a nerf to medic and assault tanks.
- Ready For Anything grants +2 ammo (from +1) - Buffed to make ammo management easier on Gunner/Medic OW
Equipment:
- Autopistol crit to 0 (from 10) - Despite some claims that previously the autopistols were underpowered without crit, I did an analysis and their extra damage, especially on flanks, makes them statistically much more damaging. Especialy now that pistolero is strong.
- Laser Sight crit to 15 (from 20) - At 20 it starts to replace some purchased and future items on a regular basis, which is not it's purpose
- Psi Defender grants 25% DR and 25 crit resist (from 30 of each) and requires Sectoid Commander Interrogation (from Mechtoid Autopsy) - Slight nerf, tone back on the strength of psionic tanks so that non-psionic tanks are more competitive/reasonable
- Acid Grenades require 60 thinman corpses to produce (from 8) - Brings it on much later, gives a use to the plethora of thinman corpses
- Alien and Plasma grenade radius to 2 (from 3) - The spike in damage of alien grenades is really large mid-game and late game there is little distinction of HE just being worse than plasma/alien. This change gives more grenades their own benefits and identity while toning down some of the mid to late game strength of grenades. Also gives grenadiers options for tighter quarters where a large radius can sometimes be a negative.
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV back to 4 slots (from 3) and base DR to 60 (from 50) - The regular SHIV was the real target of the nerf, the alloy SHIV still deserves it's slots and gives more room for the ample shiv items, overall alloy SHIV buff
Aliens:
- Outsiders gain 2 HP per AL upgrade (from 1) and regenerate 2 HP per turn (from 1) - With such poor starting stats (including leaders) they need to grow to not be complete run-overs early on missions in the mid to late game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the KSM had weight (it should have none)
- Fixed a bug where units with LMGs equipped could sometimes get around the 1 less item slot restriction
- Fixed a bug where drum mags still weighed 2.0 (they now weigh 1.3 as intended)
- Fixed a bug where Mechtoids had more base DR than intended
- Fixed a bug where units would sometimes do a non-movement action to reveal a pod and still get a scamper
Version 1.50.30
LW Rebalance v1.50.30 - Whoopsies
Strategic:
- Flak Ammo unlocks with new combat systems (instead of MEC Warfare) - Makes more sense
Tactical:
- Added information about perks and quirks to the tutorial - QoL
- Attempted to turn off tracktwo's sightline indicator when the overhead camera is moving to hopefully significantly reduce lag - QoL
- Respirator Implant grants 1.3 mobility (from 0.6) but cost increased by 20 credits and 20 meld - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where will to survive was granting a base of 80% DR (instead of 20%) - Whoopsies
- Fixed a bug where mechanics corrosion removal would sometimes not work on an adjacent unit
- Fixed a bug where close encounters would trigger on some actions and ranges that it shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where tracktwo's sightline mod would add units to the number of civilians in terror missions (that was then exemplified cause my new fix made it even worse)
Version 1.50.29
LW Rebalance v1.50.29 - Machinations
Strategic:
- Stringray aim to 40 (from 35) - Slight boost to make it more competitive
Tactical:
- Attempted to elimiante the possibility to get air support when the entire mission is indoors - QoL
- Enemies on the Temple Ship that spawn in without cover will try to seek cover - Improved AI
- The Uber ethereal will immediately move towards enemies when activated - Improved AI
Perks:
- Close Encounters once again allows destructive grenades thrown within 4 tiles to leave the user with 1 AP - Significant buff to assault close range grenade use, helps accommodate for later loss of payload
- Run and Gun grants +35 damage and crit (from 30) - Significant buff (break point on damage really cares about 30 vs 35)
- Uber (the uber ethereal's perk) makes it so psychic storm can no longer be resisted and no longer costs any AP - With lower will it was actually reasonable to constantly resist the storm, making keeping the Ethereal out of LoS actually ideal
- Dual Heart increases throw range by 10% (from 20%) - Was a little too strong on late game builds
- HEAT Warheads grants triple shred application but no longer doubles concussive blast chance - Helps make explosive shredding even stronger, but also stops supplanting the role of supports too much
- One For All no longer prevents CST - Gives MEC tanks a little bit more of a counter as they are a little too easy to use really effectively
- Will To survive grants 20% DR + 2% per enemy in sight (from 30% + 2% per enemy in sight) - Slight nerf to make them a little less strong as most tanks are quite effective offensively still
- Savior increases medikit healing by 2 HP (from 3) - Slight nerf in later game medic strength
- Platform Stability increases suppressive fire by 1 (from 2) - At 2 it was pretty much mandatory, which is not ideal for items. At 1 it is more competitive with other replacements.
- Grenadier grants 35% throw range on grenades from units in One For All (from 50%) - Tone back on grenade range
- Acid Tech throw range to 10% (from 20%) - Balance between supports as rocketeer was little overloaded
- Psychic storm no longer works on purely mechanical enemies - Relative buff to SHIVs
XCOM:
- Assault has Payload replaced with HEAT Warheads - Payload + KI + Frag was too strong in synergy, and HEAT Warheads gives the assault some pen to help when the assault is dealing with high DR hardened units, and some versatility with shred
- Marauder base mobility back to 2.0 (from 0.6) - Despite being so strong early, they really need the mobility to get up close and without it they fail to effectively use Onslaught
Aliens:
- Exalt Heavy / Exalt Elite Heavy mobilty to 4.6/5.3 (from 6/6.6) - Nerfed
Equipment:
- Alloy Plating grants 5 HP (from 4) - Significant buff to its strength to help justify its cost
- Flamethrower damage to 8 (from 6) - Without the ability to break psychic storm or mind control it took a big hit
- Alloy SHIV alloy cost to 40 (from 80) - Makes it more affordable at a time when alloys can be quite restrictive
- Heavy Mags grants 3 ammo (from 2) - Buffed, relative buff to Shogun
- All LMECs gain 2 more HP - makes lighter MEC armors more resilient
- Bulletstorm (SAW perk) grants a 35% chance for extra weapon damage (from 20%) - Buff to standard shooting gunners
- Blaster Launcher loses it's pen - Tone back in strength as the new range is enough of a buff to make it worth it
- Plasma grenades lose the 'compact' ability - One of the restriction of grenadiers was supposed to be limited use, but plasma grenades were somewhat bypassing this on the majority of missions
- Autopistol crit to 10 (from 20) - Seems like a good happy medium to make them competitive with regular pistols
Bug Fixes:
- Finally fixed a bug in the TrackTwo original sightline mod that made it so SHIV/MEC units had buggy vision when you started a mission that wasn't loaded from a save (if anyone knows him Ill show him where so he can uploaded it to the Nexus so LW1.0 players can enjoy the fix too)
- Fixed a bug where Atlas wouldn't shred
- Fixed a bug where the Burst icon on the HUD wasn't yellow when a unit had predictive tracking
- Fixed a bug where abilities that didn't have any charges would be listed as have x1 charges
- Fixed a bug where the game could softlock when flying to or from a mission and an AL popup (or other popup) occurs
- Fixed a bug where tile scanning was sometimes possible again
- Fixed a bug where pressing tab on the soldier list would permanently turn your list to sorted by nationality
- Fixed a bug where psioniic training time warnings didn't account for the hyperwave relay being built or Legacy of Uxmal
- Fixed a bug where luck could become greater than 2 billion (maybe?)
- Typos
Version 1.50.28
LW Rebalance v1.50.28 - End Game Pressure
Strategic:
- Gollop chamber being built increases mission density by 5x (from 10x) - A little more reasonable as 5x is enough
- Starting at AL10, the aliens will increase mission density (AL10 = +15%, AL11 = +30%, AL12 = +45%, AL13 = +60%, AL14 = +75%, AL15 = +90%) - Creates a ramp up in difficulty in controlling panic
- Country Panic gains in countries with low panic only increase by 25/50% (from 50/100%) - Makes NSLW campaigns not spike as bad and also makes it not so unreasonable to lower panic in countries with already low panic
- Country Panic gain on losing an abduction to 14 (from 16) - Slight decrease in overall panic generation so it's not as common to straight out lose a country
- Country Panic decrease on abduction success increased to 4 (from 2) - Helps accommodate for increased panic gains early to shift more of the increased panic to the later game, gives the player's choice more agency in controlling where panic occurs (and doesn't)
Tactical:
- Suppressive Fire deals 50% damage (from 45%) - Helps suppression stay more releveant damage wise, especially since disorient treaded on it's CCS clearing territory
Perks:
- Fleet is now divided into 2 abilities: Agile and Fleet. Fleet is the move-dodge component and agile is the defense component. Only leader lids have Fleet now while all lids still have agile - Makes explosives and other aoe's much easier to use against groups of lids with only leaders dodging, also makes the perks a little less cumbersome
- Fragmentation loses the +20% throw range - Was a little overtuned, and the main purpose was to buff assault gren... but with payload-assault-grens obscene damage they didn't really need extra strong frag
Equipment:
- Tac Armor and Tac Vest HP Weight increased by 0.6 - Increase in early game difficulty and makes earlier 2nd tier armors more valuable
Aliens:
- Chryssalids deal 5 damage (from 3) - More damaging as they were a little too anemic and helps accommodate for fleet move dodge only working on leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where average luck score would display as 0 even when it wasn't
- Fixed a bug where injured soldiers didn't contribute half of missions for retirement
- Fixed a bug where sometimes a soldier would have more small equipment slots than they were supposed to
- Fixed a bug where scavenge UFO costs were always 50 credits
- Typos
Version 1.50.27
LW Rebalance v1.50.27 - Thin Mechanics
Strategic:
- Improved Salvage Techniques (foundry project) requires 20 thinmen corpses (from 10) - Makes it harder to acquire early and gives an outlet to more thinmen corpses
- UFO Salvage costs are much more variable - Makes it a little more interesting if it's a good or bad option
- Panic generation from failed abductions increased to 16 in country (from 10) and 4 in continent (from 2) - Increased panic generation in general (in a way that XCOM has some control over), helps accommodate for easier tactical late game while still keeping pressure up
- Added many more new 'events' - QoL
Tactical:
- Luck is now displayed as "Luck(Effect):" where Luck is the zscore for all hits/crits dealt/taken and effect is how many extra hits/crits that luck actually ended up effecting and now also includes psionic abilities - QoL
- Muton Elite and Sectoid Commander weighting for appearance on missions increased from 20 to 25 - Makes more cover based aliens occur in the late game
- Thinmen weighting for appearance on missions increased from 10 to 15 at AL5 and 15 to 25 at AL6 - Makes more cover based aliens occur in the late game
- Sectopod and Ethereal weighting for appearance on missions decreased from 20 to 10 - Makes late game missions a lot easier and reduces frequency of aliens that don't use cover
Perks:
- In The Zone grants 10 aim on standard non-itz shots (from 20) - Slight nerf
- Mechanic and Master mechanic no longer grant 1 pen to all attacks vs mechanical units - Simplification of the perk, nerf to shooter and grenadier engineers
- Field medic no longer removes corrosion - overall medic nerf
- Field medic grants 2 free medikits (from 1) but no longer grants additional equipped medikits - Buff to field medic, opens up flexilibility of not equipping a medikit and increases overall healing
- Mechanic now removes corrosion from all units (from just mechanical) - overall engineer buff, helps make the engineer more useful, even for teams without SHIV/MEC
- Growth now occurs 50% faster on leaders - Helps accommodate no stat bonuses
Aliens:
- Thinmen gain +1-2 damage per level (from +1), +10 crit per level (from +5), +5 HP per level (from +4) - Buffed to make them more competitive into the late game
- Sectoid damage to 4 (from 3) but will to 60 (from 80) - makes their use of psi not such a dominant AI choice and more likely to be reasonably resisted while still keeping them threatening
- Drone aim to 55 (from 45) - Was a little too low before
- All leader Outsiders except for champions no longer gain any bonus stats - Makes UFO with leader outsiders a lot more reasonable to rush
- Outsiders gain 1 HP per alien level upgrade (from 2) - makes them still start out quite small in the mid to late game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some strategic events could happen multiple times
- Fixed a bug where corrosion removal via Mechanic wouldn't work on some allies in some situations
- Fixed a bug where combat patrols could give less resources than intended
- Fixed some OW indicators that didn't respect new disorientation status
- Fixed a bug where HP indicators on sectoids could appear incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where Ghost armor would sometimes activate too early and automatically unghost after a kill
Version 1.50.26
LW Rebalance v1.50.26 - Taunt
Tactical:
- Disorientation now prevents reactive fire - Felt intuitive anyway, slight buff to concussion grenades (which is fine after their range nerf)
Perks:
- Fervor renamed to Taunt now only affects the closest XCOM (from all XCOM) and Command now bypasses the effect. - Helps minimize the 'lose-more' aspect of Fervor and will only ever effect a single unit, can be removed from a unit by moving any unit closer (including a SHIV) or using a command; taunt also is well-known so it's effects are much more intuitive to players.
- Fragmentation again grants +2 pen to explosives - Buffed
Equipment:
- Smoke grenade range back to 14 tiles (from 10) - It's not actually that much of a difference, but allows the support to help cover deep pushes which is enjoyable gameplay, so slight buff but more importantly a buff to good gameplay
- Psi Boost and Adv Psi Boost (Aurora and Vortex armor) grant 10% and 15% throw range, respectively - Buff to the strength of psionics for grenadier and support classes
XCOM:
- Assault GSGT perk Blast to Payload - Blast didn't work as well so late and Payload works really well with frag
Bug Fixes:
- Szmind fixed a bug where you couldn't press F1 when targeting with a psionic ability (<3 that man)
- Typos
Version 1.50.25
LW Rebalance v1.50.25 - Flattening the Curve
Strategic:
- Terror missions have only 1 of 2 chryssalid pods increase in number as the campaign progress, and it only increases by month/4 (from month/3) - They were a little too hairy late game
- Terror missions no longer gain extra aliens (from 1 extra alien every 4th month) - Same as above
- Medbay and Fatigue times shortened in the barracks list so they don't scroll as much - QoL
- Wealth of Nations (Continent Bonus for Europe) grants 12% extra funding (from 10%) - Buffed to make it more appealling to start and acquire
- Architects of the Future (Continent Bonus for South Africa) grants 75% reduction in lab/shop cost (from 65%) - Same as above
- Brazil and Argentina start with 1600/1500 credits (from 1300/1200) - Buff to South America starts
- New events that can cause soldiers to gain positive and negative quirks can occur - QoL
Tactical:
- Ethereals appear at a lower frequency at AL9 and slow increase in frequency over AL10-12 (from just maxing at AL10) - Makes late game ramp up a little slower, especially abductions, council and terror
- When you are out of charges for an item it will disappear from the ability bar - QoL, prevents a bug sometimes suggesting you have some
Perks:
- Psychic Tether is released if the ethereal is damaged this turn or disoriented - Gives XCOM more leniency for movement when they are actually engaging the ethereal (similar to Fervor)
- Mind Control now reduces the AP of the mind controller by 2 (from 1) but damages the mind controllee by 35% of max HP (from 20%) - Mind Control is such a swing that breaking it is always top priority. This change makes breaking it a little more optional and those times that you can't break it less punishing.
- Adaptive Bone Marrow decrease both injury and fatigue times by 15% (from just injury times by 35%) - Tweak/buff, makes it more useful if you're not getting injured
- Precision shot avoids all graze - Buffed, feels cool and right
- Pistolero to 70% weapon damage (from 100%) - Toned back in strength, the reload is enough
XCOM:
- Assault will growth to 25 (from 20) - Assault sometimes suffer from being great early and dropping off late game, this change makes them the best at psionics, something that peaks in strength in the late game with the goal of offsetting the weakness of close range in the late game
- All SGT and CPL perks swapped on the Medic - Rapid Fire, RfA, and Combat Drugs were important to give the medic tank/OW/Support it's identity and turn on, especially the OW due to action economy with heals that it doesn't get until RfA
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where late game terror missions would have lid pod sizes of 1 sometimes
- Fixed a bug where Combat Patrols cost too much
- Fixed a bug where acid tech showed as tinker on the engineer side bar perk list in the barracks screen
- Fixed a bug where pistolero reload icon was not green (indicating 1 AP)
- Fixed a bug where pistolero was only doing extra damage on NON-reaction shots (should be on reaction shots only)
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes get combat readiness when out of sight when they shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where seekers would not gain the penetration from penetator
- Fixed a bug where suppression would record inaccurate stats
- Fixed a bug where a random blank unit could enter the stats at the end of a mission
- Fixed a bug where rarely Ram would have DR as if the target was in cover (when it really wasn't)
- Typos
Version 1.50.24
LW Rebalance v1.50.24 - AI Consideration
Strategic:
- Council requests for lower panic will now only occur in countries with 65 or more panic - QoL
- Combat Patrols now have a chance to find caches of resources (Daredevils also affects this x4) based on how high the panic in the continent is - QoL
- New OTS upgrades will give explanatory messages about the new unlocks - QoL
Tactical:
- The AI now considers target modifiers like graze, cover DR, shred, etc. when determining kill shots - Improved AI, leads to less random targeting of XCOM units that aren't 1 hit kills, makes it easier to tank in the later game
Perks:
- Disabling shot no longer disorients - The lack of aim malus was enough of a buff
- New Perk: Suppression Tactics: This unit can suppress with only 1 ammo. Removes the cooldown from suppression - Perk for aliens that basically already have it
- Pistolero grants 100% damage to pistol reaction fire (from 75%) and allows pistols to be reloaded for 1 AP - Buffed, without the offensive aspect of it it needed more strength and the discounted reload is important to keep Pistolero up and working
Equipment:
- Battle Rifles and Carbines both lose 10 crit - balance between basic rifle options, relative buff to Assault Rifle
- Blaster Launcher gains 4 pen and range to 18 (from 16) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where psi training times sometimes showed on regular perks (I think? Maybe? Wasn't able to reproduce the bug so I can't tell)
- Fixed a bug where you wouldn't get 35 crit if you had only 1 AP with a steadied shot
- Drones will no longer auto heal when out of sight
- When selecting a psionic ability the training time and success rate are now displayed - QoL
- Successful research UFO missions grant +5/6/7/8 [modified by campaign length] research (instead of a 50% [modified by campaign length] chance of +6/9/12/15 - Significantly reduces spikes in alien research and the factor of RNG on alien research
- At the start of each month, alien research is increased by 3 * (Num_alien_base ^ 0.5) (from 2 * Num_alien_base) - Slows down late game alien spikes in research when the aliens start to accumulate more bases (and thus alien level)
Perks:
- ITZ now applies 20 aim and an automatic reload to all non-streaking **standard** shots (instead of all non-streaking shots **that cost AP**) - Makes it work better with free actions. This means disabling shot no longer benefits from the +20 aim on ITZ nor does it benefit from the free reload. However, free action procs (like commanding officer on a shot) will now grant a free reload.
- Disabling shot no longer has an aim malus (from -20 aim) and also disorients the target - Significant buff, makes it more competitive on all builds, makes it more useful against enemies with Lock N' Load, helps keep Sniper/Scout relevant late game
- Pistolero only works on pistol reaction shots (instead of all pistol shots) - With affecting regular shots it was supplanting ranger too much (as well as the primary weapon)
- Ready For Anything grants +1 ammo - Helps the medic (and gunner) overwatch classes with up-time
- Greater Mind Merge has a 5 turn cooldown (from 2) - Makes it less oppressive as they can't spam it, especially with mechtoids
- Field Medic now removes corrosion from self and adjacent biosoldiers after each action - Buffed to help deal with corrosion
- Mechanic no longer removes corrosion at the end of turn from adjacent mechanical units but instead removes corrosion from adjacent mechanical allies after each action - Makes it easier to use
Equipment:
- Acid Grenade range to 10 (from 8) - it's range was too short at 8 for consistant use
- Medikits heal for 5 (from 6) but weight to 0 (from 0.6) - It was a little too strong early, puts more of the healing strength back into a savior medic, also makes equipping the medikit more ideal (as few non-medics ever would)
- Reinforced Plating weight to 0.6 (from 1.3) - When biotanks are too slow the Assault and Medic variants become too weak compared to the gunner and infantry variants, this should help prevent that a little
- Phalanx alloy cost back to 24 (from 15) - It's gooood
XCOM:
- Medic base mobility to 0.6 (from 0) - Needed to increase the effectiveness of the medic from a non-healing aspect
- Medic Bring 'Em On swapped with Sharpshooter - Gives the later game medic some earlier damage amp
Aliens:
- All Mecthoid Leaders lose 10 aim and mecthoid lvl 6 and 9 leaders lose 4 damage - Nerfed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Turtler (a quirk) wouldn't work
- Fixed a bug where previously build SHIVs (from older versions) wouldn't have the correct number of item slots
- Typos
Version 1.50.22
LW Rebalance v1.50.22 - Seeker Tweaker
Strategic:
- Abduction panic changes now shows continent changes as well - QoL
- Gentle and Elite Aliens (Second Wave options) decrease and increase AL by 5% (from 10%) - Makes them more obvious stepping stones between difficulties (brutal -> brutal elite -> impossible gentle -> impossible) as previously with the higher rates of increase/decrease late game could be harder on brutal elite than impossible gentle, and that's not ideal
Tactical:
- Using combat readiness now also reveals all cloaked enemies within 4 tiles - Gives a bandaid solution to dealing with cloaked units when you have no other detection
- All "Fear" quirks now reduced AP by 1 (instead of 2) - There were too punishing at 2
- Zhang now starts with stats as if he killed a sectoid on Friends in Low Places - QoL
- Shred applies half as much on reaction fire - Nerf to reaction fire shred, mostly to bio OW classes, relative buff to explosive and direct fire shred
- Captured alien leaders grant 20% more of an xp bonus - Feels about right
Perks:
- Executioner only grants 25 aim and no damage (from 25 aim and 1 damage) - Nerfed as it was a little too strong at it's level
- Show 'Em The Ropes grants 300% mission xp at 3000 xp or less - Buffed, easier to remember
- Tricks of The Trade grants 120% mission xp at 1200 xp or more - Slight buff, easier to remember
- Tracker now detects aliens within 6 tiles (from 4) - consistentcy with uncloak radius and makes it a little useful for spying through doors and stuff
- Repair heals for 4 HP (from 5) - Nerfed, slight tone back on strength of late game engineer healing
- Master Mechanic increases repair healing by 4 (from 5) - Similar to above
- Savior grants +3 HP to medikit healing (from +2) - Buffed
- Light Em Up grants +1 damage per instance of damage a target took (from +1 damage and +10 crit) - nerf as shooting is a lot more effective and LeU doesn't need the extra love; also a little less complex
Officer Buffs:
- Officer choices in perks were a little imbalanced, this should help with that balance while making officers even more stat beefy (which is a good thing)
- Strength in Numbers grants 15 will (from 10)
- Cover Tactics grants 15 defense (from 10)
- Tricks of the Trade grants 10 aim (from 5)
Equipment:
- Proximity sensor no longer gives start of turn location info to nearest cloaked seeker but instead provides a 12 tile radar of all cloaked seekers at all times - Makes detection a lot more reasonable
- Concussion and Psi grenade range to 10 tiles (from 12) - Slight nerf to supports
- Smoke grenade range to 10 tiles (from 14) - Forces the support to be in a better position, slight nerf to supports
XCOM:
- Regular SHIV item slots to 2 (from 4) and Alloy SHIV item slots to 3 (from 4) - Nerf on early/mid game SHIV strength
Aliens:
- Seekers gain half as much damage throw AL growth, have 3 base damage (from 4) and have impact replaced with penetrator - Makes their flanks a lot less damaging
- Seeker mobility to 8.0 (from 9.3) - It was quite frustrating how quickly they could get flanks even when you could reveal, this makes dealing with and detecting them MUCH more managable
- Drones gain 2 HP per alien level upgrade (from 1) - Keeps them a little more relevant
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some missing pictures on the post mission stats pages
- Fixed a bug where Aliens could have deflection shield up while suppressing or on overwatch
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where covert operative commanders wouldn't have any command charges
- Fixed a bug where some seekers would still have Light Em Up
Version 1.50.21
LW Rebalance v1.50.21 - About Those Leaders
Strategic:
- The Officer Training School (OTS) requires 10 successful missions to be built (from 1 unit at Rank CPL) - The rank was a little weird vs the missions (like you would sometimes try to rush a guy) and often allowed you to build the OTS before you could use it
- Added info on the panic swing when selecting abduction missions - QoL
Tactical:
- Alien leaders now provide 10 xp times their leader level to the squad (from 20xp for normal and 30xp for champions) - Significant increase in xp gains, especially mid and later game, helps make later acquired soldiers more likely to be useful in the late game through more xp gained during missions
- Seekers now spread out when revealed - Makes engaging them more interesting
- There are now more detailed lists of post missions stats that are also able to be skipped - QoL
Perks:
- Snapshot no longer grants OW immunity nor does it grant 20 crit - Simplification of the perk, overall nerf partly due to significant more late game utility with impact shutting down RTS, makes kitted more competitive on infantry OW
- In The Zone no longer prevents steady break when taking damage - The boost to steady istelf was enough of a buff that this is no longer waranted and I like the dynamic; also simplifies the perk, also makes alloy bipod more appealing
- Close Encounters no longer grants a 30% chance for graze - It was more of an Exalt buff as the unpredictability hurts XCOM a lot more, also simplifies the perk removing some bloat, slight nerf to assaults
XCOM:
- Medic MSGT perk Packmaster replaced with Bring 'Em On - Buff to late game OW medic, nerf to late game support medic, gives more choice to late game tank medic
- Medic CPL perk Vital Point Targeting replaced with Impact - Buff to early OW medic, gives it much needed early strength and some small utility. VPT was better on higher damage builds and the focus on biologic was more difficult to utiltize for an overwatch build.
- Goliath Holo swapped with Critical System Targeting - Brings damage on earlier to Goliath shooter build to make it more viable
- Engineer perk Packmaster replaced with Tinker - Nerf to enudrance on late game support engineer, more unique support role, gives players options if they really want acid tech, gives DT engineer a unique choice, and last, feels most appropriate on the engineer
Aliens:
- Seekers lose LeU but gain Impact - Makes holo'ing them not a negative sometimes and prevents long cloaked flanks from being as deadly. Also gives them some more unique interaction with XCOM Reactive Targeting Sensors and XCOM Overwatch. Overall significantly nerf to damage potential.
Alien Leader Buffs:
- Sectoid Leader level 3/6/9 gain 10/15/15 more HP - Buffed
- Floater Leader level 3/6/9/ gain 10 more HP - Buffed
- Drone Leader level 1/3/5/9 gains 3/7/7/7 more HP - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Combat Readiness button no longer prevents combat readiness from working
- Fixed a bug where units with kitted that did not equip a smoke grenade were not able to use the smoke grenade they got from kitted
- Fixed a bug where units with smoke grenades equipped would sometimes have more smoke than intended
- Fixed a bug where restorative mists wouldn't show the heal amount correctly
- Fixed a bug where sectoids on Easy had 2 HP (they lose have 50% of 5 rounded down which is 5 - 2 which is 3 HP)
- Typos
Version 1.50.20
LW Rebalance v1.50.20 - Hot Fixerooos
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD (Crash To Desktop) bug on using psionic abilities
- Units with actions remaining at the end of the turn (e.g. from scamper) will no longer forcefly remove steady for Combat Readiness
Version 1.50.19
LW Rebalance v1.50.19 - Enraged Sectoid Lag
Tactical:
- Significantly reduced lag when targeting a large number of enemies, especially for snipers - QoL
- Aliens won't use psychic storm back to back on consecutive turns, even if it was cancelled - Makes it feel less oppressive
- Being enraged now reduces the cost of reloading to 1 AP - It felt too frustrating to enrage on a unit out of ammo, this at least allows them to somewhat utilize enrage when out of ammo
- Floaters that launch with no ammo will reload after launching - Makes sense, a little better AI
- Unit stats at the end of the mission now include the Unit's class - QoL
Perks:
- Tracker (from the proximity sensor) shows units within 4 tiles and uncloaks units up to 6 tiles (from 5 of each) - Buffed to make it easier to detect cloaked seekers nearby or at high altitudes
- New perk: Dash and Bash: Allows a Kinetic Strike at 0 AP if the last AP was spent moving. Disables the AP discount from Onslaught. Cannot activate if out of ammo. 2 turn cooldown. - Good for Marauder
- Savior now costs 0 AP for stabilization and revive, but still costs a medikit when reviving (not for stabilizing) - Required to fix a bug
XCOM:
- Marauder has Run and Gun replaced with Dash and Bash - Balance on the tree as Run and Gun was too weak
- Marauder base mobility to 0.6 (from 2.0) - Was quite strong early and a little overpowered due to KSM strength and mobility, also makes the mobility LCPL perks more competitive vs Close Combat Specialist
Aliens:
- Sectoids start with 80 will (from 70) but will growth per level lowered to 5 (from 10) - Makes them slightly more challenging early
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Combat Readiness appeared purple as if it didn't cost any AP
- You can now end your turn if you are in One For All or Hiding by clicking on the combat readiness button - Note: it will not give you CR but still allows you to end a unit's turn functionally
- Fixed a bug where Exalt would overwatch when reinforcing sometimes even when they couldn't see anyone
- Fixed a bug where jumping over terrain while trying to ram someone would make the ram do less damage
- Fixed a bug where Run and Gun was still granting +30 defense on activation
- Fixed a bug where Run and Gun wouldn't show up on the bottom left list of perks in the tactical HUD
- Fixed a bug where the unit flag fatigue indicator was half as much as it actually should be
- Fixed a bug where the KSM wasn't affected by redfog or disorientation
- Ram now correctly considers target modifiers like shred and distortion when predicting damage on a target
- Overwatch warnings on unit flags will no longer occur from units that are hidden (as they won't fire their overwatch)
- Typos
Version 1.50.18
LW Rebalance v1.50.18 - Bulletstorm
Strategic:
- LEAD and REAR stances gives +10 and -10 hit chance (from 15 each) - LEAD was too strong and was the correct choice too often, this should make it a more interesting choice with LEAD being better in short engagement times while MID is less damage overall and REAR is superior but could require very lengthy engagement times
- Legacy of Uxmal decreases AL by 0.25% per Psi Rank (from 0.3%) - With the buffs to Psi this start got a boost and was a little stronger than intended, slight nerf
- Vigilis grants 13 will (from 15) - Same as above
- Sandhurst grants 25% reduction in fatigue and OTS missions required (from 30%) - Nerfed, earlier XTPs and officers is really strong
Perks:
- Disabling shot grants -20 aim (from -30) - At -30 it was too difficult to shoot and was sometimes even not worth the ammo, this makes it more competive, especially on non ITZ builds
- Countercharge again can crit because apparently I can't fix it - Updated it's description, it seems to be ~2% regardless of will so I'll leave it at that
- Pistolero no longer grants an additional ammo - Slight nerf, was strong enough
Equipment:
- SAWs ability Rotary Fire renamed to Bulletstorm and instead grants an additional round of damage equal to the weapon damage - Some SAWs it was a little bit too much to imagine they had internal rotary fire, also, it wasn't supposed to give you free reload or whatever, it was more to fire multiple times, so this better emphasizes that
- Battle Scanners now grant aim and crit to anyone within 12 tiles (including through walls and objects) instead of just those that can see the battle scanner - Due to odd behaviour the battle scanner could sometimes be thrown and 'sink' into the ground making it difficult for enemies to see it. This inconsistency made it frustrating to use scanners, especially for affecting targets at high altitudes. This new version should be much more consistent, intuitive, and easier to use
- Autopistols gain +20 crit - Buffed
Aliens:
- Drone mobility back to 6.6 (from 6) - With the easier counter to OW they didn't need such a nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Core Plating weighed 0.6 more than it was supposed to
- Fixed a bug where the Combat Readiness button wouldn't work on units you were escorting
- Shortened the text when a new item is created so it's less likely to occupy the entire screen
- Augmenting (chopping) a soldier now shows the appropriate length of time it would take
- Fixed a bug where HP % of damaged planes was showing incorrectly
- Fixed some formating on a unit load out in the F1 tab during tactical missions
- Fixed a bug where disabling shot would reload the weapon if the unit had In The Zone perk as well
Version 1.50.17
LW Rebalance v1.50.17 - Counter Ray
Tactical:
- Pause menu reshows Save and Exit to main menu (from save and quit) - There were various problems with the change so it was reverted
Perks:
- Orbital Ray deals 2 + AL/4 damage (from 4 + AL/2 damage) - Significant reduction in effectiveness of 2nd round orbital ray to make it more reasonable to get hit by
- Countercharge no longer fails to activate if the target is in smoke - It was making the ability more complex than needed and smoke is strong enough
- Countercharge no longer very rarely hits twice - QoL
Equipment:
- Exalt SAWs do not have rotary fire - Bad RNG felt too bad
- Shaped Charges grants +1 pen to rockets (from +2) - Slight Nerf, they were a little too strong early game
- Recoilless Rifle grants +2 pen - Buff to mid-late game rocketeers as they fell off a little too much
- Fixed a bug where the multiplayer button still showed up on the main menu
Version 1.50.16
LW Rebalance v1.50.16 - Main Menu Rebalance
QoL:
- The main menu now shows Long War Rebalance (instead of Long War) and if the console is installed it will show an asterisk beside Long War Rebalance - QoL, thanks to szmind for the help figuring out how to access this
- The main menu no longer has a button for multiplayer - QoL, thanks to szmind for the help figuring out how to access this
- The in-game menu on iron man games lists "quit to desktop" instead of "save and exit to main menu" - QoL
Strategic:
- Significantly reduced the difficulty of Extraction missions (maybe... hard to tell if it works) - Might make Marazuki and Carlock a lot more doable
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the Combat Readiness button would sometimes not work
- Fixed a bug where aiming with a sniper would sometimes cause a CTD
- FIxed a bug where Master Mechanic still granted 0 AP repair actions
- Fixed a bug where Ram would show a UI popup even though you couldn't quite reach the target
- Fixed an inaccurate tooltip on corrosion
Version 1.50.15
LW Rebalance v1.50.15 - Da Bears
Strategic:
- You can now accumulate psi xp for the next psi level as well - Makes it so some psi xp can carry over, balances it for NSLW
Perks:
- Show 'em The Ropes grants triple xp (from quadruple) for those with less than 2000 xp (from CPL rank or lower) - Means SetR works with XTP III and late game recruits
- Tricks of the Trade work for those with more than or equal to 2000 xp (from SGT rank or higher) - Slight nerf for TotT but accomodates SetR change
- Neural Damping no longer prevents mind fray status effects - Acted as much of a nerf than buff due to mind fray status effects protecting against future mind frays
- Sharpshooter grants 15 aim and crit vs bio targets (from 15 aim) - It was always a little lackluster
- Fixed a bug where reaction fire immunity on Smoke and Mirrors wasn't working
- Typos
Version 1.50.14
LW Rebalance v1.50.14 - Sneaky Smoke
Strategic:
- Updated display when selecting aircraft to engage UFOs to be a little more informative - QoL
- Augmentating/Chopping a soldier to a MEC costs only 70 meld (from 100) but takes 20 days (from 10) - Makes it less taxing on resources but helps cap overall number
- Advanced conversion grants 15 aim, will, and DR (from 10) - Buff due to harder chops
- The Hypwerwave Relay now also reduces psi training time by 50% - While there were various methods to help later game recruits gain regular ranks and XP, there wasn't much for psionic soldiers. This should significantly help.
- Psi XP required for psi training is now 100/200/400/600/1000 (from 200/400/600/800/1000) - Makes it easier and quicker to acquire lower level psi rank XP requirements
Tactical:
- Scatter on rockets reduced by 25% - Slight buff to their consistency and overall strength
Perks:
- Smoke and Mirrors makes support greandes cost only 1 AP - Buff to supports in general
- Bullseye grants 25 aim/crit (from 35) - Nerfed, balance on the Jaeger and Scout, the OW hits are strong and common
- Dense Smoke and Combat Drugs no longer grant an additional smoke grenade - Reduces their uses as their smoke grenades have really strong team amplifying effects
- Growth (on outsiders) grants half as much aim/will - Helps with larger UFOs and makes defense still relevant against large outsiders
- Show Em The Ropes grants 400% xp (from 200%) but only works on ranks below SGT - Buff to officer's benefit to train up lower level soldiers and gain xp on those who need it the most
- Tricks of the Trade grants 20% xp (from 15%) - Buffed
Equipment:
- Ghost armor cost to 100 meld (from 200) - Makes it slightlier easier to produce end game
- Smoke Grenades have the innate ability to always avoid reaction fire when thrown - Makes them far more useful even on non Smoke and Mirrors units
- Carbines reverted to old version (+30 crit and no longer grant snapshot) - It was abusive if you stacked them on a team
- Plasma Sniper rifle gains +30 crit but loses killer instinct - Less max output, more predictability
- Aurora armor reduces accumulation of fatigue by 35% (from 25%) - Buffed, slight buff to psi
- Psi Defender weight to 0.6 (from 1.3) and elerium cost to 10 (from 50) - Buffed, slight buff to psi
- Flamethrower no longer breaks mind control or psychic storm and deals 6 damage (from 7) - It's pretty strong on it's own
- Prediction computer no longer grants +10 aim - Was pushing late game OW above regular shots too much, Reactive Slayer and the defense still makes it a great item, especially with tac mobility not working on reactive fire
Bug Fixes:
- Further fixed a LW 1.0 bug where UFOs could get stuck at the North Pole
Version 1.50.13
LW Rebalance v1.50.13 - Rotary Snaps
Strategic:
- Gollop chamber cost reduced to 50 credits, 50 alloys (from 300, 450) - Reduction of late game grind
- Elerium Generators cost 30 elerium and 30 alloys (from 60 of each) - Reduction of late game grind
Tactical:
- Steadied shots no longer trigger reaction fire - Makes steady more worthwhile and easier to execute
- Units on overwatch can now have their overwatch broken anytime they take damage with a % chance equal to the % of max hp the damage was - Increases xcom capability to deal with enemy overwatch
- Heal Fatigue is reduced by every heal (instead of every half heal) - Accommodates increased healing levels
- Squadsight targets no longer lag as much and ones without a spotter have an additional warning and explanation - QoL, makes it more obvious
- Corrosion lasts only 2 turns (from 4) - The extra turns were mostly just penalizing towards XCOM and made it a little frustrating to deal with, this would be amplified with reduced access to medikits.
- Steady Weapon grants half of weapon damage in pen (from +2) - Makes it scale a lot more later into the game helping punch through heavily armored targets. The idea is with this and overwatch avoidance it becomes a more attractive ability late game to see a little more use.
Perks:
- Opportunist grants 15 aim (from 20) - Slight pull back on overall reaction fire strength
- Field Medic makes stabilization cost 0 AP and not consume a medikit - Makes it a lot easier to stabilize soldiers mid-battle and much more beneficial (due to no medikit cost)
- Savior reworked to: Medikits heal 2 more HP and can revive stabilized soldiers (from 1st medikit costs 0 AP and can revive) - Tweaked to be less AP efficient but increase overall healing capability, increases strength of revive
- Master mechanic no longer grants a free 0 AP heal but instead increases the heal of repair by 5 HP (from 3 HP) - Slight nerf, but overall more healing, consistent with above
- Platform Stability prevents steady weapon from being broken by damage (and Awareness no longer does) - Makes a lot more sense for the perk to be platform stability than awareness
- Bloodlust no longer clears debuffs - It led to worse gameplay
- New perk: Shadowshot - Shooting or Overwatching will not trigger reaction fire. - An alien version of snapshot without the extra shot chance or crit
- Fragmentation grants 20% throw range (from 10%) - Gives more reach to eng/ass grens as they don't have much else to do at range
- Bullseye grants +35 aim/crit if shooting at 2AP or against a target on overwatch (double if both) but no longer grants a 1 AP steady or extra damage - Realistically the 1 AP steady was just extra stats on a 2 AP shot and convoluted the steady perk. This should be more streamlined.
- Combat Drugs and Dense Smoke no longer grant 1 AP smoke grenades - Made them too strong vs other support options
- Combat Drugs also gives +20 crit - Buff to the offensive aspect to encourage use as a force multiplier
Quirks:
- Keen Mind grants 30% xp (from 20%) - Buffed
- Simple grants -15% xp (from -20%) - Makes it a little less penalizing
Equipment:
- All SAWs gain the ability "Rotary Fire" which grants a 20% chance for any shot to cost 0 AP - Buff to standard fire on a gunner, mostly the gunner tank
- Carbines lose 30 crit but gain "Snapshot" - Significant buff, helps define their role better, gives XCOM more ways to mitigate enemy overwatch
- Plasma Weapons, Blaster Launcher, Archangel/Titan/Corsair/Ghost armor, MEC3s are all impervious to damage/destruction - Makes late game grind less frustrating
- Medikits heal 6 HP (from 4) - Makes them a lot more powerful increasing their HP healed per AP used and max healing capability
- Prediction Computer grants 10 aim (from 15) - Slight pull back on late game overwatch strength
- Engineer base aim to 5 (from 10) - Further nerf to balance builds on engineer
Aliens:
- Drone mobility to 6 (from 6.6) - Makes them a little easier to control as they are still quite strong vs the other AL1 options
- Thinmen lose Snapshot but gain Shadowshot - Nerf and means Snapshot doesn't have to be conditional
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppression wouldn't show as a perk in the tactical game
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Tether would work on aliens
- Fixed a bug where you could use combat readiness when moving or acting
- Fixed a bug where pursuit could activate even if a unit didn't move
- Fixed a bug where countries that left the council could still send aircraft to help with interceptions
- Fixed a bug where Fervor wasn't working
- Fixed a bug where the Fervor debuff wasn't obvious
- Fixed a bug where it would look like some units had taken 50000+ damage in a mission
- Fixed a bug where respec times were not correct and were way too short
- Fixed a typo on the unit loadout in F1
- Fixed a tweak where units that took low damage shots would look like they hadn't been hit (they now do)
- Fixed a bug where flying units could get defense from being behind cover if their flying bonus was negated
Version 1.50.12
LW Rebalance v1.50.12 - Derusted
Strategic:
- The country flag of the map is now apparent on the squad select screen - QoL
- Stats in the barracks now show total stats and base stats (from total stats and modifications on base stats) - Makes a lot more sense as you care a lot less about the modification than what the actual base stat was
- Injured soldiers in the barracks now correctly show their HP - Previously it was reduced to simulate some injury but this meant you couldn't figure out what your soldier's actual HP was, which... was annoying
- Improved Medikit grants +2 healing to medikits (from +1) but requires Muton Elite corpses and Muton Elite autopsy - Pushes improved healing later in the game and makes it stronger
Tactical:
- All shooting weapons now deal 15 envirodamage (from 6 to 140) - Having your cover destroyed is a frustrating mechanic that is a late game problem and directly conflicts with one of the goals of making cover-based strategies effective. It's even more of an issue becuase it happens more often late game where cover-based strategies need the most help. This change standardizes the destruction so that players can more easily calculate when cover will be destroyed and feel more confident behind cover. This is similar to the change of all explosive enviro damage to 35 and for the same reason: that being that gameplay trumps realism.
- Cluster bomb will now put a warning on every xcom unit that is within the 5 tile range + 2 tile radius of the eventual explosion - QoL so you can tell exactly who is in danger of being cluster bombed
- Acid strips 2 + 10% of armor (from 1 + 20%) - makes it more consistently impactful throughout the game so it doesn't spike in usefulness only late game
Perks:
- Impact now also disables reactive targeting sensors (RTS) - Gives XCOM more flexibility vs RTS targets
- Run and Gun grants +30% weapon damage while active - Slight buff, was a little too weak vs other options on the Assault tree
- Mortar Barrage now deals 20% of a unit's damage (from 2 + 10%) - Makes it scale more
- Disabling shot no longer maims a target, has a -30 aim malus (from -10), has a 3 turn cooldown (from 2 turn), but costs 0 AP and grants +1 ammo - Makes it much easier to use with great action economy
- Critical System Targeting deals 80% extra damage (from 100%) - Slight nerf
- Combat Drugs healing capped at 3 HP - Nerfed on late game HP sponges as it wasn't intended to act as a major healing source
- Repair Servos grants servos equal to 35% of damage taken (from 30%) - Significant buff as it now works on 3 HP hits
- Fotified no longer grants steadfast or +10 base DR but instead reduces injury and fatigue times by 30% - Acts as a perk that can really help a MEC keep in action
- Master Mechanic increases heal of repair by +3 (from +2) - Buff in later game engineer healing
- Dense smoke no longer prevents explosive shots - Nerfed as the entire purpose of explosive shots was to prevent huddling in smoke, also it's strong enough as is
- Inner Fire grants +20 aim (from +10), +2.0 mobility (from +1.3), +20% DR (from +10), +20% throw range (from +10), and 2 extra reaction shots (from 1) - Massive boost to make it competitive late game vs the significant team benefit of telekinetic field. Overall buff to psionic builds.
- Psi Mastery no longer increases damage of countercharge or boosts inner fire - Simplification, and it was too much with new inner fire
- Telekinetic Field grants 50 defense (from 30) - Significant buff to psionics
Equipment:
- Light armors gain more defense: Kestrel 10 (from 5), Banshee 15 (from 5), Corsair 20 (from 10), Seraph 20 (from 10), Ghost 25 (from 20) - Buff to accommodate for late game alien aim growth so alien hit chances aren't as high late game on lightly armored units
- Holo Charger weight to 0.6 (from 1.3) - Buffed as holo isn't as strong on the SHIV without the double dip holo and with 1.3 mobility it was borderline a useless item
Aliens:
- Sectoid will to 70 (from 60) - Was probably a little overnerfed
- Drone HP to 4 (from 5) and mobility to 6.6 (from 7.3) - Slight nerf as with new Sent + Opp they are quite strong
- Sectopod base damage to 18 (from 24) - Their damage was a little too much, Note this applies to both their cannon and their cluster bombs
- Sectopod level 5 leader damage to +5 (from +8) and champion damage to +9 (from +18) - Makes them more reasonable to tank
- Ethereal HP to 24 (from 30) - Nerfed as some missions they would be so hard to displace that it wasn't reasonable
- Sectoid Commander HP to 12 (from 15) - Similar to above as they are really deadly if they can't be displaced
- Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters gain 1 dmg per alien level upgrade (from 2) - Tone down on damage output
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where luck was still displayed as 100s instead of 1s in the tactical mission
- Fixed a bug where Mental Dominion (a quirk) was not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where psionic abilities would not correctly display chances to hit if a unit had an alien trophy
- Fixed a bug where Mortar Barrage was dealing only 2 damage (instead of 2 + x% damage)
- Fixed a bug where Jai Jawan aircraft fire speed was only 40% faster (instead of 50% faster)
- Fixed a bug where the ethereal tether cursor message would sometimes stick around when using a consumable
Version 1.50.11
LW Rebalance v1.50.11 - Inspired Psi
Strategic:
- Added more 'sightings' to the crashed UFO and other missions - Makes it more challenging to memorize and more thinking required
- SHIV Advancements II cost to 400 (from 650) - Makes it a little easier to acquire
- Alien base assaults don't increase in difficult as fast but only award a single fusion core - Gives the player a little more control over the strategic layer and taking back countries and makes fusions cores a little less common
- Skeleton keys only require 1 extra outsider shard for every 2 successful alien base assaults (from 1 per 1) - Makes it easier to fabricate keys later in the campaign
- Ring of Fire theromgenerators produce 220 credits (from 250) - Slight nerf
Perks:
- Psi Inspire lasts to the end of XCOM's next turn (instead of the beginning) and no longer grants 30 will but instead grants combat readiness - Significant buff
- Distortion shares with all units (from just biologic) - Buffed so that it's still effective if you're fighting mechanical enemies and so that having a MEC mind controlled in close range is consequential
- Kinetic Blast radius to 3 (from 1.5) - Significant buff to it's ease of use, keeps it competitive vs new psi inspire and the strength of psi panic shutdowns, also part of overall psi buff
- Field medic's ability to make medikits cost 0 AP is now moved to savior - Nerf to early medic
- Concealment no longer grants 30 crit on steadied shots - Accommodates for strike rifle buff and makes the perk less complex
- Savior no longer grants +1 HP healing to medikits - Nerf to make medic a little less focused on being just healer and more on it's other talents
- Mechanic only has 2 charges (from 3) - Nerfed, makes the engineer less about healing mechanical units and more about it's other roles
- Combat Drugs heals 30% of missing HP (from 40%) - Nerfed along with other healing
- Dense smoke no longer doubles stagger chances - Slight nerf for balance with other supports, also it was an oddly complex/unintuitive condition on it
- Sniper and Strike rifle regain their base 20 crit - Buffed
XCOM:
- Rocketeer gains 5 base will, Medic and Engineer lose 5 base will - Balance between the classes
- Scout base mobility to 0.6 (from 1.3) - Slight nerf, balance between the classes
- Medic and Engineer base HP to +2 (from +1) - Makes them better MEC candidates for Shoguns
Bug Fixes:
- The amount of fatigue a soldier will get for respecing now correctly shows days of fatigue (instead of hours of fatigue)
- Flak no longer triggers CST
- Fixed a bug where sometimes enemies wouldn't trigger overwatch
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness would activate too often on impossible
Version 1.50.10
LW Rebalance v1.50.10 - Bananas in a Room
Strategic:
- Toned down number of resource and harvest missions by aliens by around 15% - XCOM buff, Reduces frequency of larger UFO missions, especially late game, also reduces alien resource and research gains over an entire campaign
- You can now destroy shot down UFOs for a small credit/alloy bounty - QoL, and makes a lot of sense. useful if you don't have the squad to attempt the mission but still want to stop the aliens from completing a mission
- Fusion cannon cost to 230 elerium (from 90) - It was a little too easy to acquire early. Still can be quite powerful if rushed
- Soldiers cost 10 extra credits per month passed (from 5) - Reduces access to soldiers a little more in the late game
- Abudctor Map speed to 4000 (from 2000) and engagement speed to 50 (from 32) - Makes them much harder to engage and actually down
- Number of enemies in extra pods on alien base assaults is 2/4/6/8 (depending on difficulty) (from always 8) - Makes consecutive ABAs easier on lower difficulties
Tactical:
- Number of Lids in a lid pods on Terror missions to 1-2 + month/3 (from 1-3) - A little less RNG. Helps increase late game panic and country loss. Also, later game lids aren't as dangerous as they are earlier
- Number of other aliens on terror missions to 5 + month/4 (from 5) - Helps increase late game panic and country loss making late game terror missions more difficult
- Melee units can now be off-guard (but they still can't be unprepared) - QoL
- Aliens with no one in sight on impossible gain combat readiness at the start of their turn (chance is reduced by 10% for each active alien over 5) - Helps discourage LoS breaks, was supposed to be this way since 1.49 but was bugged
- Luck display is now 100 times less (so 1 luck is equal to a single 100% shot missed) - Seeing someone with 1657 luck was a little odd, will be much nicer if it's +16 instead
Perks:
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic no longer give +10 aim vs mechanical units - Better balance on the tree, DT engineer too strong vs the other options
- The chance to break a plasma shield with additional damage is 400/200/100/50% of damage dealt (depending on difficulty) (from 50% on all difficulties) - Makes plasma shield easier to overcome on easier difficulties
- Steadfast and Hunker no longer grant additional will vs psi attacks - Makes hunkering a single tank to hold off psionic units not a viable strategy
- Aliens gain a unique type of shred called "Alien Shred" which is half as effective - Simply it was too strong on aliens
- Collateral Damage does 15% damage per ammo (from 20%) - A 25% reduction in damage, it was a little too strong
- Gattler increases Collateral Damage damage by 35% (from 50%) - Same vein as above
Equipment:
- Carapace armor HP to 9 (from 10) - Slight nerf
Aliens:
- Sectoid will to 60 (from 75) - Nerfed to accommodate steadfast/hunker change
- Sectoid Commander will to 90 (from 100) - Same as above
Equipment:
- Shred Resistance (on regenerative plating and core plating) reduces shred by 75% (from 50%) - Buffed
- Alien trophy grants 30 defense against psionic attacks - Accommodates for steadfast change
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where flak ammo would prevent cyberdiscs from closing
- Fixed a bug where unprepared was causing AI to wonk out and not actually reduce ammo on mechanical units
- Fixed a bug where some aliens had incorrect perks (e.g. blast when they should have danger zone)
- Fixed a bug where the displayed time for respecing a soldier was incorrect
- Fixed a bug where floaters would start flying as soon as you flanked them
- Typos
Version 1.50.09
LW Rebalance v1.50.09 - Fast Blast Amassed
Tactical:
- Added a Unit Loadout to the F1 list - QoL
- You can now click combat readiness if you are steadied even though you aren't idle - QoL
- Added a visual descriptor of units that are fervored - Makes the mechanic more transparent and less of a surprise (hopefully less jarring)
- Added strangle immunity and conduit to the descriptive lists of abilities that items give you - QoL
- Steadying a weapon at 2 AP now also grants +35 crit - Boosted to make it more useful
Perks:
- Fervor can now be silenced by disorientating the unit as well - Makes it easier to work around
- Fragmentation no longer grants +15% radius increase to explosives but instead grants +10% throw range - More versatile solution due to larger radius' becoming problematic
- Blast increases radius of explosives by 20% and damage by 2 (from 30% and 1) - Buffed, and more versatile solution due to larger radius' becoming problematic
- Passionate grants a 5% chance to enrage (from 10%) - Was a little too strong
- Tweaks multiple quirks to be more appropriately assigned (e.g. Turtler won't occur on someone who has pistolero, and other such situations) - QoL
Equipment:
- All platings weight 0.6 less - Helps both encourage use of defensive items on XCOM and make tanks more mobile
- SMG crit to 30 (from 20) but gain a long range (>10 tiles) aim malus of 5 per tiles - Makes them less versatile but stronger close
- Carbine ammo to 3 (from 2) and crit to 30 (from 20) but aim on tiers is +10 (from +10/10/15/15/20) - Significant buff to make it more competitive on shooter classes that want to increase their aim/crit, especially ones with other additional damage sources, it really becomes a aim + mob vs damage trade off now
- Plasma SMG bonus crit to 15 (from 30) - Was a little too strong
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Rapid Fire would sometimes only fire once
- Fixed a bug where drop in drones still didn't have sentintel and opportunist
- Fixed some left over wonky kill shot behaviour
- Fixed a bug where ITZ shots that triggered a free command action wouldn't grant that action
- Fixed a bug where Reconnaissance and Double Tap and Fast and Furious didn't work together
- Fixed a bug with the rocket ammo display being off sometimes
- Fixed a bug where the LCPL bullseye perk didn't appear in the soldier list for Jaegers
- Typos
Version 1.50.08
LW Rebalance v1.50.08 - Idle Begone
Perks:
- One For all also grants immunity to Critical System Targeting - Helps MEC tanks resist CST units
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where idle popups would be spammed
- Fixed a bug where KSM would put the game in slow motion
Version 1.50.07
LW Rebalance v1.50.07 - Ramming XP
Strategic:
- Ammo Conservation costs 800 alloys (from 320) - Makes it harder to maintain and more optional/reasonable to skip
- Elerium batteries costs 50 elerium (from 10) - Slight increase in price to make it not so obvious of a pick up, also makes sense it cost more elerium than anything else
Tactical:
- SPECs require 150 xp (from 200) - Makes it easier to promote PFCs early game
- LCPLs require 400 xp (from 500) - Makes it easier to promote SPECs early game
- Made it so that kill shots with the KSM always trigger (instead of 50% chance as most other kill shots) - Too cool not to see
Perks:
- Rapid Fire grants +0.6 mobility - Buffed
- Fervor now only works up to 18 tiles - Feels more fair that it doesn't work on squadsight units
- Ram now activates at at least 6 tiles of movement (from 8) - Makes it a little easier to get off and doesn't always require sprinting early
- Fleet no longer grants -50 aim vs long rifles - Makes long rifles useful against lids, reduces the difference of lid-type missions from normal missions in terms of deployments and loadouts, buff to sniper/scout
- Ranger no longer grants double close range aim bonuses - Nerfed, it was a little strong and making pistols encroach slightly too much on primary weapon turf
- Critical System Targeting grants +100% damage (from +60%) but no longer grants additional crit - Buffed, makes them perk more valuable against mechanical units (esp late game) with fortified or that are difficult to crit
- Resolute grants +50% xp (from 30%) - Makes it more worthwhile as a death perk
- Grit grants 3HP (from 2) - Slight buff, better balance on perk trees
- Shadowstep now prevents Pursuit from triggering - Nice intuitive mechanic
- Combat Drugs heals 40% of missing HP (from 30%) - Buffed
- Tinker grants 25 shred (from 20) - Slight buff
Equipment:
- Battle Rifle crit to 10 (from 20) - Slight nerf, more focus on basic rifle
- SMG crit to 20 (from 30) - Slight nerf, more focus on basic rifle
- Carbines no longer grant bonus defense - Slight nerf, more focus on basic rifle
- Arc Rifle grants 10 aim (from 20) - Slight nerf, more focus on basic rifle
- Chitin plating costs 110 (from 80) - Slight increase as it's very useful
- Breaching ammo no longer grants +30 crit vs hardened targets - Nerfed
XCOM:
- Medic base mobility to 0 (from 0.6) - Slight tone back, balance vs builds in other classes
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commander HP to 15 (from 18) - Toned back cause Eliwoodno will bully me if I don't
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where dropped in drones wouldn't have sentinel + opportunist
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness triggered through the button on the ability bar would not stabilize wounded soldiers
- Fixed another bug with Pistolero granting ammo where it shouldn't
- Alien Grenades Foundry Project grants +2/3 damage to AP/HE grenades (from +2/4) - Nerfed to accommodate larger radius
- Condensed Plasma Foundry Project grants +1 damage to explosives (from +2) - Toned back slightly as the additive effect was making higher damage base grenades stronger than ideal, especially with new radius
- Cadre and Kiryu-Kai Commander grants 2/3x the number of months passed in xp (from 3/4x) - Nerfed as they are strong enough due to decreased xp
- Incursion strength no longer additionally increases after successfully assault an alien base - The gameplay of this was probably just bad, despite it seeming cool in theory
- Incursion strength has an x% chance to move 1 closer to 100 at the end of each day where x is twice the absolute value of [Incursion Strength - 100] - Makes IS twice as quickly reach 100 if it's above or below 100
Perks:
- Cover Tactics grants +3 defense per unit the squad can see (from +2 defense per activated enemy) - Tweaked to work with enemies in sight which is a lot more appropriate
- Cover Tenacity grants 4% DR per unit the squad can see (from +3% DR per activated enemy) - Same as above
- Commanding Officer grants a chance for squadmates to have 0 AP actions equal to 2x the number of enemies the squad can see (from 2x the number of active enemies) - Same as above and nerfed
- Reactive Targeting Sensors now works against any attack that did damage - Consistency, slight buff
- Vital Point Targeting now works on steadied, uncovered, and reaction shots (from just steadied and uncovered) - Buffed for OW medic
- Distortion now only shares half the damage (from 100%) - Significant nerf to bubble tanking
- Tactical Mobility only works for non-reaction shots - Buff to reactive shots
- Hunter no longer grants opportunist - Nerfed
- Turtler now works at the end of the turn if the unit has an enemy in view - Fixes some bugs
- Rapid Fire has a -30 aim malus (from -40) - Slight buff
- Concussion grenade range to 12 (from 10) - Slight buff to support and their ability to clear OW and disable enemies
- MECs can no longer acquire negative quirks diabetes or asthma - Kinda makes sense
- Overpower no longer exists as a perk
- New perk: Psychic Tether: This unit prevents enemies within 30 tiles from dashing away and reduces their mobility by up to 50% when moving away - Makes it difficult to disengage from Ethereals
- Bullseye also grants the ability to have steady not break cloak - Important for bullseye on Jaeger
Customization:
- New dgc.ini value: BASE_DAYS_INJURED=50; (LWR Default = 50) How effective Psychic Tether is (set to 100 to prevent all movement away and to 0 to be mostly disabled)
Equipment:
- Proximity Sensor weight to 0 (from 0.6) - Feels better for an item that can feel pretty mandatory
- Concussion grenade range to 12 (from 10) - Slight buff to support and their ability to clear OW and disable enemies
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs will now only close when they take more than 10% of their max HP in damage - Feels more reasonable so 'ticks' don't cause them to close
- All Drones and Cyberdiscs gain Sentinel + Opportunist - Makes their overwatch more threatening and using clears (explosives, suppression, smoke, etc.) more important than face tanking
- Sectoid Commander base HP to 18 (from 8) - Buffed to accommodate weaker bubble tanking
- Ethereals gain Psychic Tether but lose Overpower - Feels a lot less oppressive while still preventing effective retreat, nerf to the team strength of ethereals
- Ethereal defense to 80 (from 50) - Accommodates loss of overpower and weaker bubble tanking
- Mecthoid aim to 80 (from 65) and they gain Lock N' Load - Buffed as they were a little weaker than intended, overall should make AL 5 a little more challenging
XCOM:
- Jaeger aim growth to 10 (from 20) - Nerfed
- Jaeger has CCS replaced with Bullseye - More fitting for it's role
Equipment:
- HE/AP/Alien/Plasma Grenade radius to 3 (from 2) - Significant buff to their use at dealing with multiple enemies
- Grenade/Advanced Launcher radius to 3.5 (from 2.5) - Same as above
- Alien/Plasma grenade does 7/9 damage (from 8/10) - Accommodates increased radius (applies to aliens as well)
- Fixed a bug where battle scanner was showing 15 more aim than intended
- Fixed a visual bug where payload would sometimes appear as grenadier on a perk list
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire was applying half as much shred as it should
- Fixed a bug where precision shot wouldn't apply shred
- Fixed a bug where pistolero could give more ammo than intended
- Fixed a bug where a gunner could sometimes get opportunist when it shouldn't
Version 1.50.05
LW Rebalance v1.50.05 - Efficient Gollop
Strategic:
- Gollop power required is 100 (from 140) - Makes it easier to get online and get to temple; important with new faster scaling Alien Level; reduces length of time in late game by reducing required resources
Tactical:
- The Stun Rifle can again stun champions and champions can again be maimed - That restriction is no longer needed due to the low chance for maim to occur and it's frustrating if you can't stun champions you get to low HP
Perks:
- Holo grant +20 aim (from +15) but no longer doubles with units with the perk - Probably a healthier place to be, encourages holo a little more as a support ability instead of a damage stack ability as the holo shooters seem strong enough
- Shadowstep grants +1 crit dmg (from +2) - Toned back in strength
- Concealment grants +30 crit to units that are actively concealed or steadied (from just concealed) - Buff to bullseye scout
Quirks:
- Tweaked some conditions for acquiring quirks to make them more class appropriate
Equipment:
- Battlescanners now grant +15 aim and crit (from just aim) to targets that are within range - Buffed
- Scout has Extra Conditioning and Kitted reswapped back - Buff to support scout
Aliens:
- Muton base HP to 14 (from 16) - Makes them slightly easier to push through, especially early
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD on enemy reveal
Version 1.50.04
LW Rebalance v1.50.04 - Sight from the Squad
Tactical:
- Crashed UFOs have a 50% chance for aliens to lose 25-75% of their HP (from 35%) - Makes them easier missions
Perks:
- A closed disc only has +20 defense (from +50) - Nerfed, the crit immunity, hardened, and 20 def is enough and still encourages the diverse engagement of heavy single shots but now allows a little more play when it closes
- Squadsight now grants -5 aim per tile further than 18 (from -3) (note that sniper rifles still reduce this to -2 per tile) - Closes the effective range on strike rifles, further distinguishes from sniper rifles, reduces effectives of some alien squadsight attacks as well
- In The Zone also grants: Steadied weapons do not become unsteadied when taking damage - Makes it a little easier and more reliable to use in dangerous situations
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic now apply their penetration to grenades as well (from just shots) - Buff to engineer grenadier
Equipment:
- Sniper and Strike rifles no longer grant additional aim to reaction shots - Was more of a complexity increase than anything else
- Sniper and Strike Rifles no longer grant bonus aim - Their aim was quite high (too high) already, accommodates marksman scope buff
- Sniper and Strike Rifle base crit rate to 0 (from 20) - Nerfed
- Electropulse no longer disables units but has a 3 turn cooldown (from 4 turn) - Slight tweak as the disable was bugged in multiple scenarios, mostly with outsiders and sectopods using cluster bomb
- Fixed an issue where the Ram Indicator would stick around a little too long
- Fixed a bug where the quirk icons on a soldier list would sometimes be mispositioned
- Fixed a display bug on the right soldier list menu where some redesigned perks were not showing up correctly
- Fixed a bug where covert ops could have too few items slots if they were chosen from a soldier that had a stun rifle equipped
- Fixed a visual bug where it looked like low profile wasn't granting you extra defense in partial cover (it was though, just a visual bug)
- Fixed a bug where main on stun rifles was not always working
- Fixed the ! indicator when an OW shot shouldn't trigger as it was often inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where Sectoid Commanders still had overpower
- Fixed a bug where clicking on combat readiness, tactical retreat, or air strike could rarely trigger and overwatch shot still
- Fixed a bug where shooting twice could have different chances of triggering enemy overwatch
- Fixed multiple popups and descriptions to be more clear
Version 1.50.03
LW Rebalance v1.50.03 - Chicken Fixin
Engine:
- Combined some duplicated code segments to make it easier for any future changes - QoL (mostly for me)
- Most lists of perks and quirks now contain a more complete version of them (e.g. most lists of abilities contain perks given by items now) - QoL
Tactical:
- The Luck stat now includes critical hits and both shots and crits against your soldiers - QoL
Perks:
- Ram does additional/less damage for every 5 max HP more/less than the target (from 3) but does half the mobility in damage (from 35%) - I've never really seen it be abusively strong, and it's quite fun.... so buffed. =D Makes it more based on movement, more useful later
- Close Combat Specialist no longer requires 50 aim to trigger a reaction shot and no longer grants +1 ammo - Simplification, nerf
- New Perk: Pistolero (replaces CCS on Medic and Assault): Pistols gain +1 damage, +1 ammo, and the ability to critically hit on reaction shots. If idle, at the end of turn this unit will switch to their pistol. If this unit is wielding a pistol, grants a reaction shot at any enemy within 4 tiles that acts. - Encourages more use of pistols, prevents CCS from draining primary ammo and being a negative
- Growth now only starts on turn 5 - Slows down early growth of outsiders, encourages early engagement
Equipment:
- Proximity Sensors now say the exact number of tiles away a cloaked seeker is - Buff to it's effectiveness and use
- Stun Rifles now only maim if the target has 4 or less HP - Nerfed to work mostly just on enemies you are trying to capture
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commanders lose overpower - They have a strong enough kit without it and mid-game doesn't need the effects of overpower to taper XCOM down further
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where you could equip a plasma stellerator without plasma equipment if you had a blaster launcher equipped
- Fixed a bug where the ram inidicator would occur from locations that you couldn't actually move to
- Fixed a long-time LW1.0 bug where sometimes a unit in the evac zone (mostly SHIVs) would not count as being in the evac zone - Thanks to Obsidian for the save and szmind for the help with the code
- Fixed a bug where Ram would sometimes say it would do damage and then not when you actually moved to the location
- Fixed a bug where controller users could unequip their primary weapon
- Fixed a bug where using Bring 'Em On would cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where Fascination graze chance was 100%
- Fixed some quirks that were not being assigned at proper rates are were a little too exceedingly rare
- Fixed a bug where Exalt was too slow
- Fixed a bug where On The Ready was triggering 5x as often as it should
- Fixed a bug where Chitin Plating weighed more than it should
- Fixed a bug where the Pulse pistol weighed too much
- Fixed a bug where some purely mechanical units could panic
Version 1.50.02
LW Rebalance v1.50.02 - Quirky Displays
Strategic:
- Fixed some display issues with fonts - QoL
- Added some easier ways to tell if your soldiers have a positive, negative, and/or death quirk in the soldier list - QoL
- Incorporated szmind's minimod feature that shows all of a unit's perks and quirks on the right side of the soldier list - QoL
- You can now enter the "Perks and Quirks" tab for SHIVs to find descriptions of the SHIV abilities such as Mendability and Ram - QoL
Quirk Balance:
- Fascination quirks grant 35% damage (from 25%) - Buffed
- Quick Burn starts out with 2.6 mobility (from 3.3) - Slight nerf
- On The Ready now works at the end of turn - Fixes a bug, technically could even be a bit of a negative, but testing was still strong and it's a quirk, it CAN have some drawbacks
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Arc Pistol weighed more than it should
- Fixed a bug where augmenting a soldier to a MEC would grants them weird quirks instead of reseting them
- Fixed a bug where Civilians could get quirks
- Fixed some incorrect coloring on the recoilless rifle icon
- Fixed a bug where 'Focused' temporary buff was giving negative will
- Fixed a bug where some post mission pop ups would occur but be blanks
Version 1.50.01
LW Rebalance v1.50.01 - Quirk Fixin
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where an enemy using a will associated ability could cause the game to crash
- Fixed a bug where a Ram damage popup would appear on units hidden in the fog of war
- Fixed a bug where the majority of injury and fatigue modifiers were being skipped
- Fixed an issue where some reward characters would have very little mobility
- Fixed an issue where On The Ready would sometimes not trigger correctly
- Fixed a bug where chryssalids trying to move would sometimes crash the game
Version 1.50.00
LW Rebalance v1.50.00 - Quirks
New Quirks Feature:
- Just like Darkest Dungeon, all soldiers can now acquire 1 positive quirk, 1 death perk, and 1 negative quirk
- This does not include the special character perks or random mood swings units have during battle
- Acquiring a quirk occurs after any mission and is partly based on what happened to that soldier during mission
- The quirks will be specific to what type of soldier is acquiring the perk (e.g. a sniper will not acquire a perk that makes his healing less effective) and what happened to the soldier during that mission (e.g. a soldier that was never attack will not receive a negative fear quirk)
- Overall the quirks will act as a buff to XCOM as they are mostly positive
Country Starts:
- Wealthy Benefactor grants 300 credits (from 1800) - The salary discounts are quite large
- Baumesiter grants 80% reduction in facility build times (from 50%) but facility maintenance costs are reduced by 15% (from 20%) - Tweaked
- Legacy of Uxmal decreases alien level by 0.4% per psionic rank (from 0.5%) - Slight nerf
- Kiryu-kai Commander grants 4x Months passed xp per day (from 3x) - Buffed due to perseverance loss on MEC conversion
- Cadre grants 3x Months passed xp per day (from 2x) - Buffed due to perseverance loss on MEC conversion
Strategic:
- New Warfare (Asia contient bonus) costs of foundry projects reduced by 45% (from 35%) - Buffed
- Alien Level no longer slows down by 50% at AL10+ - While the idea was good, the implementation encouraged late game farming due to the risk of AL increase being lower
- Incursion Strength now ranges based on difficulty from 70/80/90/100 to 120/130/140/150 - Feels more appropriate based on difficulty
- Respecing a soldier now requires 5 + 1/4/7/10 days per rank for easy/classic/brutal/impossible (from 10 + 5 days per rank) - Makes it easier to respec on lower difficulties and harder on higher
- Overall weapon fragment yields increased by 20% - Makes it less of a bottle neck
- SHIV Advancements II costs 650 credits (from 150) and 135 alloys (from 35) - Significant cost dump, makes mid game SHIVs more costly and optional
- Solider stats during the soldier loadout now display total stat and modifier (from base stat and modifier) - Actually feels really weird if you're used to the old system, but overall I think it's a good improvement; Also makes it easier for players that have trouble adding double digit numbers like myself
- Experience for completing a mission lowered to 120/160 (from 140/200) - Slight tone back on xp growth so it's slightly harder to get MSGT ranks in the end game
- Killing an Alien leader provides +20 xp (from 40) and a champion +60xp (from 120) - Same as above
- Abduction and Terror Missions are no longer lowered in frequency by 5% per month - Encourages using more of the roster late game and makes managing panic both more challenging and more of an issue for the tactical game
- Base Defense foundry projects injury aliens by 50-80% (from 25-75%) - Makes the XCOM Base Defense more predicatable for a mandatory mission
Tactical:
- Airstrikes now have a base 20% chance to be available and still increase in chance by half of country defense (can reach 95% with global networking) - Buffed, especially early and mid game, as it's a cool feature
- Zombies on the Temple Mission now have 3 health and deal 3 damage and are called 'Thralls' - Makes the middle part of temple that much quicker
- The chance for a champion on the Temple mission on difficulties is now 100/70%/50%/40% for impossible/brutal/classic/easy (from 100/10/10/10) - Makes the lower difficulty temple missions not so easy and gives them a larger helping of champions to make the mission feel more significant
- The damage listed in the F1 panel on enemies now incorporates non-conditional perks and bonuses - Should make things more consistent and user-friendly
- Reworked alot of code to make things smoother on the engine - This means less CTD, stutters, freezes, etc., but also probably means I screwed something up and there may be bugs
- Armor HP now protects again Stagger as Stagger is now the same chance as concussive blast: based on the % of base HP the unit lost - Tone back on stagger chances at high HP, makes them higher when armor is depleted, consistency with concussive blast
- Suppressive Fire deals 45% weapon damage (from 50%) - Tone back in strength, especially early game, as it's quite strong/consistent
- Newly augmented MECs now have all their stats reset - QoL, makes sense
- The '!' that pops up when aiming at units that are overwatching you will now occur on multiple targets if you are tabbing through multiple targets and is more obvious - QoL
- All Exalt missions are slowed down by 1 alien level (e.g. the type of Exalt mission you used to fight get at AL6 will now only appear at AL7) - Makes them a little easier
Perks:
- Aggression grants +20 crit as well - Buffed
- Tracker now detects seekers and can see through walls up to 5 tiles (from 4) - Buff to make it a little easier to use
- Acid Tech now caps out at 10 imemdiate damage - Prevents it from being so mandatory on late game missions
- Plasma Shield now activates at 30% damage (from 40%) - Makes it harder to bypass and makes it more likely that champions can survive an alpha strike (and reaction fire damage) to actually get a turn or 2
- Psi Storm now uses 50% of caster will (from 35%) - Makes it more likely to land
- Psi Panic hit chance is calculated using 50% of will (from 65%) - Nerf on XCOM and alien panic as it's quite debiliatating for both sides
- Psi Inspiration grants 30 will (from 50) - Was a little too effective at shutting down psionic enemies
- Psi Inspire now removes and prevents 'fear' (one of the possible afflictions from a negative quirk) - Slight buff
- Executioner grants +1 damage and +25 aim at targets at or below 50% hp (from just +25 aim) - Buffed
- Smoke and Mirrors no longer allows support grenade uses to cost only 1 AP - Nerfed
- Opportunist grants 20 aim (from 15) - Buffed
- Holo Rounds grants 15 aim (from 10) - Buffed again, as it needs to have more impact to be useful as a general debuff
- Combat Drugs allows smokes to cost only 1 AP - Accommodates S&M nerf
- Dense Smoke allows smokes to cost only 1 AP - Accommodates S&M nerf
- Acid Tech grants 20% throw range (from 35% throw range only on acid grenades) - Tweaked so it helps all support grenades more
- Mechanic grants +10 aim vs mechanical targets - Buffed
- Cover Tenacity grants 3% DR per activated enemy (from 4%) - Slight nerf
- Savior no longer heals the user for +1 extra - It made the medic tank a little too good at tanking and the heals on the tank are already pretty strong
- Stay Frosty reduces fatigue time by 10% (from 15%) - Toned back
- Extra Conditioning grants +10% throw range - Buffed
- Grenadier no longer grants +0.6 mobility - The AP mobility drop seems to be enough and it felt a little odd
- Driven by Pressure (Annette special Quirk) grants 20 will (from 10) - Just too weak at 10
- Ex Triad (Zhange special Quirk) grants +2 damage with pistols (from +1) - Buffed
- Hardened grants 30% DR again (from 25%) - Increased resiliency on all mechanical and melee units
- Hit and Run also grants +2 crit damage when activating - Significant buff
Weight Redesign:
- All equipment now has a weight with it (instead of a mobility bonus and malus) and XCOM unit base mobility has been significantly increased
- All SHIVs now start with 11.3 mob (from 7.3) - Accommodates for extra equipment weight
- All Biosoldiers now start with 15.3 mob (from 8.6) - Accommodates for extra equipment weight
- All MECs now start with 18.0 mob (from 7.3) - Accommodates for extra equipment weight
Equipment:
- Gravity Well does 10% damage (from 20%) - It was never supposed to have 100% penetration and was too strong against high DR targets, but I think the full pen works so I'd rather just tone down the damage
- Kinetic Strike Module has 4x the chance to break a Plasma Shield (from 3x) - Buffed
- Battle Scanner (2-Pack) back to just a single item - Nerfed to make it less desirable/mandatory
- Plasma Rifle gains Sublimator: ignores all DR from the hardened perk - Buffed
- Reflex Cannon (Plasma Shotgun) gains Sublimator: ignores all DR from the hardened perk - Significant buff to late game shotgun use
- Plasma SMGs grant an additional +30 crit - Buffed
- SMGs in general lose 10 crit - Slight nerf, their mobility is really strong for such offensive power
- Archangel costs 1500 credits (from 1200) and 450 elerium (from 300) and 850 alloys (from 450) - Significant cost hike, makes it more optional
- Aurora grants 20 will (from 30) - Was already this way in previous patch
- Breaching Ammo grants 30 crit against hardened targets (from 50) - Nerfed
- Banshee armor gains +1 HP - Slight buff
- Leather Jacket (Covert Ops armor) no longer benefits from tactical rigging - Makes sense and fixes a bug
XCOM:
- Augmenting a soldier to a MEC clears all Quirks - makes sense as some are pretty build specific
- MEC and SHIVs have -50% injury time (from -35%) - Buffed, makes it easier to tank with them and not have them out for so long, makes MEC tanks a little more reasonable vs non-tank MECs, transparency on the effect
- MECs now all start with Cybersuit Fatigue which grants 50% more fatigue - Tones back use of MECs as the lack of cover isn't as ideal, accommodates for decreased repair time, transparency on the effect
- Basic SHIV gains 0.6 mobility - Buffed
- Hover SHIV loses 2 armor HP and 2 base HP and 0.6 mobility - Nerfed
- Scout has Extra Conditioning and Kitted swapped - Nerf to support scout, gives more access to kitted to other builds but really late
- Goliath gains Holo Rounds which replaces Penetrator - Helps gain aim
Aliens:
- The uber ethereal receives alien level upgrades at every level instead of every other level - Makes fighting him at later alien levels slightly harder and AL a little more important
- Fixed up some erratic movement behavior on lids and zerkers in close range - I think?
- Cyberdisc base damage to 7 (from 8) - Slightly easier to tank
- Sectopod base damage to 24 (from 16) and level 9 leaders gain 20 more aim - Buffed
- Drone base HP to 5 (from 4) - Buffed
- Outsider base damage to 6 (from 4) - Buffed
- Muton base HP to 16 (from 14) - Slight buff
- Muton Elite base HP to 36 (from 28) - Buffed
- Heavy Floater base HP to 30 (from 20) - Buffed
Multiple Alien Leader Stat Buffs:
- All Thinmen leaders gain 4 HP and level 3/6/9 gain an extra 1 HP - Buffed
- Cyberdisc level 5 leaders gain 5 HP - Buffed
- All Muton Elite leaders gain 10 HP - Buffed
- All Berserker Leaders gain 5 HP - Buffed
- Seeker leaders level 3 gain 5 HP, level 6 and 9 gain 10 HP - Significantly buffed
- All Floater leaders gain 5 HP - Buffed
- Drone leaders level 6 and higher gain 5 more HP - Buffed
- All Outsider leaders gain 5 HP - Buffed
Multiple Alien Leader Perks Removes:
- The goal of these changes is to simplify leaders so they don't have a whole list of perks to scroll through
- Sectoid level 6 leaders lose sentinel and opportunist
- Sectoid level 9 leaders lose repulsor and awareness
- Floater level 6 leaders lose repair servos
- Floater level 9 leaders lose fortified and repulsor
- Thinmen level 1 leaders lose executioner and low profile
- Thinmen level 3 leaders GAIN low profile
- Thinmen level 6 leaders lose awareness
- Thinmen level 9 leaders lose repulsor and close combat specialist
- Muton level 1 leaders lose lock n' load
- Muton level 3 leaders lose close combat specialist
- Muton level 6 leaders GAIN lock n' load
- All Cyberdiscs lose HEAT Warheads
- Cyberdisc level 5 leaders lose sentinel and opportunist
- Sectoid Commanders level 5 leaders lose sentinel and opportunist
- Heavy Floater level 9 leaders lose fortified and grit
- Muton Elite level 1 leaders lose close combat specialist, lock n' load, and grit
- Muton Elite level 5 leaders lose sentinel and opportunist but GAIN lock n' load
- Mutone Elite level 9 leaders lose repulsor
- Chryssalid level 6 leaders lose Fortified but GAIN Iron Skin
- Beserker level 1 leaders lose Iron Skin
- Berserker level 5 leaders lose Fortified but GAIN Iron Skin
- Outsider level 1 leaders lose Critical System Targeting
- Outsider level 3 leaders GAIN Critical System Targeting
- Outsider level 5 leaders lose Grit
- Outsider level 7 leaders lose Damage Control but GAIN Grit
- Outsider level 9 leaders lose awareness
- All Sectopods lose Penetrator and Lock N' Load
- Sectopod level 5 leaders lose Shredder Ammo
- Sectopod level 9 leaders lose grit but GAIN Shredder Ammo
- Drone level 3 leaders lose absorption fields
- Drone level 9 leaders lose fortified
- Mechtoid level 1 leaders lose kinetic dampening and Mecthoid Level 9 leaders gain it
- Seeker level 6 leaders lose damage control
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some enemies that fired slowly could have holo apply before the shot actually landed (granting them an additional 2 pen)
- Fixed a bug where defective countries would sometimes allow an air strike
- Fixed a bug where using combat readiness, air strike, or tactical retreat buttons could trigger an enemy reaction shot
- Fixed a lot of bugs with will-based attacks using the correct will values
- Fixed a bug where laser and pulse LMGs were not granting as much additional danger zone range as they should
- Fixed a bug where losing or retiring soldiers was not reducing the number of psionic ranks for Uxmal
- Fixed a bug where your officer could still command your units and grant them free charges if he was mind controlled
- Fixed a bug where multiple abilities were bypassing Plasma Shield when they shouldn't (it should only be the corrosion from acid)
- Fixed a bug where covert ops could have more than 2 small item slots on covert op missions
- Fixed a bug where breaking a psi storm would cause unresistable damage
- Fixed a bug where Mecthoids had Impact but shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where the Flamethrower wasn't clearing psychic storm or mind control
- Hopefully fixed a bug where unprepared mechanical units did not run out of ammo
- Fixed a long time bug where the mobility would fail to change when equipping soldiers with different items that had different mobilities - Thanks to szmind for the help
- Fixed a bug where enemies using suppression could sometimes keep a deflection shield up
- Fixed a bug where Pursuit could follow invisible units
- Fixed a bug where units would remaing invulnerable to debuffs even after a plasma shield was broken
- Typos
Version 1.49.44
LW Rebalance v1.49.44 - Airstriking Psi
Strategic:
- Legacy of Uxmal grants 0.5% for each psi rank acquired (instead of 1.0% for each psi soldier in the barracks) - Not much of a difference, but also fixes a bug where it was based on psi rank anyway and was twice as strong as intended; also probably nicer that you don't have to spam lvl 1 psionics and can upgrade psionic soldiers and have it still feel worthwhile.
Tactical:
- Airstrikes now do a little more damage; specifically 10% of the targetting unit's HP in addition to the 3-6 - Helps them keep up a little in damage as the enemies get larger
Perks:
- Kinetic Blast deals will/20 damage (from will/15) and has 10 range (from 14) - nerfed, it's supposed to be an augmenting ability and was a little too good at dealing damage, especially with it's penetration, makes it better on units that can get close
- Psi Boost and Adv Psi Boost (from Aurora and Vortex armor) no longer grants +2 and +3 damage to psi abilities but instead both grant 30 will (from 20) - Nerfed, simplification
Aliens:
- Muton Elite Leaders gain Danger Zone - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where air strike pilots would lose their name if you loaded a save file
- Fixed a bug where air strikes could cause an infinite zoom out
- Fixed a bug where non-officers could use tactical retreat
- Fixed a visual bug where kitted didn't look like it gave enough medikits
- Fixed a CTD where airstrikes could overwhelm the XCOM engine
- Fixed a bug where system messages would popup on Temple
Version 1.49.43
LW Rebalance v1.49.43 - Air Strikes
Strategic:
- Global Networking country start increase the chance for countries to aid tactical missions with air strikes by 50% but no longer increases XCOM income by 5% - Tweaked
Tactical:
- A new ability "Air Strike" is available to XCOM by pressing "v" during a tactical mission, it requires the targets be outdoors and activated. You will know if it's available from a popup at the beginning of a mission. The chance it's available is x/2% where x is the amount of country defense a country has - Nice fun new feature
- Only Officer's can now use Air Strike or Tactical Retreat - Feels reasonable and helps stop button spam
- Heal fatigue is half as effective - Heal fatigue was designed to discourage heals from stacking all on one target as the strategy of minmaxing EHP and heals on a single unit was quite strong (as in most games). However, it's effect was making healing more than a few times simply too ineffective too fast, even on non-tanks. This should help healing retain some strength while also still not bringing back the 1 central omega tank strategy.
- Improved the stat tracking of shots so that they are more accurate - Should be less times where you hit all 8 out of 5 shots =P
- Tactical Retreats require 1-2 turns (from 1-3) - At 3 turns it's almost a negative to have called it, making it 1-2 turns makes it reasonable to use more often
- Some abilities that used to only be shortcuts now appear on the icon bar - Thanks to szmind for the help with this
Perks:
- Psi Overload now clears all heal fatigue (and still heals 50% of missing HP) and enrage chance to 35% (from 20%) per enemy in sight but costs 5 HP (from 3 HP) - Tweaked to instead of just making it all about the volunteer healing it more enables other healing
- Acidic (corrosion spreading for Lids) now only applies during the chryssalid's turn - Stops pursuit from spamming corrosion amoung your soldiers, making it easier to maneuver without additional risk
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some of the platings had incorrect HP levels
- Fixed a bug where penetration on the KSM was wonky
- Fixed a bug where IS was not properly being adjusted when soldiers died
- Fixed a bug where healing would sometimes do 0 HP
- Typos
Version 1.49.42
LW Rebalance v1.49.42 - Fast Temple Grenades
Strategic:
- Psi Warfare systems requires 20 engineers (from 50) and 20 elerium (from 60) - Allows it to come online earlier
Tactical:
- Temple mission now has all random enemies except for the uber ethereal and the sectopod in the last and second last rooms and except all enemies between the first room and sectopod room are Zombies - Massively speeds up the mission. Makes it more variable and practice a lot less important or valuable.
Perks:
- Grenadier now grants +0.6 mobility - While I want grenades to occupy a design space of shorter range to not infringe on other longer range abilities, the range with the heavy weight of grenades has always been difficulty for grenadiers. This buff should allow them to more easily position and throw grenades despite a limited range.
- Psi Overload now heals for 50% of missing HP (from 35%) but costs 3 HP (from 1) - Nerfed due to shorter mission, but buffed in HP healed so it's more useful mid-fight
- Savior grants +1 (+2 self healing) from +2 (+4 self healing) - nerfed to accommodate lower medikit healing and lower strength of medics overall
- Plasma Shields that absorb an instance of melee damage are 3x as likely to break during that instance - Buff to end game KSM use and makes dealing with Champions slightly easier
- Packmaster now grants +1 HP to healing from Restorative Mists - Slight buff to healing on the Shogun
Equipment:
- AP Grenades have 0 mobilty (from -0.6) - Similar reasoning to Grenadier buff
- Ceramic Plating, Chitin Plating, Reinforced, and Alloy Plating all grant an additional HP - Helps early game units stay alive longer
- Carapace Shredder, Mechanical Shredder, Aerial Shredder, and Ether Shredder all grant 2.0x shred (from 1.5x) - Buffed
- Plasma Carbines also ignore the 30 defense bonus flying targets receive - Buffed, required to make them more accurate against the units they are designed for
- Aurora Armor now reduces accumulation of fatigue by 25% - Buff to early-mid psionics
- Vortex Armor now grants 16 HP (from 12) and costs 500 meld (from 350) - Buff to end-game psionics
Aliens:
- Muton base HP to 14 (from 16) - makes football teams a little less oppressive
- Zombie base damage to 3 (from 5) - Put them more on par with lids for damage
- Exalt SHIV level 3 leader perk Light 'Em Up moved to level 9 leaders only - Makes Exalt SHIV leaders a lot less offensively threatening
- Exalt SHIV Lock N' Load moved from all SHIVs to level 3 leaders - Makes them less offensively dangerous and they don't really need it due to not being suceptible to the hack
- Uber base will to 120 (from 150) - Makes final room of Temple a little easier
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where acid spit would not allow you to remove corrosion from soldiers immediately
- Research Focus starts with 20 extra scientists in your home base (from 10) - Buffed
- Robotics grants 18 aim for MECs and SHIVs (from 15) - Buffed
- Vigilis grants 15 will (from 13) - Buffed
- Daredevils now increase the effectiveness of combat patrols by 4x (from 3x) - Buffed
- Jai Jawan grants 40% increase aircraft fire speed (from 35%) - Buffed
- Born to fly provides 5 aim per kill (from 3) - Significantly Buffed
- Ancient Artifacts now starts with 500 meld (from 300) - Buffed
- Deux Ex now also reduces the cost and time of genetic modifications by 35% - Buffed
- Their Finest Hour now also starts with Armored Fighters and doubles the effectiveness of repair crews - Buffed
- Survival Training grants 4 hp (from 3) - Buffed
- Uxmal decreases alien level by 1% per psionic soldier (from 0.7%) Buffed (again)
- Advanced Conversion grants an extra 0.6 mobility, 5 more aim, and 3 base HP - Buffed
- Quai d'Orsay grants 100% increase in country item request speed, 100% additional country defense, and intel scans are free (from 50% of all) - Buffed
Tactical:
- Acid clouds (including poison spit) now only last until the end of turn - Makes it a lot easier for XCOM to maneuver (as it was never a fun experience to run through a cloud with the pathing) and also makes it less abusive to have a chokepoint that all enemies walk through to get corroded, also prevents the annoying bug that seems to hang around of invisible acid clouds
Perks:
- Acid Tech grants 35% for all the following: chance to acid from shots, armor stripped, extra throw range (from 30% of all) - Buffed
- Combat Drugs no longer gives the users any bonus but instead grants 30% HP and 30 aim (from 25% HP and 25 aim) and heals at least 1 HP - The user shooting just... didn't feel great, reverted with a slight buff
- Dense Smoke no longer gives 5x stagger to the user but instead grants 2x stagger to all units within the smoke and again prevent explosive shots from trigger against units in the smoke - Gives it more of a unique effect
- Sapper grants bonus damage to all explosives (from just grenades) - Buffed, makes the grenadier rocketeer stronger for just directly boosting rockets
- Mechanic grants 3 uses of Repair (from 4) and Repair heals for 5 (from 6) - Overall nerf on Engineer healing
- Kitted now grants 2 medikits (from 1) but no longer increases throw range - Focus on medic replacement to make medic feel a little less mandatory and the perk more of a hybrid build, overall a buff
Equipment:
- Recoilless Rocket no longer costs only 1 AP to fire - Nerfed, it was really strongly biased towards the support rockteeer, this is more regular balance between the subclasses and equipment
- Shadow Device charges to 3 (from 2) - Buffed
- Alloy Jacketed Rounds renamed to Alloy Enhanced Rounds - More believable and more intuitive that they can work with other ammo types
- Medikits now heal for 4 HP (from 5) - Overall nerf on healing
- Psi Defender grants 30 crit resist and DR (from 20) - Rebuffed, it's good if psionics are strong tanks
- Ghost: This unit Ghosts when it makes a kill or uses the Ghost ability. 2 turn cooldown. Ghost lasts until the beginning of this unit's next turn or they perform an action. Deactivates or fails to activate if any enemy is within 4 tiles or this unit has Concealment.
- Fixed a bug where Public Heroes wasn't granting exactly double rewards for engineers on some abductions
- Fixed a bug where tactical rigging would sometimes grant 4 item slots and cause CTDs after first getting it
- Fixed a bug where flying hover SHIVs would not have the set 9.3 mobility
- Fixed a bug where Temple spawns would occur too quickly
Version 1.49.39
LW Rebalance v1.49.39 - Acid Burning
Strategic:
- Shaped Armor foundry project requires 4 berserker corpses and berserker autopsy (from 14 floater corpses and floater autopsy) and now also grants +10 penetration to the KSM - Buffed, but comes on later, gives a use for berserker corpses
- Militarization decreases soldier hiring costs and arrival times by 75% (from 66%) - Buffed
- Legaxy of Uxmal decreases alien level by 0.7% per psionic soldier (from 0.5%) - Buffed
- Daredevils increases the effect of combat patrols by 3x (from 2x) - Buffed
Perks:
- Payload grants 70% damage (from 65%) - Buffed
- Magnum grants 50% damage (from 65%) - Actually no functional difference, just much more clear for the player
- Mind Control and Psychic Storm can now be broken by burning (via the flamethrower) - Buff to flamethrowers everywhere!
- Mind Control use now breaks any other instances of mind control, effectively limiting mind control to 1 unit at a time max - Makes fighting multiple mind controlling units a lot less punishing
- Acid Bomb renamed to Acid Tech and now does: 30% armor strip (from 40%) but also grants 30% throw range (from 0%). It also causes hits to have a 30% chance to cause corrosion - Buff, makes shooting (and thus the weapon) more important
- Precision shot aim bonus to +30 (from +15) - Buffed, makes it more 'precise'
- Combat Drugs grants 25 aim (from 30) and heals 25% of missing HP (from 30%) but now also grants 50 aim and crit to non-reaction shots to anyone with the perk combat drugs - Tweaked to make shooting on the user more important
- Dense Smoke no longer grants 1 pen resist or explosive shot tempering but their reaction shots have 5x the chance to stagger - Tweaked to make shooting on the user more important
- Kitted grants +10% throw range - Buffed
Equipment:
- Chitin plating grants +2 HP (from +1) - Buffed
- Kinetic Strike Module (KSM) damage to 16 (from 18) and pen to 0 (from 9) - lower early game power
- Thumper has 0 mobility (from -0.6) and grants +14 damage and 0 pen and melee slayer (from +12 and 6 pen and melee slayer) - Tweaked, lighter to make the MEC more maneuverable
- Autopistols lose 20 crit - Nerfed, they were too capable of replacing SMGs or other primaries
- Arc Pistol grants 5 damage and 5 penetration (from 4 damage and 4 pen) - Buffed (it already kinda did the damage part but was bugged sometimes)
- Arc Rifle mobility to 0 (from +0.6) and damage/pen to 7/7 (from 8/8) - Nerf to make it less dominant as an anti-mec strategy
- Armor Piercing Ammo grants Penetrator (from +3 pen) - Toned back penetration and prevents stacking with the perk, didn't need to be as strong with gauss being reasonable again and AJR nerf
- Plasma Grenade damage to 10 (from 12) - Nerfed
XCOM:
- Scout: Kitted and Tinker swapped - Better balance on the Scout tree
Aliens:
- All Muton leaders lose 2 damage - Makes them easier, especially early game, makes their shred hits less shredifying when XCOM has less counters
- Chryssalid Level 3 leaders lose 5 HP - Makes them a little easier on early terror missions
Bug Fixes:
- Hopefully fixed a bug where Gravity Mines would still trigger twice
- Typos
Version 1.49.38
LW Rebalance v1.49.38 - Splitting Perks
Strategic:
- Rewards for heavy and swarming abductions increased - Makes them more compelling
- The very first terror mission will have 1 less pod (note the number of aliens do not change though) - Makes it slightly easier as it was a little too difficult sometimes
- Special Air Service grants +12 aim (from +15) - Slight nerf
- Skunkworks reduced item production time by 60% (from 70%) - Slight nerf
Perks:
- Fragmentation grants +20% radius to explosives - Buffed
- Plasma Shield now kicks in at 40% HP lost (from 30%) and breaks with a chance equal to half the damage dealt (from 1x damage dealt) - Makes it more tolerable early and less insignificant later
- Close Encounters grazes all attacks made from within 4 tiles (from just shots) but has a 30% chance (from 50%) - more attacks covered, but less reliable for gameplay purposes
- Jetboot Module grants +2.6 mobility (from 3.3) and has a 3 turn cooldown (from 2) - Slight nerf as it was a little too strong for balance on the tree
- Run and Gun no longer grants defense (just the crit) - Nerfed
Split Perks:
- Added 5 new perks: Magnum, Payload, Acid Bomb, Gatler, and Blast - Just a split of the perks mayhem, tinker, shock and awe, and danger zone for improved QoL, tones back unintended effects (like snipers being the strongest grenadier, or mutons hitting REALLY hard with nades), also allows tweaking them without affecting other classes
- Magnum: Grants +65% weapon damage to sniper and strike rifles.
- Payload: Grants +65% weapon damage to explosives.
- Acid Bomb: Acid grenades strip 40% of armor HP on detonation.
- Gattler: Collateral Damage deals 50% more damage and has its cooldown reduced by 1 turn.
- Blast: Grants +30% radius and +1 damage to explosives. Does not affect Gravity Mines.
- Chitin plating no longer causes melee attacks to graze - Nerfed, significantly, now it's more of a corrosion helper only, it was too polarizing for melee units
XCOM:
- Maruder Tree rework (see perk tree picture) - Opens up a new build and fixes a lot of dead perks
Aliens:
- Updated their AI to mostly ignore acid when determining what to do - Improved AI (not sure how complete the improvement is)
- Exalt SHIVs lose 2 damage and 10 aim - Makes them much less capable offensively when you first encounter them
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where both 1) sometimes a terror mission would fail to find a correct target and 2) if a correct target was unable to be found it would automatically select USA
- Fixed a bug where using the psi defender was causing a CTD
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Wave wouldn't destroy some cover
- Fixed a bug where red fog was not showing correct melee damage reduction in F1
- Maybe fixed a long time bug where dead aliens would still block tiles sometimes
- Fixed a bug where sometimes you couldn't act as a spotter despite being at 0AP
- Maybe fixed a bug where danger zone suppression would do more damage than intended during suppressive fire at the beginning of the turn when a unit would die
- Typos
Version 1.49.37
LW Rebalance v1.49.37 - More Housekeeping
Strategic:
- Condensed Plasma requires 5 muton corpses (from 10) - Makes it easier to acquire if luck is against you
- Overall repair times of damaged items decreased by 50% - Makes it much easier to get good equipment back online in the late game
- Abduction, DLC, and Council missions have enemy leader levels reduced by 50% - Makes it so late game they are not nearly as difficult and impossible to roll champions
- Unthwarted abductions and bombing missions generate 5 panic (from 4) - Slight increase in panic generation, reduces the amount of time players have in the late game before temple ship, hopefully cuts down on time/grind
- Enhanced Ballistics and Enhanced Lasers Foundry projects now cost 15/45 weapon fragments (from 130/130) - Makes them both easier to acquire
- Losing a country lowers Incursion Strength by 10 (from 15) - Makes it a little less significant
- Alien Grenade Foundry Project grants +4 damage to HE and +2 to AP - Buffed
Tactical:
- You can now see how much damage is absorbed by plasma shields in the F1 - QoL
- Added in a program to check the Temple Ship mission for failure to proceed towards the next stage and fix it if it fails - Fixes a long time LW (and vanilla game?) bug that would uncommonly occur on Temple missions that would make them unbeatable
- Large and Very Large UFOs have one of their outsider pods replaced by regular aliens - Makes it so UFOs are not mostly just outsider-fests
- Staggering a floater that is launching now prevents it from going on overwatch - Makes sense, QoL, feels better
- Shooting shred now shreds twice as much (equivalent to 1x shred instead of 0.5x shred) and plasma weapons shred at 1.5x the rate - Buffed
Perks:
- Plasma Shields trigger at 30% lost HP (from 40%) - More common as with the break being twice as easy (which is good) they were not nearly as durable and the goal for champions is for them to be durable while not necessarily that offensively overbearing
- Shadowstep no longer grants +30 crit or OW clearing power but instead grants +0.6 mobility - Was likely overtuned last time leading to some builds and enemies that were too strong
- Disabling shot aim malus to -10 (from -40) and cooldown to 2 turn (from 4 turn) but no longer works against mechanical units - It was never designed to work against mechanical units and there are bugs that will keep happening where aliens will get either infinite ammo or 0 ammo and their AI can start acting wonky and I cannot correct this
- Kinetic Dampening no longer removes penetration when at 18+ tiles - It felt gamey to have it drop off so hard and also made snipers insignificant where they should be shinning, also with the 1 pen resist it already helps keep them up at long range
- Precision shot grants 15 aim (from 20) and no longer boosts damage - Overall nerf, helps accomodate for kinetic dampening nerf
- In The Zone grants +20 aim to regular shots (from +10) - Buffed
- Close Encounters now has a 50% chance to graze any shot made at this unit from within 4 tiles - Significant buff to the strength and durability of Assaults (and some aliens) within close range
- Run and Gun no longer increases damage - It already does enough compared to the other builds
- Tinker no longer grants any throw range increase (from 10%) but for scouts only: shreds for 25 (from 15) and for rocketeers only: removes 40% of armor (from 25%) - Tweak/buff, makes supports more distinct
- Combat Drugs only grant 1 smoke (from 2) but instead grant 30 aim (from 20) and heal 30% of a unit's missing HP at turn end (from healing 30% of damage taken) - Acts more like an aoe medikit and aim buff (note: remember smoke does also give -10 aim to unit's in it, so it's really only like +20 aim)
- Dense Smoke only grants 1 smoke (from 2) but also prevents all critical hits and prevent explosive shots from activating - More tanky
Equipment:
- HE Grenades deal 5 damage (from 6) - Nerfed to accommodate early game strength and increased alien grenade foundry project strength
- Beam and Pulse weapons grant +15 crit (from +25) - Nerfed to make predictable crits less common and improved the balance between weapon tiers
- Alloy-Jacket Rounds and Enhanced Beam Optics no longer grant +1 penetration or +1 crit damage - Both are nerfed to try to make the feeling of being forced into laser/pulse vs ballistic/gauss less
- Regenerative Plating now decreases any shred received by 50% - buffed, gives a counter to help prevent late game shred stack on tanks
- Core Plating now decreases any shred received by 50% - buffed, gives a counter to help prevent late game shred stack on tanks
- Chameleon vest mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Now acts as a mobility buff with new shadowstep
- Reaper Ammo grants +3 crit dmg (from +4) - Tone back on crit strength
- Battle scanned (from battle scanners) gives 15 aim (from 20) - Nerfed to accommodate greater access and more frequent use
- Vortex armor gives +5 damage to rift (from +10) - Tone back in strength
XCOM:
- Alloy/Hover SHIV no longer has base 10/20 aim - They are strong enough as is, especially Hover with flight, nerfed to open up more room for other classes and make SHIVs feel a little less mandatory, helps accommodate double shred strength buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where penetration information would not always be correct (e.g. with kinetic dampening)
- Fixed a bug where the new pistol swap ability on close combat specialist was inadvertently triggering on MECs which would fail and then oddly enough grant them permanent rapid fire =P
- Typos
Version 1.49.36
LW Rebalance v1.49.36 - Global Detection
Strategic:
- Updated corpse amounts in the corpse grey market descriptions - Thanks to Admiral Billy for the idea and the hard work
Perks:
- Insentient Crush deals 30% of max HP in damage (from 40%) - Toned back so SHIVs are a little more useful vs Ethereals
- Reduced the initiation range of Psychic Storm by 2 tiles - Increases the times where it feels fair, makes it easier to counter, make the ability overall weaker even if the AI is 'trying' to abuse it
- Reduced the initiation range of Orbital Strike by 2 tiles - Same as above
- Danger Zone no longer affects Gravity Mines - It bugs out on some of the aspects and I can't fix it
- Psychic Wave now destroys all cover but range reduced to 3 tiles (from 4) - Tweaked, makes it more iconic and dangerous, but a little less oppressive as it's less likely to hit your full squad or trigger at all, encourages use of SHIV/MECs for cover
- Explosive Shredder (AP grenades and Javelin Rockets) grants 2x damage dealt in shred (from 1.5x) - Slight buff to both
- Plasma Shield has twice the chance to break after activation but also grants immunity to stuns - The gameplay of maiming champions was not intended and isn't great
- Rift does 3 less damage and can no longer deal negative damage and actually heal targets - While sometimes it's doing really small damage, sometimes it does a lot of damage, and ethereals are too hard to deal with if they do too much damage due to their strong kit
- Collateral Damage does 20% damage per ammo (from 15%) - Buffed with 33% more damage output
Equipment:
- Acid Grenade range to 8 (from 10) - Nerfed as it was a little too strong for it's ease of use
- Javelin Rocket radius to 1 (from 2) and scatter reduced by a further 33% - Nerfed (scatter reduction just helps accommodate radius nerf), makes it less like a grenade and more like a pin-point single unit damaging weapon (as was intended)
- Arc Rifle aim bonus to +20 (from +35) - Nerfed as it was displacing other weapons too readily, this should make it more of a niche weapon
- Motion Tracker no longer grants Tracker perk - The item was too strong and was pushing out other options for detection and even just other options to equip on the SHIV, overall slight SHIV nerf
- Battle Scanner small item now comes in a pack of 2 (from a single item) - Buffed, buffs specifically the scout, part of a shift of detection from the SHIV to the Scout
- Proximity Sensor now provides a directional alert and also extends the warning range to 14 tiles (from 10) - Buffed
- Plasma Weapons, MEC3s, Titan Armor, and Corsair Armor all have 50% reduced chance of being damage or lost after missions - Buffed
- Fixed a bug where Gravity Mines were still a little wonky (they should work consistently now)
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Blast was estimating more damage than it actually dealt
- Fixed a bug where kill stats were recorded (and removed display of it as a total cause it was redundant)
- Fixed a bug where the HP reduction on gravity mines could occur twice
- Fixed a bug where UHIV and Iago could sometimes be seen outside of the Exalt Base Raid mission
- Fixed a typo in the tutorial pages
Version 1.49.35
LW Rebalance v1.49.35 - Ironing the Creases
Tactical:
- Luck now is not divided by number of shots (so someone who hits 10% more shots than they should would have +10 luck if they fired 1 shot, but +100 luck if they fired 10) - QoL, makes more sense
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed MEC1 and HMEC2 having 5 less base DR than intended
- Fixed a bug where Fast and Furious was triggering too early before other free actions
- Fixed a bug where the post-mission messages would be out of order
- Fixed a bug where Gravity mines would sometimes not damage units at the start of their turn
- Fixed a bug where maim wasn't working if your primary weapon was an arc rifle
- Fixed a bug where units with Perseverance could cause a CTD upon finishing a mission
- Typos
Version 1.49.34
LW Rebalance v1.49.34 - Smoothing The Edges
Tactical:
- Added an end of mission summary of stats of how the mission performance was - QoL
- Improved some of the efficiency of code so that the game should be a little less choppy - QoL
- Improved some UI inconsistencies
Perks:
- Field Medic no longer grants +2 HP - Medic tank good enough without it, boosting other medics too much as well, overall making medic tank a little too appealing vs the other options
- Tricks of the Trade grant 15% mission xp (from 10%) - Buffed
- Rapid Fire aim malus to -40 (from -30) - Nerfed further as it's still quite strong
- Hunter no longer grants +1 ammo but instead grants Opportunist - Balance on the LCPL rank of the Jaeger tree, buff to Close Combat Specialist build
Equipment:
- Chameleon Vest no longer provides +10 defense - Wasn't needed as the item is strong enough and the defense was almost superfluous
- Chameleon Vest meld cost to 60 (from 40) and elerium cost to 90 (from 60) - Nerfed as the item is quite strong to really open up strength in some builds
- Alloy Jacketed Rounds provide +5 aim - Slight buff as they are still costly and need to justify their price, also they have more competition with the ballistic/gauss special ammunition
- Gravity Mines lower movement by 50% (no change), defense by 20 (from 15), and remove 20% of current HP at turn start (from 15) - Buffed
XCOM:
- Engineer has Danger Zone replaced with HEAT Warheads - More fitting for pen on the anti-Mech unit
- Assault has HEAT Warheads replaced with Danger Zone - HEAT Warheads didn't really synergize with the Killer instinct and Fragmentation, feels better this way
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Run and Gun wasn't receiving it's bonus damage
- Fixed some User Interface inconsistencies
- Fixed a possible CTD when stats were recorded on very long missions
- Typos
Version 1.49.33
LW Rebalance v1.49.33 - MEC STRONK
Strategic:
- All Furies will reduced by 5 - Helps prevent them from supplanting your own psionic soldiers
- Building the Gollop chamber freezes alien reserach but instead of quadrupling panic increases it increases the rate of most mission generation by 5x - Feels better
- Quenchguns now grants +1 pen vs all units (from just mechanical units) - Buffed
Perks:
- Invulnerable replaced with Plasma Shield: Any turn this unit takes more than 40% of its max HP in damage it gains a shield of pure plasma. The shield absorbs all damage and prevents all negative effects until the end of the current turn. Each instance of damage absorbed has a chance to break the shield equal to half of all the damage absorbed. - Feels a lot better to play against
- Sapper grants 25% damage to grenades and mines (from 35%) - Toned back in strength, balance vs Frag that was also toned back
- Close Combat Specialist grants +1 ammo and 0 aim (from +0 ammo and +20 aim) and Rapid Fire grants +1 ammo (from +2) - Shift to spread out the ammo more
- Hunter grants +1 ammo (from +2) - Was a little much at +2, no need with RF and CCS granting more
- Mind Merge now damages units equivalent to the amount of HP they gain (10% of caster will), except for, as usual, mechtoids shields are just 1 damage and shield lost - QoL, simplification
- Kinetic Blast is now fully penetrating and has a 1.5 tile radius and deals will/15 damage - Significantly buffed as it was too weak vs the other options
- Kinetic Blast is no longer dodged by lids - They shouldn't seem it coming, more intuitive
- Bullseye now also grants +30% weapon damage vs targets on overwatch - Buffed
- Run and Gun now also grants +30% weapon damage while active - Buffed, because fun > all
- Killer Instinct increases the damage critical hits on explosive do to 200% (from 175%) - Buffed to accommodate crit loss on hardened/covered on Fragmentation
- Absorption Fields grants 5 armor HP - Significant buff to the capability of early MECs to tank
Equipment:
- Aurora and Vortex armor no longer grant psychic shielding - High will units already are better at resisting psionics, the need to double it up was overkill and slightly convoluted
- Banshee, Corsair, Seraph, and Ghost armor lose 2 HP - New grapple makes them really strong, their HP was a little too similar to the heavier armors so that heavier armors were almost wrong to use on non-tanks
- Kestrel armor loses 1 HP - Same as above
- Psi Frayer no longer affects Kinetic Blast - Would be to OP on stacked builds with new KB
- Proximity Sensor now provides an alert at the start of any turn when a Cloaked Seeker is within 10 tiles - Slight Buff, QoL
- Electropulse mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Slight buff
- HMEC2 and MEC1 gain 10 base DR - Buffed for higher strength
- HMEC3s gain 5 base DR - Buffed for higher strength
- All MECs gain +2 HP and +0.6M - Makes them tankier and overall stronger
- Shielding Module no longer grants absorption fields but instead grants 30% DR - Tweaked so it doesn't become OP with Absorption Fields change
XCOM:
- Engineer: Packmaster and Extra Conditioning swapped - The grenadier engineer was able to stack too many perks on it's grenades making it a little too synergist and powerful late game
- Gunner: Bring 'Em On and Kitted swapped - Gives the gunner a little earlier access to Bring 'Em On, especially as Kitted was a little overshadowed by LnL/TD on most gunner builds, minor change
- Alloy SHIV HP to 16+16 (from 20+20) - Tone back in strength of mid-game SHIV
Aliens:
- Exalt SHIV leaders lose absorption Fields (except for the UHIV) - Makes them a little easier to kill
- Mechtoids and Sectopods both lose 10 base Aim - Makes them a little less threatening
- Mechtoid cannon damage to 8 (from 10) - Makse them a little less threatening
Bug Fixes:
- Misc UI fixes
- Fixed incorrect preview area of battle scanner
- Fixed a bug where mind controlling a unit would have their overwatch carry over an extra turn
- Fixed a bug where there were too many leaders on base defense missions
- Fixed a bug (again) where the Ram indicator would be incorrect through cover
- Fixed a bug where Augmentation times were being estimated incorrectly
Version 1.49.32
LW Rebalance v1.49.32 - Statification
Strategic:
- The chance for a champion to appear when a level 8 already occured is now 10% (from 5 * iDiff) - Significantly lowers the rate that champions appear on regular missions (Note it's still 100% on impossible temple mission)
- Alien Aggression no longer affects leader level - it was skewing things too much
- Leader levels are defined by (iAL + Rand(iAL))/2 instead of (1 + iAL + Rand(iAL))/2 - Slight reduction in leader levels, mostly just slightly easier leaders early game
Tactical:
- In mission stats are now displayed for each unit in the bottom left of the tactical UI (can be disabled in the dgc.ini at the SW_COVER_INCREASE variable) - QoL
- Crit resist removed from the F1 menu - It was actually adding more confusion on what number meant what then actually helps, as well, it's avaible on all enemies that you're aiming at anyway, and on XCOM you can calculate through perks
- Suppressive Damage is 50% of weapon damage (from 45%) - Significant buff
Perks:
- Psychic Storm hit chance is calculated using 35% of will (from 50%) - Significant reduction in hit chance
- Rift does 5 more damage - Buffed
- Rapid Fire grants +2 ammo - Buffed
- Fragmentation no longer grants a 50% crit rate against hardened targets or vs targets through cover - Nerfed
Equipment:
- Alloy Bipod grants +2 damage to suppressive fire (from +1) - Significant Buff
- Psi Defender grants 20% DR (from 30%), grants 20 crit resist (from 30), and has -0.6 mobility (from 0) - Nerfed
- Aurora and Vortex Armor lose kinetic dampening - Pen resistance stacking is too strong
- Vortex armor increases rift damage by 10 (from 15) - Accommodates for rift buff
- Engineer base aim to 10 (from 20) - Double Tap Engineer is good, and with the high aim (+holo and +dt) a little too good
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where "!" could popup when targeting friendly units that can fire a reaction shot
- Fixed a bug where the Alien Leadership defensive bonus wasn't being added to the Defense stat on aliens in the F1 Info panel
Version 1.49.31
LW Rebalance v1.49.31 - Flaming Leaders
Tactical:
- Rocket Scatter reduced by 33% - Slight more consistency and early and mid game rockets
- Heat of Battle doesn't apply to SHIVs - SHIVism in full effect
Perks:
- Grenadier increases throw range by 50% when then unit is in One For All (from 30%) - Buffed, accommodates for grenade/advanced launcher nerf
- Grenadier no longer grants +1 damage (tone back on early/mid game grenades) - Nerfed
Equipment:
- Grenade/Advanced Launcher range to 8 (from 10) - Nerfed
- Flamethrower now has a 35% chance to roll for panic on units affected (from 25%) - Buffed
- Incinerator Amp now grants +20 shred to any unit hit by the flamethrower - Buffed
XCOM:
- Scout perk Kited swapped with Packmaster - Tone back on Support Scout strength
Alien Leader Balance Changes:
- Ethereal Primus loses 20 will
- Sectopod Titan and Atlas lose 20 aim
- Mecthoid Colossus gains 20 aim
- Muton Elite Bashar gains 4 damage
- Outsider Navigator and Pioneers gain 5 HP
- Outsider Pioneers gain 1 damage and 10 aim
- Seeker Stalker loses 10 aim
- Seeker Wraith gains 2 aim
- Seeker Battle Wraith and Hydra gain 4 aim
- All Thinman leaders lose 2 will
- Sectoid Prodigy loses 20 will
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where sometimes units could be mind controlled for an extra turn
- Fixed a bug where Ram would sometimes say it could Ram when it couldn't based on sight lines
- Misc UI fixes
Version 1.49.30
LW Rebalance v1.49.30 - Hot Potato Fixins
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Medic had their old tree perks
- Fixed a bug where multiple leader chances were set 5% too low
- Fixed a bug where excavations were costing 100 more than intended
- Fixed a bug where Terror missions had both too many leaders and too many Champions
Version 1.49.29
LW Rebalance v1.49.29 - Run and Awe... some Excavations
Strategic:
- Combat Patrols now damage planes by 10-25% of their HP (modified by campaign length) (from 10-90%) - makes them a little less taxing on planes and less prone to bad RNG
- Excavation costs are 50 starting directly beside the elevator on the first floor and increase by 50 for each tile down or left/right - Makes digging down a little less expensive and digging out a little more expensive, thanks to darkzero for the idea
- Leader level is now = (AL+ Rand(1 + AL))/2 - 0/1/2/3 (Diff) [Capped at 8] - Makes levels more consistent, and less random
- And then if Level is 8, (5 * (Diff + 1)) chance to be level 9, if this is terror, alien base, or temple, chance is x5
- Terror missions increase level by 1 (from 2)
- Any non-leader (include non-pod leaders) will have a (iAL - 10)% chance to be upgraded to a level 1 leader
Tactical:
- Units with CCS now swap their weapon to their other weapon at the end of turn if their current weapon has no ammo and their other weapon does have ammo - Slight buff and QoL for Close Combat Specialist (Due to programming issues it will not work with RfA)
Perks:
- Shock and Awe no longer grants additional uses to grenade launchers or mine launchers but instead grants +30% weapon damage to rockets, lowers the cooldown of Collateral Damage by 1 turn and increases the damage of CD by 40% - Buffed to focus on Collateral Damage use on the Shogun and effective rockets on the Rocketeer, gives the Shogun alternative build focuses at GSGT
- Run and Gun grants 30 defense when active - Significant increase to survivability of those more dangerous flanks Run and Gun units tend to do
- Sentry Now grants combat readiness if the unit can see 4 or more enemies when entering overwatch and the condition for graze is combat readiness instead of overwatch - Makes it more predictable, buffed against multiple enemies (predictable graze + CR buffs), nerfed against 3 or less enemies (no graze), small buff overall (CR guaranteed graze always)
- One For All now prevents the units from having attacks graze - Makes sense, as you turn into a big stationary unit with no defense
- Strangle now grants 35% DR while strangling - Buff to the strangle aspect of the attack, accommodates for crit nerf
- Bring 'Em On no longer grants damage to grenades but instead grants crit equal to 5x enemies in sight - Buff to shooters, removed as a grenade perk as it was both 1) bugged and 2) not competitive
- Fervor no longer allows you to swap units out, any unit that is being 'fervored' must stay in vision of at least 1 fervor unit but they can move towards it as well (even if it's out of vision) - The swapping out made it too meek, being able to move between fervor units is enough and especially towards them. You can 'game' it by moving towards out of sight then moving away but after testing this actually fits and doesn't really feel gamey but smart and is definitely not always possible and is still restrictive
- Tinker grants 10% throw range (from 20%) - Nerfed
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic grant penetration to shots only (from all sources) - Nerfed on engineer grenadier due to them coming on so strong with their first perks
- Outsiders gain slightly more HP with growth - Makes them a little more challenging as they were dropping too quick, even if you didn't get them that early
- Mind Merge grants 10% of will in health to aliens (from 4% of will) - Buffed
- Shaped Charges grant 30% weapon damage (from +1 damage) - Buffed to scale a little more late game
- Holo Charger alloy cost to 0 (from 30) and credit cost to 20 (from 90) - It's weak enough that it doesn't need a restrictive cost
- Advanced Launcher grants 3 grenades (from 2) - Buffed so its more useful on longer missions
XCOM:
- Rocketeer Ranger replaced with Impact - Gives the Shooter rocketeer a little more umph
- Medic Extra Conditioning swapped with Bring 'Em On and then Bring 'Em On replaced with Close Combat Specialist - Makes the medic have more synergy with rapid fire and being in close range, opens up the CCS + Sent + Opp build again
Aliens:
- Seeker plasma shot now has -50 crit - Helps accommodate for stronger strangle, makes seekers a lot weaker on flanks
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where aliens were doing way less suppressive fire than they should have been
- Fixed a bug where Ram could go through walls
- Fixed a bug where Fragmentation was still granting +2 pen making frag grenades a lot stronger than they should be
- Fixed a bug where Combat Patrol aircraft damage was not done correctly
Version 1.49.28
LW Rebalance v1.49.28 - Genetic Drugs
Strategic:
- Deus Ex always gives both gene mods, and the reduction in cost/time is removed - Removes the micromanaging aspect of the start, buffed
- Born to Fly grants 50 crit (from 40) - Buffed
- Daredevils no longer decreases the cost of combat patrols but instead grants +50 crit to pilots - Tweaked and likely buffed as the discount was of dubious benefit
- Bred Tough base DR to 20 (from 15) - Solely based on Eliwoodno's feedback
Perks:
- Iron Skin Crit resistance to 30 (from 35) - Slight nerf
- Savior grants +2 armor HP - Buff to medic tank and slightly to other medics as well
- Fragmentation to 0 pen (from 2) - Nerf
- Explosive Shred (on Javelins and AP grenades) toned down to triple normal shred (from quadruple) - Was a little too strong
- Tinker strips 25% of armor on acid grenade detonation (from 35%) - Nerfed
- Sapper grants +35% weapon damage to grenades (from +1 damage to all explosives) - Allows it to scale late game, buff
- Double Tap grants 20 aim on the 2nd shot (from 30) - Slight nerf
- Combat Drugs grants +20 aim to units in the smoke - Puts the combat back in the drugs, buffed
- Combat Drugs and Dense smoke grant 2 smokes (from 1) - Buffed
- Mind Merge grants +50% graze (from +35%) - Significant buff for XCOM tanks supported by psionics and sectoids
Equipment:
- AP Grenade damage to 3 (from 4) and shred to triple (from quadruple) - Its good enough with Explosive Shred and the 2 pen
- Aurora armor grants +2 HP - by the time you got it it was outclassed too quickly, psi buff
- Reaper ammo to +4 crit damage (from +3) - Buffed
SHIV Equipment Rename:
- Targeting motor - Anti-Armor Motor
- Adaptice tracking pod - Auto Tracking Module
- Smartshell pod - Burst Fire Module
- Shielding pod - Shielding Module
- Autosentry turret - Retaliatory Sensor
XCOM:
- Rocketeer: Penetrator replaced with Ranger - Slight tweak/nerf to shooter rocketeer to focus a bit more on the rockets
- Rocketeer: Loses slayer with Shock and Awe - Overall Rocketeer and Shogun nerf
- Engineer base aim to 20 (from 10) - Buff to Double Tap build and engineer overall
- Goliath base aim to 15 (from 5) - Buff to Sentry and Double Tap builds
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where UFOs would sometimes gain +40 crit when they shouldn't
- Fixed some ordering on free activations so they occur more appropriately
- Fixed a bug where Special Soldiers were missing some bonuses from certain country starts
- Fixed a bug where Shredder ammo still had -0.6 mob
- Fixed a bug where units in One For All, units with fortified, units strangling, and closed cyberdiscs could be crit by fragmentation
- Typos
Version 1.49.27
LW Rebalance v1.49.27 - Suppressing Bugs
Tactical:
- Suppressive Fire deals 45% of weapon damage (instead of regular shot damage) - It was the only example where it wasn't based on weapon damage and instead regular shot damage, which was really inconsistant. Also acts as a relative buff to bipod.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where start bonuses were being double applied to reward soldiers
- Fixed a bug where Engineers were receiving 1 less aim on level up than intended
- Fixed a bug where Fragmentation was not calculating critical hits accurately
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Blast damage was being estimated incorrectly
Version 1.49.26
LW Rebalance v1.49.26 - Explosive Starts
Starting Bonuses:
- Advanced Cconversion no longer grants 250 meld and no longer grants 5 HP for conversion purposes but instead always grants MECs: +0.6 mobility, +2 HP, +5 aim, +10 will, and +10 base DR - Buffed and made much more consistent
- Survival Training grants +3 HP (from +4) but affects MEC conversion - Simplification and buff
- Per Ardua Ad Astra grants +1 HP, +5 aim, +5 will (from +2, +4, +4) and affects MEC conversion and psionic training - Buffed
- Legacy of Uxmul reduces AL by 0.5% per psionic soldier in your barracks (from 7% flat) and reduces psionic training time by 50% (from +20 will for the purposes of psionic training) - More unique, buffed
- Vigilis grants +13 will (from +20 will) but the will affects psionic training time - Simplification, buffed
- Special Air Service grants 15 aim (from 10) - Buffed
Strategic:
- Firestorm HP to 3000 (from 2500) - Buffed
- Jellied Elerium and Condensed Plasma increases the damage of all explosives by 1/2 (from just rockets) - Buff to grenades/mines, especially on lower damage ones (e.g. AP grenades)
Tactical:
- Shred is now half the effect on regular shots, normal effect on plasma shred specific shots, and double the effect on explosives - tweaks to balance shred across the various sources
- Suppressive Fire deals 45% of regular shot damage (from 40%) - Buff for mid-late game mayhem suppression
Perks:
- Outsider growth stat gains decreased by 65% and chance of growth is always 100% - Makes activated outsiders not gain super accelerated stats, makes inactivated outsiders gain stats at the same level but instead of being random it's a lot more consistent
- Tinker grants 15 shred (from 20) - Slight nerf
Equipment:
- Laser and Pulse LMGs increase the effect of danger zone suppression by 0.5 tiles - Buffed so that they are worthwhile to build
- Shredder Ammo mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Buffed to accommodate weaker shred
Aliens:
- Exalt heavies gain 10 aim - accommodates for saw nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the crits from fragmentation were inaccurate
- Fixed a bug AGAIN where gene mod cut scenes could soft lock strategic games
- Typos
Version 1.49.25
LW Rebalance v1.49.25 - Smol Outsiders and Big Ops
Installation
- Included instructions for how to install LWR on a Steam Deck - thanks meleeman
Strategic:
- Wealthy Benefactor now also doubles the size of council loans and reduces the surcharge by 75% (from 50%) - Buffed
Tactical:
- Corrossion reduces the range of aoe attacks by 20% (from 50%) - makes it less debilitating on specifically throwers/rocketeers
- Shred no longer has a minimum application is is based on % of max HP in damage dealt: Applies Shred equal to the damage dealt as a percent of the target's max HP; which increases subsequent damage the target receives by the amount of Shred. Also sources no longer triple or quintuple shred amounts. - Makes it significant right from the get go and always about damage dealt, less complicated with the 20 minimum, makes it harder to shred larger HP enemies, buff to shredder ammo, prevents 'ticking' large targets to immediately grant 20% more damage
- Suppressive Fire back to 40% damage (from 2 + 25%) - The 2 was too distorting early game, helps later game suppressive damage stay relevant
- Alien def/crit resist growth when near an alien leader is triple AL (from double) - Increases resiliency of non-leader aliens into the mid and late game, helps slow down alpha striking, encourage more non-shot attacks
- Covert Operatives now gain Fast and Furious - Helps them be more than just tower/communication array hackers
Perks:
- New Perk: Fast and Furious (replaces Quick Draw): The next idle-ending non-move action after any blue move costs 0 AP - Buff for covert ops
- Growth occurs 35% of the time while dormant (from 25%) and 100% of the time while active (from 50%) - Accommodates for easier outsiders
- Grenadier grants 30% additional throw range for unit's in One For All - Buff to MEC grenadiers when they have to be stationary
- Snapshot also grants +20 crit - Buffed
- Ready For Anything and Close Combat Specialist no longer grant 50% extra stagger chance - Simplification and they were both strong even without
- Suppression has a 2 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - Nerfed for gunners overall
- Mayhem now reduces the cooldown of suppression by 1 turn - Focuses suppression more into the mayhem build as the one extra instnace of suppressive fire wasn't THAT impactful, especially with new shredder
Equipment:
- Shadow Device no longer affects units in One For All - Makes sense, prevents weird interactions while providing cover
- Kinetic Strike Module (KSM) damage to 18 (from 24) and pen to 9 (from 12) - Toned back in strength in the early/mid game
- Thumper KSM boost damage to 12 (from 8) and pen to 6 (from 4) - Accommodation for above KSM tone back
- Reaper Ammo crit to 0 (from 30) but still grants +3 crit damage - Was a little overtuned with both
- SAW and LMG both receive -10 further aim - Nerfed as gunners were a little strong
- Targeting motor has -0.6 mobility - It's quite a strong item
- AP ammo grants +3 pen (from +2) - Significant buff
- Flak Ammo now ignores the full 30 defense of flying units - Significant buff
- AP grenades deal 4 damage (from 3) - Significant buff, especially since alien grenade foundry project grants them 2 instead of 1 damage
- Weapon Supercooler to -1.3 mobility (from -0.6) - Nerfed as it's quite strong
XCOM:
- Goliath has Brawler replaced with Lock N' Load - Gives the goliath more control over entering and leaving OfA, especially for the double tap build
- SHIV aim back to 55 (from 65) - Tone back in shooting strength, especially with stronger shred in mid-late game, also affects Exalt SHIVs
Aliens:
- Outsider base HP to 4 (from 10) and AL upgrade increases to 2 (from 3) - Makes engaging them first and fast a LOT more reasonable
- Thinmen gain 5 crit with each alien level (from 15) - Accommodates for gaining snapshot and slows down late game crit growth
Bug Fixes:
- Further fixed the North Pole UFO bug to fix games where it already occured
- Fixed a bug where Pursuit would trigger if you tried to move a unit to a location that was occupied and couldn't actually move there
- Prevents some crashes that occured due to the engine being overloaded on really large missions and on normal sized missions with exceptional AI activity
- Fixed some misc bugs
- Fixed a bug where Site Recon mission could end prematurely if you performed certain actions
- Typos
Version 1.49.24
LW Rebalance v1.49.24 - Home Is Where The Heart Is
Strategic:
- Tweaked the AI so it is a LOT less likely to target your home continent in the first 7 months - Hard to fully test but seems like it's working, should really help stop a frustrating aspect of the game where the aliens focus your home continent
- Montly panic gains in the world is reduced to 1 per month passed (from 2) on Easy and Classic difficulties - Gives those players more room on the strategic game
- Aircraft Boosters increase interception time by 50% (from 30%) - Buffed
- Aircraft repair times reduced by 20% - Makes it easier to keep your fleet ready to respond, overall decrease in airgame difficulty
- Fighter HP decreased by 20% - Makes it easier to defend against hunts
Bug Fixes:
- Exalt should show they are out of ammo more readily when you hack an array
- Melee damage sources (Ram, Brute, Brawler) now all are reduced by disorientation and redfog
- Fixed a bug where a text screen would appear during the loadout of base defense missions and lock players out of using the mouse - Thanks to szmind for the fix!
- Fixed a LONG time EW bug where a UFO could be generated that just sat at the North Pole and muck up a campaign - Thanks again to szmind for helping with the fix
- Typos
Version 1.49.23
LW Rebalance v1.49.23 - Evens and Starts
Tactical:
- Mutons may possibly be more likely to show up in other pods - Who knows if this works? =P
- No reinforcements can be leaders anymore - Makes exalt missions a lot more forgiving and the difficulty less variable
Perks:
- Bloodlust does 20% damage (from 10%) - Makes it easier to kill multiple zerkers
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where using an aim or dodge booster would reduce the number of tracking boosters as well
- Fixed a bug where mind controlled units sometimes would have 2 AP
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIV still had damage control without being a level 6 leader
- Fixed a bug where acquiring a genetic modification could sometimes soft lock the strategic game
- Fixed a bug where Flak could still apply on reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where staggering an alien going on overwatch sometimes wouldn't clear their overwatch
- Cadre grants extra XP equal to twice the number of months passed per day (from just the number of months passed per day) - Buffed
- Kiryu-Kai Commander grants extra XP equal to 3x the number of months passed per day (from just the 2x number of months passed per day) - Buffed
- Skunkworks reduces item production time by 70% (from 40%) - Buffed
- Foundry Project Reflex Pistols grants +35% damage to all pistols (from +1) - Buff at plasma level
- Failing an abduction in low panic country will now increase panic by 50 and 100% (from 100 and 200%) - Nerfed, especially so it's not as extreme on NSLW
- Included new minimap feature from szmind's Minimods where the map preview image stays on the loadout screen - QoL
- Labs, Uplinks, Workshops now require staff at the following rate: 20, 40, 80, 120, 160... (and +40 for each thereafter) - Makes it not accelerate too much late game if someone wants to build multiple
Tactical:
- Rocket Scatter increased by ~20% - Slight nerf to rocketeers
- Suppressive Damage is 2 + 25% of a regular shot (from 1 + 25% of a regular shot) - Buffed with more focus on early game strength
- Updated colors of alien leaders as per Admiral Billy's work - Thanks Billy =D
Perks:
- Grenadier grants +1 damage to all grenades/mines as well - Buffed
- Lone wolf grants it's bonus if there are no allies within 4 tiles (from 5) - Buffed and consistency with many other perks
Equipment:
- Grenade Launcher range to 10 (from 8) - Slight buff
- Alien Grenade mobility to -0.6 (from -1.2) - Buffed
- All SMGs gain +10 crit - Buffed
- All Machine Pistols gain +20 crit - Buffed
- LMG takes an extra small equipment slot - Nerfed, accommodates more damaging suppressive fire and puts it more on balance with the SAW
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commander Leaders lose Lock N' Load - didn't do anything
- Exalt Heavy (and elite) has 15 less aim - With Light 'Em Up there are doing too much damage
- Damage Control now occurs on Exalt SHIV lvl 6 leaders (instead of all Exalt SHIVS) - Makes them less resilient in the early/mid game
- Chryssalid defense to 30 (from 20) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Possibly fixed the dead alien occupying a tile bug (again)
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs had 20 more aim than intended
- Fixed a bug where rarely a crashed UFO wouldn't damage the occupants
- Probably fixed a bug where interception times were bugging out
- Typos
Version 1.49.21
LW Rebalance v1.49.21 - Bugs and Damage
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where crit damage was being applied twice
- Fixed a bug where lid leaders were named incorrectly
- Updated Fleet definition to be more clear
Version 1.49.20
LW Rebalance v1.49.20 - Leader Nerfin
Strategic
- For the Sake of Glory reduces injury and Fatigue times by 35% (from 25%) - Buffed
- Combat Patrols now do less damage to aircraft on shorter campaign lengths - Makes sense
Tactical:
- Advanced Flight foundry project increases fuel available to flight capable units by 50% (from double) - Toned back so fuel management is more of an issue, slight nerf to flying units
- Flying for XCOM units sets mobility to 9.3 (from 8.6) - Slight buff
- Units that revealed the enemy with an attack or other non-movement ability will not scamper - Prevents using scamper in an unintended way
- Aliens at 15 HP or more will have a little HP display beside their name - QoL, makes large stacks of HP easier to know exact numbers on
- Staggering a unit attempting to go on overwatch will now prevent that unit from entering overwatch - Slight buff to overwatch builds, somewhat accommodates for the only single OW pull
Perks:
- The volunteer has psi inspire replaced with psi overload which also now has a 25% chance per enemy in sight of the overloaded unit to become enraged and also has a 1 turn cooldown - Buffed, name change, encourages use during engagements
- Fleet now only reduces the close range penalty of shotguns by half - Significant buff to shotguns against lids, cause it still did feel slightly odd they weren't that accurate up close
- Savior no longer grants weapon damage boost - Nerf to medic OW and somewhat medic tank, relative buff to medic support, relative nerf to other supports, relative buff to other builds on other classes that could go support, relative nerf to builds which are shared with other builds on other classes that could go support
- Bloodlust now grants 2 damage and 1.3 mobility per kill (from 1 and 0.6 mobility) but also damages the berserker by 10% of it's current HP - Makes pumping out enough damage to kill multiple that are active a LOT more reasonable
Equipment:
- Seraph/Archangel/Hover SHIV fuel to 8/12/14 (from 12/16/16) - Tone back in amount of fuel on flying armors to make fuel management more important
- Tac Armor loses it's 10 DR but gains +1 HP - Slight buff to make the balance vs tac vest a little more reasonable
Aliens:
- Exalt SHIV gains 14 HP but base DR to 30 (from 65) (Exalt SHIV leaders only gain +10 base DR (from 15 extra), UHIV only gains +20 base DR (from 30 extra) - Buff to Exalt SHIVs, forces more anti-mechanical on those missions, makes pure pen not quite as required, their new base DR will range from 30-50 (instead of 65-95)
- The Uber Ethereal range for initiating psi storms is reduced by 5 tiles - Allows teams to get closer
- Floater level 6 and 9 leaders gain 1 damage (from 4) and 10 aim (from 20) - nerfed
- Thinmen level 6 and 9 leaders gain 3 damage (from 6) and 10 aim (from 20) - nerfed
- Muton level 6 and 9 leaders gain 0 damage (from 4) and 10 aim (from 20) - nerfed
- Cyberdisc level 9 leaders no longer gain light 'em up - Significant nerf
- All Heavy Floater leaders lose 4 damage and 10 aim - nerfed
- Muton Elite level 6 and 9 leaders lose 3 damage and muton Elite level 6 leaders only lose 10 aim - nerfed
- Chryssalid Level 6 and 9 leaders lose 3 and 4 damage, respectively
- Chryssalid leaders no longer gain shadowstep - Nerfed, since OW is supposed to help counter them
- Chryssalid level 3 leaders gain Fortified (instead of level 6 leaders) - Slight tweak
- Chyrssalid Level 1 and 3 leaders lose 5 HP - nerfed
- All Chyrssalids gain 3 HP per AL upgrade (from 4) - nerfed
- All outsider leaders lose 10 aim - nerfed
- Exalt Medic Champions gain Opportunist - OCD consistency with Sentinel
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some weird credits would appear after you passed the game - Thanks for finding it Stefan :)
- Fixed a bug where plasma weapon shred swap that happened a few versions ago didn't actually happen and now does
- Fixed a bug where invulnerability triggering would be off by 1 HP
- Fixed a bug where Aurora armor wasn't granting psychic shielding
- Fixed a bug where sometimes when aliens died you couldn't move to the tile they were on
- Fixed a bug where the damage preview suggested damage could still be 0 on some units it shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where the ethereal would get home ground (i mean, it kinda made sense but nah)
Version 1.49.19
LW Rebalance v1.49.19 - Bugging Melee
Aliens:
- All berserkers have Brawler (isntead of just mongo) - Tones down KSM strength 'slightly' and feels reasonable
Perks:
- Overpower no longer affects melee damage - Simplification
- Close Combat Specialist grants +20 aim to shots made within 4 tiles - Buffed, as a close combat specialist should be
Bug Fixes:
- Possibly fixed a theoretical bug where distortion damage sharing could be considered a Psi Lance attack and jump to mind controlled targets on the enemy team
- Fixed a bug where sectoid commanders still had snapshot and shadowstep
- Fixed a bug where invulnerable wasn't capping damage
- Fixed a bug where Psi Inspire with Distortion was doing 0 damage (instead of 1)
- Fixed a bug where Brawler would not activate sometimes
Version 1.49.18
LW Rebalance v1.49.18 - Exalt Puppets
Strategic:
- Legacy of Uxmul reduces alien level speed by 7% (from 5%) - Buffed
- Jungle Scouts also reduces wound times by 20% - Buffed
- MEC1 and HMEC2 gain +2 HP - Helps in early/mid game survival
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where overwatch sometimes wouldn't work against invulnerable units
- Fixed a bug where you could get no rewards for abductions (instead of a minimum of 1) on longer campaign lengths
- Typos
Version 1.49.17
LW Rebalance v1.49.17 - Crushing Temple Harder
Strategic:
- Losing a country to the aliens decreases incursion strength by 15 (from 10) - Should lower IS over a campaign some more
Tactical:
- Combat Readiness no longer reduce the damage of explosives - It was making explosives too weak as their strength relies on larger numbers and nerfed alpha meant either taking a full on 30% hit or having smaller numbers
- Data Recovery missions are ~1 AL easier - Makes them a little less dangerous
Perks:
- Invulnerable reworked: It now does not start invulnerable but turns invulnerable (capping any extra damage dealt) anytime it loses 40% of it's max HP in a single turn. It also only lasts until the end of the current turn. - Makes OW and reactive fire more useful, makes it possible to engage targets right away
- Fervor now only prevents ALL units from breaking LoS (instead of each separate unit) - Significantly increased flexibility why trying to fight and engage with fervor units, allows you to swap out a vulnerable unit for a tank and many other things that make dealing with fervor a lot more forgiving
Equipment:
- Alien Trophy grants 20% xp - The math on 30% is too strong, and I think people just don't realize how OP the item was at 30%
- Plasma Rifle grants Carapace Shredder and Plasma Shotgun grants Ether Shredder - Swapped, more fitting
Level 9 ALien Leader Nerfs:
- Sectoid Aim to 0 (from 20)
- Flaoter Aim to 0 (from 20) and damage to 0 (from 2) [and level 6 floater aim to 20 (from 35)]
- Thinman aim to 0 (from 20) and damage to 0 (from 8)
- Muton aim to 0 (from 25) [and level 6 muton damage to 4 (from 8)]
- Cyberdisc damage to 0 (from 3) and aim to 0 (from 10)
- Heavy Floater aim to 0 (from 20) and damage to 0 (from 4)
- Muton Elite damage to 0 (from 5) and aim to 0 (from 20)
- Mechtoid damage to 2 (from 4) and aim to 0 (from 20)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the flamethrower was not triggering Fleet
- Fixed a bug where some overlap during soldier loadout could occur - Thanks szmind!
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Blast was showing incorrect damage predictions
- Fixed a bug where fervor halted moves would trigger pursuit in chryssalids
- Typos
Version 1.49.16
LW Rebalance v1.49.16 - Gritty Shadow Shotguns
Strategic:
- Asset / Assault council mission resource caches give half as many resources - Were probably a little too much
Tactical:
- Leader drop-ins only occur for Exalt - Makes council missions less unfair with bad RNG
Perks:
- Channelling a Cluster Bomb now disables the ability to fire reaction shots (include reactive targeting sensors) - Prevents that age old bug that triggering RTS on a sectopod could have them cluster bomb you
- Clarified that Fleet does not prevent close range bonuses vs side arms and that it requires sight to dodge incoming aoe attacks - QoL
- Grit grants 2 HP (from 3) and %DR equal to half of the % total HP lost (from 10 + half of the % total HP lost) - Nerfed, it was a little too strong and warping balance on trees a little
- Will to survive grants 30% DR + 2% per enemy in sight (from 10% + 5% per enemy in sight) - Significant buff, biased towards the lower number of enemies in sight so it's still quite effective with lower numbers (which is the majority of shots taken)
- Shadowstep now clears the unit from OW after movement, no longer grants an additional 0.6 mobility, but instead grants +2 crit damage (from +0) - Focus on the damage aspect
- Hardened grants 50% DR vs shotguns (still 25% normally) - Accommodates stronger shotguns
- Hunter grants 2 ammo (from 1) but increases damage by 30% (from 50%) - Makes it more consistent and a little less reliant on ammo management
Equipment:
- Shotguns gain +20 aim - Buff to make them not so bad vs lids and stronger up close
- Breaching ammo to 0 mobility (from -0.6) - Slight buff to accommodate for shotguns being worse against lids
- Gauss SAW/LMG no longer increase suppressive fire damage - Toned back for balance through the tiers
- Ghost armor gains Repulsor - buffed
- Phalanx armor HP to 6 (from 5) - Buffed, makes it not useless when you get tac rigging and slightly more coveted early game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where abductions would sometimes reward too many scientists and engineers
- Fixed a bug whre recoilless rifle icon color was incorrect
- Fixed a bug where medikit self-healing predicted amounts were sometimes incorrect
- Fixed a bug where the wrong popup occurred sometimes when throwing acid grenades that vanilla code would have not work
- Fixed a bug where the DZ indicator would pick up dead units
- Fixed a bug on OW popups not showing correct number of shots remaining
- Fixed a bug whre disorient was stacking multiple times and was only reducing aim by 50 (should be 60)
- Fixed a bug where unit's recovering from mind control could still trigger XCOM reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where the injury popup would not always occur
- Fixed a bug where plasma dragon was still granting 2 damage to suppressive fire (should be 1)
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would stay invulnerable for more than 1 turn and some would start without invuln
- Typos
Version 1.49.15
LW Rebalance v1.49.15 - Pursuing Control
Strategic:
- Plasma Weapons require 30 more engineers and double build times - Slows down the plasma spike at end game so it's not so sudden, makes later game engineers more important, doesn't change resource requirement though as that can be too restrictive based on campaign progress
- Firestorm HP further reduced to 2500 (from 3500) - Makes it less durable in the air game, and multiple more valuable for more air game health, increase in late game air difficulty, slight increase in late game panic generation
Tactical:
- Suppressive Fire applies shred at 3x the damage (from 5x the damage) - Toned back for balance on the gunner tree
- Your units will no longer fire reaction shots or perform countercharge against targets from their own team (if mind controlled) - QoL, makes sense, you wouldn't do it to your own units
Perks:
- Fleet no longer grants defense but instead grants the unit to use a quarter of it's mobility to dodge any incoming area of effect attacks. It also removes the close range bonus against this unit and long rifles (sniper/strike/arc) lose 50 aim. - Buffed new feature on chryssalids, accommodated by mobility and damage nerfs
- New Perk: Pursuit: This unit will chase any unit that moves away from it (maximum 1 pursuit move per XCOM move) - New feature on chryssalids, accommodated by mobility and damage nerfs
- Acidic only affects units within 1.5 tiles (from 2.5 tiles) - Decrease in general acid spread so it's less oppressive, especially with new Fleet/Pursuit
- Kinetic Blast now deals Will/15 damage (from clamp((will-50)/5, 1, 5)) - More simple, allows it to scale to encourage higher wills
- Mind Control now lasts for 1 turn after mind control is broken, and then the recovered target is disorientated - Buffed
- Mind Control and Psychic Storm can now be broken with panic - QoL, makes sense
- Being Mind Controlled now is considered non-idle for the purposes of other abilities - Makes mind controlled targets less likely to do things like countercharge, rfa, etc.
Equipment:
- Blaster Launcher range to 16 (from 14) but requires 2 AP to fire - Tweak/nerf. The ability to move and fire was really strong and not really the design that fits a rocketeer. This should provide similar design while being more of a backline unit.
- Conduit grants a will/3 % chance (max 50%) for a 0AP action (from 25%) - Slight nerf, tweak to make it more effected by will (psi inspire, will+ items) and thus make it feel more psionic like
- Archangel and Seraph armor credit cost to 1200 and 600 (from 900 and 300) - Flying is stronk
- Aurora armor now grants +2 damage to mind fray, countercharge, and kinetic blast (from just countercharge) - Buffed
- Vortex armor now grants +3 damage to mind fray, countercharge, and kinetic blast (from just +2 damage to countercharge) - Buffed
- Advanced Launcher number of grenades to 2 (from 4) - Nerfed, the 40% more damage and extra range was easily strong enough, encourages using builds that supplement ammo more
XCOM:
- Sniper perk Opportunist replaced with Shadowstep - Buff to mobile strike rifle sniper, removal/nerf to overwatch sniper as it was too strong with double mayhem and too focused on just late game enhmeta/ifire builds
Aliens:
- Mobility growth on zombies, berserkers, and chryssalids to 0 (from 1-4) - Nerf so that you don't have to stand so far away to kite them
- Berserker HP growth to 8 (from 6) per AL upgrade - Accommodates for mobility loss
- Chyrssalid base damage to 3 (from 5) and damage growth to 0.5 per AL upgrade (from 1) - Overall significantly less damage
- Chryssalids gain the perk: Pursuit, mobility to 10.6 (from 12), base HP to 8 (from 9), base defense to 20 (from 0) - accommodates for fleet losing defense, slightly less hp to make them easier to take down
- Chyrssalid leaders no longer gain awareness but gain 10 HP (from 5) - Makes them easier to hit, and was stacking too much otherwise, also didn't make sense (or feel right) that the larger leaders were more evasive
- Sectoid Commander HP to 8 (from 12) and mobility to 8 (from 9.3) - Helps accommodate for new stronger mind control by making them easier to kill and less able to maneuver
- Cyberdisc mobility to 8 (from 9.3) - Makes them less mobile so a little easier to deal with in the mid game
Leader Renames:
- Greater Hive Queen renamed to Hive Empress - For more kool factor
- Outsider Champion renamed to Gladius - For more kool factor
- Great Reticulan renamed to Reticuluan Commander - For more kool factor
- Floater and Heavy Floater Squad Leaders renamed to Floater and Heavy Floater Aces - For more kool factor
- Muton Squad Leader renamed to Muton Optio - For more kool factor
Bug Fixes:
- Improved the code that fixes the LW1.0 bug where unit's stay permanently mind controlled to act much quicker and not always take a turn or 2 to kick in
- Fixed a long time bug where RTS would 'sometimes' trigger when firing a rocket - Yay, no more cluster bomb retailiations on rockets =P
- Fixed a bug (really this time) where RTS was still not triggering correctly due to miscalculated low aim
- Fixed a bug where suppression was only using 1 ammo after firing (instead of 2)
- Fixed a bug where exalt elite medics couldn't get one of their perks
- Fixed a bug where some alien leaders had too much will
- Fixed a bug where ethereals could sometimes use insentient crush on their allies
- Fixed a rare bug where the Genelabs would act as if no genetic modifications were avaialble to soldiers - Thanks to szmind for figuring out what was wrong and how to fix it
- Mind Control will no longer automatically injury targets sometimes
- Typos
Version 1.49.14
LW Rebalance v1.49.14 - Unbuggered
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where level 1 floater leaders still had deflection shield (it should be just level 3)
- Fixed a bug where UFO were growing 1 level too early
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm was permanent disorientation
- Typos
Version 1.49.13
LW Rebalance v1.49.13 - Retarded Fragseye
Strategy:
- Starting base excavations are more standardized - Helps discourage feeling like you need to reroll
- You are now unable to use aircraft boosters before the timer starts - Prevents a bug from occuring, QoL, thanks to szmind for help with the code
- Alien Levels of 10 or higher are now retarded: take twice as much time/research for aliens to progress to the next level - Slows down late game AL progression
Tactical:
- Alien leader level chances at AL 2 are 50% of normal - Provides a slower ramp up
Perks:
- Fragmentation is now: explosives gain +1 penetration and have a 100% chance to critically hit (dealing 150% damage). If the target is protected by cover or hardened, the chance is 50% - Buffed as the first version was a little lack luster against both fliers and hardened targets
- Bullseye no longer grants additional damage vs overwatch targets (only aim and crit) - The condition that a unit is on OW is actually really common with the new reveal mechanics so the damage was likely overkill, also part of the goal was balance on the tree and the HnR nerf also was a relative buff so this didn't need to be so strong
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Level 1 Sectoid leaders still had low profile (it should be level 3+)
- Fixed a bug where Heavy Floaters still had CST
- Fixed a bug where Mortar Barrage would fail to fire
- Fixed a bug where the Satellite uplink required engineers was incorrect
- Hopefully fixed a bug where grapple would not act appropriately
- Fixed a bug where psi storm would remove concussino grenade charges from units
Version 1.49.12
LW Rebalance v1.49.12 - Grappling with Bugs
Strategic:
- The number of countries you have before the Temple Ship Assault mission no longer grants your soldiers bonus stats or repairs your equipment - It felt really odd and didn't really serve much as far as gameplay goes
- Late game assault missions now reward the player with caches of resources - Makes them feel more rewarding
Tactical:
- Grapple now costs 0 AP (from 1 AP) and is single use only - Significant buff to the ability which needed to see more use anyway
Perks:
- Psi Inspire now grants 50 will (from 30) - Makes it more significant for protection against things like psi attack and psi storm, as well as makes it much stronger at turning on offensive psionic abilities
- Run and Gun no longer gains a damage bonus and crit bonus to 30 (from 35) - Nerfed for balance on the assault tree, it was relatively buffed with the mobility nerfs
- Fervor now only occurs on Brutal and Impossible difficulties - QoL
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commanders will far less try to hide when they are mind controlling a unit - It's not strategically smart, but the gameplay is just too "not fun" when they do this and do it effectively
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a game breaking bug where generating an abduction mission was causing a CTD
- Fixed a bug where exposed status wasn't working correctly for explosive crits
- Included a warning to not use aircraft boosters before the engagement timer starts (it's all I've got right now)
Version 1.49.11
LW Rebalance v1.49.11 - Crash Be Gone
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD that occured whenever an attack that would crit with low damage occured
- Removed some code that may have been causing a CTD when shooting
- Fixed a bug where Muton Squad Leaders had CCS and they shouldn't have
Version 1.49.10
LW Rebalance v1.49.10 - Critical Changes
Strategic:
- The number of eng/sci required for workshop/labs increased to 20 (from 15) - makes the building more prolonged and eng/sci more valuable later game
- The number of eng/sci required for additional workshops/labs/uplinks now doubles after each one built (from just increasing by 20 each time) - Makes eng/sci more valuable later game, makes later game more challenging
- Increased the rate of gain of eng/sci on council requests - Somewhat accommodates for above changes
Tactical:
- Critical hits are now a target modifier on damage and directly affect damage dealt instead of being apart of travel damage - Makes more intuitive sense, just that vanilla code had it the other way and it was complex to turn it around
- When barrel damage is randomized, critical hits cause any randomizing down to just yield the barrel damage instead - Similar to previous situation where critical hits would not be too low but this now makes all critical hits stronger
Perks:
- Fragmentation now lets all explosives 'crit' (dealing 150% damage) and grants 50 explosive crit (being exposed also grants +50 explosive crit) - Buff for balance on the trees, makes the perk a lot more predictable
- Bring 'Em On now also works for grenades and secondary weapons - Buff and options for various grenade using classes
- Killer Instinct increase the crit of all shots (from just primary weapon shots) and also works on explosives - Buffed and more versatile
- Bullseye Grants +30 aim/crit/weapon damage against targets on overwatch (from +20 of each) - Significant buff
- Leadership (from alien leaders) grants non-leaders defense and crit resist equal to the ALx2 (from just defense) - Increase in crit resistance in general, accommodates for stronger crits
- Hit and Run no longer grants +35% weapon damage but instead grants 0.6 mobility - Slight nerf, makes the perk more about mobility than high damage, works better with SMGs
Equipment:
- Strike Rifle mobility to 0 (from +0.6) - Was a little too stacked, pushed the scout too strongly to use a strike rifle
Aliens:
- Mutons start with 16 HP (from 20) but gain 5 HP per AL upgrade (from 4) - Makes them easier early game when they can feel too oppressive
Bug Fixes:
- Maybe fixed a bug where acid clouds would disappear
- Fixed a bug where injury status would sometimes not occur upon taking base HP damage
- Fixed a bug where abduction scientist and engineer rewards would be too random and too large
- Fixed a bug where impact wasn't increases damage or pen of precision shot
Version 1.49.09
LW Rebalance v1.49.09 - Crushing Temple
Strategic:
- Retraining a soldier now takes 10 days + 5 days per rank of fatigue (from 10 + 3) - Makes it a little more challenging to respec soldiers to fit game stage
- Training to become psionic has a base train time of 20 days (from 15) - Puts a little more pressure on choosing higher will soldiers and accommodating training
- When an Alien Level changes the popup warning about it occurs immediately (instead of each day) - QoL
Air Game:
- Fighter HP to 600 (from 800) but growth to 100% per AL (from 50%) - Makes them more durable later (~35% more hp at AL 10)
- Credit and alloy reward for shooting down UFOs decreased by around 50% - Makes farming alien UFOs less rewarding, and dominating the air game less of a strategic difference from campaigns where you don't, and a little less snowbally
Tactical:
- Abduction missions all have 1 less enemy - Makes them sligthly easier
- All missions have a 2% chance per incursion strength above 100 to have an additional pod (not additional aliens though) - Makes IS more significant and impactful, helps accommodate for number capping of # of aliens with high IS at 8 per pod
- Explosives (Concussive blast) no longer disable RTS - Buff to RTS, a bit of game simplification
- Pod Leader Aliens (Cyberdiscs, Mechtoids, Sectoid Commanders, Sectopods, Ethereals) occur at half the rate of normal leaders - Prevents all such aliens from being leaders
Perks:
- Insentient Crush no longer scales with difficulty (it's always 40%) - Wasn't really that necessary and SHIVs are still good with the restriction
- Mechanic no longer heals mechanical units at the end of each turn but instead heals any mechanical unit that takes damage that is within 1.5 tiles for 30% of the damage taken and the corrossion removal requires within 1.5 tiles (from 4 tiles) - The 1 HP heal at the end of the turn was borderline useless and the 4 tile distance just looked weird half the time, also should be more reasonable with OfA absorbing explosive shots
- Neural Damping now grants 50% resistance to overpower - Buff for balance on the tree
- Iron Skin grants 35 crit resistance (from 50) - Slight nerf for balance on the tree
- Will to Survive grants 10% + 5% DR (from 15 + 5%) - Slight Further nerf
- Fervor now allows movement outside of LoS as long as a single unit with Fervor still has vision - Multiple Fervors were too punishing otherwise
Equipment:
- Vortex armor grants +15 damage to Rift (from +10) - Buffed, helps deal with ethereal in last room and sectoid commander in first
- Electric weapons (Stun Rifle, Arc Rifle, Arc Pistol) renamed to Arc weapons - Clarity, QoL
- Ceramic Plating HP to 2 (from 3) - Slight nerf due to free item
- Alloy Carbide Plating HP to 3 (from 4) - The corrosion resistance is really strong on it's own
XCOM:
- The volunteer now also learns Insentient Crush - Makes the temple mission more doable (especially first room), encourages volunteer use
- SHIV base aim to 65 (from 55) - Buff to offensive power of all SHIVs
Aliens:
- Muton Elite Level 3 Leaders no longer exist (they are level 1/5/9 like others now) - Consistency
- Renamed Sectoid Commander leaders to more fitting names - QoL
- Ethereals gain 4 HP and Ethereal leaders lose 4 HP - Shifts more durability to the regular ethereals
- Sectoid Low Profile and the 5HP moved from Level 1 leaders to level 3 leaders - makes early leaders more reasonable
- Floater Deflection Shield and the 2 dmg, and the 5HP moved from Level 1 leaders to level 3 leaders - makes early leaders more reasonable
- Muton Close Combat Specialist and the 5HP moved from Level 1 leaders to level 3 leaders - makes early leaders more reasonable
- Heavy Floater Critical System Target is removed from all heavy floaters to only level 5 leaders - Makes groups of heavy floaters are lot more reasonable to tank with SHIV/MECs
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where players who did not download the charskin optional file would experience weird colors of some units - Thanks szmind! =D
- Fixed a bug where aliens were sometimes being triggered as having seen XCOM when they shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where clearing inventory on a soldier with 3 slots could sometimes still give them 3 slots with default armors even with tac rigging not researched
- Fixed a bug where alloy rewards from shooting down UFOs was not being properly randomized
- Fixed a bug where on reveal, some sectopods would be levitating
- Fixed a bug where Muton grenades were supposed to do lower damage (due to having Mayhem) but were accidentally doing full damage
- Typos
Version 1.49.08
LW Rebalance v1.49.08 - Psychic Drizzle
Perks:
- Range on Psychic Storm use reduced significantly - Makes it feel a lot less oppressive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where large missions (e.g. Alien Base Assaults) could overload the game engine and cause CTDs
- Typos
Version 1.49.07
LW Rebalance v1.49.07 - Leader Shenanigans
Strategic:
- Chance for an alien leader changed to [2/3/4/5 * (AL + 10)] instead of [5/10/15/20 x Alien Level] - Makes it not such a quick spike in difficulty
- Alien leader level now randomized twice - Makes lower leader levels weighted to be more common
- Terror missions increase leader level by +2 (from +1) - Accommodates for new weighted leader level formula
Tactical:
- Killing an alien leader provides 40xp (from 70xp) - Accommodates for increased frequency of leaders from previous patch
Perks:
- Will to Survive grants 15% DR + 5% DR per alien in sight (from 20% + 5%) - The ability to make all cover act as full cover is a huge increase in tanking that was probably a little overdone (e.g. from partial to heavy is the equivalent of an extra 30% DR)
Alien Tweaks:
- Sectoid Level 3 lose VPT and gain +3 damage
- Sectoid Level 9 lose Adv Perception and gains repulsor
- Floater level 1 loses impact
- Floater level 6 loses holo rounds and executioner and gains +2 damage and +10 aim
- Floater Level 9 lose Adv Perception and gains repulsor
- Thinman level 6 loses aggression, advanced perception, and sharpshooter and gains +2 damage and +10 aim
- Thinman level 9 loses VPT and impact, and gains +3 damage
- Muton level 3 loses executioner and gains 5 aim
- Muton level 6 loses tandem warheads, aggression, and VPT and gains +6 damage
- Muton level 9 gains Repulsor
- Cyberdisc level 9 loses tandem warheads
- Heavy Floater level 1 lose holo rounds and advanced perception but gain +2 damage and +5 HP
- Heavy Floater level 5 lose executioner but gain +5 aim
- Heavy Floater level 9 lose tandem warheads and mayhem
- Muton Elite level 3 lose aggression, executioner, VPT, and bring em on but gain +6 damage and +10 aim
- Muton Elite level 5 leaders gain neural dampening
- Muton Elite level 8 leaders no longer exist
- Muton Elite level 9 leaders gain iron skin
- Sectoid Commanders lose Snapshot and Shadowstep - They were strong enough without it, buff to mid game OW builds
- Sectopod level 1 gain kinetic Dampening
- Mechtoid level 1 gain kinetic dampening and +5 HP and +2 damage
- Seeker level 1 gain +4 damage
- Seeker level 3 gain +6 HP
- Seeker level 6 gain +5 HP and +2 damage
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where tracker was revealing sneaking aliens at a larger range than intended
- Fixed a bug where SHIVs only had 3 equipment slots (They should have 4)
- Fixed a bug where the visual indicator was sometimes off on aliens (thanks szmind)
- Sandhurst reduces mission fatigue and missions required to unlock Officer Training School projects both by 30% (from 25%) - Buffed
- Aim Boosters and Dodge Boosters now also increase interception engagement time by 30% - Buffed
- Firestorm HP to 3500 (from 6000) - They were way too tanky, especially with T4 armor
- Destroyer (UFO) HP to 1200/1500 (from 1500/2000) - Nerf in overall destroyer HP making them a little easier to deal with
Tactical:
- Alien leader occurance occurs at the following rate: 5/10/15/20% per alien level (from 20/25/30/35 + 2x the Alien Level) - Makes all pods likely to have leaders late on
- Alien leader level is determined by 1 + Rand(AL/2 + Bonuses) instead of 1 + Rand(AL / 2) + Bonuses - Makes lower level leaders more prevalent, accommodates for increased leaders
- Fixed a bug where zombie skin colors were too strongly bias towards one specific color, it's more random now - QoL
- Soldiers on the first mission will equip tac vests if they are slower - Increases the mobility on the first mission where players can't choose their loadouts
- Suppressive Fire damage to 1 + 25% (from 35%) - Makes it stronger early game, but weaker later game
- All exalt missions have slightly less numbers of exalt - Tones it down to make up for stronger perks
- Combat Readiness reduces the damage of area explosives by 30% (from 50%) - Was too effective at nullifying explosives
- Units will have a little * beside their DR for each amount of pen resist that they have - QoL
Perks:
- One For All now grants 40% DR (from 30%) and creates a barrier that prevents enemy explosive shots that hit this unit from damaging nearby units - Boost in effectiveness -- as it takes a turn and explosives shots make it harder to use cover so it was falling off in effectiveness
- Kinetic Dampening grants 1 penetration resistance (from 0) and 5% DR per tile further than 10 (from 4%) - Buffed
- Hunter back to 50% base damage (from 70%) - With crit and 200% damage it was a little too strong, I think people told me this but I had some poor tests
- Tracker now reveals hidden units within 4 tiles (from 6) - Makes it a little less effective, relative buff to seekers
Equipment:
- Phalanx, Aurora, and Vortex armor now grants 3 item slots (from 2) but does not upgrade with tactical rigging - Makes the armor choices more unique, buff to early psionic armors, gives early game supports more options for small items
- Phalanx armor HP to 5 (from 6), DR to 10 (from 15), and costs 25 alloys (from 10) - Accommodates for extra slot
- Aurora armor HP to 6 (from 7) and mobility to 0.6 (from 1.3) - Accommodates for extra slot and kinetic dampening buff
- Vortex armor meld cost to 350 (from 200) and elerium cost to 120 (from 40) - Makes it harder to produce in multiples due to kinetic dampening buff
- Tac Armor mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Buff to early game xcom
- Tac Vest HP to 4 (from 3) - Buff to early game xcom
- Carapace armor grants 10 HP (from 9) - Slight buff for balance with other armors
- Kestrel armor grants 8 HP (from 7) - Slight buff for balance with other armors
- Arc Rifle bonus aim vs mechanical units to 35 (from 50) - Was still quite strong and was pushing too many other options out of viability due to it's strength
- Ghost Armor HP to 12 (from 9) - Buffed, the lack of slot is quite restrictive
XCOM:
- Goliath repair servos swapped with Kinetic Dampening - More fitting with the kinetic dampening buff, overall buff to Goliath
Aliens:
- All Exalt units have Lock N' Load (from just operatives) - Makes the relays less overall effective and those missions less about hitting the relays
- Cyberdiscs gain 2 damage per AL (from 3) and base damage to 9 (from 10) - Slight decrease in their strength
- Heavy Floaters lose aggression - Helps tone down their damage so they are a little less oppressive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where invulnerability would drop too soon on Champions
- Maybe fixed a bug where acid visuals would disappear sometimes
- Fixed a bug where partial cover was only granting 25% DR (should be 30%)
- Fixed a bug where abductions were giving less scientists and engineers than intended
- Fixed a bug where Reactive Targeting Sensors sometimes wouldn't fire when it should if the Goliath's aim was low
Version 1.49.05
LW Rebalance v1.49.05 - Fly Swatta
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where pod sizes and aliens numbers on missions were messed up
- Fixed a bug where scout concealment use was crashing the game
Version 1.49.04
LW Rebalance v1.49.04 - Snail Mode
Colored Aliens:
- Updated szmind's colored alien skins (which now includes zombies and exalt) - Thanks so much to szmind for the amazing work on this code and to Admiral Billy for the default colors
Strategic:
- Interceptor/Firestorm speed lowered to 20/30 (from 25/35) - Decreases interception time slightly making aggressive stances a little more beneficial, increases the importance interception time foundy projects
- Increased abduction rewards, especially on higher abduction densities - Makes it feel more fair and reasonable to do harder abductions
Foundry Balance:
- UFO Tracking now increases interception times by 20% - Buffed
- Aircraft Booster Foundry project weapon fragment cost to 10 (from 150) - Makes it a lot more reasonable to get boosters online
- Cooling Coils alloy cost to 320 (from 490) - Makes it a more affordable
- Armored Fights credit cost to 250 (from 550) - Same as above
- Shaped Armor credit cost to 20 (from 200) - Same as above
- Condensed Plasma fragment cost to 160 (from 80) - Same as above
- Elerium Afterburners requires 26 UFO Power Sources (from 4) - Same as above, slows down the time when it comes online
- UFO Countermeasures requires 12 UFO Computers (from 4) - Slows down the time when it comes online
- Improved Avionics alloy cost to 300 (from 160) - Same as above, makes it more challening on alloys when you need alloys most
- Heavy Shells alloy cost to 480 (from 220) - It's really strong and is better balanced as a late game alloy sink
- Jellied Elerium fragment cost to 160 (from 70) - Makes it harder to acquire early as a rush on this can be a little abusive strong
Tactical:
- Sometimes the base game causes units to get 'stuck' in locations that are not able for the AI to use, I added new code that checks for single enemy units that might be stuck for multiple turns and pulls them out of such bad locations - QoL
- Tweaked the AI to use globals a little less often, especially when a lot of them are active - QoL
- Combat Readiness now reduces the damage of any area explosive attack by 50% - Buff to the effectiveness of CR vs area explosives -- helps tone down alpha striking
- F1 info will now display base HP - QoL
- F1 info will now alter the damage of a unit if it has been reduced (e.g. melee damage being reduced by red fog) - QoL
- Alien pods will not overwatch on the first turn of a mission - QoL
- Danger Zone now shows # of targets for regulary suppression as well as mayhem suppression - QoL
Perks:
- Run and Gun damage and crit to 35 (from 50) - was a little too strong at 50 outshining other assault builds
- Psi Blast renamed to Kinetic Blast - makes more sense and is more descriptive
- Muscle Fiber Density no longer grants +0.6 mobility - Toned back in strength as it's quite strong just as is
- Adaptive Bone Marrow grants 35% reduce injury time (from 50%) - Balance on the tree
- Opportunist grants +15 aim (from +10 aim) - Slight increase in strength of biologic overwatch
- Disabling Shot aim malus to -40 (from -20) - It's quite strong at removing a threat for at turn (or more), balance on the tree
- Grenadier no longer grants +1 damage to grenades - It's strong enough without the extra damage
- Collateral Damage to 15% weapon damage per ammo (from 20%) - It was making the Shogun a little too strong
- Bullseye grants +20% weapon damage against targets on overwatch as well - Helps it stay more relevant late game
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle ammo to 1 (from 2) - Makes it harder to use on multishot classes, makes elerium batteries foundry project more impactful
- All boosters (for aircraft) have their credit cost cut by 80% - Makes it more just about the corpses
- All XCOM armors and MEC Suits lose 0.6 mobility (except for the Tac Vest) - Nerf in overall mobility
- All SHIVS lose 0.6 mobility - Nerf in overall mobility
- Breaching Ammo mobility to -0.6 (from 0) - Slight nerf
- Prediction Computer grants +10 aim (from +20) - Tone back on late game overwatch strength
- Psi Conduit grants 25% chance for free action to cost 0 AP (from 30%) - It's strong, slight nerf
- Proximity Sensor no longer grants 5 def - Makes it useful on tanks too
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs will no longer close after shooting if they took damage while shooting - QoL, makes sense
- The following aliens lose 0.6 mobility: Floaters, Heavy Floaters, Thinmen, Mutons, Drones - Helps accommodate for xcom mobility loss
- Berserkers gain 1.3 mobility - Helps them be more of a threat and cause more damage before they die
- Outsider mobility to 6 (from 6.6), damage to 4 (from 6), and HP to 10 (from 12) - Further nerfed to encourage earlier engagement
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where high incursion strengths were sometimes not increasing alien count
- Fixed a bug where Mateo Garcia started at PFC (he should start at SPEC)
- Fixed a bug where all pulse weapons accidentally had +0.6 mobility
- Fixed a slight discrepency where Ram would sometimes say it would trigger but wouldn't actually trigger
- Typos
Version 1.49.03
LW Rebalance v1.49.03 - Terror No More
Strategic:
- Added szmind's new code that shows more small equipment slots on each character in the mission loadout screen - QoL, thanks szmind! =D
- Terror missions have one less pod - Makes them more manageable
- We have ways reduces autopsy and interrogation times by 95% (from 85%) - Vahlen is quite effective
- Second wave option "Super Soldiers" now allows genetically modified and psionic soldiers also be officers - Thanks to pathologic for helping with the code
- Newfoundland should now occur, on average, occur 1.5 months later than previously - It's a really difficult mission and lids are easier to deal with later in the game
- Deus Ex reduces the costs and time of gene mods by 50% - Buffed, allows players to take more advantage of the extra chance for double mods
- Starting country panic is now capped at 35 panic in your home continent - Should strongly discourage aliens from attacking there
- Jai Jawan now increases aircraft fire rate by 35% (from 25%) - Significant buff
- Jai Vidwan now starts with 300 weapon fragments (from 150) - Significant buff
- Cadre gives xp equal to the number of months passed (instead of 1 + number of months passed) - Minor nerf
- Kiryu-Kai Commander gives xp equal to twice the number of months that passed (from 3 + number of months passed) - Significant Buff
- Ancient Artifacts starts with 300 meld (from 200) - Significant buff
- Born to Fly also grants +40 crit - Significant buff
- Research Focus starts with 100 elerium (from 200) and 10 scientists (from 20) - Toned back a little as the econ is strong as well
- Ring of Fire rebuffed to 250 per thermogenerator - Despite the potential being huge late game, the pain early game to bring it on is really debilitating and people aren't doing well with the start so I think the original nerf may have been unwarranted
Tactical:
- Covert Op missions (extraction and data recovery) require the towers to be deactivated before calling in big sky - Tactical Retreat could make them a little too easy
- Prepared will no longer have a unit enter overwatch on easy or classic, and will have up to 2 units enter overwatch on impossible - Tweak to accommodate for difficulties, also further balance the difference in difficulty between single and multiple pod activations (due to prepared being so much weaker)
- Perseverance grants 25% reduction of fatigue and injury time on MECs (from 50%) - Decreases the effeect so that getting the perk doesn't push them so much into getting chopped
- Sapper gratns a 20% range increase (from 30%) - Nerfed as with the +1 damage it's quite strong
- Bullseye grants 20 aim AND crit against targets on OW (from just 20 aim) - Slight buff
- Snapshot no longer grants an additional chance for OW to trigger - The 20% chance for 0 AP actions and avoiding overwatch is strong enough, was a little overkill on infantry due to enh meta/ inner fire
- Savior now grants +35% weapon damage to targets affected by red fog (from +20 aim) - Tweak to be more effective against targets where they already have high aim
Equipment:
- HE Grenade radius to 2 (from 2.5) - it didn't need the extra range as it's quite a good grenade
- Flak ammo no longer works on reaction shots - wasn't intended and had other unintended consequences
- MEC1 has 1 small equipment slot (from 2) - slight nerf as it's quite good now
- Strike Rifles grant +10 aim to reaction shots (from +20 aim) - Slight tone back for balance vs sniper rifle and decrease in scout OW strength
- Sawed-off shotgun crit to 0 (from 40) - It was too competitive vs other options making building many other side arms not a reasonable option
- Psi Defender grants 1 pen resistance (from 2) - It was too strong at negating pen on low damage units
- Aurora/Vortex armor grants +20 will (from 5/10) - Buffed
XCOM:
- Engineer base aim to 10 (from 5) - Slight buff to the shooter engineer
- Infantry has Snapshot and Impact swapped - Provides earlier access to reaction shot avoidance while making the GSGT pick more balanced
Aliens:
- Outsider aim to 55 (from 65) and base HP to 12 (from 14) - Makes attacking them earlier a little more reasonable
- Sectopod and Ethereal level ups occur 1 level later - Fix for moving their initial appearance later
- Sectopods base damage to 16 (from 12) and aim to 100 (from 90) - Accommodates for later levels and missing a level now, focuses a little more on damage
- Cyberdisc base damage to 10 (from 12) - Slight nerf to make them a little less lethal
- Mecthoid base damage to 10 (from 8) - Slight buff to make them more lethal
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a really annoying bug where the combat drugs graphic would not dissipate when the effect did
- Fixed a bug where coloring a dead alien leader would sometimes cause it to stand up and look... not dead (though the dead units will lose their color which kinda sucks) =P
- Fixed a bug where sometimes not all blueshirts would get upgraded perks during the base defense
- Fixed a bug where retiring a soldier would not add any missions to the retired staff in the OTS
- Fixed a bug where blueshirts would sometimes enter with the injured debuff (despite not being injured)
- Fixed a bug where overwatch would sometimes last on units that moved
- Maybe fixed a bug where xcom should sometimes give a vocal warning about incoming reinforcements on exalt covert op extraction missions
- Maybe fixed a rare bug where SHIVs could be lost when perform an evacuation or tactical retreat with less than 2 AP
- Typos/formatting
Version 1.49.02
LW Rebalance v1.49.02 - Moar Rainbow!
Strategic:
- Ring of Fire credit bonus per thermo to 200 (from 210) - Slight further nerf to bring it more inline with other top economic producers
- Public Heroes grants 2x rewards (from 3x) and an extra soldier to take on the skyranger for all abduction missions - Buffed
- Global Networking gives 5% additional funding (from 7%) and also grants an additional soldier on exalt covert operative extraction and data recovery missions - Buffed
Tactical:
- Aliens leaders all have their own specific colors - thanks to admiral billy for creating the list (and again szmind for the amazing code and files that allow us to do this)
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle damage and pen to 8 (from 9) - Was a little overdone at 9, especially with the 50 aim
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppressing an enemy would sometimes stop other reaction shots from affecting them
- Fixed a bug where invulnerable wouldn't always clear correctly from champions
- Fixed a bug where Sapper was only granting grenades +1 damage (instead of all explosives)
- Fixed a bug where mines were not getting boosted by grenadier or sapper
Version 1.49.01
LW Rebalance v1.49.01 - Bugs and Temple
Downloads:
- Separated the characters skins from the main LWR download so that players don't have to download them for each update - QoL
Strategic:
- Temple Ship soldiers allowed are 8/9/10/11 (based on difficulty) - Makes easier difficulties have an easier time with the mission
Tactical: - Tactical Retreats do not work on DLC missions and only on bomb missions after the bomb is defused - Helps prevent bugs and makes it feel better
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an "AP Shred" system message from popping up
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire could stagger (only standard shots should)
- Fixed a bug where the skin for sectoid commanders was incorrect (thanks szmind and admiral billy)
- Fixed a bug whre Brawler was still granting graze
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness was not showing up for aliens
- Fixed a bug where the engine could get overloaded at the start of a turn and cause a CTD
- Typos
Version 1.49.00
LW Rebalance v1.49.00 - Taste the Rainbow
New Looking Aliens:
- Aliens leaders are now differently colored (e.g. Thinmen leader wear white suits) - Thanks to szmind for his many many hours to finally get this working! =D
Start Country Balances:
- Uralvagonzavod grants SHIVs +15 base DR (from +10) - Slight buff
- Ring of Fire thermogenerators produce 210 credits and their location is standardized to the bottom of the 2nd and 5th columns of the base - Slight nerf, stops rerolling
- Roscosmos reduces satellite costs by 50% (from 70%) - Balance in start picks
- Advanced Conversion starts with 200 meld and acts as if soldiers have +5 HP (from +3) - Large Buff
- Ancient Artificats starts with 200 meld (from 100) - Buffed
- Baumeister starts with 3 thermo generators (from fussion) and facility upkeep maintenance are reduced by 35% - Significant buff
- Per Ardua Ad Astra grants soldiers acquired later in the campaign gain double the bonus attributes for each month passed - Buffed
- Sandhurst also allows for a 9th unit to join Base Assaults (alien base, exalt base, temple) - Buffed
- Special Air Service grants 10 aim (from 8) - Buffed
- Deus Ex starts with 0 meld (from 100) and no longer reduces gene mod time and cost (from a 90% reduction) but acquiring any gene mod has a 50% chance to grant the opposing gene mod as well (can be repeated until all are aquired) - Buffed, more true to Deux Ex Machina
- For the Sake of Glory reduces injury/fatigue by 25% (from 20%) - Buffed
- Special Warfare School no longer grants bonus xp but instead starts with all 3 foundry pistol projects and tactical rigging unlocked - Buffed and unique start with a fun niche
- Militarization grants a 66% reduction in soldiers costs and recruitment time (from 50%) - Buffed
- Advanced Preparation has the laboratory on the right instead of the left to not interfer with the steam vent - QoL
- Legacy of Uxmal decreases alien level (instead of just alien research) by 5% - This is the way it always worked, just clarification
Strategic:
- Temple Ship Assault only has 8 soldiers sent to it (from 12) - Prevents the lack of cover and the necessity of MECs, allows the toning down of the strength of the enemies and invulnerable
- XTP III grants 20 xp per day (from 40) - Tone down in late game automatic experience gains (as you can get a lot from missions at that time)
- Elite Aliens and Gentle Aliens Second wave options affects overall alien level instead of just alien research - This is the way it always worked, just clarification
- Difficulties modify overall alien level increase speed (instead of alien research speed) - This is the way it always worked, just clarification
- Terror missions will not display more information post-mission after a successful missions - QoL
Tactical:
- You can now call a tactical retreat by pressing Z, which will call big sky to make a flyby in 1-3 turns near the active unit. This can only be done outdoors. The mission automatically ends at that time and anyone not in the flyby zone will be MIA. - QoL
- Prepared is now half the strength it was previously and is called combat readiness (as that's what it is now) and the only thing 'prepared' is is the activation - Makes it a lot less oppressive and impactful, makes alpha strike and breaking vision with enemies much more reasonable to do
- The chance for aliens out of line of sight gaining combat readiness (old prepared) is now reduced by 10% for each active alien above 5 - Makes large easier to deal with
- Prepared pods will now have a single unit enter overwatch - makes alpha strike slighty harder, and immediate retreat slightly harder, buff to single activations
- Pod sizes are, in general, larger - Makes it harder to alpha strike pods, makes single pod activations less of a push over
- Shred popups will include the initial 20% shred damage to make it more obvious to players how much more shred an enemy unit actually has - QoL
- Stagger is now based off of damage taken (from damage dealt) - Makes it harder to activate against units with higher damage resistance
- Suppressive Fire Damage is now 35% of regular shot damage (from 30%) - Slight buff
- Pen resistance is now flat (instead of %) - Makes calculations a lot more elegant and obvious
- Fixed up many spelling mistakes and made the tutorial generally more clear and comprehensive - QoL
- Triggering suppressive fire by acting no longer triggers a shot animation, just the unit takes the damage - Fixes a long time suppression bug
Perks:
- Invulnerable now lasts until the end of the unit's first turn - It felt too unfair/unfun to have it completely uninteractable and be forced to engage with it, now you just have to give it a turn to position (or act) before engaging to help accommodate for poor drop-in locations
- Psi Inspire is now upgraded by distortion to also heal units for 35% of their lost HP ignoring all heal fatigue but damaging the caster by 1 HP - Gives a source of healing from the volunteer and on the long temple mission, significant buff to help deal with harder temple mission
- Onslaught and Close Encounters grant 3.3 mobility after use (from 4) - Minimal change in actual gameplay, makes their use more obvious to players
- Onslaught now also grants Ram but no longer increases KSM damage - Feels great, too perfect for Marauders not to have, buff to marauders and helps them work early game
- Double Tap grants +30 aim at consecutive shots vs the same target - Buffed for engineers, gunners, goliaths, and snipers
- Collateral Damage grants 20% weapon damage per ammo (from 25%) - Slight tone back on CD strength as it can be very strong
- Dense Smoke / Psi Defender grant 1/2 pen resistance (from 25/50%) - Change to new flat pen resistance system
- Grenadier grants +1 damage to grenades and mines - Helps grenadiers be a more relevant class, especially early game
- Mayhem grants 65% damage to explosives, sniper and strike rifles (from 70%) - Slight nerf
- Brawler no longer grants graze against melee units but does full damage on augmented units when counterattacking - Nerfed
- Sapper also grants explosives +1 damage - Buffed
- Will to Survive starts with 20% DR (from 25%) - Slight nerf
- Impact no longer clears Reactive Targeting Sensors (RTS) - Nerfed RTS too much
- Insentient crush now scales with difficulty: 40/30/20/10% of max HP - QoL
Equipment:
- The KSM deals 24 damage (from 16) and 12 pen (from 8) - Accommodates for marauders losing bonus KSM damage, works stronger with melee slayer, and grants extra pen
- MEC1s now also gain damage control (along with body shield) and 30 defense (from 20) - Helps them both tank and avoid shots to survive when they need it the most
- Basic SHIV and Hover SHIV base DR to 50 (from 40) - Buffed, makes them better at surviving the early/late game
- All SHIVs get 30 crit resist (from 15/20/15) and 25 defense (from 20) - Buffed, increased survivability
- Arc Rifle grants +50 aim, but only vs mechanicals (from +20 aim to all) and deals 9 dmg and 9 pen vs mecs (from 8 and 8) - Buff overall but especially at countering flying mechanical units
- laser Pistol crit to 45 (from 30) and pulse pistol crit to 70 (from 45) - Buffed
- Regenerative plating mobility to 0 (from -0.6) and base DR to 20 (from 25) - Slight buff
- Disabling shot swapped with Impact on the sniper - Impact was too strong for CPL level, brings disabling shot earlier
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs lose sharpshooter - Helps their targeting be a little less random and make it a little easier for backline supports to survive
- Sectoid Commanders now gain snapshot and shadowstep - Makes them immune to reaction fire, buff to sectoid commanders, slight reduction in strength of mid game overwatch
- Floater Leaders have Critical System Targeting moved from level 1 leaders to level 6 leaders - Buff for early game mechanical units and their tankability
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where seekers had holo and impact still
- Fixed a bug where Ram suggested it could work at different height elevations when it can't
- Fixed a bug where Close Combat Specialist was not increasing stagger chances
- Fixed a bug where holo rounds would not be correctly applied when hitting multiple targets (e.g. danger zone suppression)
- Fixed a bug where some muton drop-ins had no perks
- Fixed a bug where master mechanic was showing the incorrect amount it would heal in the preview window
- Fixed a bug where on impossible enemies could get combat readiness (old prepared) with 1 way vision which felt unfair
- Fixed a bug where blue shirts with bonus HP would start somewhat injured
- Fixed a bug where blue shirts would sometimes not receive a death perk (they all should get one)
- Fixed a bug where mechanic would not remove corrosion on some mechanical units sometimes
- Fixed a bug where onslaught was still messing with marauder mobility
- Fixed a bug where flak could fire through walls
- Fixed a bug where precision shot was not granting +20 aim
- Typos and clarifications
Version 1.48.04
LW Rebalance v1.48.04 - Blueshirt Justice
Strategic:
- Injured soldiers now longer require a salary - Makes them feel less bad
- You can now retired wounded soldiers (but they only add half of their missions to the OTS mission pool) - QoL
Tactical:
- The chance for aliens leaders 20/25/30/35 (easy/classic/brutal/impossible) + 2x the Alien Level (from 20/25/30/35 (easy/classic/brutal/impossible) + 1x the Alien Level) - Makes later game a little more challenging
- Maybe fixed some instances where invulnerable units would waste their invulnerability by going on OW - Better AI
- All Blueshirt soldiers now start with a random death perk and improved stats - Justice for blue shirts
- Lids and Zerkers will attack a little more consistently - They would act a little too unpredictably
Perks:
- Dense smoke grants 25% pen resistance (instead of 1) - works basically the same except for really high pen values, keeps pen resistance consistant as a % reduction, stacks more intuitively with psi defender
- Will to survive makes partial cover grants the DR of full cover, starts at 25% DR (from 20% DR), and grants -10 defense (from half cover defense) - Significant buff to flexilibity of positioning of biotanks and buff to enemy mutons who are in cover. Also, changes taunting to be less effective in heavy cover in exchange for significantly higher overall defense so that it's not so weak early game (which isn't so bad as lower cover is still an effective taunt and now has high DR)
- Mind Fray damage is halved if the target is already affected by mind fray - Makes consecutive mind frays a lot more forgiving
- Savior grants +4 HP for medikits used on self (from +3) - Further buff for medic tanks
- Repair heals 6 HP (from 5) - Buff to the overall effect of healing due to healing fatigue being quite strong
- Psi Blast description now includes the fact that it destroys corpses - new 'feature' =P
- Psi Lance now jumps to targets within 6 tiles - Makes it more effective
Equipment:
- Medikits heal 5 HP (from 4) - Buff to the overall effect of healing due to healing fatigue being quite strong
- Pulse weaponry costs 50% more elerium - Makes the alloy vs elerium compromise between gauss and pulse more impactful, slight nerf to pulse
- Laser and Pulse weapon mobility to 0 (from +0.6) but crit to 25 (from 10) - Focuses more on damage output than mobility as mobility is slightly warping when balancing weapon tiers (and gauss already modifies specific weapon mobilities), plus gives a more reasonable niche for crit builds
Aliens:
- Outsider aim to 65 (from 55) - Slight buff
- Seekers lose holo rounds and impact but gain light 'em up - Tweak in gameplay to help distinguish them from other flying mechanical units, reduction in overall penetration and holo out there to act as a slight relative buff to XCOM tanks
- Sectoid Commander hp to 12 (from 8) - Increase in resiliency, increase in mid game difficulty
- Cyberdisc leaders lose holo rounds but all cyberdiscs gain sharpshooter - Tone back on holo throughout enemies, increase in focus of cyberdiscs on non-mechanical
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where holo was applying penetration on units that were not already holo'd
- Fixed a bug where high DR values were being truncated incorrectly
- Maybe fixed a bug where the AI would skip some turns half way through
- Maybe fixed a bug where pods would spawn too commonly homogenously with their leader (probably not tbh)
- Fixed a bug where jumps of psi lance were doing 1 more damage than they were supposed to
Version 1.48.03
LW Rebalance v1.48.03 - Terro Wasp and Fly Trap
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Ram would not trigger sometimes
- Fixed a bug where Will to Survive would grant 99% DR
Version 1.48.02
LW Rebalance v1.48.02 - SHIV Seppuku Helpline
Strategic:
- Tweaked abduction difficulty so it is much more likely to get light and moderate abductions into the late game
- Alien Research speed changed to 0.8/0.9/1.0/1.1 (from 0.85/0.9/0.95/1.0) - Slight increase in difficulty to accommodate for stronger officers
Tactical:
- The RAM indicator now includes estimated damage dealt - QoL
- Added an indicator to how many targets will be included in danger zone suppression attacks - QoL
Perks:
- Mechanic again grants +1 pen to all weapons and equipments - Helps make the engineer not so much of ONLY a mechanical heal bot
- Ram deals 30% less damage - Was a little too strong
- Mechanic now automatically removes corrosion and passively heals 1 base HP for a single mechanical unit within 4 tiles at the end of each turn (capped at 1 heal after any damage instance) - Buffed support aspect, gives early access to corrosion removal, doesn't work on taking damage like old version
- Will to survive grants %DR equal to 20% plus 5% per enemy in sight (from 40%) - Makes it weaker against smaller alien numbers (1-3) and much stronger against large numbers
- Cover Tenacity grants 4% DR per active enemy (from 2%) - Large buff to 'active enemy based officer perks'
- Cover Tactics grants 2 defense per active enemy (from 1) - Large buff to 'active enemy based officer perks'
- Commanding Officer triggers at double the rate - Large buff to 'active enemy based officer perks'
- Camaraderie increases the commanding officer trigger by 50% (from double) - Accommodates higher rate
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater crit to 50 (from 30) - Buffed to give an enemy where crit resist is always important, general increase in heavy floater damage
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the SHIV would sometimes move off into the middle of nowhere and commit seppuku
- Fixed a bug where the indicator for Ram would activate on friendly units
- Fixed a bug where Commanding Officer triggers wouldn't occur as often as they should
- Fixed a bug where starting a game could cause a CTD due to improper steam vent placement
- Typos
Version 1.48.01
LW Rebalance v1.48.01 - Raid Max Double Control Liquid Child Resistant
Bug Fixes:
- Battle Computer had the wrong stats listed
- Fixed a bug where Marauders had the wrong perks at LCPL
- Fixed a bug where multiple abilities had more penetration that intended
Version 1.48.00
LW Rebalance v1.48.00 - Psiberdisc Onslaught
Strategic:
- Fission Generators grant 4 power (from 6) - Encourages building thermal/elerium
- Power adjacency bonus to 2 (from 3) - Encourages building thermal/elerium
- Thermal Generators grant 20 power (from 30) - Nerfed so it's not so polarizing and necessary to rush to
- The Thermal spot in each base is always middle of the left side - Reduced RNG
- Easy/Classic/Brutal starts with 15/10/5 more power - Accommodates for reduced effectiveness of power generation
- Mechanized Defenses (Foundry Project) requires 2 cyberdisc wrecks (from Mechtoid Cores) - Bring on alloy carbide plating slightly earlier for early MECs and SHIVs
- Elerium Batteries (Foundry Project) alloy cost to 30 (from 90) - Makes it more reasonable to acquire
- Aircraft Boosters (Foundry Project) credit cost to 50 (from 350) - Massive reduction in price to make the weaker boosters a little more reasonable to acquire
- UFO Tracking (Foundry Project) credit cost to 40 (from 280) and alloy cost to 10 (from 60) - Massive reduction in price to make such a borderline useless project somewhat viable
- Elerium Afterburners (Foundry Project) elerium cost to 130 (from 60) - Makes it a little harder to acquire and puts pressure on the elerium crunch
Tactical:
- Added code that looks for fake flanking units (I think caused from some interaction with tracktwo's invisible sightlines code and some LWR code) and actively removes them - QoL, helps prevent bugs and wonky AI
- The sightline indicator will now indicate whether or not a Ram will be successful - QoL
Perks:
- Bring 'Em On grants a 5% chance for any attack to graze for each enemy in sight but deals 1 less damage - Makes the perk not just about damage, but about resilience too. Helps shooters survive. Buffed.
- Invulnerability now prevents acquiring the target on overwatch - Helps make champion units that spawn in the open not be destroyed so easily
- Distortion reduces damage to 30% (from 35%) - Slight buff to Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals (helps accommodate for all weapons dealing 1 damage)
- Repair (from mechanic) heals for 5 (from 4) - Buffed, overall strength increase of engineers, makes their healing more reasonable
- Mechanic no longer grants +2 pen - Tones back strength of early game shooter and grenadier engineers
- Danger Zone grants +1 damage to explosives - Buffed, increases strength of rocketeer and Engineer grenadiers
- Fragmentation has a 40% chance to trigger (from 50%) - Nerfed, tones down assault and engineer grenadiers
- Precision shot grants +20 aim - Buffed
- Disabling shot no longer requires 2 AP - Buffed, makes it much more versatile
- Dense Smoke grants +1 penetration resistance but only 1 smoke grenade - Buffed so it's more reasonable when aliens get high aim
- Combat Drugs heals 30% (from 35%) and now is disabled when in dense smoke - Slight nerf, balance amoung supports, also prevents a bug and confusion about which smoke is active
- Close Combat Specialist grants 50% more stagger chance - Buffed, like RFA was -- helps CCS be more relevant
- Impact now also grants +1 damage to shots - Buffed
- Hunter grants +50% weapon damage (from +70%) but also grants +1 ammo - Tweaked
- Onslaught now grants +50% weapon damage to the KSM - Large buff to Marauders
- Dual Heart increases throw range and reduces scatter by 20% (from 15%) - Buffed
- Will to Survive grants +40% DR (from +30%) - Buffed, helps biotanks stay competitive
Weapons:
- MEC Weapon credit cost tripled (except plasma is doubled) - Makes MECs more restrictive
Equipment:
- Battle Scanner small item mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Buffed, makes it a little more useful in the early game
- Psi Defender now grants penetration resistance of 50% - Massive buff to the effectiveness of psionic tanks
- Heavy Mags mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Buffed
- Elerium Turbos grants +2 mobility (from +4) but now doubles the effect tiles moved has on Ram damage - Tweaked
- Adaptive Tracking Pod grants Ready For Anything (from Sharpshooter) and +5 aim as well - Buffed, more unique
- AR Targeter cost to 110 credits (from 160) - Buffed as it was slightly too expensive
- Alloy Jacketed Rounds alloy cost to 20 (from 50) - makes them much more affordable as you're usually pushing on laser when these come online
- Alien Trophy grants +20% xp (from +15%) - Buffed to further make it appealing throughout the game
- Battle Computer grants 15 aim/def/crit (from 10) - Large Buff due to late game and expense
- Psi Conduit grants a 30% chance for actions to cost 0 AP (from 20%) - Significant buff as it takes an item slot and can be unreliable
- Psi Frayer grants 20 will (from 15) and also resets the cooldown on Psi Blast - Buffed to make it both a little more powerful and a little more versatile
- Laser Sight crit to 15 (from 10) - Significant buff, helps it be a little more than just a throw on item for extra slots
- Chitin Plating to +1 HP (from +2) - Slight nerf
- Neural Scope grants +15 aim (from +20) - Toned back a little
- Illuminator Scope grants 10 aim (from 15) and no longer grants killer instinct but 30 crit (from 15) - Tweaked to be more different thatn other scopes and not overlap with perks that some classes get
- EMP Cannons cost 140 elerium (from 80) - Makes it much harder to field en masse
Armors:
- Phalanx Armor cost to 35 (from 17) and alloy cost to 10 (from 4) - It was far too cheap that it made bee-lining for it too dominant of a strategy
- Kestral and Banshee Armor both grant +1 HP - Slight buffs
XCOM:
- Assault Mayhem replaced with HEAT Warheads - Tone back in strength of assault grenadier
- Infantry HEAT Warheads replaced with Tandem Warheads - Buff in strength of infantry grenadier
- Engineer Critical System Targeting and Lock n' Load and Extra Conditioning swapped - BeO was dead vs CST and this gives the support the interesting choice of packmaster vs tinker
- Engineer Danger Zone and Packmaster swapped - Balances out the TSGT level
- Rocketeer has Ranger replaced with Sapper - Provides long range grenades that a rocketeer can really use, also helps with destruction of both rockets and greandes, overall buff
- Marauder Fortified swapped with Reactive Targeting Sensors - Fortified was too strong at LCPL vs the other picks
- Medic Bring 'Em On and Sharpshooter swapped - Gives the tank the option of picking up BeO or packmaster
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc base aim to 95 (from 85) and base damage to 12 (from 9) - Helps them land their only shot and make their only shot more impactful
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the 2nd shot of maim would still kill a target
- Fixed a bug where shred would sometimes apply when it shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where the "!" warning could occuring in a spamming manner when using rockets
- Fixed a bug where higher damage (10 or over) was not ever granting bonus penetration
- Fixed a bug where the Marauder wouldn't get any mobility during level up
- Fixed a bug where fervor would clear invulnerability
- Fixed a bug where Bloodlust popups could spam the screen
- Fixed a bug where using an allies medikits to revive them would bypass stabilization and revive them with too much hp
- Fixed a bug where reconnaisance would sometimes not trigger
- Fixed a bug where unit's in valid location would try to be fixed as if they were in an invalid location
- Fixed a popup when psychic shielding was active
- Fixed a bug where ram could hit targets on diagonals (it has to be adjacent only)
- Fixed a bug where Scope still had 5 crit
- Fixed a bug where the KSM wasn't doing any environmental damage
- Typos
Version 1.47.08
LW Rebalance v1.47.08 - Ready For Flak
Strategic:
- Rushing an item increases the meld cost by 40% too - was always odd that meld based items didn't have their cost increased
Tactical:
- Boosting a unit now gives it an extra move after it reaches the new height - QoL
Perks:
- Ram no longer has full penetration, and damage formula is now: half of (unit max hp - enemy max hp + tiles moved) (from a third of (unit base hp + tiles moved)) - Doing it based of max hp instead of base hp makes sense, and making it half instead of a third increases the damage to make up for no penetration. This makes more sense in-game as you will run over a small sectoid but hit a brick wall when you try it on a sectopod.
- Ready For Anything now grants +50% stagger chances for all reaction shots - Buffed, helps keep gunner and medic OW impactful into the late game
- Kitted grants 1 medikit (from 2) - Was a little too overloaded at 2
- Bloodlust and Bloodcall no longer remove holo, acid, or shred - Didn't really make sense, makes it easier to debuff mutons/zerkers
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle deals +1 damage and pen vs mechanicals - Buffed
- Restorative Mist heals for 4 (from 5) - AoE healing still very strong
- Flak Ammo now deals 1 damage to all flying units within an area of 4 tiles of the primary target (including the primary target) before the actual shot hits - Buffed, unique effect
- Breaching Ammo now grants 3 pen and 50 crit vs hardened targets (from just bypassing their 25% DR) - Buffed
- Armor Piercing Ammo cost to 15 alloys (from 45) - Makes it more accessible
- The Neural Scope no longer requires a basic scope - Was an annoying build requirement
- The Electropulse no longer requires a stun rifle - Same as above
- Alien/Plasma grenade mobility to -1.3/-0.6 (from -0.6/0) - Slight decrease in grenadier mobility to slightly tone back their strength at mid game and later
- All SHIVs gain +10 base DR - Buff
- UHMEC3 loses 4 HP - Nerf of tanking of MECs
- HMEC3 and HMEC2 lose 2 HP - Nerf of tanking of MECs
- Core Armoring grants 20 base DR (from 30) but 6 HP (from 5) - Tone down on high % DR numbers
- Biosoldier platings all lose 10 base DR - Tone down on high % DR numbers, makes platings not quite as strong in general
- Regenerative Plating heals +1 HP upon taking 4 or more damge (from 3) - Was a little too effective at dealing with multiple enemy shots
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the grey market wasn't requiring a sectoid captive
- Fixed a visual bug where Fervor wouldn't show up on a unit's flag sometimes even though it was active
- Maybe fixed a bug where being Mind Controled would randomly modify injury times on soldiers
- Fixed a but where Elite Aliens and Gentle Aliens would give civilians more or less HP
- Maybe fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes act as if they've seen XCOM before when they haven't
- Fixed the bug where Javelins were not providing Javelin rockets
- Fixed a bug where Heat Of Battle wouldn't grant combat readiness sometimes
- Fixed a bug where Ram would suggest it shredded the target sometimes
- Typos
Version 1.47.06
LW Rebalance v1.47.06 - Mobile Starts
Strategic:
- Resourceful Country Start now starts with Advanced Scavenging Foundry Project - Makes sense, small buff
- Global Networking Start now starts with the Grey Market Foundry Project - Makes sense, small buff
- Grey Market Foundry project costs only 10 credits (from 250) but requires a sectoid captive - Slows down the acquisition while not being a credit cost
Tactical:
- All units now list their mobility on their unit flags - make it easier to plan a turn, QoL
- Improved the randomization chance of leaders on missions - No idea if this does anything as all tests had it random, but maybe there was some native code seed problems? Most players probably won't notice a difference
- On impossible, aliens will only get prepared by breaking LoS if they can see no XCOM and XCOM can ALSO not see them - Feels better as it feels like prepared should only occur if the aliens were off in the fog of war
Perks:
- Burst grants 50 aim (from 35) - Buffed
- Brute will no longer activate when a reinforcement just moved or dropped in - Just the damage was too unavoidable (e.g. killing a VIP -- sorry Stefan)
- Mortar Barrage is now more random (more likely to miss instead of 100% accurate) and even more inaccurate the further away the target is; Also deals 2 + 10% of unit's damage (from 1 + 20% of unit's damage) - Should tone down the damage taken by around 50-75%, makes it a lot less oppressive
- Psychic Storm now requires 50 will (from 40) and each storm level is will/50 (from will/40) as well the hit chance is based on 50% of will (from 66%) - Tones down the damage component further, makes it even more likely to be resisted
- Strangle deals 50/33/25/20% of HP in damage based on difficulty (from always 50%) - QoL
- Holo Rounds grants +10 aim and +1 pen (from +15 aim and +1 pen) and another +10 aim and +1 pen (from +15 aim and +0 pen) more if the target is already holod - Was a little too strong
Equipment:
- Alloy Bipod increases suppressive fire damage by 1 (from 2) - It was really too strong at 2
- Scope credit cost to 35 (from 85) - With tactical rigging delayed this was a much more restrictive item
- Regular Exalt HP slighty lowered, Elite Exalt HP slightly increased - Makes exalt a little easier early and a little harder later
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some invulnerable units wouldn't start invulnerable
- Fixed a bug where shaped charges was weighing more than it should
- Fixed a bug where Smart Macrophages wasn't granting shred immunity
- Fixed a bug where all Heavy Floaters would still get Adv Perception
- Fixed a bug where Hit and Run sometimes wouldn't grant it's bonus damage when it should
- Fixed a bug where pistols were causing shred
- Fixed a bug where Brute would hit targets the user couldn't see
- Fixed a bug where the Javelin rocket wasn't granting an extra rocket
- Fixed a bug where the Ready For Anything popup would sometimes be a blank text line
- Typos
Version 1.47.05
LW Rebalance v1.47.05 - Bug Control
Perks:
- Ram no longer requires dashing but instead requires at least 8 tiles of movement - Dashing was weird requirement in that it could actually rewarded lower mobility
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all suppressive fire was shredding
- Fixed a bug where Javelin Rockets were granting shredder ammo
- Fixed a bug where Psi Blast would still destroy cover
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire wouldn't deal extra shred on the final shot
- Fixed a bug where panic from research/harvest UFO missions was being modified by campaign length twice
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Dampening wouldn't show correctly on the shot preview screen
- Typos
Version 1.47.04
LW Rebalance v1.47.04 - Ram
Strategic:
- Elite Aliens and Gentle Aliens also increases and decreases HP by 1 - Helps make them more able to find a reasonble spot between difficulties
- Jellied Elerium/Condensed Plasma increase the damgae of rockets by 1/2 (from both grenades and rockets) - With the Advanced Launcher and Plasma Grenades the bonus damage wasn't need to make explosives end-game competitive, plus grenades were a little too strong end-game
- Smart Macrophages and Iron Skin Gene Mods cost increased by ~50% - They were a little too cheap for how strong they are
Tactical:
- Number of reinforcements on council missions no longer increases by 2 for each month that has passed and instead is just 2-3 + 0/1/2/3 (base on difficulty) - Significant reduction in difficulty of those missions, especially later game -- similar change to bomb disposal missions making them more reasonable
- The Temple Ship Assault will only have Champion leaders on Impossible difficulty and non-Champion on Brutal or lower (instead of random on Brutal and lower levels on easy/classic) - Makes it a lot less of a challenge except for impossible difficulty
- Aliens will only become prepared for breaking LoS and Launching on impossible difficulty (instead of chances on lower difficulties) - It was not a mechanic that benefited any difficulty below impossible
- Aliens will now only become prepared on impossible when out of sight if they are Idle - Stops situations where non-idle aliens got preprepared and it didn't feel like they should
- Lowered chance for globals to activate on difficulties below impossible - Hopefully a QoL improvement
- Melee units cannot be prepared - Didn't make much sense; plus since they are DPS checks could lead to bad situations
- Shred minimum % to 20% (from 30%), but certain abilities increase the shred application - the 30% minimum was fine, but for anyone you want to stack on the only option was high damage multi-shot weapons, this made high damage primary weapons the primary source for good shred and left off a lot of other things, which was not ideal. So despite the simplicity, we're reverting slightly back to an older shred system that boosted application on specific weapons
- Suppressive Fire deals quintuple shed damage - Buffed to accommodate new shred
- All explosives deal 35 environment damage (from 20-70 or 5x explosive damage) - Standardizes cover destruction so it's not so much easier in the late game
Perks:
- New Perk: Ram: If this unit dashes in a mostly straight line towards the tile directly in front of an enemy, this unit will hit that enemy for x melee damage, where x is a quarter of (max base HP + tiles dashed). - Buff for SHIVs
- Psychic Storm Hit chance is calculated using 66% of will (from 100%) - Makes it much more reasonable to resist
- Damage Control reduces shred to 35% (from 30%) - Makes it still significant
- Leadership no longer affects leaders - Only buffs the rabble instead, makes leaders easier to kill
Equipment:
- Prediction Computer aim to +20 (from +10) - Buff to later game overwatch, helps them keep up with other classes that rely on long range shots
- Holo charger aim to 0 (from +5) and mobility to -1.3 (from -0.6) - The holo is strong
- MEC Grenade/Advanced Launcher range to 8 (from 10) - They were too capable with their larger aoe, long range, and high damage; The range is reasonable as MECs don't use cover so can often get a lot closer than a biosoldier and the larger aoe helps accommodate too
- Ap Grenades deal quintuple shred damage - Buffed to accommodate new shred
- Javelin Rockets deal triple shred damage - Buffed to accommodate new shred
- Gravity Mine radius to 4 (from 3) - Buffed
- Recoilless Rifle ammo to 2 (from 3), and Blaster Launcher ammo to 3 (from 5) - Was a little too much
- Spare Rocket replaced with Shaped Charges: Grants +1 damage and +2 penetration to all rockets - The spare rocket was too often not used and competitive vs the Javelin
XCOM:
- All SHIVs pick up the new Ram perk - QoL
Aliens:
- Advanced Perception only occurs on Heavy Floater leaders (from all heavy floaters) - Having frequent graze on regular units isn't ideal
- Floater and Heavy Floater leaders lose Awareness - Prevents defense stacking from getting too high
- Sectopods gain Penetrator - Helps them deal with tanks a little more
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Mind Control could mess up injury status after a mission
- Fixed a bug where the Advanced launcher had 5 grenades (should have 4)
- Fixed a bug where mayhem was only granting 50% damage to grenades (should be 70%)
- Fixed a bug (maybe?) where global abilities maybe activate from inactive aliens
- Psi Blast no longer works with shredder ammo
- Fixed a bug where panicking units were getting prepared (they shouldn't)
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm disorient status wore off too soon
- Fixed a bug where Psi Blast was doing too much damage sometimes
- Fixed a bug where breaching ammo was working on more than just the primary weapon
- Typos
Version 1.47.03
LW Rebalance v1.47.03 - Base Bomb
Strategic:
- Sat coverage increases the frequency of hunts by 20% per sat (from 12.5%) - Slight tweak to help keep the strategic game in the alien's favour
- Incursion Strength (IS) max cap is now 150 (from 120) - Won't effect most campaigns as it is uncommon that it reaches 80 or 120 but can help keep some campaigns that did really really well in check; also important to try to help keep campaign checks in the tactical realm instead of the strategic where control and gameplay is quite poor
- Successful Alien Base Assaults increase Incursion Strength by 15 (instead of maxing it) - Accommodates for higher cap
Tactical:
- Base DR is now reduced by the % of armor HP lost squared (from just the % of armor HP lost) - Significant reduction in the ability to plow through base DR by lowering initial armor
- Number of reinforcements on bomb disposal missions reduced to 1 + Rand(3) + iAL/2 (from 1 + Rand(3) + iAL) - Makes later bomb disposals much more manageable
Perks:
- Onslaught no longer grants additional mobility - It was bugged and would cause turns to end prematurely
- Run and Gun no longer grants 50% graze after use, but now grants +15% more weapon damage and +15 more crit on activation - Run and Gun is an odd build vs the gren and tank assault in that if it can't find a safe close range spot to attack, it's often not viable to use. The graze was an attempt to mitigate this, but it actually didn't change the playstyle. This change will make the RnG assault more capapble of eliminating a target, increasing the chances it has at finding a safe spot to engage. It also makes it more of a glass cannon, which i think is OK.
- Repulsor no longer grants 10 defense - Due to healing being able to top units HP up it's a lot stronger and needed to be toned back some
- Awareness grants 30 defense (from 20) - Buffed to be competitive on the Jaeger
XCOM:
- Marauders now start with +2.0 mobility (from +0.6) - Accommodates for Onslaught nerf
- Jaegers have Impact at SGT (instead of holo rounds) - Despite not being multi-shot themselves, the ability to gain +30 aim on holod targets was too strong. Impact provides a unique build with hunter bypassing overwatch.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a visual UI bug where dense smoke was granting 80 defense total (instead of 60)
- Typos
Version 1.47.02
LW Rebalance v1.47.02 - Psi Blast at Last
Equipment:
- Core Plating grants 5 HP (from 4) - Slight buff
Aliens:
- Sectoid aim to 55 (from 45) - They were slightly too nerf with the damage and aim reduction, this should be a more reasonable compromise
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Psi Blast was still a level 4 psi ability when learning new psi abilities
- Fixed a bug where the second wave option "Predictable Damage" would display crit damage as normal hit damage in the damage display before firing
- Fixed a bug where triggering a pod as prepared and then waiting out of LoS would have them lose their prepared buff (as they haven't seen XCOM before), instead, all units in a prepared pod will act as if they've seen XCOM
- Typos
Version 1.47.01
LW Rebalance v1.47.01 - Armor Matters
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where units with suppression would sometimes get teleported inadvertently in an attempt to fix their step-out problems
- Fixed a MAJOR bug where DR was not being applied the vast majority of the time
Version 1.47.00
LW Rebalance v1.47.00 - Global Gravity
Strategic:
- Bred Tough starting bonus grants 15 base DR (from 10) - Buffed
- Deus Ex strats with 100 meld - Buffed
- Fusion Weapons costs 40 elerium (from 240) - Makes it significantly more reasonable to acquire
Tactical:
- "Alecto" Hawkins starts with Psi Blast instead of Psi Panic
- Alien leaders chances increase by 1% for each alien level and occur at 15/20/25/30% per difficulty (from just 20/25/30/35 flat based on difficulty) - Increased chance of aliens leaders into the later game, slightly reduced early game
- Full rework on the activation of long range abilities from aliens to activate more commonly in sight of XCOM and less commonly out of sight if there are only a few aliens - QoL
- Mutons and Muton Elites can no longer sneak - They are too big so it feels silly and they already have deflection shield
- Sneak Mode (hiding aliens) will now only activate and stay active when 4 or more aliens are active - Prevents small number of sneakers
- Fatigue reduction for longer missions is reduced at 1% per turn (from 2% per turn) - Makes it still important to reduce turn numbers in mission that go longer than 20 turns
- Combat Readiness grants +0.6 more mobility, 10% more graze, and +1 pen but no longer grants defense - buffed to make it stronger
- New Ability "Heat of Battle" for XCOM: for every unit that an XCOM can see at the end of their turn, there is a 10% chance that combat readiness automatically activates - Makes staying engaged more rewarding
- The chance for an alien to be prepared and/or sneak based difficulty is now 0/10/35/100 (from 20/50/75/100) - Makes it a lot less common on lower difficulties where the benefits are not nearly as needed or appreciated
- Prepared no longer has a chance to reduce XCOM AP by 1 but instead grants the newly activated pod the prepared buff which is a double combat readiness buff but only lasts until the START of their next turn (instead of end like combat readiness) - Speeds up game significantly
- Aliens that start their turn out of line of sight but have seen XCOM before, have a 0/10/35/100% chance to get the prepared buff if there are 4/3/2/1 active aliens per difficulty - makes partial and full breaks of LoS more dangerous
- Sneaking aliens all gain the prepared buff - Buff to sneaking, makes full LoS breaks more dangerous
Perks:
- Psychic Storm now also disorients non-SHIV targets, but now can be resisted as it's a psionic ability that uses 100% of the casters will to determine success chance - Buffed effect that disables hit units, but gives some more agency to resist it
- Psychic Storm can be interrupted by explosive damage or disorientation (from just disorientation) - Makes it easier to cancel
- Mind Control can be interrupted by explosive damage or disorientation (from just disorientation) but only on the mind controller (from both) - Makes it easier to cancel, but only on the caster: encouraging engagement
- Orbital Ray now also shreds it's targets - Buffed
- Psi Blast is now a level 2 psi ability (from level 4): Channel psionic energy up to 14 tiles away that causes a tandem kinetic blast with a 1 tile radius that does not affect cover. Deals 1 kinetic damage for every 5 will above 50 (min 1, max 5). 1 turn cooldown. - Makes it a nice longer-range low-damage dealing ability for psionics
- In The Zone grants +10 aim to regular shots - Slight buff
- Psi Mastery grants +2 damage to countercharge (instead of 50% more damage) - Stops scaling problems
- Countercharge deals 2 + will/20 damage (from will/20 damage) - Significant buff in damage, especially at the low end
- Will to Survive grants +2 armor HP - Significant buff
- Grit grants +3 armor HP (from +4) - Slight nerf
- Onslaught grants +0.6 mobility for each enemyin sight (from every other enemy in sight) and allows moving 4 tiles after activation - Large buff
- Close Encounters allows moving 4 tiles after activation - Large Buff
- Fervor now works against all XCOM units (instead of not affecting those affected by red fog) but can be disabled by any damage - Encourages more engagement and is much easier to control
- Overpower now only works when the overpowering unit is active - Makes it much less common to be affected by it
- Brute now deals only 15% of unit's base HP (from 20%) and the movement after each attack is only half as far - Makes it easier to deal with
- Launch now has a 0/10/35/100% chance to grant Prepared to Floaters - Makes them less suceptible
- Lone wolf grants its bonuses if no allies are within 5 tiles (from 6) - Makes it easier to activate, buffed
- Savior grants +20 aim to shots against targets effected by red fog - Slight buff
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifles gain 10/10/15/15/20 aim (similar to strike rifles) - Significant buff to the strength of snipers
- The -0.6 mobility penalty of guass no longer affects smgs, carbines - Balance for those weapons
- Gauss SAW and LMG grant +1 damage to suppressive fire - Balance for those weapons
- Plasma Dragon grants +2 damage to suppressive fire (from +1) - Buffed
- AP Grenade damage to 3 (from 4) and penetration to 2 (from 1) - Tone down in strength while making them more effective towards their role (penetration)
- MiNE Launcher renamed to Gravity Mine Launcher: 5 dmg, 10 range, 3 radius, detonates at the end of XCOM's next turn, slows all units that are within 3 tiles by 50%, lowers the defense of all units within 3 tiles by 15 - Gives MECs a disabling device that can slow enemy movement
- Incinerator Amp increases flamethrower charges by 1 (from 3) - nerfed, as it's quite strong
- Regenerative Plating now heals 1 HP anytime the unit takes 3 or more damage (from 4) - Buffed
Aliens:
- Muton Berserkers lose the ability to Bull Rush - It simply lead to gameplay that wasn't fun
- Muton Elite Will to 10 (from 30) - makes psionics more effective against them
- Mechtoid will to 20 (from 35) - Makes psionics more effective against them
- Drone aim to 45 (from 60) - Accommodates for the height and holo advantages it usually gets
- Sectoid aim to 45 (from 55) and damage to 3 (from 4) - Significantly decreases effectiveness of shots
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where squadsight units on Temple would lose invuln from being in squadsight
- Fixed a bug where Psi Blast was doing way too much cover damage
- Fixed a bug whre dead or dying commanders could still grant free actions
- Fixed a bug where platform stability wouldn't grant an aim bonus on the 2nd shot on some units
- Fixed a bug where moving units would sometimes register in invalid locations and then trigger code trying to fix their location
- Fixed a bug where concealment would be half active sometimes and cause unit to be unable to reconceal
- Fixed a bug where the graze chance in the UI would sometimes by off by a percentage point
Version 1.46.06
LW Rebalance v1.46.06 - Healing Fatigue
Strategy:
- New popups every new Alien Level detailing new possible enemies and some recommendations - QoL, especially for newer players
Tactical:
- The exception to the 10 damage grants +1 pen for cover is removed - Less convoluted and biotanks didn't need the love - Brutal Aliens have 1 less HP - makes Brutal a little less difficult, especially early game
Healing Rework:
- Medikits Heal for 4 (instead of 1+50% of HP up to 4 max) - Buffed
- Restorative Mists heal for 7 (instead of 1+50% of HP up to 6 max) - Significantly buffed
- Repair heals for 4 (instead of 1+50% of HP up to 4 max) - Buffed
- Heal Fatigue: Each active heal a unit receives on a mission reduces the strength of all future heals by 1 - Tones down multiple heals on the same target
Perks:
- Double Tap aim to +20 (from +25) - slight tone back
- Dense Smoke no longer grants immunity to crit and graze chances - Nerfed
- Psychokinetic Strike renamed to Psi Blast: Channel and build-up psionic energy up to 14 tiles away that causes a tandem kinetic explosion in a 2 tile radius. Deals 2 + caster_will/20 damage to everyone in the area of effect. 1 turn cooldown. - Gives psionic units a nice small short cooldown 100% hit aoe ability.
- Leader (on alien leaders) only grants 2x the current Alien Level in defense (from 3x) - Tone down the late game hit on shooters
- Smart Macrophages increases medikit healing by 1 (from 3) - The corrosion and shred resistance was competitive enough, and it made gene mod tanks imbalanced with the new heal fatigue
Equipment:
- Regen Plating base DR to 35 (from 25) no longer grants repair servos but instead heals back 1 HP anytime more than 3 damage is taken, tone back on self-healing of biotanks
XCOM:
- Engineers base aim to 5 (from 15) - Tones down their shooting strength
- Engineer has Mayhem replaced with Bring 'Em On - Nerf to Grenadier Engineer build
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where improved medikit was giving 2 HP and macrophages 2 as well
- Fixed a bug where dense smoke was granting 20% DR
- Fixed a bug where gunslinger and other multiaction abilities would avoid triggering reaciton fire on the 2nd action
Version 1.46.05
LW Rebalance v1.46.05 - Uninvulnerable Fervor
Tactical:
- New DGC.ini variable: DASHING_REACTION_MODIFIER=1.0f; (LWR Default = 1.0) Float for modifier of how much enviromental damage is done (0.0f = no damage ever, 1.0f = normal LWR damage, 10.0f = All cover is paper)
- Added in multiple popups showing when an ability is not activating due to another ability cancelling it (e.g. Not being able to conceal due to being holod) - QoL
- Aliens cannot enter sneak mode anymore if there is only 1 or 2 of them - Prevents lone runners which seems to be a problem sometimes and was not the intended function of sneak mode
- The base chance for boosting level 8 leaders to champion leaders is 25% (from 10%) - Note that on specific missions it can still go higher than this as usual (see leader section on wiki for more details)
Perks:
- Leadership bonus is now 3 times the current alien level in def (from always 15) and is also granted to the leader themselves - Nerf of early game leaders (level 4 or less), buff of later game leaders (level 6 or more), reintroduces more defense scaling throughout a campaign to accommodate for XCOM gaining more aim throughout a campaign, prevents campaigns from being mostly shooting into the late game encouraging more explosives and other 100% hit abilities
- Fervor no longer prevents moving backwards, only moving out of sight and only works on enemies that are NOT affected by red fog - Makes it a lot less punishing as it could feel quite unfair sometimes, doesn't feel quite as cool, but still forces an engagement without being horribly punishing when caught out of position. Also allows wounded soldiers to retreat.
- Invulnerability will now drop whenever a unit fires a shot (regardless of whose turn it is) - Felt too unfair if the invulnerabilty unit used Reactive Targeting Sensors or fired overwatch shots and didn't drop the invulnerability
- Invulnerability now wears off at the start of a turn if an alien can see an XCOM unit - Feels much more fair and more reasonable, makes OW more effective
- Hit and Run grants +35% bonus damage (from +50%) - Slight tone back, with the assault nerfs the HnR scouts role opened up a lot more and it doesn't need so much damage
- Reactive Targting Sensors no longer bypasses cover DR - Makes it easier to tank such units from cover, simplification of perk
- Opportunist grants +10 aim to reaction shots (from +20) - Nerf to predictability of reaction fire
- Intimidate is now renamed to Brute: Reacts unpredictably when wounded, with a 100% chance to rush and strike fear in it's attacker. The chance is 10% less for every other active alien. Attacks enemy units within 1.5 tiles of this unit after each move with damage equal to 20% of this unit's max base HP. - Buffed when alone, nerfed when in large groups. Helps make the ability not so punishing with mutiple aliens active while making the berserker more of a threat when alone. Makes the Berserker more effective when in close range.
- Rapid Fire grants -20 aim on each shot (from -30 aim) - Buffed
- Close Encounters grants immunity to critical hits within 4 tiles - Buffed, grants more resiliency to assaults, especially against close range flanks
- Repair grants 4 HP (from 5) and Master Mechanic grants 6 HP (from 7) - Reduces reliance on engineers for healing
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifles and Strike Rifles all grant +20 aim to reactive fire - buff to their use with reactive fire
- Pulse weaponry has it's elerium cost ~doubled - Makes it more determinental towards plasma if you build a lot of it
- Carbines gain 20 crit - Makes them more competitive weapons
- Prediction Computer grants 10 aim (from 20) - Nerf to predictability of reaction fire
XCOM:
- Assaults start with 20 will (from 10) - Gives them back reasonable psi-cability to help offset situations where they might not have much else to do, overall buff
Aliens:
- Muton and Muton Elite leaders gain Fervor - Feels fitting, makes it much more common to see as it's a cool ability
- Muton Berserker HP to 26 (from 22) - Slight buff, makes them a little harder to kill, minorly accommodates for nerfed Fervor
- The Uber Ethereal now damage shares with the entire map and is not restricted to biologic units - Prevents the odd situation where someone might kite the ethereal away from other aliens, makes mechanical spawns still effective in keeping the uber alive (as with too many mechanical spawns you could technically just down the uber)
- Champion Outsiders gain Ready For Anything - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where enemy Telekinetic Fields would remain on unit's that were mind controlled and recovered
- Fixed a bug where orbital ray was doing less damage than intended
- Fixed a bug where orbital ray would not be recorded properly and reset inbetween saves
- Fixed a bug where deflection shield would turn Fervor off
- Fixed a bug where there was a range indicator on MECs for medikit use despite not being able to use them
- Fixed a bug where aliens moving in 'invalid' ways could cause a crash-to-desktop on the Base Defense mission
- Typos
Version 1.46.04
LW Rebalance v1.46.04 - Fixa Da Bugga
Strategic:
- New DGC.ini variable: HIGH_AIM=1; (LWR Default = 1) Set to 1 to have world panic slowly increase each month based on how many countries have left the XCOM project, Set to 0 to disable monthly panic increases (warning: makes the strategic game a lot easier)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where class icons would disappear on units sometimes
- Fixed a bug where units might get corroded when they shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where sometimes regenerative abilities would bring a character back from the dead
Version 1.46.03
LW Rebalance v1.46.03 - Silent Onslaught
Strategic:
- Jungle Scouts starting bonus grants 0 HP (from +2) - Nerf to accommodate later tac rigging
- Tactical Rigging requires 4 mutons corpses (from 10) - Makes acquiring it more consistent, helps playthroughs where muton corpses were quite variable
- UFO Fighters start with 800 HP (from 600) - Makes them a little more durable throughout the campaign
- Hunts now have 100% chance of success (from 50%) and stealth satellites reduces this chance to 50% (from 25%) - Makes it more consistent if you don't have aircraft to defend (note: lowering the hunting UFO to 50% HP reduces the hunt chance to 0% still)
Tactical:
- Changed 'prepared' to only show up if a unit actually had their AP capped - QoL
- The DR shield now shows the %DR instead of the DR Tier - Makes more intuitive sense
- Hardened grants 30% DR (from 35%) - Slight nerf
- Noise now has no effect on the game besides pulling distant pods closer - Make prepared a little less convoluted
- Prepared now occurs always at the following rates (regardless of noise level): Easy: 25%, Classic: 50%, Brutal: 75% (38% if 1 active alien), Impossible: 100% (50% if 1 active alien, 25% if 2) - Simplification
- Anytime contact is made with the enemy a popup occurs exlpaining what type of activation is occuring: prepared, normal, off-guard, or unprepared - Makes the mechanic more obvious
- Improved the code to both detect and fix aliens that can be stuck in an unreasonable position - QoL
- Repair Heals 5 HP (from 6) - Tone down on drone/engineer healing strength
- Sneaking aliens are revealed automatically if they are within 2 tiles (from 4) - Gives the aliens a little more wiggle room to close in on XCOM
Perks:
- Platform stability grants 15 aim (from 10) and +2 suppressive fire damage (from +1) - Significant buff
- Brawler also grants +1 damage to shots made within 4 tiles - Buffed
- Fortified grants +10 base DR (from +15) - Slight nerf
- Onslaught also grants +0.6 mobility per every 2 enemies in sight - Buffed, thematic
- Will to survive grants 30% DR (from 35%) - Slight nerf
- Mechanic grants +2 pen vs mechanicals (from 3) - Tone down on overall engineer strength
- Master Mechanic boosts Repair Heals to 7 HP (from 9) and grants +2 pen vs mechanicals (from 3) - Tone down on drone/engineer healing strength, tone down on overall engineer strength
- One For All grants 30% DR (from 35%) - Slight nerf
Equipment:
- Alien Trophy grants +15% xp (from +10%) - Buffed
- AP Grenade pen to 1 (from 2) - Slight tone back as with the damage boost and range and shred it was too strong and made HE grenades seem weak in comparison
- Core Plating grants +30 base DR (from +35) - Slight nerf
- Psi Defender grants 30% DR and crit resistance (from 35) - Slight nerf
- Phalanx, Carapace, Aegis, and Archangel armors grant 15 base DR (from 20) - Slight nerf
- Titan armor grants 20 base DR (from 30) - Nerfed
- Concussion Grenade range to 10 (from 12) - Toned back, makes positioning on supports more important
- Maruader has Snapshot replaced with Vital Point Targeting - Snapshot didn't do much now that the OW build is gone
- Marauder has Sharpshooter swapped with Extra Conditioning - Balance on the tree
- Marauder has Jetboot Module swapped with Sprinter - Balance on the tree, accommodates buff on Jetboot Module
- Medic has Brawler replaced with Grit - Buff to medic tank in the mid-late game
Aliens:
- Champion Cyberdiscs gain Light 'Em Up - They were a little too easy to control with a good tank
- Cyberdsic HP to 28 (from 24) - Makes them a little harder to take out quickly, helps offset their single attack for a pod leader
- Heavy Floaters have impact replaced with Penetrator - Grants them slightly more penetration late game, doesn't turn off RTS
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where scout and other units would report hiden enemies erroneously
- Fixed a bug where Leader Cyberdiscs were gaining 2 damage less damage than intended
- Fixed a bug where swarming abductions were not always generating as many aliens as they should
- Fixed a bug where the LCPL perk on the Jaeger was not showing up correctly
- Typos
Version 1.46.02
LW Rebalance v1.46.02 - Predicted Abductions
Strategic:
- Tactical Rigging requires 70 units of time (from 210) and requires Muton Interrogation (instead of sectoid interrogation) and requires 10 Muton Corpses (from 10 sectoid corpses) - Slows down acquisition till more mid-game
- Psi Warfare systems requires 16 sectoid corpses (from 6 sectoid corpses) - Makes the corpses more useful (accommodates for less needed for tact rigging)
- Ammo Conservation requires muton elite autopsy and 10 muton elite corpses (from muton autopsy and 16 muton corpses) - It was reasonablly only acquired late game, and requiring muton corpses late game would sometimes be difficult to obtain and make getting the project online almost impossible
- Improved the "dismantle satellite" algorithm to specifically only prevent it if the AI is targeting that exact satellite (instead of any satellite) which will make it much easier to dismantle later game - QoL
- Bonus stats from chopping a MEC is now more granular where each additional HP and rank gives more of a benefit - Was too segmented before, slight buff compared to before
- Reduced the range on abduction sci/eng rewards by ~33% - Makes the rewards a little more consistant, no balance change
Tactical:
- Abduction missions now have 1 less alien if they are light, 1 more if they are heavy, and 2 more if they are swarming - Makes the choice between difficulty of the mission more of a factor besides just the reward, slight increase in overall abduction difficulty
Perks:
- New Perk: Reactive Slayer: Grants reaction fire +x% weapon damage equal to the target's current HP, stacks with slayer and gun slayer - Buff for the Prediction Computer and late game overwatch
- Fervor no longer works at squadsight ranges and cannot be broken through damage - Didn't make a lot of sense that it worked on squadsight units, and was too easy to break with just any damage
- Reconnaissance now provides more information on sneaking aliens (their direction and information even if they are > 18 tiles away) - Buff to usefulness of scouts
- Run and Gun no longer grants low profile - It's resiliency with strong damage output made it a little too strong vs the other options, this makes the assault tree more balanced, while still keeping the graze chance on RnG
Aliens:
- Mutons pick up Mayhem - Makes their suppression more effective
- Muton base grenade damage to 4 (from 7) - Accommodates for Mayhem
Equipment:
- Prediction computer grants +10 defense as well - Buff to mid-late game overwatch, makes sense a computer that predicts enemy actions would increase your defense, helps make overwatch builds that are not actively overwatching less likely to be targeted, also can be a useful item for non-overwatch builds (e.g. a covert-op)
- Prediction computer grants Reactive Slayer - Buff to late game overwatch, helps make overwatch effective when dealing with units with mountains of health as overwatch was still falling off a little too much late game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where swarming abductions were not granting more rewards
- Fixed a bug where Fervor wasn't triggering at all
- Fixed a bug where Mind Fray duration was not registering correctly
- Fixed a bug where a stunned unit (from being neural dampened) could cause a CTD when it became able to scamper
- Fixed a bug where Double Tap would show an aim bonus when it shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where finding a sneaker would cause a 'revealed' popup multiple times
Version 1.46.01
LW Rebalance v1.46.01 - Gunslinger
Perks:
- New Perk: Gunslinger: Standard pistol shots cost only 1 AP - New perk for sectoids and sectoid commanders
- Mortar Barrage deals 1 + 20% of unit's damage (from 2 + 20%) - Slight tone back
- Absorption Fields grants +25% DR (from +35%) - Reduces some of the tankiness of late game allied and enemy MECs
- Zhang's unique perk "Gunslinger" changed to "Ex Triad" - Makes space for new Gunslinger perk
Equipment:
- Aurora and Vortex armor grant +2 damage to countercharge (from +1) but no longer increase cc chance - tweaks it so it's not too strong on high will units
- AR Targeter cost to 160 (from 210) - Slight reduction
- Alloy Carbide Plating base DR to +10 (from 20) and HP to +4 (from +5) but mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Makes it more accessible to non-tank MECs
- Alloy plating base DR to 20 (from 25) - Slight nerf as the HP boost was strong
Aliens:
- Sectoids and Sectoid Commanders lose Light 'em Up and replace it with Gunslinger - Stops their stacking damage
- Sectoid HP down 1 (the +1 on growth was enough as it was more late game they were too weak) - Slight nerf
- Outsiders gain Impact - Helps make them better at dealing with XCOM tanks and makes them a little stronger early game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Electropulse would not disable some units immediately
- Bloodlust and blood call wont't clear acid if they are in acid
- Typos
Version 1.46.00
LW Rebalance v1.46.00 - Global Fervor
Strategic:
- North America continent bonus grants 15% faster aircraft rate of fire - Buffed for balance
Tactical:
- Clues about sneaking aliens no longer have a direction associated with them - Makes them slightly more effective
- Suppression, Steady, and overwatching no longer increase crit by 30 - Was convoluted and didn't increase gameplay value enough to warrant it's inclusion
- Cover now prevents the extra penetration from sets of 10 damage - Makes biotanks and cover in general more effective into the end game
- Reenabled the visualization of countercharge on units - Makes it more obvious for players
- The final room will have 4 random enemies and the uber ethereal (instead of the uber, an ethereal and 3 random enemies) - Makes the mission easier
- Stagger chance is equal to % of total HP in damage dealt (from double total HP in damage dealt) - It was a little too common to get staggers
Perks:
- New Perk: Fervor: Enemies that can see this unit will feel an uncontrollable desire to kill it and will be unable to move away. Can be temporarily silenced for a turn if this unit takes any damage or is not idle. - New perk for berserkers
- New Perk: Mortar Barrage: Fires up to 4 mortars at long range dealing 2 + 20% of the unit's damage on each explosion - New global ability for Mechtoids and Sectopods
- Ready For Anything no longer grants 30 crit resistance while overwatching - Due to removal of crit susceptibility
- Bullseye now grants +20 aim to targets on overwatch - Makes it better at it's role, buff to strike rifle scout and Shogun
- Sentinel no longer grants Slayer - Tweak to make the perk more stream-lined, nerfed late game strength (on xcom and aliens)
- Sentry no longer grants any ammo - It's strong enough with just the graze
- Psychic Storm and Orbital Ray no longer have any range requirements - There already is multiple other 'safe guards' in place that prevent frequent spamming from a single unit and firing without seeing XCOM first, so this feels fine
- Cluster Bomb (from sectopods) will always show a warning location now, even when out of sight - Too frustrating otherwise
- Master mechanic no longer grants repair charges - Toning down late game strength as they start with 4 now
- Impact now clears RTS as well as overwatch - makes sense, consistency with concussive blast
- Double Tap now also can trigger from Burst as well as other shots - More versatile
- Mind Control can only be broken by disorientation (through concussion grenades or concussive blast from destructive grenades) - relative buff to concussion grenades
- Psychic Storm can only be broken by disorientation (through concussion grenades or concussive blast from destructive grenades) - relative buff to concussion grenades
- Brawler counterattacks with half damage on MECs - makes it more even on assaults/medics and Goliaths/Marauders
- Opportunist grants 20 aim (instead of 25 aim/crit) - Accommodates for new prediction computer item, lowers crit chance capping so crit is still important on overwatch
- Mind Fray has a 2 turn cooldown (from 4 turn) - Makes it easier to use sequentially, especially for sectoids
Equipment:
- Ceramic Plating base DR to 15 (from 25) - Nerf
- Alloy Plating base HP to 3 (from 2) - Buff
- Breaching ammo alloy cost to 8 (from 65) - Makes it easily attainable
- Medikits can only heal biosoldiers (not MECs) - Large relative buff to the use of engineers, makes medics feel less mandatory throughout the mid-late game
- AR Targeter costs 210 credits (from 110) and grants 15 crit (from 10) - Makes it harder to acquire, especially early
- Scope costs 85 credits (from 25) and grants 10 crit (from 5) - Makes it harder to acquire in large numbers, especially early
- Arc Rifle/Pistol damage to 7/5 (from 6/4) and penetration to 7/5 (from 6/4) - Buffed, makes them more competitive
- SMG crit to 30 (from 20) - Buffed
- SAWs and LMGs gain 0.6 mobility - Overall buff to gunners
- Shielding Pod no longer grants reduced corrosion turns, but instead the Alloy-Carbide Plating and Core Plating do - Makes it accessible to MECs
- New Item (replaces mimic beacon): Prediction Computer: Grants +20 aim to reaction shots, unlocked with adv gauss weapon technology - Buff to mid-game overwatch builds, delays the strength of overwatch till later game and makes it stronger later game, overall buffed
Aliens:
- Berserker Leaders pick up Fervor - Makes them harder to retreat from and encourages engaging them
- Sectopods will cluster bomb when out of LoS much less often - new mortar ability accommodates for this
- Sectopods and Mecthoids gain Mortar Barrage - Makes it harder to break LoS on them
- Sectoids and Sectoid Commanders pick up Light 'Em Up (LeU just moved from SC leaders to all SCs) - Gives them more offensive capability
- Sectoids gain +1 HP and +3 HP per alien level (from +2) - Makes them more resilient
- Mecthoids and Sectopods have 80% of their hp as armor HP (from 60%) - Makes acid more effective against them
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some bugs UI where mind merge was not correctly displaying some of it's stat modificaitons
- Fixed a bug where the AI would overwatch irregardless if they were outside of cover
- Fixed a bug where Seekers didn't have holo or impact on drop in
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm and orbital ray would sometimes incorrectly target units when a save game was loaded with them in progress
- Fixed a bug where leader Exalt SHIVs didn't give bonus xp
- Fixed some bugs on the duration display numbers on buffs and debuffs
- Typos
Version 1.45.01
LW Rebalance v1.45.01 - The Unabusable
Tactical:
- New dgc.ini to help control how strong overpower is variable @ line 877: BASE_DAYS_INJURED=6; (LWR Default = 6) Divisor on a units' will power to determine how effective Overpower is (set to 1 to be highly effective and >20 to be mostly ineffective)
Perks:
- Invulnerable units no longer lose invulnerable at the start of their turns - Buff to melee champions
- Close Encounters and Onslaught reduce mobility to 0 after activating (instead of -50%) - Nerfs, removes potential abusive situations
- All Mecthoids lose the ability to heal with restorative mists - Doesn't feel as frustrating if you lose vision and then they heal up, and isn't necessary anymore due to removal of CE potential abuse
Bug Fixes:
- Mind merge no longer effects the caster - There were bugs I could not fix
- Made Invulnerability into it's own perk as it didn't make sense on combined arms very much
- Suppressive Fire can no longer crit and do nothing by critting
Version 1.45.00
LW Rebalance v1.45.00 - The Great Balancer
Strategic:
- There is a popup screen when you fail a MEC augmentation - QoL
- Mutons, Floaters, Sectoids, and Drones can always appear as pod leaders at later alien levels at lower % chances - Makes it so you sometimes still see them
Tactical:
- Grenades no longer get a slowmo cinematic - Was too much
- Hunker is: +30 defense, +30% DR, and -30 hit chance on psionics (from double cover defense and 50% DR and -50 hit chance on psionics) - Toned back as it was slightly too strong and the AI could not work around it
Perks:
- New Perk: Melee Slayer: Grants % bonus weapon damage equal to the targets current HP - Buff to the late game KSM
- Double Tap grants +25 aim (from +15) on the 2nd shot same target - Slight buff
- Holo Rounds grants an additional +15 aim against units that are already holo'd but no longer works with reaction fire - Buff to holo units, especially if they multi-shoot
- Mayhem grants +70% weapon damage to snipers/strike rifles (from +65%) and grenades (from +50%) - Buffed
- Mind Merge grants the bonuses to both the target and the caster but no longer grants 25 defense and instead grants 35% graze chance - Buff to sectoids and sectoid commanders, slight buff to XCOM units
- Bullseye no longer gives +35% weapon damage to strike rifles and no longer prevents decloak - Balance of scout builds, not needed on Jaeger
- Combat Drugs grants 1 smoke (from 2) - Nerfed, balance on the medic tree
- Run and Gun grants Low Profile again as well as a 50% chance for all shots to graze until the unit's next turn (also the damage boost now lasts until next turn to work with CCS and overwatch) - Buffed
- In the Zone no longer grants +20 aim on standard shots - Was too strong
- Mechanic grants 4 charges of repair (from 2) - Overall buff to engineers
- Dense Smoke no longer grants 20% DR but instad grants immunity to critical hits, and a 35% chance for attacks to graze - Buffed
- Savior grants +15 aim against targets affected by Red Fog - Buff to Medic OW, slightly to other medics
- Sentinel grants Slayer - Keeps biological OW performance up in the later game
- The Thumper grants Melee Slayer - Buff to late game KSM use
XCOM:
- Scout base Aim to 20 and Mobility to 1.3 (from 10 aim and 0.6 mobility) - Buff to scouts in general
- Gunner base Aim to 10 (from 5) - Slight buff to shooting gunners
- Scout Tree rework (see image) - Buff to support scouts
- Engineer has Sapper swapped with Fragmentation and Fragmentation swapped with Mayhem - Grants an option for early range on the engineer (both Support and Explosive)
- Rocketeer has Snapshot replaced with Penetrator - Helps the shooter build do effective damage
- Medic has Close Combat Specialist replaced with Brawler - Helps with tanking melee units and CCS was a little too hard on the ammo
- Jeager has Bullseye replaced with Vital Point Targeting - Balance on the Jaeger
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Dampening would show too much DR on the shield and F1 info panel
- Fixed a bug where outsiders would grow even when not at full base HP
- Fixed a bug where Kinetic Dampening was not working
- Fixed a bug on the holo display timer on units that were holod
- Tried to fix a bug where smoke graphics still lingered when they shouldn't
Version 1.44.06
LW Rebalance v1.44.06 - Panicked Hotfix
Strategy:
- XP requires for SPEC promotion to 200 (from 250) - Makes it so you can omre reasonably promote to SPEC in 1 mission
Bug Fix:
- Panic no longer skyrockets at all times
Version 1.44.05
LW Rebalance v1.44.05 - Late Game Lockdown
Strategic:
- Scientist and Engineer rewards for Abductions increase at a rate of 10% per month (from 5% per month) but overall offerings lowered by 25% - They were not as valuable later in the game because you didn't care about them as much and got enough early game; this makes them more competitive options throughout the entire game
- Scientist and Engineer council request rewards are also now increased at a rate of 10% per month (from 0% per month) - Makes council requests more balanced
- Extra scavenging teams will now also find bonus weapon fragments - QoL, helps acquire more fragments throughout a campaign besides just the Improved Salvage foundry project
- Building the Gollop chamber now prevents any alien research from increasing, but quadruples all panic increases - Creates a more interesting dynamic end game: Now players don't have to worry about AL getting harder on temple ship, but will quickly begin to lose countries
- XP required for promotions changed to 250/[500]/1000/2000/[4000]/7000/12000 (from 100/[300]/700/1500/[3100]/6300/12700) - Slows down some of the early/mid game progression
Tactical:
- The grey pips on an HP bar now represent how much base DR there is in multiples of 20 (from multiples of 10) so that 1 full row (5 bars) = 80-100% base DR and 1 bar = 1-20% base DR - PRevents situations where high base DR could block how much base HP a unit had, and intuitively makes more sense that 1 row = 1-100%
- There is now number on the DR shield termed the 'DR Tier' that represents the fraction of damage that gets to the target (e.g. Tier 5 means 1/5th of the damage will make it through) - Helps make higher levels of DR more obvious (e.g. 85% DR = Tier 6, 90% DR = Tier 10)
- There is now a confirmation prompt when boosting a unit - Prevents triggering it by accident
- New alien types that first appear will no longer be eligible to be a leader alien until 1 alien level after the level they first appear at - QoL, makes the first encounter with most aliens not leaders, helps ease players into experiencing new alien types
- Cluster Bombs (from Sectopods) will now only show you the targeting location of the cluster bomb if the sectopod that is cluster bombing is visible - Makes it more challenging to break LoS on Sectopods
- Expanded szmind's cinematic code to include grenades and the KSM - QoL (remember that the default chance for a cinematic when throwing is set in the dgc.ini at a default of 50% with the variable PSI_TRAINING_HOURS) - Thanks again to the master wizard szmind for this awesome code
- The max number of XCOM units that can be capped during prepared on impossible when 2/1 aliens are active is now limited to 2/4 units (from unlimited) - Makes it less punishing when you roll unlucky with active aliens
- Aliens on the Temple ship are no longer sometimes invulnerable - Due to modification to combined arms
- Chance for an alien leader in a pod is now 20/25/30/35% (easy/classic/brutal/impossible) at all times (from 3/4/5/6% x Alien level) - Helps flatten out the difficulty curve throughout the game
Perks:
- Leadership defense bonus that alien leaders give grants only 15 aim (from 20) - Tone back on defense stacking
- Combined Arms now grants aliens who have it invulnerability - Instead of making it a Temple only capability
- Will to Survive DR back to 35% (from 30%) - Slight rebuff to xcom biotanks
- Sentinel grants 20 defense when on overwatch - Makes it easier to be on overwatch and not get sniped
- Changed a bug/feature where Advanced Bone Marrow was healing armor HP on outsiders, it will now only heal base HP, but Growth now works when outsiders have full base HP (from full armor HP) - Tweaked so that armor stays off outsiders permanently, making them easier to deal with
Equipment:
- Blaster Launcher no longer requires 2 AP to fire - Means you can fire it after moving with 100% accuracy or after using a 1 AP ability, significant buff, makes it more similar to the recoilless rifle in AP economy
- Sniper Rifle no longer grants additional aim - That buff was premature and removed the balance between strike and sniper rifles, as sniper rifles without the aim are still quite competitive due to pen
- All shotgun aim to -30 (from -20) - Helps make more room for smgs and tones back the strength of shotuns
- Flak ammo removes half the defense from flying units (from all of the defense) - It was too strong vs fliers and made it stronger than the other ammos
XCOM:
- Holo replaced back with Kitted on the sniper tree - The versatile sniper was actually a really nice build and holo with it's recent buffs was again probably a little too strong paired with ITZ
Aliens:
- Regular Mutons lose penetrator - It was too strong on such an early level enemy, tone down on alien penetration, buff to XCOM tanks
- Outsiders lose the impact perk - Not really needed as they hit hard enough as is, tone down on alien penetration, buff to XCOM tanks
- Mongo picks up Brawler - doesn't do THAT much but just feels too cool not to
- Chyrssalids and Berserkers gain only 1 damage with alien level upgrades (from 2) - Significant nerf to their later game damage output, because it just got much too high with full penetration
- Mechtoids now all carry an infinite supply of restorative mists which they will use during battles if there is no one in sight - Helps prevent LoS breaking on Mechtoids, and also makes them slightly tankier as the loss of absorption fields and new pen was a heavy hit
- All mechtoids regain absorption fields (from just mechtoid champions) - Increase in mid-game difficulty and helps them fill their role of being a solid tank more now that their base DR can completely disappear
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where aliens would display kill animations when the XCOM unit actually survived
- Fixed a bug where advanced scavenging was not correctly unlocking scavenging
- Fixed a bug where the F1 info panel showed penetration relative to the active unit which was not appropriate or accurate
- Fixed a bug where Jungle Scouts was granting a slight boost to augmentation success and stats when it should not
- Fixed a visual bug where Slayer looked like it was still active on Assaults
- Typos
Version 1.44.04
LW Rebalance v1.44.04 - Cinematic Brawler
Strategic:
- Surchages on Council Loans lowered by ~35% - Makes them a little more feasible while still (hopefully) prohbitively costly to do routinely
- Gollop Chamber only requires 5 ethereal corpses (from 10) and 30 UFO Power Sources (from 20) and takes 3 days to build (from 30) - Reduces farming a player might feel like they have to do and late game waiting
- Vortex Armor requires only 200 meld (from 300) - Reduces farming a player might feel like they have to do
- Elerium Generators take 2 days to build (from 25) - Reduces late game waiting
- The guaranteed aliens on UFOs all occur 1 month later - Ethereals were showing up a little too early for some difficulties and aren't as necessary to be prevelant with the corpse requirement cut in half
Tactical:
- Added new soldier cinematics for firing rockets and grapples - Thanks to szmind for the really cool code =D
Equipment:
- Aurora and Vortex armor now grants Pscyhic Shielding: Reduces all psychic damage received by 50% - Buffed, makes psionic units better anti-psi units, gives a more effective counter to sectoid commanders and ethereals, helps the volunteer not die so quick to global abilities
- Alloy plating loses 2 HP and gains 0.6 mobility, alloy cost reduced to 25 (from 40) - Tweak to make it's role one of an inferior but earlier chitin plating instead of a competitor for reinforced plating
- Reinforced plating alloy cost to 35 (from 25) - Makes it harder to produce multiples of
Perks:
- Critical System Targeting grants +50% damage vs mecs (from +65%) - with the way armor goes down MECs need a little more resiliency, effects both XCOM and aliens pretty evenly
- Brawler grants +20 aim against targets within 4 tiles, no longer prevents crits, but now also grants a counterattack after any melee attack with damage equal to half the brawler's base HP - Buffed, acts as a more offensive option
- Reconnaissance no longer detects hiding aliens - Stops it from working when a nearby alien is hiding, makes sense as hiding aliens wouldn't make much noise
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Advanced Scavenging would not appear in the foundry list
- Fixed a bug where mind fray durations were not being reported accurately
Version 1.44.03
LW Rebalance v1.44.03 - Sniper Loans
Strategic:
- Exalt credit sabotage operations steal less credits as the game goes on - It was too punishing
- You can now acquire a loan from the council - QoL
- Changed some item descriptions to be more concise - QoL
- Grey Market foundry project cost to 250 (from 350) - Makes it a little easier to attain
- Wealthy Benefactor reduces the surcharge on loans by 50% - Buffed slightly
Tactical:
- Improved visual effect of psychic wave and orbital bombardement - Thanks to szmind for the awesome code for this!
- Close Combat Specialist no longer grants +1 ammo - Especially with the new graze mechanics on stagger, its quite strong. Even comparing it to Killer instinct on a RnG assault it's really strong (the CCS shot is comparable to the KI bonus damage) but then it ALSO works even when it's not the unit's turn. Also, it's much less often a waste of ammo now that it requires 50 aim to fire. I wanted this ability to be strong as it's fun, but I think that I've pushed it a little further than is ideal.
- Killer instinct no longer gives a special situations of +200% damage with shotguns - With CCS not as strong, this would have been auto pick, now all 3 should be balanced again and ranger shouldn't be a dead pick
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifles gain +10/+10/+15/+15/+20 aim - Buffed, similar to Strike Rifles, buff to snipers overall, especially late game
- Acid Grenade range to 10 (from 8) - With the way base DR disappears, acid is a little less effective, so this boost is to help offset that
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes skip units when XCOM fired more than 1 overwatch shot at them
- Fixed a bug where you could scavenge on an airbase defense map
Version 1.44.02
LW Rebalance v1.44.02 - Grey Reinforcements
Strategic:
- The grey market is no longer created at the beginning of the game - Encourages accumulation of resources into the mid game
- Scavenging a UFO now requires the foundry project: Advanced Scavenging - Gives more agency on how players want to advance their game
- New Foundry project: Grey Market, no prerequisites - Establishes a Grey Market
- New Foundry Project: Advanced Scavenging - Allows the option of seconding an additional scavenging team for a cost to collect additional resources from UFOs
- Advanced Surgery decreases injury time by 25% (from 35%) - Makes injuries matter more later game, increasing roster utilization
Tactical:
- Added duration timers to abilities on unit's flags - QoL
- Limited the number of pod leader type enemies (cyberdisc, Mecthoid, sectoid commander) that can spawn on council missions and prevented sectopods (as well as previously ethereals) from spawning - So they don't get ridiculous
Perks:
- Scout Reconnaissance will detect when no aliens are in sight even if there are active aliens - Buffed
- Psychic Wave damage is now based on Ethereal will/20 (from will/40) - Was much too weak at /40
- Fixed a bug where the Advanced Launcher wasn't working properly
Version 1.44.01
LW Rebalance v1.44.01 - Brawling Blood
Tactical:
- Aliens will now only open doors if they are reasonably close enough but will try to move closer to unopened doors if not in vision of xcom but active - They lose their telekinesis but learn the ability to move towards doors =P
Perks:
- New Perk: Psychic Wave: Unleashes a wave of destructive psychic energy against any enemy unit within 4 tiles after each move. The damage is equal to this unit's will / 40. - A new perk to help make ethereals derping not so much of a derp but instead tactical genius!
- Brawler grants +1 armor HP (from +3) - Nerfed, as the crit immunity is quite strong on its own
- Dense Smoke again grants +20% DR - Buffed
- Will to survive grants 30% DR (from 35%) - Slight tone back on biotanking and alien tanking in cover
- Bloodlust now clears shred, acid, and holo as well - Makes it more simple to just clear all debuffs
- Blood Call now has effected units heal 10% of max HP and have all debuffs removed - Buff to the use of the ability, especially now that the bonus DR isn't so effective
- Double Tap grants +15 aim on the 2nd shot (from +20) - Slight nerf
- Hunter no longer requires a target to be injured to trigger, but instead of granting a 0 AP shot it grants +50% weapon damage when cloaked - Nerfed but more consistent triggers
XCOM:
- Jaeger has Impact (LCPL) replaced with Close Combat Specialist - Impact was too weak of a choice on the Jaeger
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs gain Penetrator - Helps them deal with XCOM tanks
- Ethereals gain Psychic Wave - Improved AI
Bug Fixes:
- Attempted to fix the smoke visual lingering bug again
- Fixed a bug where Bradford was telling people they were failing a mission when they weren't
- Fixed a bug where council spawns were all sectoids
- Base injury time is 4 days longer - Helps accommodate for losing armor wounds
- Satellite Nexii cost 10 elerium (from 50) - Makes them easier to use on 4-country continent starts
- The chance a UFO power source is intact on a crashed UFO is now 0% (from 20%) - Makes getting a surplus of early elerium not RNG based
- XCOM Security I/II now damages 50/100% of aliens (from 25/50%) - Makes the base defense mission even easier
- XCOM no longer loses some to all of their aircraft in their home continent if they lose the base defense mission
- We have ways reduces autopsy/interrogation time by 85% (from 65%) - Buffed
- You can now sell aircraft weapons and aircraft boosters on the grey market - QoL
Tactical:
- Council missions will now have random reinforcements based on the alien level (instead of just thinmen) - QoL
- Bomb Disposals now have a more reasonable and gradual number of reinforcements - QoL
- You now automatically find any alien sneaking within 4 tiles (from point blank) - makes it not so easy for aliens to hide when they are close, buff to XCOM
- Sectopods will no longer appear at AL 7 and Ethereals will no longer appear at AL 8 - Makes the early part of late game a little less difficult
- Base DR now decreases as the armor HP of a unit decreases (instead of as the full HP of a unit decreases) - Makes a lot of intuitive sense as armor provides the base DR
- Every 10 damage dealt grants +1 pen to the shot - Makes penetration scale better with higher damage
- VIPs (on council missions) no longer gain +25% mobility - Makes them harder to rush extract, requires more protection on their part
Perks:
- Sentry grants 1 ammo (from 3) and causes the first hit to graze (instead of 50% DR) - Nerf on ammo surplus, makes it more obvious where the reduced damage is coming from, guaranteed graze is more DR than 50% DR (especially due to new pen)
- Biologic Shredder broken down into Aerial Shredder, Ether Shredder, and Carapace Shredder which affects flying-capable units, Distortion Units, and hardened biologic units, respectively - Tone down in strength on plasma weapons
- Ranger now grants sidearms a 1 AP reload - not innate on pistols anymore, also works with sawed-off shotguns now
- Fragmentation grants a 50% chance for double damage (from 40%) - the unpredictablilty is more of a negative
- Combat Drugs heals back 35% of damage taken (from 45%) - Toned back, as it was the premier smoke due to not being able to stay in smoke and mitigating damage
Equipment:
- Pistols no longer have quick load - Baked into ranger now
- New Equipment: Advanced Launcher: Equippable by MECs only. Dmg: 14, Env Dmg: 70, Range: 10, Radius: 2.5, Rounds: 5, Mob: -0.6, 150 credits, 20 meld, 30 elerium, 80 alloys, 32 time to build, 100 engineers, requires heavy floater interrogation and mec warfare systems - Acts as an upgrade to grenade based MEC builds in the end game (similar to what plasma grenades did for biosoldiers)
- Breaching Ammo no longer grants +2 pen - strong enough at just ignoring hardened which is like +50% damage on anything hardened
- Plasma Stellerator grants +1 pen - Helps with late game damage reduction
- Marauder: Sentry replaced with Sprinter, Sprinter replaced with Shadowstep, Opportunist replaced with Repulsor - Gives an option for a faster Marauder off the bat as sentry wasn't a great pick, and tones back the CCS build while providing players more of an option for resiliency at SGT
- Goliath: CST and Penetrator swapped - Stops Goliath DT from coming on so strong so early with the DT/CST build
- Jaeger: CCS replaced with Impact, Opp replaced with Holo, VPT replaced with Lock N' Load - CCS was probably just not going to work on the build, depsite trying, and Impact focuses more on Hunter's ability to avoid OW to let the Jaeger clear overwatch for others, VPT switching for LnL is to overall lower the damage output, but also help the fact that Hunter requires ammo and thus improve the consistency of the Jaeger for triggering Hunter, also, impact/holo is more fitting in the sniper/scout theme
Aliens:
- Heavy Floaters pick up Impact - Accommodates for loss of innate penetration
- All aliens lose all innate penetration - their damage will now be enough
- Mecthoids only gain Absorption Fields at Champion Level (from all Mechtoids) - Significant reduction in their resiliency
Bug Fixes:
- Tweaked the timing in checking for flying status on aliens so players playing really quick would not flank floaters in cover and find they all of the sudden start flying
- Fixed some inaccuracy in the hit panel graze chance calculations (visual bug only)
- Possibly fixed a bug where a unit could become permanently mind controlled
- Typos
Version 1.43.15
LW Rebalance v1.43.15 - Aim Eraser
Equipment:
- Enhanced Beam Optics and Alloy Jacketed Rounds grant +5 aim (from +10) - Slight tone back, was a little too strong at +10
- Scope grants +5 crit (from +10) - Slight tone back, makes more room for other items early game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where a font size description would appear on the soldier nickname place in the bottom left of a tactical mission and ERASE their previous name!
- Fixed a bug where triggering indomitable would sometimes cause a crash
- Fixed a bug where Infantry had a wrong perk
- Fixed an incorrect popup when suppressing
Version 1.43.14
LW Rebalance v1.43.14 - Close Heat
Strategic:
- New Foundry project 'Heavy Shells': 100 time, 45 engineers, requires heavy floater interrogation and 5 heavy floater corpses, costs 100 cash and 220 alloys and 10 weapon frags: All MECs gain HEAT Warheads - Gives late game MECs a boost to their explosive perks to keep them competitive with bioclasses
- You can now dismantle your own satellites for a 50 credit bonus - QoL
Tactical:
- Hyperwave Relay now provides slightly more information during a mission - QoL
- You can now press ALT + T during any tactical mission to bring up the tutorial again - QoL
- Prepared will no longer effect XCOM units that are further than 18 tiles + their mobility away - Just takes away some unnecessary AP capping, I think it's not abusable, really helps when a unit is off getting meld or something or when you rush 1 guy forward and the rest of the crew is way behind
- Concussive Blast (from explosives) now also disables Reactive Targeting Sensors for a turn - Give another option to deal with sectopod and other alien leaders with RTS to make solutions for problem enemies more varied, significant buff to later game explosives
Perks:
- In the Zone grants +20 aim on regular shots - Buffed to make it competitive with Double Tap and Mayhem, also only buffs the non-steadied component to encourage more versatility in the build
- Close Combat Specialist grants +1 ammo to all primary weapons (from just shotguns) - Buff to Jaeger and Marauder CCS as it was a little weak on Jaeger and Marauder will be using more ammo with new Onslaught
- Close Encounters no longer grants Slayer - Assaults were already one of the highest damage output classes in the game, especially late game, they didn't need the extra bump
- Fortified grants +15 base DR (from +10) - Buffed
- Assaults replaces HEAT Warheads with Mayhem - Significant buff to later game Assault Grenadier with easily the highest grenade damage potential with Mayhem + Frag (plasma grenades fragging for 36+ damage), keeps it competitive with the other 2 assaults
- Infantry replaces Vital Point Targeting with HEAT Warheads - BeO and VPT were similar and replacing one with HEAT gives a nice boost to the infantry grenadier, also, this focuses the Infantry Shooter on a "see more do well" shooter build, last, it makes infantry grenadiers more competitive with the other greandier builds late game (as they fell off too hard)
Aliens:
- Outsiders gain 1 damage per alien level upgrade (from 2) - Reduces their damage output mid-late game as they were a little too much of a difficulty spike in mid game
- Floater Champions lose Ready For Anything - So it doesn't have bad AI with Light 'Em Up, also it's little bit too much action economy that should be reserved for things like sectopods and ethereals, also lowers the oppressiveness of RfA units
- Muton Leaders lose Ready For Anything - Same as above
- Sectoid Commander Champions lose Ready For Anything - Same as above
- Heavy Floater Leaders lose Ready For Anything - Same as above
- Muton Elite Leaders lose Ready For Anything - Same as above
- UHIV loses Ready For Anything - Same as above
- Floater champions gain 60 HP (from 40) - Buffed
- Level 5 Heavy Floater Leaders gain 20 HP (from 10) - Buffed
- Heavy Floater Champions gain 50 HP (from 25) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where you could get SHIV Chasis from killing cyberdiscs (instead of Exalt SHIVs)
- Fixed a Damage Control popup occuring at an incorrect time
- Fixed a bug where smoke would linger visually despite being gone mechanically (I hope)
- Fixed a bug where the reactive targeting system UI flag buffs were incorrect
- Typos
Version 1.43.13
LW Rebalance v1.43.13 - Buggy Fleet
Perk:
- Fleet now grants bonus defense equal to 2.5x this unit's mobility (from 5x) but no longer is removed with damage - Grenades were already extremely effective vs lids, didn't need to be further motivated to use them -- helps newer players not feel 'pigeon holed' into using only explosives
- Indomitable no longer works against melee attacks - Makes sure we get sweet KSM glory
- Run and Gun again grants +35% weapon damage and +35 crit (from just +30 crit) - With Low Profile it was probably too strong, without the damage and LP it's probably too weak, this seems like a good sweet spot. Focuses the build more on high risk high reward, an attempt at keeping it competitive into the late game.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some smoke debug messages appearing
- Fixed a bug where mouse clicking end turn would sometimes not set combat readiness correctly
- Fixed a bug where sometimes acid clouds would disappear
- Fixed a bug where battle scanners were not revealing all sneaking aliens
Version 1.43.12
LW Rebalance v1.43.12 - Staggering Countercharge
Strategic:
- Add arrival time information to buying soldiers and interceptors panels - QoL
- Survival Training no longer reduces injury time - The 4 HP was strong enough on it's own
- Alien Grenade Foundry Project no longer increases grenade range of HE/AP by +2 - Helps keep grenades more mid-short range
- Cooling coils increases aircraft fire rate by 30% (from 15%) - It needed a boost since it was so late game
Tactical:
- Staggered now makes all shots from a staggered unit graze their opponent - Buff to the strength of OW, and makes sense, was tricky to get this to work but works nicely now
- Prepared will only activate on single pod activations - Feels more fair
- Injuries can no longer occur through armor - The pros didn't seem to outweight the negatives, it's a nice feeling to know you're safe behind your armor
- Overall injury times increased by ~20% - Accommodates for no armor injuries
- Leader aliens now grant over double the previous XP bounty when killed, and champion aliens triple this (from doubling it) - Makes seeing leaders more of a nice benefit to really help out the squad and increases xp gain, especially late game
Perks:
- Telekinetic Field reduces the damage of explosives by 50% - Makes it more resilient against all attacks
- Awareness now only grants 20 defense vs non-reaction fire - Buff to later game overwatch classes
- Double Tap grants +20 aim on the second shot if fired at the same target - Buffed, and realistically fits the original use of Double Tap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap)
- Mind Fray no longer lowers defense - Means you don't have to hide a solider that gets hit by it and that they became a primary taunter which felt bad, slight nerf vs countercharge for XCOM
Equipment:
- The KSM (Kinetic Strike Module) can only be used once per turn - Encourages Marauders to utilize their other capabilities
- The Neural Scope grants +20 aim (from +10) - Large buff to psionic shooters
- Reaper Ammo grants +3 crit damage and +30 crit (from +2 crit damage and +20 crit) - Buff to pulse weapons
- Enhanced Beam Optics (EBO), Alloy-Jacketed Rounds (AJR), and the Plasma Stellerator all grant +10 aim (from 0) - Buff to EBO and AJR as they were often skipped and buff to late game aim on the stellerator
- Alien and Plasma Grenade range reduced by 2 - Helps keep grenades more mid-short range, similar to Alien Grenade Foundry Project change
XCOM:
- Brawler and Tenacious Defense swapped on Assault - Makes the assaults role more about close combat and gives further differentiation to the tanks
- Bullseye replaced with Brawler on Goliath - Pushes the bruiser/tanky role on the Goliath, tone back on DT build (accommodating for DT buff)
Aliens:
- Countercharge now only occurs on Sectoid leaders (from all sectoids) - Despite giving it the test of time, a large portion of players still dislike this ability being so common. Also, with the increased chance of their other psionic abilities to land, and the prepared mechanic, this is no longer as important to act as a skill differential through injury rates during missions.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where SHIVs might still have suppression
- Fixed a bug where sometimes hiding enemies would count as enemies in sight for various abilities and effects
- Fixed a bug where the aliens would sometimes enter sneak mode in view of xcom (e.g. when they hunkered)
- Fixed a bug (I hope) where a smoke graphic would sometimes linger despite smoke having already dissipated
- Typos
Version 1.43.11
LW Rebalance v1.43.11 - Classic Bull
Difficulty Changes:
- Chance for OW on drop-in/launch is now 25/50/75/100 based on difficulty (from 0/0/50/100) - Makes those difficulties experience some of the game more
- Chance for enemies hiding during sneak mode is now 25/50/75/100 based on difficulty (from 0/0/50/100) - Makes those difficulties experience some of the game more, plus sneak mode is really fun and a huge success
Strategic:
- Panic reductions from council requests are now 66% stronger - They felt not worth it too often
- Alien Grenade Foundry project requires 20 muton corpses (from 10) - Makes it come on later as it was a little bit too much of a power spike early/mid game
- Gene Mods and Psi Abilities no longer show on the right list for soldiers (you have to click on the psi or gene tabs to see them) - Cleans up the right side and prevents scrolling and clutter
- SHIV Advancements I grants Lock N' Load (instead of Suppression) - Helps it focus more on damage than disable
Tactical:
- Temple ship aliens do not gain prepared - It's strong enough with invulnerable
- Active Aliens 2/1 on impossible now have a 20/50% chance to trigger prepared and prepared chance no longer has any effect based on how many enemies are visible, just on how many are active - Helps prevent some abuses and stops from encouraging leaving units alive at high levels
- Prepared will no longer trigger all of XCOM or none and instead each soldier will roll a chance for prepared to trigger - Makes it less all-or-nothing, also keeps obsidian happy
- Updated the Tutorial with more information including hotkeys and other various features - QoL
- Melee units when activated will no longer stutter step but instead spread out laterally on activation - Improved AI
Perks:
- Bull Rush no longer destroys cover - Felt quite unfair when it did and creates some really spikey difficulty
- Holo Rounds grants +15 aim (from +10) - Was a little too weak at 10 making it too ineffective
- Suppression does suppressive fire on suppression shot instead of actually taking a shot - Makes the ammo feel much more worth it
- Collateral Damage no longer requires 2 AP - Significant buff to allow for much easier positioning on use
- Close Combat Specialist will now only fire a reaction shot if the hit chance is greater than 50% (from the normal 30%) - Buffed as too often CCS would waste ammo taking pot shots
- Advanced preparation grants 30% graze chance (from 40%) - Was too predictable/strong at 40%
- Overpower is reduced/increased by 1% for each HP above/below average - With the reduction in strength of overpower, the effect of HP's reduction was amplified and was too strong
- Rapid Fire aim to -30 flat (from -10 + -5 per tile away) - makes it slightly more useful at range and not so strong at point blank and at 4 tiles away the same
- Mechanic no longer grants additonal throw range - They really didn't need it, was proably a mistake to give it them as they are quite strong with their solid perks and innate mech pen
- Hit and Run grants +50% weapon damage (from +35%) - Buffed due to the more tanky meta making the hit and run playstyle not as useful
Equipment:
- Targeting Motor now grants Critical System Targeting (instead of Mayhem) - Mayhem not useful anymore since no suppression and helps the SHIV fill a unique role
- Autosentry Turrent mobility to -1.3 (from -0.6) - Reactive Targeting Sensors is a lot stronger on the SHIV with better ammo supply
- Holo Charger aim to +5 (from +10) - Accommodates for holo buff
- Incinerator Module renamed to Incinerator Amp - QoL, more intuitive
- Targeting Module renamed to AR Targeter - Module felt like something for MEC/SHIV, AR for Augmented Reality feels more reasonable for crit buff
- Ammo Module renamed to Heavy Mags - More intuitive
XCOM:
- Assault base will to 10 (from 15) - Slight nerf to psionic potential on assaults, balance vs infantry and overall slight reduction of assault strength
- Recoilless Rifle upgrades the Fire Rocket ability to only cost 1 AP - Buff to mid-game rocketeers, gives a fitting and unique role to the 'recoilless' rifle
Aliens:
- Thinmen leaders no longer gain concealment - Didn't do much and bugged with sneak mode
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the visual display of an acid cloud (and some other volume emitters) would sometimes disappear despite still existing on the map
- Fixed a bug where bloodlust would not update the unit's flag and visually it looked like they might still be debuffed
- Fixed a bug where Desperate Odds would not allow a base defense mission to activate
Version 1.43.10
LW Rebalance v1.43.10 - Bug Hunter
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where aliens sometimes wouldn't trigger prepared on the alien turn
- Fixed a bug where lids would sometimes not move properly on reveal (they still will sometimes do more than stutter step but there is only so much I can reasonably do)
- Fixed a bug where alien resources would not accumulate correctly (minor bug, just a rounding error)
- Fixed a bug where aliens could CTD on a reveal when other aliens are sneaking
- Fixed a bug when holo-targeting penetration would sometimes not work if the unit already had some penetration
- Fixed a bug where the visual timer on bomb missions would sometimes restart after defusing the bomb (visual only)
- Fixed a bug where some computers that were overloaded would not record the turn yet and let pods get prepared on the first turn
- Fixed a bug where non-idle enemies could hide during sneak mode
- Typos
Version 1.43.09
LW Rebalance v1.43.09 - Stutter Step
Tactical:
- Melee pods now only move short distances in random direction on pod reveal - Prevents being so punishing when prepared and prevents being as suceptible to area effects
- Alien pods cannot be prepared on the first turn - Prevents getting jumped in the landing zone without being able to appropriately position, also represents some sort of 'storming' of the area by xcom
- Psionic damage can no longer cause armor injuries - Makes sense and helps lower frustration from psychic storm and countercharge
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where power nodes being hit on bomb missions wouldn't always display correctly in the bomb countdown timer
- Fixed a possible bug where pods on aliens turns could trigger prepared too soon (more just making the code more robust in case the engine glitches or something)
- Fixed a bug where cues for potential sneakers around XCOm were showing incorrect directions
Version 1.43.08
LW Rebalance v1.43.08 - Psychic Drizzle
Tactical:
- Sneaking aliens that are within 18 tiles will now sometimes give XCOM a clue of where they are at the start of each XCOM turn - Makes sneaking enemies a little less difficult to find
- Aliens that activate on the alien turn right after xcom killed or lost sight with the last alien will no longer trigger prepared - Prevents the situation where you just killed a pod and another pod wanders in and gets prepared
- Added a tutorial for the first mission - QoL
- Prepared chance per difficulty changed to 0/10/20, 0/10/20, 40/50/60, 80/90/100 - Makes noise less of a factor
- Steadied shots grant +70 aim (from +50) - Buffed, makes it more useful, and on aim maxed can provide more crit
- Enemies no longer overwatch on activation - Could trap some units, and create some unreasonable situations, prepared is already filling this role so no need to double up on it, plus, for some reason, it was only specific aliens, which didn't really make sense
Perks:
- Psychic Storm no longer deals double damage to mechanical units - Original reason for this is not there anymore, so it felt needless
- Tuned down the frequency of back-to-back Psychic Storms and Orbital Rays - Wasn't necessary and often would lead to not-good-feeling situations
- Max range on Psychic Storm reduced to 25 tiles (from 28) - Makes it easier to avoid triggering
- MEC MiNE Launcher radius to 5 (from 4) - Buffed to make it easier to tag more units
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where promotions after LCPL would previously still change armor tints of some characters
- Fixed a bug where some alien units did not scamper on reveal (especially floaters)
- Fixed a bug with Jai jawan start granting extra power sources
- I think fixed a bug where power nodes still only granted a single turn on bomb disposal missions
Version 1.43.07
LW Rebalance v1.43.07 - Frenchie Drones
Tactical:
- Diffusing bomb nodes now increase the bomb timer by 2 (from 1) on bomb diffusal missions - Makes them more reasonable missions
- Combat Readiness graze chance to 10% (from 20%) - Was too strong at 20% for tanking, and wasn't intended to augment that role so much
Prepared Mechanic:
- Enemies that are prepared no longer have a chance to go on overwatch after moving and no longer gain a combat readiness buff - Felt too strong in some really bad situations, also the combat readiness with graze chance could be very frustrating and didn't lead to great gameplay
- Enemies that are prepared will now restrict all XCOM units to a maximum of 1 AP - Really prevents the alpha striking while still giving XCOM the initiative
- Prepared chances per difficulty and xcom noise level are now: Easy: 0/10/20, Classic: 0/20/40, Brutal: 30/50/70, Impossible: 60/80/100 - Mostly to lower the effect of noise level, and make brutal have an automatic chance
Perks:
- Field Medic no longer requires use on an ally to trigger - Buff to self-healing on the medic
XCOM:
- Annette and the other psi characters you get all gain +10 will - Makes them feel more special, especially for when you get them, and the higher will isn't as 'abusive' as it used to be
Aliens:
- Drone mobility to 8 (from 6) and aim to 60 (from 45) - They don't need to be so slow now that their holo has been nerfed, helps keep the more offensively relevant
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where research focus and assembly line starts would sometimes not reduced the cost of laboratories and workshops
- Fixed a bug where Jai Jawan still granted a foundry project
- Fixed a bug where the DPS of aircraft did not accurately account for anything that modified the fire rate of aircraft and thus would often underestimate damage done
- Fixed a long time bug with tracktwo's sightlines mod where you could sometimes target an invisible flying sectoid or chyrssalid - Fear not, even though you won't be able to see them, they'll still be there watching you and guiding you
- Fixed a bug where you could still see a + on a mission description when alien resources were high suggesting alien resources could affect the mission (where it can't anymore)
- Typos
Version 1.43.06
LW Rebalance v1.43.06 - Obsidian Joy
Tactical:
- Enemies being 'prepared' no longer occurs if you have a single alien at less than 50% hp in vision - Minor change. It was a little too convoluted, so this simplifies things: prepared can occur if no aliens in sight and < 3 active
- First mission has 1 less sectoids on easy, 2 less on classic/brutal, and 3 less on impossible - Makes it easier
- Prepared aliens will have 0/0/1/2 aliens in the pod enter overwatch after moving (based on difficulty) - After testing more, it is by far the best way to balance both the issues of the significant difficulty dichotomy between single pod engagements through a mission vs map-wide engagements while also balancing out the significant difficulty dichotomy of enemies walking into you vs activating at the end of your turn
Perks:
- Overpower is now based on will/6 (from will/5) - It used to be will/4 so this is a overall significant reduction of the strength of overpower
- Mind Merge, Enhanced Metabolism, and Inner Fire no longer grant Overpower resistance - Accommodates for overpower nerf, relative buff to psi inspire (especially cause it's doing less with OP weaker), makes mind merge not act like such a stacking buff on overpowered units, overall psi less important for OP resist. Now the only two abilities that resist OP are combat stims and psi inspire.
Aliens:
- Floater leaders gain deflection shield - Makes them harder to remove when they derp
- Sectoid will increased by 10 - Buffed as they were a little too weak
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where being overpowered would not show the correct aim in the F1 panel
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes enter sneak mode even though they could see an XCOM unit
- Fixed a bug where red fog was increasing melee damage instead of decreasing it
- Fixed a bug where sneaking units were not being revealed by the tracker perk or battle scanners
- Fixed a bug where the game would sometimes not properly remove a unit when it died which would turn off scout reconnaissance
- Fixed a bug where Their Finest Hour was granting free foundry projects
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would activate deflection shield and perform an action on the same turn
- Typos
Version 1.43.05
LW Rebalance v1.43.05: Sneaky Slayers
Strategic:
- Alien Grenade Foundry Project now grants +2 range to AP and HE grenades - Accommodates for decreased range on AP and HE grenades
Difficulty:
- Impossible Difficulty add +3 HP to all units (from +2 HP) - Increase in early game difficulty
- Easy Difficulty reduces mobility by -1.3 (from -2) - Was causing some problems at so much mobility reduction
Tactical:
- Cleaned up some code to make the game a little smoother - QoL
- Aliens will now open doors - Improved AI! =D
- Improved Sneak mechanic on aliens: If XCOM completely breaks LoS and sneak activates, aliens that use cover will now become hidden from vision. XCOM units that see an exposed unit within 10 tiles will reveal them (works like concealment but no heavy cover requirement and must be within 10 tiles). The chance to hide will be 0% for easy/classic, 50% for brutal, and 100% for impossible - Makes the aliens better at dealing with LOS breaks, if they use cover
- Combat Readiness grants a 20% chance for graze (from 10%) and reduces rocket scatter by 20% (from 10%) - Buff to the effect on both XCOM and Aliens
- Concussive Blast no longer auto disorients against fliers - Was a little too effective vs that group and is already effective enough without this extra buff, also a simplification
- Noise Level modification: The 1st alien pod being prepared is no longer a 100% chance but instead the chance is based off of Noise Level and Difficulty as follows: Easy (0/15/30% chance), Classic (0/25/50% chance), Brutal (0/35/70% chance), Impossible (50/85/100% chance) - Makes noise more important and gives players on lower difficulties the possibility to avoid most 'prepared' activations
Slayer:
- New Perk 'Slayer': All weapons and equipment deal bonus % weapon damage equal to the target's current HP - It was a feature of multiple items/abilities and is now being condensed into a perk, for simplification of descriptions and ease of understanding
- New Perk 'Gun Slayer': Primary weapon shots deal bonus % weapon damage equal to the target's current HP, stacks with Slayer - A perk for the plasma stellerator
- Close Encounters no longer grants bonus damage based on Enemy HP to targets within 4 tiles but instead grants Slayer - Buff to grenadier Assault, especially late game
- Shock and Awe no longer grants bonus damage to Collateral damage, Rockets, and standard shots based on enemy HP but instead gains Slayer - Buff to grenadier Rocketeer, especially late game
- Plasma Stellerator grants Gun Slayer instead of just the ability - No change
Perks:
- Leader perk (for alien leaders) no longer applies to other alien leaders - Reduces late game def stacking
- Psi Lance does base 4 damage (from base 5 damage) - Decrease in ethereal damage output
- Mayhem grants +70% weapon damage (from +90%) - Balance on the sniper tree
- Danger Zone grants a +35% increase in radius (from +50%) - at 50% it was a little too much on rockets (sometimes a negative) and with the recent buff on HE grenade radius the +50% was too strong, this puts it in a more reasonable place for both, last the grenadier rocketeer is already getting a buff with new slayer
Equipment:
- AP and HE grenade range to 10/8 (from 14/10) - Accommodates for Alien Grenade Foundry project boost (where they get range back), tones back early game strength
- HE Grenade radius to 2.5 (from 3) - Slight tone back as it was a little too strong
XCOM:
- Scout base aim to +10 (from +15) - Slight nerf to bullseye scout
Aliens:
- Level 1 Muton leaders HP bonus to 5 (from 10) and aim to 10 (from 20) - Makes them a little less punishing early game
- Level 9 Muton leaders HP bonus to 10 (from 5) and level 6 Muton Leader aim to 20 (from 10) - Accommodates for Level 1 leader stat adjustment
- Ethereal base regen to 1 (from 3) - Makes them less important to alpha strike to kill
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a display bug where it looked like Outsider non-leaders had indomitable
- Critically wounded units that fly to heaven will drop back to earth at the beginning of each XCOM turn
- Fixed a bug where Repulsor didn't show up with an actual title in the F1 aim panel
- Fixed a bug where lead and rear stances weren't granting appropriate aim in the air game
- Fixed a bug where you could equip a Fusion lance before you had researched Fusion Weapons
- Fixed a bug where Tac Armor wasn't giving 10 base DR
- Fixed some code where only requiring 2 hacks on exalt covert op extractions was too common
- Typos
LW Rebalance v1.43.05 - Sneaky Slayer
Strategic:
- Alien Grenade Foundry Project now grants +2 range to AP and HE grenades - Accommodates for decreased range on AP and HE grenades
Difficulty:
- Impossible Difficulty add +3 HP to all units (from +2 HP) - Increase in early game difficulty
- Easy Difficulty reduces mobility by -1.3 (from -2) - Was causing some problems at so much mobility reduction
Tactical:
- Cleaned up some code to make the game a little smoother - QoL
- Aliens will now open doors - Improved AI! =D
- Improved Sneak mechanic on aliens: If XCOM completely breaks LoS and sneak activates, aliens that use cover will now become hidden from vision. XCOM units that see an exposed unit within 10 tiles will reveal them (works like concealment but no heavy cover requirement and must be within 10 tiles). The chance to sneak will be 0% for easy/classic, 50% for brutal, and 100% for impossible - Makes the aliens better at dealing with LOS breaks, if they use cover
- Combat Readiness grants a 20% chance for graze (from 10%) and reduces rocket scatter by 20% (from 10%) - Buff to the effect on both XCOM and Aliens
- Concussive Blast no longer auto disorients against fliers - Was a little too effective vs that group and is already effective enough without this extra buff, also a simplification
- Noise Level modification: The 1st alien pod being prepared is no longer a 100% chance but instead the chance is based off of Noise Level and Difficulty as follows: Easy (0/15/30% chance), Classic (0/25/50% chance), Brutal (0/35/70% chance), Impossible (50/85/100% chance) - Makes noise more important and gives players on lower difficulties the possibility to avoid most 'prepared' activations
Slayer:
- New Perk 'Slayer': All weapons and equipment deal bonus % weapon damage equal to the target's current HP - It was a feature of multiple items/abilities and is now being condensed into a perk, for simplification of descriptions and ease of understanding
- New Perk 'Gun Slayer': Primary weapon shots deal bonus % weapon damage equal to the target's current HP, stacks with Slayer - A perk for the plasma stellerator
- Close Encounters no longer grants bonus damage based on Enemy HP to targets within 4 tiles but instead grants Slayer - Buff to grenadier Assault, especially late game
- Shock and Awe no longer grants bonus damage to Collateral damage, Rockets, and standard shots based on enemy HP but instead gains Slayer - Buff to grenadier Rocketeer, especially late game
- Plasma Stellerator grants Gun Slayer instead of just the ability - No change
Perks:
- Leader perk (for alien leaders) no longer applies to other alien leaders - Reduces late game def stacking
- Psi Lance does base 4 damage (from base 5 damage) - Decrease in ethereal damage output
- Mayhem grants +70% weapon damage (from +90%) - Balance on the sniper tree
- Danger Zone grants a +35% increase in radius (from +50%) - at 50% it was a little too much on rockets (sometimes a negative) and with the recent buff on HE grenade radius the +50% was too strong, this puts it in a more reasonable place for both, last the grenadier rocketeer is already getting a buff with new slayer
Equipment:
- AP and HE grenade range to 10/8 (from 14/10) - Accommodates for Alien Grenade Foundry project boost (where they get range back), tones back early game strength
- HE Grenade radius to 2.5 (from 3) - Slight tone back as it was a little too strong
XCOM:
- Scout base aim to +10 (from +15) - Slight nerf to bullseye scout
Aliens:
- Level 1 Muton leaders HP bonus to 5 (from 10) and aim to 10 (from 20) - Makes them a little less punishing early game
- Level 9 Muton leaders HP bonus to 10 (from 5) and level 6 Muton Leader aim to 20 (from 10) - Accommodates for Level 1 leader stat adjustment
- Ethereal base regen to 1 (from 3) - Makes them less important to alpha strike to kill
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a display bug where it looked like Outsider non-leaders had indomitable
- Critically wounded units that fly to heaven will drop back to earth at the beginning of each XCOM turn
- Fixed a bug where Repulsor didn't show up with an actual title in the F1 aim panel
- Fixed a bug where lead and rear stances weren't granting appropriate aim in the air game
- Fixed a bug where you could equip a Fusion lance before you had researched Fusion Weapons
- Fixed a bug where Tac Armor wasn't giving 10 base DR
- Fixed some code where only requiring 2 hacks on exalt covert op extractions was too common
- Typos
Version 1.43.04
LW Rebalance v1.43.04
Strategic:
- Improved medikits increase medikit healing by +1 and smart marcrophages increase medikit healing by +3 (from +2 both) - Balance on medikit modifiers so they are all useful
- LEAD for aircraft grants +15 aim (from +10) and REAR for aircraft grants -15 aim (from -10) - Makes the stances a little more balanced
Perks:
- Savior no longer increases the amount healed to 70% of missing HP - Medics didn't need the extra healing buff
- Run and Gun no longer grants +35% weapon damage and only grants +30 crit (from +35) - Was too strong
- Field Medic now only grants a free medikit use if it's used on an ally - Nerf to medic tank
- Hunter rework: Standard shots from cloak at a wounded enemy cost 0 AP. This unit cloaks at the beginning of each turn if it can see an enemy, has ammo, and is idle. Cloaking prevents aliens from seeing this unit and grants +30 crit. Cloaking breaks after taking any non-movement action or at the end of turn. Grants Combined Arms [All weapons and equipment deal +1 damage]. - More thematic, focuses on wounded targets, discourages alpha striking, still allows overwatch breaking
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic grant +3 pen vs mechanical units (from just +2 pen) - Buff to drones and grenadier/shooter engineers, especially since the nerfed holo and that it's only pen against mechanical units
- Disabling Shot aim malus to -20 (from -30) - With Sectopod gaining lock n' load it lost it's primary strength and didn't need as much of an aim malus
XCOM:
- Infantry base mobility to 1.3 (from 0.6) and Assault base mobility to 0.6 (from 1.3) - A little switcharoo as Infantry were a little lack luster and assaults a little spectacular
- Scout base mobility to 0.6 (from 0) - Scout HnR and support buffs
- Assault will to 15 (from 25) - Was too much of a psi shoe-in, was better if that was infantry's role
Equipment:
- Battle Scanner aim to +20 (from +15) - Buffed
- Targeting Motor grants 0 aim and 0 pen (from 5 aim and +1 pen) - Was very good with just mayhem
- Vortex armor now increases the damage dealt by Rift by +10 - Buff to volunteer on final mission
- Plasma Pistol cost to 5 meld (from 15) and Plasma Autopistol cost to 10 meld (from 30) - More reasonable pricing
- AP Grenade range to 14 (from 10) - Significant buff to the item and grenadiers in general
- HE Grenade range to 10 (from 8) - Buffed
- Concussion grenade and Psi Grenade range to 12 (from 10) - Buffed
Aliens:
- Heavy Floaters all gain CST again (instead of just leaders) - Floaters, especially with their reduced mobilty and grenade range, only have one real option: fire at tank, and it makes it too easy to just tank them... so much so that they end up not being much of a threat, especially late game where it's easy to park a MEC/SHIV (with their increased tankiness) out front to tank them all
- Sectoid Commander and Mechtoid Champions no longer gain Awareness - Nerf to high defense aliens late game and SCs are hard enough
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where a stunned enemy would make reconnaisance act weird
- Fixed a bug where bullrush AI could bug out causing the aliens to skip their turn
Version 1.43.03
LW Rebalance v1.43.03
Tactical:
- Lower difficulties have lower overall enemy defense 50%/75%/100%/100% (from 50/100/100/100) and it also includes the perks Transform (cyberdisc in closed state) and Fleet (chryssalids) - Easier for lower difficulties
- Aliens will be more likely to use global abilities (psi storm, orbital ray) on the Temple Ship when not in vision of XCOM - Makes XCOM engage more
- Invulnerable (Temple ship buff) now only wears off when an alien either starts in Line of sight of xcom, or performs a shot or casts a psionic ability - Prevents avoiding invulnerability
Perks:
- Saturation Fire renamed to Burst and grants +30 aim (from +25) - Was too much of a mouthful with saturation fire, slight buff
- Holo Rounds grants +10 aim against marked targets but now works just if they are fired at and on reaction fire - Makes it less mandatory but much easier to apply
- Mind Fray hit chance is calculated using 80% of will (from 66%) - Boosted
- Removed the champion perk - It's nice if red fog effects champions some more - Champion nerf, makes temple mission a little easier
Equipment:
- LMG aim malus to -20 (from -30) and ammo to 4 (from 5) - It pushed it too much into never use for shooting at -20
- Plasma Dragon (LMG) grants +1 damage to suppressive fire (from +2) - Toned back
- Recoilless Rifle / Blaster Launcher number of rockets to 3/5 (from 2/3) - Buffed for use on late game longer missions
XCOM:
- Sniper LCPL perk Kitted replaced with Holo Rounds - Holo feels a little more implace for a shooting class and spreads the holo-capability around the team, not so overpowered anymore with the reduced strength of holo
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where F1 aim wasn't accurate due to some dev code accidentally left in
- Fixed a bug where some code was causing the calculations in the engine to ramp up and cause some CTDs
- Fixed a bug where suppression wouldn't use opportunist when the perk was legitimately attained
- Fixed a bug where injuries sometimes were not being recorded
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm wouldn't always show the unit who was storming
- Fixed some code that might have been causing some psionic units to derp more
- Fixed a bug where some computers running LWR would not correctly execute the additional meld cannister code
- Typos
Version 1.43.02
LW Rebalance v1.43.02
Background Coding:
- Improved some code so that the engine runs smoother and should be less choppy and less likely to CTD from being overwhelmed - QoL
Strategic:
- Fear No Evil provides 20% panic reduction (from 10%) and countries that have left xcom provide 20% of their funding (from 40%) - Makes the bonus more balanced throughout a campaign instead of so strong just near the end
Tactical:
- Tweaked the prepared mechanic when revealing an enemy pod so it should only work on the first pod revealed and not 2 pods - Not 100% sure this will work all the time
Perks:
- Dense Smoke and Combat Drugs provide 2 additional smokes (from 1) - Buff to eng/med supports, give them back a touch of their former glory
- Dense Smoke loses the extra DR it gives - Tone back in strength and simplification, accommodation for extra smoke
- Sentry grants 3 ammo (from 2) - Mostly buff to XCOM classes that need to fire a lot to stay in sentry
- Suppression no longer automatically grants opportunist on only suppression shots - A bit of balance to gunners, biggest nerf to bullet wizards, second to gunner tanks, nothing to ow gunners
- Hunter now cloaks the Jaeger if multiple units are in vision (from 1 or more units) and will not occur the unit is in risk of triggering overwatch - Tone back on strength, encourages getting closer, makes it harder to 'keep 1 unit alive' and trigger hunter, also makes Jaeger a lot weaker vs overwatch
- New perk 'Hover': This unit can hover a tile above the ground to avoid some terrain and ground based effects - Helps explain a bug that sometimes occurs on sectopods
XCOM:
- Medic CPL perk impact replaced with Vital Point Targeting - More thematic and impact was a dead perk after nerf
- Jaeger TSGT perk Sharpshooter replaced with Vital Point Targeting - Buff to strength overall, helps accommodate for Hunter being more difficult to trigger
- Jaeger LCPL perk Impact replaced with Sharpshooter - Impact wasn't really worth it with the changed hunter
Aliens:
- All sectopods gain the new perk 'Hover' - Helps explain a bug that sometimes occurs on sectopods
- Exalt Heavy and Exalt Elite Heavies no longer have Sentry - Makes them much easier to flank and kill and tones down the strength of their overwatch a lot, large nerf
- Exalt Heavy / Exalt Elite Heavy aim to 50/60 (from 60/70) - Tone down on their strength further
- Exalt Operatives and Exalt Elite Operatives no longer have Impact or Sentinel - Significant nerf, especially on their overwatch strength
- Exalt Snipers and Exalt Elite Snipers no longer have Light 'Em Up - Huge nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where regular sectoid commanders would still sometimes have psi mastery
- Fixed a bug where Muscle Fiber Density cost 36 meld instead of 9
- Fixed a bug where the visual display on retired soldiers was suggesting they got more xp then they actually did
- Fixed a bug where ready for anything could activate on off-guard pods
- Fixed a bug in the F1 display that showed aim as lower than reality when a unit was disoriented
- Typos
Version 1.43.01
LW Rebalance v1.43.01
Bug Fixes:
- Steady is no longer lost if you can only see units in squadsight
- Fixed a bug where concussive blast would sometimes trigger from explosive damage through only armor HP on non-flying units
- Fixed a CTD when using stealth abilities inside telekinetic field or a distortion ring
- Fixed a bug where scout recon could detect helper units
Version 1.43.00
LW Rebalance v1.43.00
Strategic:
- Requirements for Gollop chamber to 20 ufo power sources (from 10) - They weren't very significant at 10 of each
- Reduced the rate of retirement experience by ~35%: from "every 2.5 days of retirments mission = 1 xp per day" to "each soldier gains xp: num_total_missions/4 each day" - Tone back and clarification
- SHIV Advancements I and II require 50 weapon fragments (from 80/60) - Makes them more reasonable to bring online, buff to early game XCOM SHIVs
- Genemod meld and credit and fatigue costs reduced by 50% - Makes them much more attainable
- XCOM Security: Guns and XCOM Security: Armor renamed to XCOM Security I and XCOM Security II and now they not only equip blue shirts with weapons but will fight and damage some of the aliens before they reach the interior of the XCOM base. Specifically 25% chance to lose 25-75% of their HP for security I and 50% chance for security II - Makes the projects more relevant and the base defense mission easier
- XCOM Security I/II cost to 200 and 600 credits - increased to make the decision strategic
Tactical:
- Enviromental damage from explosives to x5 weapon damage (from x10 weapon damage) - Destroying the environment was leading to too much straight forward engagements of "destroy cover - shoot till dead" which is not ideal gameplay
- Terror Missions now always have 2 lid pods and sometimes an extra zombie pod - Less RNG
- If you are on an enemies OW list but won't actually get shot by them right now, you'll still have a target icon in the top right of the soldier flag to let you know - Helps with certain situations like squadsight enemies
- Disorient now grants -15 defense (from -30) - It's be used more for a targeting solution than to disable the enemy, this should bring back more of the disable and help slow down alpha striking
- Red Fog now reduces aim, will, melee damage, throw range, rocket accuracy, and mobility by half the percent of base health lost (instead of set and different values) - Increase in effect of red fog, improved consistency and ease of understanding, makes it significantly more effective into the late game (overall significant xcom buff)
- Alien Appearances reworked and no longer have a small chance of more dangerous enemies appearing one alien level before they actually appear - Was not a fun or even really interesting mechanic
- Any pod that is revealed with no other visible aliens (or 1 visible alien below 50% HP) will be 'Prepared' [combat readiness] - Helps make individual pod activations less beneficial
- Every noise you make (smashing a window, breaking a door, firing a gun, using a rocket, etc.) will increase the noise level. The noise level ranges from 0 to 2 and decreases by 1 for each turn XCOM makes no noise made. Aliens pods are more likely to converge on XCOM if they make more noise. - Makes being silent on maps more important
- Only idle units can berserk - Prevents hurting steadied units and suppressed units
Perks:
- You can no longer overwatch units at squadsight and then fire at them when they enter visual range - units in squadsight simply are not overwatchable
- Reconnaissance grants just 1 battle scanner (from 2) - Nerfed, makes stealth detection harder and the aim bonus from battle scanners more coveted
- Greater Mind Merge now also activates a Telekinetic Field - Buff to the perk, as it was often not strong enough on it's own
- Deflection shield now activates on pod scamper - Makes sense
- Improved the Reconnaisance ability of the scout to detect active and inactive units equally and find any unit out of sight, including when engaged in battle, and when tracking a fleeing enemy - QoL, buffed
- New Perk 'Leader': This unit grants 20 defense to allies in sight
- New Perk 'Champion': This unit grants 20 defense to allies in sight and resists 50% of the effects of red fog
- Holo rounds only applies on the primary weapon and grants: If this unit fires two consecutive shots in a turn against a target it marks that target, regardless if either shot hit - Buff to units with the perk that can fire multiple times, especially buff to XCOM holo users
- Rapid Fire has a -10 aim malus with -5 per tile away (from -20 with -4 per tile away) - Buffed to XCOM rapid fire users
- Combat Drugs grants 45% healing of damage received (from 35%) - Buff for XCOM medics
- Repair Servos gains servos equal to 45% of the damage taken (from 50%) - Slight nerf
- Sapper deals double enviro damage (from triple) - Tone back on enviroment destruction
- Psychokinetic strike range to 10 tiles (from 18) and 2 tile radius (from 3) - Same as above, acts more like a super sapper grenade with unlimited charges
- Psi Lance does 10% less damage on each jump (from 50%) - Makes the jumps more significant
- Dense smoke damage reduction to 20% (from 30%) - Slight tone back, it's quite good
- Camaraderie grants double the chance for Commanding Officer to trigger (from triple) - was good enough at double
- Commanding Officer grants 50% resistance to the effects of red fog
- Damage Control grants 20% DR per hit (from 15%) - Buffed
- Damage Control now repairs 10 + half of the shred damage on a unit at the end of each of the wearer's turns - Buffed, makes tanks better at dealing with being shredded
- Psi Mastery now upgrades psychic storm to deal half it's damage when interupted - Makes it a better option on leader sectoid commanders and ethereals
- Absorption Fields is 35% DR (from 30%) - Buffed
- Repulsor Plating renamed to Repulsor - Distinguish it more from the plating items
- Rift does 2 + will_difference/25 damage (from 3 + will_difference/20) - Combined with the ethereal will reduction, rift should be doing significantly less damage
- Penetrator just again deals +2 penetration (from bypassing all base DR) - Made it too late game-centric when base DR got high
- Mechanic no longer grants healing after taking damage to mechanical units but does grants +15% throw range - Buff to grenade engineers, the 'in range to take damage' was pretty difficult to use and didn't play out in an ideal manner - either felt useless and rarely felt abusive
- Impact no longer grants +1 damage - Was strong enough with the pen and OW clear
- CST is back to 65% extra damage (from 100%) - Makes MEC tanks and SHIVs a lot more reasonable, means that fighting mechanical units isn't all about if you have CST, overall tune down in damage dealt on both sides
- Kitted also grants +1 ammo - Buff to the perk, especially since it's defensive in nature
- Collateral Damage to 25% damage per ammo spent (from 20%) and automatically also grants Lock N' Load - Buff to the action economy on the Shogun
- Mayhem to +90% weapon damage (from +100%) - Slight tone back, balance with other builds
- Savior no longer grants healing when damaged - Tone back on medic tanks
- Shock and Awe and Master Mechanic no longer clear OW status on enemies hit by shots for bio/mech targets - The perks were getting a little complex and the shooter builds are already strong enough
Equipment:
- Neural Gunlink and Illuminator Gunsight renamed to Neural Scope and Illuminator Scope - Makes it more clear to understand that scopes can't be equipped together but other items can
- Battle Rifles gain +20 crit - Buffed to be more competitive vs carbine/assault/smg
- Killer instinct grants 200% crit damage with shotguns and 175% with other weapons (from 175% always) - Buff to KI on the assault
- Flamethrower base damage to 7 (from 5) - Buffed as it was likely overnerfed before, buff to mid-game MECs
- HE grenade radius to 3 (from 2) - significantly stronger at dealing with multiple aliens and actually gives a little more reach, pushes it more into the close range grenade use
- Alloy/Hover SHIV armor HP to 20+20 and 16+16 (from 18+18 and 14+14) - Buff to SHIV resiliency
- Titan/Archangel armor to 14/12 (from 12/10) - Buff to xcom resiliency and strength of later game armors
- Corsair/Seraph armor HP to 10/8 (from 9/7) - Buff to xcom resiliency and strength of later game armors
- Acid Grenade range to 8 (from 10) - Nerfed, as it's quite strong
- All platings now provide 20 crit resistance - Buffed
- Ceramic/Alloy/Reinforced/Chitin/Regenerative Plating no longer give Base DR of 10/10/20/15/15 but instead grant %DR of 25/25/35/30/25 - Buff to bioplatings, especially on non-tanks, also helps them work better even when injured on tanks
- Alloy Carbide/Core Plating no longer give Base DR of 0/20 but instead grant 20/40% DR - Same as above but on mechanical units
- Regenerative Plating mobility to -0.6 (from 0) - Slight tone back
- Battle Scanner (2-Pack) now has -0.6 mobility (from 0) - It's strong and didn't want it to be as mandatory
- Neural Scope credit cost to 110 (from 300) - Makes it more reasonably affordable
- Chameleon Vest elerium/meld cost to 60/40 (from 120/80) - Same as above
- Battle Computer credit cost to 50 (from 250) - Same as above
- Psi Frayer bonus will to +20 (from +15) - Slight buff
- Base DR of Heavy armors increased by 10 (except for Vortex) - Buff to base DR on biosoldiers as it was too insignificant before, further increase in general xcom resiliency
- Aurora no longer grants base DR - Tone back on psi tank early game armor
- Vortex armor meld cost to 300 (from 200) - Makes it harder to acquire in multiples
- Aurora and Vortex armor grant Countercharge now has double the chance to trigger and +1 damage - Buff to countercharge on XCOM psionic users
- UHMEC3 HP to 22 (from 18) - Buffed due to low mobility being so debilitating
- Battle Rifles gain +20 crit - Buffed to be more competitive vs carbine/assault/smg
- Electropulse damage to 12 (from 8) and radius to 10 (from 8) - Buffed
- Grenade Launcher range to 10 (from 12) - Slight tone back, as positioning is much easier for MECs so getting in range was easier to do
- Thumper grants +8 dmg and +4 pen to the KSM (from 6/3) - Buffed
- Mechanic no longer grants healing after taking damage to mechanical units but does grants +15% throw range - Buff to grenade engineers, the 'in range to take damage' was pretty difficult to use and didn't play out in an ideal manner - either felt useless and rarely felt abusive
XCOM:
- Goliath Repair Servos and Kinetic Dampening swapped - Repair Servos was too strong of a pick that it was imbalanced at that level
- Penetrator on sniper replaced with kitted - Gives the sniper a slight utility role, penetrator was a dead perk with the new change
- Impact on Marauder replaced with Snapshot - Impact was a little weak on a unit that wants to get so up close vs sprinter, Snapshot further complements the shooting build and provides some option when under overwatch
Aliens:
- Ethereal will to 100 (from 110) and growth to 20 per alien and leader level (from 30) - Tone down on ethereal strength
- Heavy Floaters gain Iron Skin - Buff to resiliency
- All alien leaders gain the Leader perk - Buff to alien leaders, helps increase late game resistance to shots
- All alien champions gain the Champion perk - Same as above
- Ethereals and Sectoid Commanders gain the Telekinetic Field ability - Buff to their resiliency and use of defensive (instead of offensive) abilities
- Sectoids and Drones level up on all even levels (from odd) - Makes the odd vs even level ups more balanced
- Psychic Storm is a little more likely to go off when the AI is 'derping' - Improved AI
- Floater leaders and Heavy Floaters Leaders gain Light 'Em Up - Buff to their damage output
- Seeker mobility back to 9.3 (from 6.6) - They were too slow to pose a significant threat, now they should be much more lethal for engaging quicker and getting faster strangles/flanks
- Sectopod gains lock n' load - Prevents feeling forced to have disabling shots to be effective against them
- Sectopod damage to 12 (from 14) and damage increase per AL to 3 (from 4) - Tone back on strength of sectopods
Bug Fixes:
- Sawed off no longer has quick load
- Fixed a bug where the requirements for the gollop chamber were being affected by campaign length twice (meaning you only required 5 of the ethereal corpses and ufo power sources instead of 10)
- impact no longer acts as if it buffed overwatch for the purpose of visual cues
- Fixed a bug where indestructible objects would not always be shown when pressing "l"
- Fixed a bug where MiNEs wouldn't clear psychic storm or mind control
- Seekers no longer fly when strangling
- Fixed a bug where suppressing a seeker could cause a soft-lock
- Tried to fix a bug where on lower difficulties some enemies would still reinforce on overwatch
- Fixed a bug where indestructible objects were still not being listed as indestructible
- Improved some code to reduce possibility of CTD with lots of enemies
- Fixed a bug where alien leaders that were dead still applied leadership bonuses
- Fixed some oddities with the new reconnaisance system
- Fixed a bug where loading a save could change the weapons your soldier have equipped and mess up things like overwatch/steady
- Fixed a bug where multiple starts were not granting the correct amount of weapon fragments
- Fixed a bug where Resourceful wasn't granting double resources on UFO missions
- Typos
Version 1.42.14
LW Rebalance v1.42.14
Strategic:
- Consensed Plasma weapon fragment cost lowered to 80 (from 250) - makes it more reasonably attainable
Tactical:
- New feature 'Boosting': If you hunker two units adjacent to an idle biosoldier in cover with an AP remaining, that biosolder will lose all remaining AP and gain the ability to scamper up any adjacent height - QoL, helps access previously inaccessible locations (to get meld, engage enemies, get good vantage points, etc.)
- In The Zone no longer lowers aim/crit and doesn't grant a free steady on reload but again grants a free reload on firing a non-steadied shot - Reverted to old version, reduced action economy
- Disabling Shot aim malus to -30 (from -20) - Still was strong =P
Equipment:
- MiNEs lose their penetration and start with 1 round (from 2) - Tone back in strength
- Grenade launchers start with 2 rounds (from 3) - Tone back in strength
- Laser sight crit to +10 (from +15) - Toned back so it's less of a late game item
- Alloy Bipod cost reduced to 30 alloys (from 60) - It was a little too cost prohibitive
Aliens:
- Only berserker leaders gain grit (from all berserkers) - Makes packs of berserkers much easier to deal with
- Only outsider leaders gain indomitable (from all outsiders) - Make packs of outsiders easier to kill with heavy hits
- Only heavy floater leaders gain indomitable (from all heavy floaters) - Make packs of heavy floaters easier to kill with heavy hits
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where ethereals and sectoid commanders were taking less damage than intended due to a truncation error with critical hits and bonus weapon damage
- Fixed a bug where getting hit while attempting to suppress could leave the unit in a new position out of cover
Version 1.42.13
LW Rebalance v1.42.13
Strategic:
- Research Focus now also starts XCOM with 100 weapon fragments (modified by campaign length) - Buffed
- Overall weapon fragment gain increased by 10% - Slight help with tight fragments during campaigns
Tactical:
- Pistols now all have the ability Quick Load: Reloading costs only 1 AP - Makes them more useful
- Smoke now only lasts 1 turn (from 2) - Decrease in the camping capability of XCOM, and ability of multiple supports to keep all of XCOM permanently smoked for entire missions, thanks to szmind for help with the code on this
- Added a warning when either psychic storm or orbital ray might trigger on the next turn in case the player or the game didn't catch the trigger - QoL
Perks:
- One For All grants 35% DR (from 20%) - Helps with tanking a lot
- Flush renamed to Saturation Fire and now will never trigger a unit to move but grants +25 aim (from +20) - Slight buff, and removal of the unpredictable nature of having enemies move, makes it nice for applying holo/shred and hitting difficult to reach targets
- Predictive Tracking reduces the malus of flush from -50% damage to -25% damage (instead of to -0% weapon damage) - Toned back in strength due to stronger flush
- Impact grants +1 pen and +1 dmg (from just +1 pen) but no longer affects stagger chances - Buff to the damage aspect of the perk while making it harder to disable enemies
- Telekinetic Field grants 30 defense (from 40) and no longer reduces explosive damage - Tone back on ability to tank through turns, makes other psionic options more competitive at that level
- Awareness grants 20 defense (from 30) - Makes it a more balanced choice on the Jaeger and enemy leaders not so hard to hit and early game awareness not as strong on XCOM
- Run and Gun no longer grants low profile - Tone back in strength, they are quite versatile
- First Aid grants a free smoke grenade and +1 HP (as well as 2 medikits) and is renamed to 'Kitted' - Buffed
- Shock and Awe again grants +x% damage to standard shots where x is the target's HP - Buffed for extra hit for the Hit and Run Shogun and the Light 'Em Up Rocketeer
- Shock and awe now makes standard shots clear enemy biologic unit's overwatch - Buffed, another option for clearing enemy overwatch
- Master Mechanic makes standard shots clear enemy mechanical unit's overwatch - Buffed, another option for clearing enemy overwatch
- In The Zone now has -10 aim for each shot taken - Toned back in strength
- Close Encounters reduces mobility by 50% (from 35%) - Reverted back as it was really effective at doing Hit and Run tactics
- Disabling shot to -20 aim (from -40), and 4 turn cooldown (from 3), but has a chance to maim bio targets equal to how much %hp they lost (from 100% chance to maim) - Much easier to use without steady (and with) but can only maim injured targets
XCOM:
- Critical System Targeting replaced with Bring 'Em On on Infantry - Was too strong on infantry, especially with recent buff, and focuses the infantry or bio targets to open up more roles for engineer and heavy (gunner/rocketeer/goliath) as well as arc equipment
- Shogun has Impact replaced with Shock and Awe, and Shock and Awe replaced with Jetboot Module - Prevents new overlap with new S&A and gives earlier mobility to the Hit and Run build
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs gain +10 aim - With leaders losing LeU they lost a lot of their bite so they didn't need the -10 aim
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where mind deterioration would not properly kill a unit
- Fixed a bug where enemy units could get trapped under the map - Thanks szmind for some of the help with the technical parts of the code
- Fixed a bug where smart macrophages were preventing the unit with the macrophages from shredding other units (instead of being shredded themselves) - Whoopsies =D
- Finally fixed a bug where throwing grenades directly on a target would still have DR
- Fixed a visual bug where graze could occurs when a unit bled out
- Fixed a bug where dangerzone mayhem suppression wouldn't apply AoE holo rounds
- Fixed a bug where Mayhem was only doing 50% more weapon damage on non-precision shots (it's supposed to do 70%)
- Fixed a bug when Exalt SHIVs scampered they could shut down XCOM SHIVs
- Fixed a bug where some units would not die on some missions where they clearly died
Version 1.42.12
LW Rebalance v1.42.12
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc leaders lose LeU - Makes the leaders a lot less dangerous
- All sectopods gain Reactive Targeting Sensors (from just leaders) - Makes them more dangerous and harder to control
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD when generating a council request
Version 1.42.11
LW Rebalance v1.42.11
Perks:
- Holo Rounds requires a unit to hit it's target with a non-reaciton shot in order for them to be holo'd but grants +20 aim (from +15) and +2 pen (from +1) - Tone back on how easy it is to apply and overall strength, but overall buff when they do. On average should be less application but more accommodation when it is applied.
- Repair servos again grants servos equal to half of damage received (from 33%) - Was too weak at 33%
- In The Zone now only grants a free steady on reload if the reload was done at 2 AP - Slight tone back in strength
- Critical System Targeting grants +100% damage and +50 crit (from +65 of each) - Buffed, prevents overflow of crit
XCOM:
- Engineers and Rocketeers gain +5 aim - Helps with their shooter builds, accommodation for holo nerf
- Alloy SHIV mobility to +0.6 (from -0.6) - Helps it be more than just a squatter, significant buff
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc loses 10 aim - It was a little too accurate, especially for a flying unit
- Improved AI on Psychic Storm and Orbital Ray - They can trigger if the aliens haven't seen you but it's smarter now so it doesn't feel abusive
Equipment:
- Holo charger now grants +10 aim - Accommodates for holo nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where floaters would often not fly when they should
- Fixed a bug where drones could still orbital strike without seeing you and do so too often (was frustrating on base defense and temple ship)
- Fixed a bug where the council could request starting items from specific starts to give players too much of a head start on their campaign
Version 1.42.10
LW Rebalance v1.42.10
Strategic:
- Foreign Legion starts players with 10 extra soldiers (from 14) but cuts the salary and overhead of soldiers by 50% - Buffed
Tactical:
- Concussive blast has a chance to disorient them equal to the percent of max base HP they lost (from half the percent of max base HP lost) - Significant buff to all explosives
- Autopsied enemies will now show in the F1 panel - QoL
Equipment:
- AP Greandes deal 4 damage (from 3) - Buffed
Perks:
- Close Combat Specialist grants +1 ammo to shotguns (from +2) - Was too strong at +2
- Close Encounters no longer grants bonus damage vs melee units but instead shots from the primary weapon against targets within 4 tiles gain +x% weapon damage where x is the target's current HP - Previously it pushed assaults too strongly for terror missions, now it helps assaults where they are weakest, later game against HP pools that are quite large
- New perk for Chryssalids: Fleet: Grants bonus defense equal to 5x this unit's mobility if it has not been damaged this turn - Makes them easier to kill through combined weaponry but more resilient to just straight up shooting
- Collateral Damage 20% weapon damage per ammo spent (from 25%) - Slight tone back, as it's still really strong
Aliens:
- Chryssalids lose all base defense - Accommodates for new Fleet perk
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where sometimes floaters would not be flying after flanked and launched
- Fixed a bug where the Bred Tough starting bonus was affecting MEC augmentation
- Fixed a bug where cover DR was still applying on explosives that were placed point-blank
- Fixed a bug where going in stealth would sometimes not clear you from enemy overwatch lists
- Fixed a bug where commanding a unit was clearing the ITZ restriction of only shooting for the rest of the turn
- Typos
Version 1.42.09
LW Rebalance v1.42.09
Strategic:
- Maintenance cost of uplinks and nexuses reduced to 15/20 (from 80/90) - Makes expansion more reasonable and profitable (as the expense sometimes discouraged it)
- Soldiers now have a monthly cost equal to 0.666*1 for 1 soldier, 0.666*(1+2) for 2 soldiers, 0.666*(1+2+3) for 3 soldiers, etc. Injured soldiers count as half. Retired soldiers cost 0. SHIVs cost 0. - Creates tension between a barracks size instead of just getting a decent number of soldiers so fatigue/injury times are less relevant (formula for an additive factorial is x(x+1)/2 for those that care -- /3 for the cost for soldiers)
- The Home Country now grants 1000 credits (from 800) - Accommodates for new soldier costs
- Alien Propulsion reduces the cost of interceptors by 25% (from 50%) - Prevents waiting to build lots as a strategy and also discourages skipping repair to just build due to being so cheap
Tactical:
- You can now press "L" and the object nearest to the cursor will display it's remaining and total HP - QoL
- At the beginning of each of XCOM's turn, if a unit is currently using cover that might be damaged a popup will display a warning - QoL, helps keep track of where cover might not be reliable and makes that mechanic more obvious
Perks:
- Scouts can now use reconnaisance while concealed - Was no real good reason not to... you'd probably hear more if you're trying to be silent, slight buff to ease of use on scout
- Acidic now only corrodes units within 2.5 tiles and reveals units within 4 tiles and does not matter if a unit is a leader - More reasonable as the 4 range corrosion felt bad
- Bloodlust now reveals units within 4 tiles always and does not matter if a unit is a leader - consistency
Equipment:
- Banshee Armor grants 2 mobility (from 2.6) - Slight tone back, as repulsor plating is great
Aliens:
- Muton Berserkers gain 6 HP with each alien level (from 8) - Makes them less dangerous and less of a damage per turn check, especially into mid-late game when they come in groups
- Cyberdisc grenade range to 6 tiles (from 8) - Consistency with other grenades, gives XCOM a little more play to avoiding them, also, some native code may be increasing grenade range on aliens so this should reduce that further
- Cyberdisc penetration to 2 (from 3) - Makes DR a little more effective against them, especially for being so early
- Muton Elite penetration to 1 (from 2) - Makes DR a little more effective against them, especially since they alreayd have penetrator
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where initial campaigns would not start with SPECs
- Fixed a bug where Elite Exalt were not awarding 2 meld per kill bounties
- Fixed a bug where snipers wouldn't steady after reloading sometimes
- Attempted to fix a bug where if the line dictating the path a grenade would take obviously passed the cover but would sometimes still have cover DR
- Typos
Version 1.42.08
LW Rebalance v1.42.08
Country Starting Balances:
- Assembly Line no longer grants alloys and only 10 engineers
- Sandhurst grants a 20% reduction in fatigue and OTS project mission requirements (from 25%)
- Skunkworks now reduces item build time by 40% (from 50%) but also starts with all elevators in place
- Daredevils grants 2 interceptors and increases the strength of combat patrols by double (from +50%) and decrease the cost increases after use just 10*AL (from 50 + 10*AL) - makes them much more spammable and much more powerful
- Legacy of Uxmal grants 20 will for the purposes of psionic training (from 10) and reduces alien research speed by 5%
- Uralvagonzavod grants 4/6/8 damage to SHIVs (from 3/6/9) and +10 base DR
- Robotics grants 15 aim for new SHIVs/MECs (from 12)
- Ancient Artifacts also starts the player with 100 meld. Also provides a Blaster Launcher and a Fusion Lance but they can only be used after unlocking Fusion Weapons
- Born to fly provides pilots with 3 aim per kill (from 2 aim per kill)
- Ring of Fire grants 250 for each thermogenerator (from 230)
- Cheyenne Mountain reduces excavation costs by 85% (from 80%)
- Foreign Legion starts with 14 soldiers (from 12)
- Jai Vidwan starts with 150 weapon frags (from 100)
- Kiryu-Kai/Cadre both now grant active and fatigued soldiers gain xp each day equal to +3/+1 plus month passed
- Ghost in the Machine now starts all players with 2 more SHIVs and grants 30 aim (from 25)
- For the sake of glory reduces all injury and fatigue times by 20% (from 15%) but Egypt starts with 300 less credits (600 instead of 900)
- Global Networking no longer grants additional sightings (they were lame and too insignificant to mention), but instead grants an overall 6% increase in overall XCOM funding
- Special Warfare School reduces OTS project cost by 80% (from 70%) and increases XTP and retired soldier XP granted by 60% (from 40%)
Tactical:
- Orbital Ray chance to target lock a unit back to 80% reduced by cover/hunker/ceiling (from 40%) - It was so low that often the drone would just sit there trying to acquire targets wasting it's turn, and that's not the intention
- Holo Rounds grants +15 aim (from +20) - It was a little too polarizing on builds with how important it was, slight tone back
XCOM:
- SHIV/AlloySHIV/HoverSHIV base DR to 30/40/30 (from 35/50/35) - Slight tone back as they were a little too tanky after flat DR change to base DR
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the DT stepout bug fix would sometimes fix HnR moves inadvertently if the player moved too quick
- Psychic Storm and Orbital Ray now show popups even if the unit was in the fog of war
- Overwatch ability icon should now be yellow if it has any buffs
- Fixed a bug where Cadre and Kiryu-Kai would force those units to be on the first mission (first mission should only be Rookies)
- Fixed a bug where the AI could sometimes target you with global abilities before seeing you on specific missions with reinforcements
- Updated some missing item uses on the description of items (thanks sanghelios)
- Fixed a bug where later recruits gained 1/4 as much will as intended
Version 1.42.07
LW Rebalance v1.42.07
Strategic:
- Survival Training country start reduces injury times by 15% (from 25%) - toned back due to boost in HP strength at preventing late game overpower
Tactical:
- The chance for an unactivated pod to be unprepared is increased to 15% per active enemy over 5 (from 10% per active enemy over 5) - Makes it much more likely to trigger unprepared when triggering multiple pods
Perks:
- Overpower is now resisted by 2% for each HP above/below average - It was too insignificant at 1%
- Cover Tactics and Cover Tenacity no longer have caps - Makes them stronger when you have over 10 enemies activated
Aliens:
- Ethereal will to 110 (from 130) - Makes them do less damage overall, and have less of an overpower aura as they were a little too strong late game
- Ethereals and Sectoid Commanders now only get Psi Mastery if they are leaders - Significant reduction in their offensive power when not a leader, makes the leader versions much more dangerous as previously there wasn't enough distinction between leaders and non-leaders unlike most aliens
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where floaters could launch from indoors
- Fixed a bug where Double Tap (and sometimes other abilities) would leave a stepped out soldier permanently stepped out with weird cover status
- Fixed a bug where finishing a gene mod could sometimes black out the strategic screen soft locking the player out of the game
Version 1.42.06
LW Rebalance v1.42.06
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where a unit being revealed didn't immediately trigger some inactive pods
- Fixed a bug where VPT would trigger even if the unit was protected by cover
- Fixed a popup bug with close combat specialist and reactive targeting sensors
- Fixed a bug where Psi Defender and Psi Frayer were granting psionic abilities
- Fixed a bug where enemy units could activate at the end of your turn thus not letting you scamper and giving the enemies a scamper and then a full turn - Thanks to szmind entirely for this fix
Version 1.42.05
LW Rebalance v1.42.05
Strategic:
- Ammo Conservation now works with Shotguns - Consistency that it now works with most basic weapons, buff to mid-late game shotguns, increase in Assault strength in mid-late game
Perks:
- Mechanic now only heals within 1.5 tiles of a mechanical units - Was actually really strong and felt a little odd at such long range
- Vital Point Targeting no longer grants additional damage at point blank (only the 30% boost will apply) - Reduces strength of the Hit and Run scout (only when at point blank) as it's combination of high damage, high mobility, and cover bypass was (still is) quite strong
- Shock and Awe no longer affects standard shots - It made the Light 'Em Up rocketeer too good in the late game, like really good, also for balance on the Shogun, esp with VPT nerf
- Close Combat Specialist now grants +2 ammo to primary shotguns - Buff to CCS and the potential ammo constraints on biosoldiers
- Shock and Awe no longer grants Concussion and Psi grenades gain +2 range and radius - Nerf to support Rocketeer
- Tinker strips 35% of armor HP (from 50%) - Slight nerf on it's initial impact on high armor enemies
- Brawler grants immunity to critical hits from enemies within 4 tiles - takes it from CE and acts as a boost
- Inner fire resists 50% of overpower - Buff to psionics as well to keep them competitive with late game gene modded soldiers and MECs
- Bloodlust now only works during XCOM's turn and only clears panic, mindfray, maim, and disorientation - Toned back in strength
Close Encounters Rework:
- Close Encounters grants +70% weapon damage to shots against melee targets within 4 tiles - Helps make assaults more able to counter zerkers and lid bosses as a melee specialist
- Close Encounters lowers mobility by 35% (from 50%) after the first shot - Makes repositioning after using the first shot/nade a more reasonable posibility, making moving to a safe location a lot more reasonable (ala Hit and Run)
- Close Encounters no longer grants crit immunity within 4 tiles - It was unpredictable on assaults and too strong on enemies
- Close Encounters no longer effects grenades - The actual difference of firing grenades was not huge (grenade, grenade, grenade vs grenade, shot, grenade; esp with new melee damage boost) and it pushed assaults too much into the anti-terror role (esp with melee damage boost) which wasn't the intention. Also, the perk was getting to complex.
- Summary of new CE: The first standard shot within 4 tiles of an enemy will leave this unit with 1 AP but movement is reduced by 35% if the next action is a move. Grants immunity to reaction fire from enemies within 4 tiles. Shots against melee targets within 4 tiles gain +70% weapon damage. Activating Run and Gun disables the AP discount.
Equipment:
- The chameleon vest now grants +10 defense (from 0) - Makes it more ideal for units that will be gaining undo attention due to proximity aim bonuses (covert ops, assaults, scouts, etc.)
- Breaching Ammo also grants +2 penetration - Buff to make it further stronger at penetrating armor
XCOM:
- Infantry gain 0.6 base mobility (from 1.3) - They were a little too all-round great, slight nerf
- Assaults gain 1.3 base mobility (from 0.6) - Helps them accomplish their goal of getting in close, slight buff
- Assaults gain 25 base will (from 20) - Buff to help them become Psi and be more likely to have something to do when not in range of the enemy, increase in Assault strength in mid-late game
- Scouts gain 0 base mobility (from 0.6) - Tone back on overall strength, especially the hit and run version, slight nerf
- Maruader loses Repulsor Plating and gains Grit instead - Repulsor Plating wasn't great on a target that had a high potential to take multiple hits, makes the Marauder tank more reasonble with more core tank pers
Aliens:
- Exalt SHIV gains new perk called Volatile Death: If this unit is killed with a strong kinetic hit it may cause explosions in nearby environmental structures - Bug turned feature
- Exalt Operative Elite Exalt Operative aim to 60/70 (from 65/75) and HP to 8/10 (from 10/13) - Slight nerf
- Elite Exalt now only have 1 gene mod each - Makes them easier to deal with
-- Operatives: Enhanced Metabolism
-- Heavies: Iron Skin
-- Snipers: Muscle Fibre Density
-- Medics: Smart Macrophages
- Outsider Leaders and Chryssalid Leaders lose Brawler - It wasn't doing much on them anyway
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some bugs with the new Floater AI not making it obvious when they launched if other things were occuring at the beginning of the turn (e.g. growth, corrosion, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where Walker Servos was requiring advanced power armor and it shouldn't
- Fixed a bug on large map missions with multiple enemies where the damage reduction shield calculations could overflow the engine and cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug whre Enhanced Metabolism wasn't actually lowreing the effect of Overpower
- Fixed a bug where Floaters would sometimes launch without any ammo
- Fixed a bug where you could see multiple popups that should not be able to cause they were in the fog of war (damage, disorient, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where 'j' wouldn't end a unit's turn if they couldn't enter combat readiness
- Fixed a bug where savior said it healed 1 hp upton taking 3 or more damage (should be more than 3 damage / 4 or more damage)
- Fixed a bug where Double Tap would not work on your pistol if the primary weapon was out of ammo
- Fixed a bug whree ITZ could fire for more than 3 shots
- Fixed a bug where pilots were not getting renamed appropriately on the first promotion
Version 1.42.04
LW Rebalance v1.42.04
Strategic:
- Home Country reduces panic increases by 65% (from 50%) - Makes it harder to lose the home country
Perks:
- Psi Inspiration also removes disorient - buffed
- Perseverance grants 50% reduction in injury and fatigue times (from 40%) - Buffed
- Explosives Shots (splash damage ability of cyberdiscs, mechtoids, and sectopods) now deals half weapon damage to targets within 1.5 tiles (from full damage taken to targets within 2.5 tiles) - Altered so it's not dependent on how much the primary target absorbs and toned back radius so it's not as restrictive on placement and penalizing when you are clustered
Equipment:
- Smoke grenade range to 14 tiles (from 10) - helps keep the smoker out of LoS and makes it easier to smoke units far away
- Proximity Sensor credit cost to 15 (from 70) and time to 4 (from 12) - Makes it easier to produce, more reliable as a backup detection methods if motion trackers/scouts aren't available
Aliens:
- Improved Alien AI in various places (especially with floaters) - QoL
- Seeker base HP to 10 (from 12) and mobility to 6.6 (from 8) - Their offense is enough that they didn't need so much HP, and the lower mobility makes revealing them more powerful
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some of the random battle buffs were incorrectly described and applied
- Fixed a popup bug on overwatch shots
- Fixed some misnamed Exalt Units
- Fixed a bug where panic popups could occur on dead or dying units
- Typos
Version 1.42.03
LW Rebalance v1.42.03
Strategic:
- Alien Computers tech renamed to Alien Circuitry - Makes more sense, especially now that it requires UFO Power Sources
- Alien Circuitry requires 2 UFO Power Sources (instead of 2 UFO Flight Computers) - Prevents RNG from locking players out of mechanical autopsies and early MECs
- Advanced Conversion country start no longer grants bonus flight computers - Not necessary to prevent RNG anymore
Tactical:
- Enrage now grants immunity to countercharge - Prevents taking extra damage when already down
- First mission has 1 more sectoid on impossible - Makes it more challenging
- Effects of in battle stat modifiers: home ground, pessimistic, optimistic, focused, etc. doubled - Makes them matter a little more
Perks:
- Run and Gun back to a 2 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - With the extra damage and crit, the consistency is much better and the perk doesn't need the frequency anymore
- HEAT Warheads grants double the chance to disorient a target through Concussive Blast - buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a visual display where making some sectoids non-idle still listed them as having countercharge active
- Fixed a bug where aliens using orbital ray or psychic storm were considered idle
- Updated the critical wound bad location fix code to prevent warping back and forth between a bad location and the correct location (I hope)
- Typos
Version 1.42.02
LW Rebalance v1.42.02
Country Starts:
- Research Focus (Canadian Start) now reduces the upkeep costs of laboratories to 0 - Buffed, as the early upkeep cost was a significant negative
- Assembly Line (Chinese Start) now reduces the upkeep costs of workshops to 0 - Buffed, as the early upkeep cost was a significant negative
- Ready For War starts with 100 Weapon Fragments (modified by campaign length) - Buffed
- Jai Vidwan starts with 100 Weapon Fragments (modified by campaign Length) - Buffed
Air Game:
- Phoenix Cannon damage increased to 400 (from 360) - Makes it slightly more effective
Tactical:
- Corrosion again removes half of Base DR - Without it some enemies were a little too tanky and it made some other forms of penetration too mandatory, also makes acid effectively immediately
- The TYPE and NUMBER of Exalt on 5 man missions is pushed back a full Alien Level (but strength based on AL is still the same) - Makes them less challenging and they were a little too difficult
- Added in code to reduce graphical display on aliens during the alien turn (DR shields and such) if there are more than 8 aliens active - Prevents CTDs from too much information during AI processing
- Shredded is now 30% extra damage + 1 for every shred damage taken (from 20% + 1) - Buff to just the initial application of shred
Perks:
- Sapper no longer affects concussive blast chance (from triple) and only grants 15% range increase (from 20%) - Tone back in strength
- Fortified no longers grants +3 Armor HP but instead grants +10 Base DR - Makes it better at mitigation, helps at making the perk more appealing for mitigation tanks
- Alien and Plasma grenade range to 12 tiles (from 10) - Buffed for mid-late game use
XCOM:
- Shogun gains 20 base aim (from 10) - Buff to the HnR build, especially since it's only single shot
- Crit resist on SHIVs to 20/30/20 (from 35/50/35) - Stacked too high and they were a little too tanky, especially with shielding pod
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc grenade range to 8 (from 10) - Toned back so there is more strategic benefit of keeping them at range
- Elite Exalt Operatives lose Advanced Perception - Toned back in strength
- Elite Exalt Snipers lose Predictive Tracking - Toned back in strength
- Elite Exalt Heavies lose Advanced Perception - Toned back in strength
- Elite Exalt Medics lose Adaptive Bone Marrow - Toned back in strength
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed visual bug on Rockets not showing the correct display of # of rockets in soldier loadouts
- Possibly further improved the code that prevents critically wounded units from teleporting around the map after being killed
- Fixed a bug where you could countercharge when on overwatch (you have to be idle)
- Prevented a double popup for entering stealth mode
- Typos
Version 1.42.01
LW Rebalance v1.42.01
Perks:
- Fragmentation grants a 40% chance for double damage (from 50%) - Toned back so it more even with mayhem
- Absorption Fields no longer reduces acid duration - Buff to effectiveness of acid vs mecthoids/sectopods/SHIVs/MECs
Equipment:
- Shielding Pod reduces corrosion duration to 1 turn - Accommodates for Absorption Fields loss
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where squadsight XCOM units would sometimes activate alien pods that couldn't see them
- Fixed a bug where chrysallids could corrode through walls
- Fixed a bug where the Gollop Chamber costs would not always be correct
- Fixed a bug where shooting down a UFO would sometimes cause a significant boost in alien research
- Fixed a bug where alloy and elerium yields from UFOs were being slightly reduced if the mission went on longer than 10 turns
- Typos
Version 1.42.00
LW Rebalance v1.42.00
QoL:
- Exposed over 300 text variables to the xcomgame.int file (as m_arrCredits variables) - Allows players access to edit the text of the game
Air Game:
- Scout base HP to 400 (from 500) - It's important for campaigns to regularly be able to shoot down scouts
- Fighters gain 60% HP per alien level (from 100%) - Tone down in their strength
- Raider HP to 5000 + 10% per month (from 5000 + 30% per month) - Makes it much more reasonable to shoot down later game
- Harvester Armor Tier to 0 (from 4) but HP to 7000 + 10% per month (from 6000 + 10% per month) - Makes another UFO that can be shot down with lasers, opens up some uncommmon large UFO crashed maps
- Aircraft kills required for rank increaese to 4/6/8/12/16 (from 6/9/12/18/24) - Makes it easier to get larger squadron sizes sooner
- Fusion Lance aim to 15 (from 10) - Makes it a little more competitive
- UFO Hunts no longer vary with the square of the campaign length and instead just directly with campaign length
- Satellites are no longer immune on the first hunt for being destroyed
Country Starts:
- Public Heroes grants 2.5x (from 3x) the credits/scientists/engineers in a non-random fashion (the average number is added to the final total for all abductions) - Makes them much less RNG-based, slight nerf to public heroes
- Jungle Scouts no longer starts with advanced medikit and advanced surgery - Toned back in strength
- North American, Asian countries, South Africa, and Nigeria start with 300 more credits - Balance
- Resourceful recovers double the salvage materials from each UFO without additional cost (from +50%) - Buffed, balance
- Global Networking increases Grey Market sell prices by 50% (from 35%) and reduces intel scan costs to 20 credits (from 50) - Buffed as selling resources is less ideal than it used to be
- Ring of Fire Thermogenerators produce 230 credits a month (from 200) - Slight boost
- Alloy/Elerium yield from UFOs reduced by 20/25% - Too much was being accumulated
- Gangplank only rewards 1 fusion core (from 2) - Makes ABAs more valuable and makes skipping this DLC not as punishing
- Alien base assaults reward 2 fusion cores (from 1) - Same as above
- Weapon Fragment yields from missions reduced by ~33% - Almost everyone had too many throughout campaigns that they weren't really an issue
- Ease into It 2nd wave option replaced with AYYLMAO: Replaces much of the information in the game to crude and often humorous alternatives. WARNING: Not Safe For Work. - QoL
- Increased the number of perks suceptible to the 2nd wave option: Training Roulette - QoL, was too limited
- Soldier arrival time is reduced by 33% - Makes early game soldier acquisition (especially on NSLW) possible before too many missions
Foundry:
- All 3 foundry resource projects grants 20% increased resources and cost 800 credits (from 1000) - Buff to their use
- Quenchgun alloy cost to 160 (from 360) - Buffed, especially due to slightly weaker value of penetration
- Enhanced Lasers foundry project costs 130 weapon fragments (from 45) - More costly due to Enhanced Beam Optics being stronger
- Enhanced Ballistics foundry project costs 130 weapon fragments (from 15) - More costly due to Alloy Jacketed Rounds being stronger
Tactical:
- Flat DR is now Base DR which simply acts as a core level of %DR in a unit - Removal of Flat DR for ease of calculations during battle
- Corrosion (from acid) removes 0% of base DR (from all flat DR) but decreases armor HP at a rate of 1 + 20% of remaining armor HP (from 1 + 10% of remaining armor HP) - In this way it still lowers base DR, but just through increased damage instead while also making it more dangerous to XCOM
- Penetration and Base DR are now listed on the F1 for aliens - QoL
- Total % DR of a target is now listed when targeting someone with a weapon - QoL
- Healing (medikits, repair, mist) now heals for 1 + 50% of missing HP (from 50% of missing HP with a minimum of 1) - grants a little more healing so it's not so useless if units have a lot of HP
- Close Range bonus/malus for shotguns to 10 aim per tile (from 8) and for sniper/strike rifles to 20 aim per tile (from 16) - Makes them advantages and disadvantages more significant, gives shotuns more aim at close range
- Performing an action while hidden will now clear you from enemy overwatch lists - Makes sense and is intuitive
- All abduction maps that don't have 3 meld will receive additional meld up to a possible 3 canisters if finished in quickly - Means that you dont have to avoid no meld maps during abductions due to their lack of meld
- In Smoke changed to [-10 aim, +30 defense, prevents extra crit from exposed/steadied/suppressing/overwatching, and does not trigger reaction shots -- aim and defense affects psi as well] from [-10 aim, +30 defense, cannot be exposed, and does not trigger reaction shots when in smoke or when moving out through 2+ tiles of smoke -- aim and defense affects psi as well] - Makes sense
- Added a confirmation dialogue for when you click the mouse button "end turn" - QoL
- The lone cyberdisc/mechtoid/scommander/ethereal on UFOs now have a buddy - Those units don't function as well completely solo, slight increase in UFO difficulty
Perks:
- Repair (from mechanic) now heals 6 HP (9 with master mechanic) (from 4 and 8 with master mechanic) - Buff to the repair ability and engineer overall
- Mechanic now repairs 1 HP on any mechanical unit within 4 tiles that takes 3 or more damage - Buff to the mechanized healing aspect of engineers
- Iron skin grants 50 crit resistance (from 20) but +10 base DR (from +20) - Buff to gene modded tanks, but nerf on the DR due to stacking
- Will to Survive grants 35% DR (from 30%) - Buff to biotanks
- Will to Survive decreases injury time by 50% (from 30%) - Buff to biotanks
- Combat Drugs heal 35% of damage taken (from 40%) - Slight nerf
- Collateral Damage has a 3 turn cooldown (from 4 turn) - Buff to Shogun
- Disabling shot aim malus to -30 (from -10) - Nerfed, as it's quite strong at shutting down high level aliens
- Savior also increases the healing of medikits to 70% of missing HP (from 50%) - Buffed
- Savior now heals 1 HP anytime the medic takes 3 or more damage - Buff to medic tank
- Mind Fray uses 66% of will to calculate hit chance (similar to psi panic) - It was too strong and predictable at 100%, on both sides
- Adapative bone marrow reduces injury time by 50% (from 30%) - Buffed
- Mayhem no longer grants +1 suppression damage - Toned back in strength
- Tinker grants +20% throw range (from +10%), increases virtual shred damage to 15 (from 10), and has no cap on the amount of armor removed with acid grenades - Buffed
- Perseverance dencreases injury/fatigue time by 40% (from 35%) - buffed
- Run and Gun grants shots +35% weapon damage and +35 crit when active and has a 1 turn cooldown (from 2) - Buffed, grants consistency to the attack when you move into a dangerous situation
- Double Tap no longer has an aim malus (from -10 at 1 AP and -20 at 2 AP) - Buffed use for moving and using the 2nd shot, simplification of the perk
- Mayhem grants +70% weapon damage to sniper and strike rifles - Makes them hit a little harder late game, helps accommodate for large damage shots not being as useful to break through flat DR
- Master mech grants 2 pen vs mech (from 4) - Tones down early drone strength and later game DT engineer strength
- Shock and Awe again boosts Concussion and Psi grenades: gain +2 range and radius and also grants extra equipped rockets an extra charge - Support rocketeer needs some strength as a slow and distant support is naturally weak at it, also gives rocketeers with an extra equipped rocket more rockets for longer missions
- Smart Macrophages now grants complete immunity to shredding and corrosion (from just corrosion) - With corrosion being less common and less dangerous to tanks this needed a buff
- Repair servos now grants servos equal to 35% of the damage sustained (from 50%) - toned back as it was acting as a little too much healing
- Snapshot grants an additonal reaction shot on overwatch to non-aliens but 20% chance for 0 AP actions (from 25%) - Buff to OW infantry, increased diversification of other builds that use snapshot
- Bloodlust now clears all debuffs when triggered - Makes berserkers more difficult to control
- Danger Zone now increases explosive radius by 50% (from 35%) - Buffed
Equipment:
- Shotguns gain -20 aim - Tone back on strength, especially at range, accommodates for higher range up close
- Flamethrower damage to 5 (from 6), charges to 2 (from 8), and chance to panic to 25% (from 50%) - Nerfed as it's damage pentration is very strong and was overshadowing most other aoe abilities
- LMG to -30 aim (from -20) - Nerf to bullet wizard and late game high aim gunner builds
- Strike rifles gain aim bonuses similar to carbines (ballistic/laser = +10, gauss/pulse = +15, plasma = +20) - Buff to their use on both the sniper and scout
- Restorative Mist now passively only heals 1 HP if the unit has taken more than 4 damage (from more than 1 damage) - Tone back in it's strength at taking multiple low damage shots
- Restorative Mists no longer require left over charges for the passive effect - Didn't really make sense
- SMGs base crit to 20 (from 40) - Nerfed as their damage output is really strong
- Machine Pistol base crit to 0 (from 20) - Nerf as their crit boost damage is pretty easy to use and quite strong
- Sawed-off shotgun crit to 40 (from 60) - Tone back due to higher aim bonus
- Incinerator module damage to +2 (from +3) but still grants +4 charges - Same reason as above
- Plasma grenades gain a new ability, Compact: Twice the number of this equipped item is brought into each mission - Makes their use into the late game longer missions much more reasonable and desirable
- Recoilless Rifle/Blaster Launcher start with 2/3 rockets (from 1/1) - Increased uses into the late game for longer missions
- Smoke grenades no longer grant crit immunity but instead just prevent units from being exposed - Nerf to their strength at protecting units from crits, buff to crit resistance/immunity perks/items. Smoke will only really reduce crit (by 50) on flanked biosoldiers.
- Thumper grants +6 damage (from +4) and +3 pen (from +2) to the KSM - Buffed
- Chameleon vest meld cost to 80 (from 30) and elerium cost to 120 (from 80) - It's really good, even just for the +30 crit after moving (vs, for example a laser sight)
- Shadow Device now has 6 range, 2 charges, and 2 tile radius (from 4 range, 2 charges, and 1.5 tile radius), can affect panicked units, but only affects 1 unit - Buff to usefulness, but reduced in # of targets
- Chitin and Regenerative Plating Base DR to +15 (from +10) - Buffed
- Breaching Ammo alloy cost to 65 (from 115) - Buffed due to less alloys and the difficulty of the alloy bottle neck at this stage of the game
- AP Ammo can now be equipped by SAW/LMGs - Buff to gauss weapons on gunners
- SHIV costs to 350/450/550 (from 270/330/390) - They are worth it
- Cash cost of MEC1 to 50 (from 200), Meld cost of MEC2s to 40 (from 20), and meld cost of MEC3s to 150 (from 40) - Makes them more expensive on the meld front
- Ghost Armor has 2 charges of Ghost (from 3) - Tones down it's strength (and potential abuse)
XCOM:
- Goliath, Jaeger, Sniper, Medic, Engineer and Rocketeer perk tree reworks - See perk tree Image
- All MECs start with 7.3 mobility (from 8.6) - Reduced strength of MECs to get in the face of aliens so easily
- Gunners and Rocketeers gain 3 base HP (from 4) - Tone back in their strength as MEC candidates
- Gunner base will to 5 (from 10), Engineer base will to 10 (from 15) - Slight nerfs and lowers potential of psionics on these soldiers
- Jaeger base aim to 20 (from 10) and base mobility to 1.3 (from 0.6) - Buff due to loss of damage from VPT
- Marauder base mobility to 0.6 (from 0) - Slight buff
- Shogun base mobility to 1.3 (from 0) - Buffed
- SHIV/Alloy SHIV/Hover SHIV Base DR to 35/50/35 (from 30/40/30) - Buffed
- SHIV/Alloy SHIV/Hover SHIV crit resist to 35/50/35 (from 0/30/20) - Buff to crit resistance and overall durability
- Sniper aim growth changed from 8-24 to 12-20 - Reduces RNG due to such a large increase on the first level
Aliens:
- Thinmen gain 4 HP per AL (from 5) and have 65 base aim (from 7) - Makes them slighty less damaging early game and less tanky into the mid-late game
- Cyberdisc/Mechtoid/Sectopod cannons cause splash damage (damage taken by primary target splashed to all units within 2.5 tiles) - Discourages clumping, makes them more capable of dealing with being outnumbered
- Muton Elites start with 30 base DR (from 40) - Nerf due to new base %DR
- The following aliens gain penetration and lose damage (except sectopods) as listed: Heavy Floaters(1), Muton Elites(2), Mechtoids(2), Cyberdiscs(3), Sectopods(5) - Provides aliens a way to help bust tanks a little easier and make them not so dangerous against exposed units
- Sectoid starting will to 65 (from 55) - Slight boost
- Sectopods no longer ignore the DR from hardened - It was an odd exception that was not really explained, with the addition of penetration they should be fine
- Mechtoids, Cyberdiscs, Heavy Floaters, and Sectopods lose the impact perk - Wasn't necessary on them
- Seekers pick up impact - Makes thier OW (especially from stealth) more dangerous and helps their shots hurt more through tanks
- Floaters/heavy Floaters gain 4/5 crit per alien level (from 0/0) - Buffed
- Chryssalid defense to 30 (from 50) and gain 1 base HP - makes shooting more predictable against them
- Drone Aim to 45 (from 55) - They were slightly too strong offensively
- Improved alien AI to be more aggressive at using their special abilities when they would be beneficial - QoL
- Muton Berserker mobility to 8 (from 10) - Makes it more difficult for them to reach and attack XCOM
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where nicknames would sometimes get overwritten on units
- Fixed a bug where it looked like Exatl SHIVs had 14 HP more than inteneded in the F1 info panel during tactical missions
- Fixed a bug where splash damage perks were not appearing correctly in F1 info panel
- Fixed a bug where the visual ammo counters for rockets and stun rifles were inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where the cyberdisc and drones would spawn chaotically on base defense missions
- Fixed a LW 1.0 visual bug where disabling a melee only unit with disabling shot would still apply a graphical effect
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle still gave units squadsight
- Fixed a bug where you could command a comatose unit that has been protected by neural damping from mind control
- Fixed a bug where "aliens killed" was not displayed in the F1 panel during tactical missions
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm and orbital ray were not triggering often enough
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIV HP was not setting correctly
- Fixed a visual bug on the overwatch info
- Fixed a bug where you could uncloak and NOT reveal enemies right away
- Updated strangle description to state that it does provide immunity to critical hits
- Fixed a bug where some UFOs might not have the extra cyberdisc/mecthoid/scommander/ethereal, but it's still possible, so it's not guaranted
- Fixed a bug where loading a saved game with a hidden unit would often reveal that unit
- Fixed a bug where AYY LMAO didn't work with the some overwatch info
- Fixed a bug where restorative mist use could cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where corrosion would sometimes show up as an electric shock graphic on a soldier
- Fixed a bug where certain save state variables were not being saved and reloaded correctly in the middle of a tactical game
- Fixed a bug where Bradford would explain all exalt missions despite only supposed to explain the first one of each campaign
- Fixed a bug where electropulse could cause CTDs
- Maimed units now correctly do not intimidate or run towards their attackers
- Fixed a bug where ironman games would sometimes try to save during an alien turn and result in a bad save file
- Fixed a bug where nearby alien melee units could cause a CTD when trying to set the color of xcom AP pips
- Fixed a bug where some drop-ins would not have their appropriate perks
- Fixed a bug where the color of XCOM HP pips would sometimes be incorrect on the alien turn
- Fixed a bug with incorrect elite exalt names
- Typos
Version 1.41.06
LW Rebalance v1.41.06
QoL:
- Various minor QoL fixes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where psi lance wasn't calculating each target's will as it jumped
- Fixed a bug where psi lance would jump to dead targets
- Fixed a bug where injured SHIVs would double report them being battle ready after being wounded
- Fixed a bug where Sentry was granting 3 reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where the confirmation screen came up on aoe targeting abilities that the red highlighting of units would disappear
- Fixed a bug where the visual distortion aura would still extend off of dead/disabled units
- Fixed a bug where when seekers fired from stealth the hit chance would sometimes popup twice
- Fixed a bug where pressing 'j' to stabilize someone with medikits wouldn't work sometimes
- Fixed a bug where units that would become critically wounded would sometimes fall into the map or fly up into the sky - Yay, another LW 1.0 bug squashed
- Typos
Version 1.41.05
LW Rebalance v1.41.05
Aliens:
- All heavy floaters have advanced perception (instead of just lvl 9 leaders) - Makes them more resilient and unpredictable to kill (~20% more resilisent, but unpredictably)
Perks:
- Psi Lance now chains to targets within 4 tiles dealing 50% less damage each jump - Buff to the perk at dealing damage throughout a team, further discourages clustering XCOM together, helps the ethereal stay dangerous in 1v8 situations
Equipment:
- Respirator Implant grants +0 def (from +10) - Was too strong of a package and in some ways this can act as a buff as your biotanks can now use it
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an uncommon bug where the hit chance for a reaction shot triggering was not always accurate and was not triggering sometimes when it should
- Fixed a CTD on exalt missions where exalt tried to move with multiple XCOM units on overwatch
- Fixed a long-time CTD when loading into a mission with an electropulse item on more than 1 MEC
- Fixed a bug where the aliens would sometimes lose slightly more resources then they should when a UFO was shot down
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes fire another shot despite supposedly being out of ammo
- Fixed a bug where foundry project times were not working correctly
- Typos
Version 1.41.04
LW Rebalance v1.41.04
Perks:
- Opportunist grants +20 aim (from +10 aim) on reaction shots - Buff to all overwatch builds
XCOM:
- Medic perk Bring 'Em On swapped with Impact - Tones down the early game strength (as early BeO on a class that could fire 3x a turn was a bit much)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug with 1.41.03 where it was missing a file
Version 1.41.03
LW Rebalance v1.41.03
Installation:
- Updated Linux installation instructions slightly - QoL
Strategic:
- All foundry projects take longer to produce - They were way too quick before
Tactical:
- UFOs will now have a solo mechtoid in Sept/Oct and a solo Cyberdisc in July/Aug - Makes those missions a little more difficult and gives access to those corpses
Perks:
- New perk 'Tinker': Concussion and Psi grenades Shred [Damage received is increased by 20% (plus 1% for each shred damage dealt)] their targets as if they took 10 shred damage. Acid grenades strip 50% of armor HP (max 10) on detonation. Grants +10% throw range. - Grants another perk for support classes
- Master Mechanic grants 4 pen (from 2) vs mechanical units - Makes drones more effective at countering mechanical units, also acts as a buff to shooter/grenadier engineer vs mechanical units
- Shock and Awe no longer effects concussion grenades - Accommodates for Tinker
- Collateral Damage does 25% damage per ammo (from 20%) - Slight boost to Shogun
- Squadsight has a -3 aim per tile penalty (from -2) - Makes the distance into squadsight more important, even for higher aim soldiers
- ITZ no longer reloads after a non-steadied shot but instead automatically steadies the primary weapon if it was reloaded - Buffed, improves versatility and opens up the combo: steady -> Fire Fire Fire -> Reload + Steady -> Fire Fire Fire, etc.
- Grit grants +4 armor hp (from +2) - Buff, mostly to tank gunner
- Opportunist no longer grants bonus damage to strike/sniper rifles - Tone back on Mayhem Opp build (due to extra shot from inner fire/enh meta)
- Inner Fire grants an extra reaction shot when going on overwatch - Buff to later game OW psi users
- Enhanced Metabolism grants an extra reaction shot when going on overwatch - Buff to later game OW gene users
- Hunter is a 0 AP action (instead of setting the unit to 1 AP) - slight tweak/buff
- Double Tap has a -10 aim malus on the 2nd shot (from 0 aim malus), note that at 1 AP it's still a -20 aim malus on 2nd shot - Slight nerf to the build to accommodate for strength of using pistols
- Suppression lowers aim and mobility/range by 35% (from 50%) - Tone back in strength so it's not such a strong debuff (as it still has pinned and suppressive fire damage)
- Acidic (chryssalid acid spewing perk) now reveals and corrodes any unit within 2.5 tiles (from 1.5) and 4 tiles if it's a leader - Buff to leader lids, prevents hiding around melee units
- Bloodlust now reveals any unit with 2.5 tiles after any movement (4 tiles if it's a leader) - Prevents hiding around melee units
- Overload has a chance to disorient equal to the % of HP unit's lost (not 3x the % of HP they lost) - Toned back as arc weapons are in a good place without this strong buff
- Cannon Fire (Sectopod's main attack) and Cluster Bomb now ignore DR from being hardened - Makes it harder to tank shots from sectopods with mechanical units
Equipment:
- Sniper rifles lose 10 crit, 0.6 mobility, and reduces SS penalty to 2 per tile (from 1 per tile) - Makes the slightly weaker overall, and makes the strike rifle a slightly more reasonable option for snipers, especially if they want to be moving
XCOM:
- Scout has First Aid replaced by Tinker - Buff to support scout
- Rockteer has Bombard replaced by Tinker - Buff to support rocketeer
Aliens:
- Mecthoid aim to 75 (from 65) - Makes them a little more dangerous
- Seeker HP to 12 (from 8) - Significantly more of a threat
- Alien grenades deal base 7 damage (from base 4) - Makes them more damaging when they hit due to 1) requirement to get in range and 2) single use, Also nice how they are similar to XCOM nades again.
- Level 5 Leader Sectopods gain Shredder Ammo - Makes units tanking a shot much weaker for the rest of the battle
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where multiple pilot promotions would not be displayed after an air engagment
- Fixed a bug where the LCPL perk would sometimes be inaccurate on certain soldier lists - Thanks szmind for helping
- Fixed a bug where combat patrols were reducing slightly more panic than intended - Minor fix
- Fixed a bug where the foundry pistol project was granting +1 ammo to the arc rifle
- Typos
Version 1.41.02
LW Rebalance v1.41.02
Tactical:
- Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals will always appear on late game UFOs (from 50% chance) - Makes it easier to acquire corpses
Bug Fixes:
- The "fix units in bad position" code will now be much more preferential in it's targeting - It would try to fix units that weren't in need of being fixed
- Meld cannisters no longer give 3 trillion meld =P
Version 1.41.01
LW Rebalance v1.41.01
Air Game:
- All aircraft in a sorite gain 1 kill for shooting down a UFO (from just one of the lead pilots) - Prevents kill stacking (which can feel like 'gaming the system'), also makes sense as they all participated in getting the kill
- Requirements for pilot rank increases are tripled - Accommodates increased pilot kills granted, decreases strength of airgame overall, especially into the mid and late game with super pilots
- Born to Fly grants 2 aim per kill (from 8) - Accommodates increased kills granted
- Plasma Cannon cooldown to 4.5s (from 3.0s) - It was a little too dominating
- UFO Scouts gain 100% HP per alien level (from 110%) - Keeps them as an easy target into the mid and late game
- UFO Fighters gain 100% HP per alien level (from 50%) - Makes them much less of an easy target mid/late game
- UFO Destroyers gain 50% HP per alien level (from 30%) - Makes them quite strong, even late game
- UFO Abductor armor to tier 8 (from tier 7) - Makes it harder to stop late game abductions as this could lead to snowballing aliens in the strategic layer, especially on lower difficulties
Strategic:
- Gollop Chamber requires 2 additional ethereals corpses - Extends the end game a little longer
Tactical:
- Death perks are twice as likely to be acquired - They were a little too rare
- Meld containers now grant a little more meld on average and is uncoupled from alien resources, specifically the formula is changed to (3 + AL/3) * (6 - Diff) / CL - Makes alien resources not feel like something you need to try to modify
- Only chance based free action abilities will have a sound play when they activate and the sound should be more subdued - QoL
- You can now only stun a unit if you have the autopsy complete - Slows down capture rates and removes the situation where you have a capture but can't do the autopsy because of no corpses
- Created new code to find units in bad locations and fix them - QoL, they'll say "Surprise!" when they get fixed
Perks:
- Brawler grants +3 HP as well (from 0) - Was too weak restricted to only melee
- Tactical Mobility grants 20 defense (from 15) - Slight buff to make it more significant and make turning it off more of an important choice
- Kinetic Dampening now prevents penetration from damage > 18 tiles away - Makes outsiders and some melee units more resistant to snipers with their higher penetration
Equipment:
- Battle scanner back to +15 aim - Was too weak at +10, 15 is probably the sweet spot
- Archangel and Seraph armors no longer provide 50/35% DR while flying but instead cause all attacks against them while airborne to graze - Buff to their defensive capabilities
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Kiryu-Kai Commander was not granting the appropriate rank and/or country
- Fixed a bug where Alien Level 6 exalt missions would be unintentionally 3x as easy as intended
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIV shredder would not work
- Fixed a bug where restorative mists could be used to stabilize when a unit went down
- Fixed a bug where Mind Control would prevent a user from being commanded after the mind control was broken
- Fixed a bug where pilots could sometimes get double nicknames after getting kills
- Fixed a bug where sometimes aftering healing with a medikit the unit's HP would not show correctly
- Typos
Version 1.41.00
LW Rebalance v1.41.00
Strategic:
- Gollop Chamber requires 8 ethereal corpses (from 6) - Makes it more of a factor before finishing the game
- Laboratories grant 30% more research (from 50%) - Overall decrease of reserach speeds. Speed was not enough of a factor for research due to resource limitations, this makes research speed a more significant factor and research starts more viable. Also makes skipping some tech harder as the stretch between techs is longer.
- Condensed Plasma grants +2 damage to grenades and rockets (from +1) - Buff to later game explosives
- Gene Labs now show how many soldiers are active in them on the main menu - QoL
- Injury and Fatigue on difficulties spread out a little more to -20%, -10%, 0%, +10% (from -15%|-10%|-5%|0%) for easy/classic/brutal/impossible, respectively - increases the distinction on the difficulty levels, increases fatigue on higher difficulties slightly
- The formula for UFO destruction is 1-0.5^((dmg-1200)/500) (instead of 1-0.5^((dmg-600)/500)) - Makes it so the destruction chance of stingrays, even on a crit, is 0%
- Plasma Cannon Aircraft weapon does 1600 damage over 3s (from 1000 over 2s) - Keeps destruction rate the same, slight buff in dps
- Kiryu-Kai Commander grants 1 MSGT (from 2 GSGTs) - Due to the strong benefit of early game strength at helping carry into the mid game
- Soldiers mission count is only 'successful missions', not all missions - Stops fatigue and retirement strength from accumulating from failed missions
- Decreased the sell price of multiple alien artifacts - Decreases credit accumulation from UFOs
- Soldiers recruited later in a campaign start with more stats Rand(+0.25 mob, +0.5 HP, +1 Aim, +2 will) per month passed - Makes newer soldiers later in the game more worthwhile
- You can no longer retry the temple ship on Ironman - Pain and suffering...
- Landed UFOs that successfully complete their mission will now increase panic by 0.5 for each month that has passed (modified by campaign length) - Encourages engaging them either in the air on on the ground, especially late game
Tactical:
- All large and very large landed UFOs have 4-6 less aliens - Makes them a lot more doable and less of a slog
- Units suppressing you will now have a target icon on their alien head icon in the bottom right - QoL
- Damage Control will no longer show a popup if the unit is dead - QoL
- Suppressive Fire damage decreased back to 0.3 (from 0.35) of shot damage - Sorry snack, it was too strong :(
- The indicator for smoke and acid will now properly accommodate for height differences - QoL - Yay. :)
- Entirely reworked the range and target indicator for electropulse so it should now be 100% accurate and work at different elevations - QoL
- Acid grenades now highlight and correctly estimate for mechanical units - Thanks to szmind for leveling up and making a programming break through - I think we both worked on this one for a full day =P
Perks:
- Aggression now grants the primary weapon additional crit damage equal to the number of enemies in sight or squadsight (from +15 crit per enemy in sight) - The crit often overstacked and made the perk weaker, this should be much more competitive and a significant buff
- Driven by Pressure (Annette special perk) grants 10 will (from 20) - Makes her less of an automatic volunteer
- Dense Smoke grants 1 additional charge (from 2) - Is a strong full team amplifier and doesn't need extra strength
- Savior (Revive) now only works on stabilized soldiers and returns them at 1 HP and 0 AP (from working on bleeding out soldiers and returning at 33% HP and 1 AP) - Nerfed so it's less of a power play mid-engagement, although gives the player more control over when to bring a unit back which can be a lot more powerful
- Hunter no longer grants additional penetration if within 4 tiles and will activate if anyone is in vision (from requiring a unit within 15 tiles) - Tone back on it's strength up close, makes it easier to trigger at range
- Rapid Fire has -20 aim plus -4 aim per tile away (from -5 aim per tile away) - Toned back in strength as the 1 AP double shot is very strong
- Grit grants 15 + half of HP lost in % DR (from 10 + half of HP lost) - Buffed
- Field Medic grants 2 medikit charges (from 3) - Three made medics too strong and other healing sources too weak comparatively
- Reconnaisance grants 2 battle scanners (from 1) - Makes the small item a little more optional
- Suppression no longer affects rocket scatter - The reduced range is already enough
- Overpower now has maximum effect within 20 tiles but slowly tapers off by 1% per tile outside of 20 tiles - Gives the player more indication of where the overpower is coming from and prevents distant overpower from being as punishing
- Overpower effect is now simply the caster's will divided by 5 - This puts the effect at 20 - 40% (first Brutal SC vs lvl 9 Brutal Uber)
- Overpower is no longer resisted by higher will, but instead has the effect reduced/increased by 1% for each base HP above/below average - Makes base HP more important into the mid to end game where it's effect is usually not as important; also makes tanks/officers the more resilient ones
- Adrenaline Surge renamed to Enhanced Metabolism and now also reduces the effect of overpower by 50% at all times - Significant buff to the perk and gene modded soldiers in general, offers another counter to overpower
- Neural Damping now prevents the status effects of mind fray - Slight buff
- Brawler now only effects melee attacks (from melee attacks and shots) - nerfs as it was easy to abuse the AI for guaranteed dodge and made it too strong vs the other options on the tree
- Fotified grants +3 armor HP - Buffed
- Shock and Awe damage boost now applies to rockets as well - Buffed late game rockets
Equipment:
- Plasma Sniper rifle grants Killer Instinct and no longer deals +2 damage on squadsight targets - Buffed
- MEC2s require 6 UFO power sources (from 4) and MEC3s require 8 UFO power sources (from 0) and a Fusion Core - Makes them harder to mass
- Alloy Cost for all MEC suits doubled - Alloy cost should be a more significant factor in their production, slows down production some
- Neuroregulator grants 10 will (from 20) - Toned back in strength for will stacking
- Battle Scanners grant +10 aim (from +15) - Makes scouts and the battle scanner small items both a little more optional
- Marksman Scope no longer grants killer instinct - It was a little overloaded
- Arc Rifle lose squadsight but mobility to +0.6 (from 0) and aim to +20 (from 0) - Buffed so it's more reasonable for a mobile and support class to use it
- Arch Angel armor cost to 450/300 alloy/elerium (from 240/240) - it's really good
- Plasma Stellerator cost to 80 meld and 230 elerium (from 10/120) - Makes it harder to acquire, especially en masse
- Plasma Stellerator no longer grants +2 damage but instead grants +x% base damage where x is the target's current HP - Makes it much stronger against large targets in the late game
XCOM:
- Hover SHIV aim bonus to 10 (from 20) - It was a little too strong
- Jaeger perk Squadsight replaced with Impact - Forces bullseye Jaegers to still be within vision in order to get off double shots but also gives them the added advantage of beign able to clear OW - can also work with other Jaeger builds
- Scout will to 15 (from 20) - Toned back so they aren't so great at being psionic
- Assault will to 20 (from 10) - Makes them much more likely to be a strong psionic user
Aliens:
- Level 9 Outsider leaders gain awareness - Improves their durability, needed a boost
- Level 5 Sectopod aim to +40 (from 20), Level 9 Sectopod aim to +80 (from +40) - Makes it much harder to dodge a hit from the leader sectopods
- Level 5 Sectopod damage to +8 (from 6), Level 9 Sectopod aim to +18 (from +10) - Makes taking a hit more dangerous
Bug Fixes:
- Attempted to fix a bug where invisible units could spawn on the Temple Ship causing crashes
- Fixed a bug where mind control broken popups would occur incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where aliens were grazing shots more often than they should from advanced perception
- Added code to try to help fix a problem where the engine would not correctly revert mind controlled units back to their original team
- Fixed a bug where squadsight units were sometimes acting as spotters for other squadsight units
- Maybe fixed a bug where multiple smokes would expire at the same time and sometimes cause a unit to be out of smoke
- Fixed a bug where critical wounds could still cause panic
- Fixed a bug where leader aliens were sometimes doing 1 more damage than they should be
- Fixed a bug where some Psi abilities could affect invulnerable units
- Fixed a bug where some crashed/destroyed UFOs would still grant the aliens bonus research/resources
- Fixed a bug where flying floaters caught off guard would not register as being flying
- Fixed a bug where fatigue per mission was only 5% (it should have been 10%)
- Fixed an issue where some computer timing problems would cause certain variables to save incorrectly in save files that were autosaved - thanks szmind for the help
- Fixed several log errors throughout the code - QoL for those who read the log
- Cleaned up some engine code - maybe it makes crashes less common and speeds things up
- Typos
Version 1.40.03
LW Rebalance v1.40.03
Strategic:
- Re-enabled the alien base assault cinematic for the first victorious alien base assault - Thanks to szmind for helping direct my efforts =D
Tactical:
- Enraged no longer grants a chance for free actions on idle-ending abilities - Tones down the RNG and potential strength
- Berserk is half as likely to trigger - Same reason as above
- Shaken (penalty for being witness to your own soldiers dying) lowers will by 5 (from 10) - A little less snowball when things go bad
- When an XCOM soldier dies, it will no longer panic other soldiers - It was too much of a snowball mechanic and if someone already died things are going bad enough =P
Bug Fixes:
- Onslaught no longer grants +x% damage where x is the target's HP (it was bugged and can't really be fixed)
- Fixed a bug where after destroying a UFO and gaining a rank the game would sometimes freeze - Really szmind fixed it
- Fixed a bug where engaging with UFOs would sometimes cause a game freeze - He fixed this one too =D
- Fixed a bug where Jai Jawan wasn't correctly increasing aircraft fire rate
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire wouldn't occur on some units that were disabled
- Fixed a graphical bug on Hit and Run for the barracks display
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would not appear on the motion tracker
Version 1.40.02
LW Rebalance v1.40.02
Strategic:
- Identifying which LCPL perk each soldier has should be easier in the barracks - QoL - Thanks to szmind for the huge help
Tactical:
- Brutal difficulty aliens now gain +1 HP and +1 damage - makes the distinction between classic and brutal and little more.... brutal =P Also makes the step between brutal and impossible and little closer.
Equipment:
- Psi Frayer no longer doubles the damage on mind fray - After testing, I think the heavy psi use is ok/ideal/fun but the heavy damage with it can be so strong that it feels abusive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle range was not set correctly
- Fixed a bug where impact would sometimes still clear overwatch when used with reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where berserk/enrage could still trigger from revived soldiers
- Maybe fixed a bug where dead XCOM units would not end up only wounded after an alien base assault
- Fixed a bug (I think) where going on overwatch would sometimes trigger multiple reaction fire shots
- Fixed a bug where some airborne units would not have the 'flying' description and seem like they were flanked mid-air
- Fixed a visual bug where the ranks for planes were not displayed correctly
- Fixed a bug where bounty popups could occur repeatedly over and over
Version 1.40.01
LW Rebalance v1.40.01
Strategic:
- You now start with 5 LCPLs and 5 SPECs (from just 5 LCPLs) - Minimizes the amount of rookie play in the game
- XTP II and Captain OTS projects required missions to 30 and 40, respectively (from 40 and 30 -- swapped) - Makes XTP II come on earlier
Perks:
- Savior no longer grants additional healing on taking damage - Medics were strong enough tanks without this
Equipment:
- Slight tweak on Arc Rifle: Arc Rifle gains squadsight - Needed a little nudge to make it slightly stronger, this seems to fit perfectly and gives some more distinction to the item, felt small enough that it was reasonable to put in.
- Overload (on Arc Rifles and Pistols) grants a chance to disorient equal to 3x the percent of max HP lost (from 2x) - Buff to the additional effect (now if you deal 34% damage on a unit it's auto-disorient)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where late game council mission rewards didn't scale properly with campaign length
- XP requirement was supposed to be 100 increments doubling, but was not for a long time: tweaked from 100/500/1000/1500/3000/6000/12000 to 100/300/700/1500/3100/6300/12700 (so increments are 100/200/400/800/etc.) - Will also make the early ranks come on quicker (LCPLs almost twice as early)
- The Exalt scan reminder won't spam you asking you to visit it if you haven't scanned yet and a scan is ideal - QoL/bugfix
- Maybe fixed a bug where a few bomb disposal missions got less reward than intended
- Fixed a bug where Cadre was granting 5 CPLs (instead of LCPLs)
- Fixed a bug where elevation bonuses could exceed 30 aim and/or 30 defense
- Fixed a bug where electropulse wouldn't work correctly
- Fixed a bug where Uralvagonzavod would give 3/6/6 damage instead of 3/6/9 damage to SHIVs
- Fixed a bug where after most missions the fatigue per mission modifier was twice as high as it should be
- Fixed a bug where aliens sometimes went on overwatch when they couldn't see anyone
- Fixed a bug where distortion damage sharing could stagger units
- Fixed a bug where Perseverance was reducing fatigue by 35% twice (instead of reducing injury and fatigue by 35%)
- Fixed a bug where 2 Exalt cells would spawn after the introduction of Exalt (should be only 1)
- Exalt SHIV now properly have their HUD icon as an Exalt icon
- All MECs innately have Indomitable (from just MEC2 and MEC3s) - It was bugged that this was already the case, just making it official
- Fixed a bug where seekers were not moving to the right tile when strangling
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would not be recorded properly on the list of active aliens in F1
- Typos
Version 1.40.00
LW Rebalance v1.40.00
Strategic:
- SHIV injury time reduced by 35% (from 50%) - Makes getting them injured more consequential
- Pulse, Advanced Pulse, Light Plasma, Standard Plasma, Heavy Plasma, Vehicular Plasma, and Precision Plasma research times all reduced by 50 days and Fusion weapons reduced by 200 days - Makes late game pulse and plasma come on earlier, gives players more time with more of the late game weapons
- Each workshop increases item build speed by 60% (from 40%) - Increase to the strength of workshops and the speed at which mid game, and especially late game items are fabricated
- The Gollop Chamber now requires 6 ethereal corpses (modified by campaign length), 10 UFO power sources (modified by campaign length), and 450 alloys (from 50) and 0 elerium (from 50) - Lengthens the late game more
- Soldiers only take 5% more fatigue per mission previously accomplished (from 10% per mission) - Significant reduction in late game fatigue accumulation allowing your better players more battle time
- Yuna Saito's will to 41 (from 44) - Makes her less of a common unit on Temple ship missions
- Minimum resources aliens get after each month reduced - players have a little more agency in the air game and they are not as dangerous come late game
- Alien Grenade Foundry project requires 10 muton corpses (from none) - Slows down the ability to rush it too early as it can be quite strong
- Exalt reminder system revamped to be 100% accurate and much more intuitive - QoL (finally)
- Kills needed to upgrade pilot ranks increased to 2/4/8 (from 1/3/5) - Makes it scale better with difficulty and makes it harder to get max rank
- Panic per month worldwide reduced by 7/6/5/4 per country lost (from 6/5/4/3) - makes panic levels overall lower into the late game
- MSGT requires 12000 xp (from 9000) - Makes it harder to max out your soldiers
- Multiple Country Start bonus changes (see wiki) - QoL and balance
- OTS mission requirements extended significantly throughout the early/mid game (from 10/20/30/50/70/100/130/160 to 20/40/60/80/100/120/140/160) - It made little sense to have requirements that were basically never restricting the actual upgrades due to other restrictions (# of ranks, credits, etc.)
- OTS mission requirements for XTP I and Lt swapped - So that XTP I could still come online early
- Lowered the number of Exalt on exalt missions - Makes those missions a little easier, helps accommodate for no command working on covert op
Tactical:
- If an xcom unit is bleeding out and has a medikit on them, an ally can move to within 2 tiles and press "J" to stabilize (revive if they have savior) them - QoL, makes intuitive sense
- If a unit is bleeding out and the mission ends the unit will be automatically stabilized like vanilla gameplay (as long as the mission was not abandoned) - Was frustrating otherwise due to player expectation
- Overall scatter increased by 25% - Slight nerf to rocketeers
- Base HP now affects scatter by +/-8% for each base HP under/over 6 HP - the effect was too insignificant previously
- Muton pods should have less mutons now - Hopefully this helps reduce the occurance of full muton pods
- Reaction fire again requires 1 tile of movement to trigger (instead of 0 tiles, which ended up being 0.0 to 0.9 tiles) - Despite my belief that 0 tiles is more ideal, too much of the game is designed around 1 tile that it actually creates more unintuitive situations so in the end it was less ideal.
- Suppressive Fire damage increased to 0.35 (from 0.3) - Just to make snackhound happy
- Blue shirts can no longer bleed out - Prevents requiring them to die to get more reinforcements on base defense missions
- Zombies, Chryssalids, and Berserkers can no longer go off-guard - Helps prevent their AI from messing up
Perks:
- Squadsight no longer works on reaction shots - Prevents AI abuse (and even annoying situations for the player too)
- Increased the chance that countercharge triggers from will/5 to will/4 - minor boost
- Distortion reduces corrosion duration to 1 turn - Makes ethereals a little less susceptible to acid
- Absorption Fields reduces corrosion duration to 1 turn - Sectopods, Mechtoids, SHIVs, and MEC tanks a little less susceptible to acid
- Shock and Awe boosted: grants twice their targets current HP in extra damage if the unit has an assault or battle rifle equipped (from just their targets current HP) and grants +2 radius and range to concussion/psi grenades (from +2 range only) - Boost to non-grenadier rocketeers
- Psi Inspire radius to 4 tiles (from 6) - Toned back in ability to affects full teams at once
- Double Tap now works on sidearms too - Something else for snack, also makes sense
- Executioner is +25 aim (from +30) - Slight tone back
- Kinetic Dampening grants 4% DR per tile further than 10 tiles away (from 3%) - Buff to outsiders, especially against squadsight which helps offset squadsight strength on the larger UFO maps. Also buff to Goliath and psi armors which could use a little love.
- Mind Merge no longer grants bonus DR - it's not intended to amplify a solid tank strat anymore, but can still get units out of trouble (with defense/mobility) or increase their offensive power
- Mechanic grants +2 pen again (from +1 pen) - Buff to the engineer, especially early game
- Command can no longer be used on covert operatives - Makes officers not feel mandatory and saved for exalt missions
- Being in smoke now prevents countercharge from triggering against your actions - Helps give some counterplay to countercharge
Equipment:
- Seraph armor grants 35% DR when airborne - Makes the units that use it gain resistances more similar to partial cover
- Archangel armor grants 50% DR when airborne - Makes the units that use it gain resistances more similiar to full cover
- MEC2 and MEC3 armors gain the indomitable perk - Helps prevent bad situations from occuring with higher tier MECs
- Psi Frayer doubles the damage of mind fray again (as well as reseting the cooldown) - Buffed
Aliens:
- Exalt Snipers and Gunners have Double Tap replaced with Light 'Em Up - Double tap would not work correctly on aliens, also, these units could use a slight nerf to their ability to move and put out high offensive power
- Exalt Operatives lose Light 'Em Up and instead gain Close Encounters - Makes them worse at range but stronger up close
- Exalt Sniper and Gunners both lose 1 damage - Helps lower their offensive power
- Elite Exalt Sniper and Gunners both lose 2 damage - Helps lower their offensive power
- Drone mobility to 6 (from 6.6) - Slight reduction to decrease their ability to flank and close in on you
- Floater mobility to 8 (from 7.3) - Slight increase in ability to flank and close in on you
- Heavy Floater mobility to 8.6 (from 8) - Slight increase in ability to flank and close in on you
- Only Heavy Floaters leaders gain critical system targeting (from all heavy floaters) - Buff to MEC and SHIV tanking
- Ethereal mobility to 9.3 (from 10.6) - It felt weird to have them be able to float so far and ended up actually being worse for it's AI
- Ethereal regeneration lowered to 3 + 1 every 2 AL (from 4 + 2 every 2 AL) - Makes disabling their regen less important
- Mechtoids lose 1 flat DR - Helps accommodate for shorter corrosion durations
- Secotpods lose 2 flat DR - Helps accommodate for shorter corrosion durations
- Toned down Floater Launch frequency - It rarely was causing bugs where you couldn't control the screen or your units
Bug Fixes:
- Disabling shot properly grants -10 aim (instead of -20)
- Fixed a bug where Combat Patrols were getting longers repair times on lower campaign lengths
- Fixed a bug where reloading wouldn't break OfA sometimes
- Fixed a bug where countries over 80 panic would not lose double the panic from satellites when a satellite monthly panic reduction occured
- Fixed a bug where stagger was cancelling some actions too soon
- Fixed a bug where aliens would still sometimes teleport
- Fixed a bug (hopefully) where going on overwatch would still pull more than 1 enemy reaction shot
- Fixed a bug where council missions (which scale with campaign length) didn't have their rewards scale with campaign length
- Fixed a bug where the screen would seem to be possessed by someone else at the beginning of a turn and it was hard to look around
- Fixed a bug where pilot kills were not working correctly on NSLW for increasing ranks
- Fixed a bug where Exalt reminders would not always appear
- Fixed a bug where bomb disposal missions would have too many reinforcements
- Fixed a bug where Cloaked units (from Hunter) could still trigger reaction shots
Version 1.39.03
LW Rebalance v1.39.03
Strategic:
- Fixed an unideal mechanic where failing an abduction in a country with low panic would raise the continental panic as well (it should only be country panic) - QoL
- Elite Aliens second wave option increases alien level by 10%, gentle aliens second wave option decreases alien level by 10% - Makes these settings more significant
Tactical:
- Mutons are half as likely to appear at AL2 - Makes AL2 a little easier
- Terror missions increase the leader level by 1 (from 2) - Makes them a little easier
- Terror missions no longer have a set and unique first mission in terms of alien composition - Never really made sense
- Added the class icon to each soldier to more easily identify them on the battle field - Thanks to szmind for helping with some of the complex coding here
Perks:
- Close Encounters now grants immunity to damage from the user's own explosives - Helps with stepping into grenades - QoL
- Absorption Fields grants 30% DR (from 25%) - Was a little too insignificant at 25%
- Will to Survive grants 30% DR (from 40%) and 30% reduction in wound time (from 40%) - Part of the overall shift from biotanks strong early game and not strong late game to more even strength throughout the game: they now have less overall DR but are more able to taunt and gain damage control later
Equipment:
- Psi Defender grants 35% DR and 35 crit resistance in cover (from 40 of each) - Same reason as will to survive tone back
- Chitin plating makes corrosion wear off after 1 turn (from 2 turns) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the Strike Rifle wasn't being granted extra damage from Bullseye
- Fixed a bug where the Javelin Rockets were only doing 75% bonus weapon damage (supposed to be 100%)
- Fixed a bug where corrosion was lasting 1 turn longer than intended (it was really just a beginning of turn end of turn thing but intuitively it was incorrect)
Version 1.39.02
LW Rebalance v1.39.02
Strategic:
- Phoenix Coilguns and Supercapacitors requires 12/16 UFO Power Sources (instead of 6/8 UFO Power Sources) - Acts as a sink for power sources
- MEC injury times are reduced by 35% overall - Helps deal with injury times
Tactical:
- Bomb disposal reinforcements reduced by a further 30% - Makes them less dangerous especially as one of your units are disabled
- Crashed and Landed Large and Very Large UFOs have 2-4 less enemies - makes them a little easier
- Multiple enemy types have more various pod compsitions - QoL
Perks:
- Bullseye now grants +35% weapon damage to the strike rifle - Buff to bullseye scout
- Shock and Awe grants Collateral Damage and standard shots +x% weapon damage, where x is their target's current HP (from +15% * their target's current HP in bonus damage) - Makes the primary weapon damage important, slight nerf
- Onslaught deals +x% weapon damage, where x is the target's current HP (from 25% of the targets current HP in bonus damage) - Similar consistency with S&A, toned back
- Disabling Shot aim malus to -10 (from -30) and cooldown to 3 turns (from 4 turns) - Significant buff to it's ability to land, especially when not steadied; effective for bullseye scouts that are concealed as they can steady while scouting a pod
- Clutch Leadership grants +1 aim per alien in sight (from +2) - Nerfed for balance on the officer tree
- Will to Survive lowers cover defense by half (instead of -30 defense) - Makes partial cover much more reasonable for biotanks and still acts as lower defense in full cover than a non-W2S unit in partial cover
- Repulsor Plating grants 10 defense (from 0) at all times; Also causes all attacks to graze (from only those within 15 tiles) but requires the unit to be at full HP for the graze mechanic - Toned back as it was really strong, makes it more useful for those who rarely get hit
- Close Combat Specialist no longer grants +1 ammo - Was strong enough without the buff
Equipment:
- Aegis armor HP to 7 (from 11) and mobility to +1.3 (from +2) but gains Damage Control and 2 item slots (from 1) - This equipment needed a more specific niche than just faster and the item slot restriction was too polarizing
- Banshee armor HP to 4 (from 7) and mobility to +2.6 (from +3.3) but gains Repulsor Plating and 2 item slots (from 1) and loses Tactical Mobility - This equipment needed a more specific niche than just faster and the item slot restriction was too polarizing
- Titan Armor now grants Damage Control, 2 DR (from 1), and HP to 12 (from 14) - Buffed
- Corsair Armor now grants Repulsor Plating and 10 def (from 5) - Buffed
- Seraph Armor has 7 HP (from 9) - Slight nerf
- Archangel Armor no longer requires titan armor to produce, has 2 item slots (from 1), 10HP (from 14), costs x3 as much to produce as Seraph armor - The requiring titan was weird since it was removed from everything else and made the price deceptive, the new archangel acts as a superior seraph at a cost premium
- Titan Armor alloy cost to 360 (from 160) - Makes it harder to mass produce, gives reason for late game alloys, accommodates for increases in late game UFO missions (and thus more alloys)
- Corsair Armor alloy cost to 240 (from 80) - Same reason as above
- MEC1s and MEC2s require 4 UFO power sources (from 2) - Makes them slightly harder to acquire a gives a use for all the power sources accumulated
XCOM:
- Shogun perk Repulsor Plating replaced with Repair Servos - Helps the Shogun tank sustain and Repulsor Plating isn't great for a unit expecting to take multiple shots now
- Shogun perk Fortified swap places with absorption fields - Makes more sense for the builds
- Marauder no longer gains +1.3 base mobility - It was strong enough and it was making extra speed not important enough
Aliens:
- Ethereals no longer have deflection shield - Helps focus them down as they are dangerous enough
- Level 6/9 Beserker leaders gain 4/4 damage (from 6/10) - Reduction in Berseker leader damage
- Level 1/5/9 Beserker leaders gain 5/5/5 HP (from 10/10/10) - Decrease in their resiliency
- Level 9 Berserker leaders gain 50 will (from 80) - Makes them a little more psi suceptible
- Level 9 Chryssalid leaders gain 10 HP (from 20) - Decrease in their resiliency
- Level 3 Chryssalid leaders gain 10 will (from 30) - Makes them a little more psi suceptible
- Level 9 Drone leaders gain Awareness and Fortified - Increase in their resiliency
- Level 9 Sectoid leaders gain Advanced Perception and Awareness and 20 HP (from 5 HP) - Increase in their resiliency
- Level 9 Floater leaders gain Advanced Perception and Fortified - increase in their resiliency
Bugs:
- Clarifications on some descriptions
- Fixed a bug where countries could start too much panic
- Fixed a bug where electropulse popup for disables did not always fit what actually was occuring
- Maybe fixed a bug where sometimes berserk wouldn't properly reload the weapon
- Fixed a bug where chyrssalids could cloak
- Fixed a bug where autopistols were doing 1 less damage than intended on critical hits
- Fixed a bug where bomb disposal missions didn't have less drop-ins
- Typos
Version 1.39.01
LW Rebalance v1.39.01
Strategic:
- Doubled the number of reserach/harvest missions the aliens send out, but halved their research/resource bonuses - Makes it more likely to see scouts/raiders and landed UFOs, increases access to late game elerium
- Harvester HP to 6000 (from 8000) and Transport HP to 8000 (from 14000) - makes them much easier to down and generate missions from
Tactical:
- Exalt SHIVs are reenabled - Fixed the teleport bug that was messing them up. YAY =D
Perks:
- Impact causes non-reaction shots to clear OW (from all shots) - Prevents lockdown on enemies who go on overwatch
Aliens:
- Muton and Floater grenade range reduced to 6 tiles (from 8) - Makes it even harder to get off and easier to avoid, helps accommodate for new stronger muton elite grenades (due to mayhem)
- Cyberdisc grenade range increased to 10 tiles (from 8) - They rarely get close enough to use this appropriately and as an added bonus their mechanic makes it look like it should throw further anyway
- Exalt SHIVs have 10 more aim but just over a third of their normal HP - Makes them harder to ignore while being much less tanky
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs were not gaining difficulty based alien stats (making them too hard on low difficulties and too easy on hard difficulties)
- Fixed a visual bug when evacuating with the VIP it would still suggest that the mission was a failure (when it would be success)
- Fixed a bug where chryssalids would get the Hunter perk
- Fixed a bug where all aliens would sometimes teleport around the map immediately after being revealed or shortly after being revealed
- Typos
Version 1.39.00
LW Rebalance v1.39.00
Strategic:
- All damaged and repairing equipment is automatically repaired before attempting the Temple Ship - Makes risking damage of equipment before the temple ship not such a bad idea
- Increase the time between Exalt operations by ~50% - Makes the missions a little less frequent
- Improved accuracy of Exalt Scan Reminders - I hope this works =D
- Augmenting (Chopping) a soldier costs 50 credits and 100 meld (from 30 credits and 70 meld) - Makes it more expensive to field MECs, overall slight decrease in MEC composition in mid to late game missions
- Improved medikit requires 30 thinman corpses (from 45) - Slight reduction to accommodate reduction in thinmen
- Your Home Country is now 50% more resistant to panic increases - Makes it much harder to lose
Starts:
- Jai Jawan (India country start) also grants +2 SHIVs - Buffed
- Advanced Preparations (Canada country start) only grants 3 soldiers (from 5) - Slight nerf
- Survival Training (South Africa country start) only reduces wound times by 25% (from 40%) - Toned back
- Ring of Fire (Japan country start) grants 200 per thermogenerator (from 150) - Slight buff
Missions:
- Bomb disposal missions have 30% less drop-ins - They are difficult mission so this should make them slightly easier so they aren't such a spike
- Remaining health on aliens on crashed UFOs are 25-75% (from 25-100%) - A little more damaging
- Thinman pods contain a more varied combination of units - Helps reduce their overpresense/appearance as they occur on so many council missions
Tactical:
- Reaction fire triggers on any movement (from movement >1 tile) - more intuitive, felt abusive and uninentional to have a unit be able to walk 1 tile and not trigger reaction fire
- Suppressive Fire does 30% of damage (from 40%) - Toned back so it's not as effective on exposed units and floaters. Also slight nerf to gunner overall.
- Repair now heals 4 HP max (from 5 HP) - Tone back on engineer healing strength
- All healing heals a minimum of 1 HP - Felt bad when it healed 0, helps with AI
- Exalt SHIVs are no more - Sad, but I was able to reproduce the bug and have units indeed teleport around the map, and it seems to be because the alien AI can't handle SHIVs
Perks:
- Impact now clears enemy overwatch regardless if the weapon was steadied before hand - Significant buff to the perk for clearing overwatch
- Concealment now breaks after any action (from almost all actions) - Prevents using abilities while concealed which the AI cannot handle well
- One For All now counts as idle (for abilities that grants bonuses to end-in-idle actions) - Intuitive
- Being hidden (stealthed, shadowed, concealed, ghosted, cloaked) now counts as idle (for abilities that grant bonuses to end-in-idle actions) - Intuitive
- Command now works on units in One For All - It actually always did just it was described as it did not
- Close Combat Specialist grants +1 ammo - Buff to it's strength and the ease of it's use
- Jetboot Module no longer breaks Cloaking or Shadow - Buff to it's usefulness
- Bullseye upgrades steadying a weapon to no longer break stealth abilities (Cloaking, Shadow, Concealment, Stealth, or Ghosting) - Buff to it's usefulness
- Hunter reworked: Standard shots made while cloaked will leave this unit with 1 AP. All shots made within 4 tiles gain +4 penetration. This unit cloaks at the beginning of each turn if it can see an enemy within 15 tiles, has ammo, and is idle. Cloaking prevents aliens from seeing this unit and grants +30% crit. Cloaking breaks after taking any non-movement action or at the end of turn. Grants Combined Arms [All weapons and equipment deal +1 damage]..
- Master mechanic increases repair healing to 8 (from 10) - accommodation for repair tone back
- Savior only grants 2 HP max healing (from 3) - Makes the upgrade more important as the max HP was overkill previously
- Smart Macrophages only grants 2 HP max healing (from 3) - Makes the upgrades more important as the max HP was overkill previously
- Field Medic grants 3 free medikits (from 2) - Boost to innate healing capability of the medic
- Tactical Mobility is only active if the unit is undamaged - Makes stacking up damage on units with tactical mobility easier
- Platform Stability reduces rocket scatter by 50% (from 30%) - Makes it more reasonable to perform a 1 AP action before firing with rockets, overall buff to the alloy bipod on rocketeers
- Snapshot grants a 25% chance for a 0 AP action (from 20%) - Buffed
- Will to Survive reduces injury times by 40% (from 50%) and grants -30 defense (from -10) - Slight tone back on injury times, and makes the biotank much more capable of taunting attacks (even in heavy cover)
- Mind Control can now be interupted by explosive damage or disorientation on either the Mind Controllee or Mind Controller - Gives more capability for the player to break mind control
- Brawler makes shots and melee attacks graze (from all attacks) - it didn't feel right when grenades and other distance attacks grazed based on where the damage dealer was standing
Equipment:
- Arc Rifles no longer grant disabling shot - Focuses them more on a early-mid game weapon
- Incinerator Module increases flamethrower damage by 3 (from 6) - Toned back in strength
- Electropulse now penetrates all damage resistance and has 10 tile radius (from 8) but deals 8 damage (from 12) - Makes it much more effective against its intended targets
- Restorative Mist heals for 6 max HP (from 10) - Tone back in strength due to AoE and because it has 2 charges now
- Medikits heal for 4 HP max (from 5) and medikit 2 only grants 2 HP max healing (from 3) - Makes the upgrades more important as the max HP was overkill previously
- The elerium emitter has been renamed back to Shadow Device - This is apt considering it now 'shadows' units
- Shadow Device now cause units to be 'Shadowed' (instead of concealed) - Helps differentiate the different types of stealth for accuracy
- The Shadow Device and mimic beacon can now be equipped by all biosoldiers (from psi only) (Note: you still need psi warfare systems to produce them) - They were too restrictive for such specific items
- The Psi Frayer now resets the cooldown after use of mind fray but no longer increases damage - Now it's possible to mind fray many times in a single turn
- Shadow armor renamed to Ghost Armor - This is because it lets you Ghost (so it's much more intuitive) and the term 'shadow armor' is confusing if the new Shadow Device (old elerium emitter) causes Sahdow.
XCOM:
- Marauder Tree rework (see perk tree image)
- Annette and the Furies have 10 less will - Makes them feel a little less mandatory so you can use more of your other crew
Aliens:
- Base damage of floaters to 5 (from 6) - Makes them a little less offensively punishing early game
- Mutons no longer start with plasma carbines and upgrade to plamsa assault rifles and instead just start with plasma assault rifles but plasma assault rifle damage to 7 (from 8) - This little tweak was only apparent to a few and made things needlessly complicated, plus the carbine model didn't fit the muton model very well and always seemed a little buggy, overall slight boost to early game muton strength and tone back of mid game strength
- Outsiders gain 0.5 regeneration per alien level upgrade (from no upgrade to regeneration) - Their HP quickly outclassed their regeneration into the mid and especially late game that it needed some increase
- Muton Elites gain Mayhem - Significant buff to the damage output of muton elites, especially with their suppression and grenades so that they are much higher priority targets, especially when close enough to grenade
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the illuminator gunsight was giving squadsight instead of killer instinct
- Fixed a bug where the battle scanner was only providing 10 aim instead of 15
- Fixed a bug where seekers were still taking triple damage when strangling
- Clarified description of close encounters
- Fixed a bug where the uber ethereal would sometimes go 'off-guard'
- Fixed a bug where reload would not break One For All
- Fixed a bug where units that were mind controlled and took explosive damage would sometimes die after the mission ended even if they weren't dead
- Maybe fixed an issue where the command pod on alien base assaults could have 2 sectoid commanders (hopefully they all only have 1 now)
- Fixed some descriptions that were too long for display
- Fixed a bug where Close Encounters would sometimes trigger on grenades thrown further than 3.99 tiles away
- Fixed a bug where the ammo counts were not always accurate on certain weapons (stun rifle, rockets)
- I think (?) fixed a bug where overwatch would sometimes pull more than one reaction shot when xcom did it
- Hopefully fixed a bug where exalt scan reminders would double up after exalt is first revealed
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would sometimes not go on overwatch
- Maybe fixed a bug where Sectopods would sometimes get stuck firing cluster bombs non-stop (Thanks to szmind for trying to help fix this with me)
- Fixed a bug where command would still allow some action discounting perks to work
- Fixed a bug where combat patrol repair times were not accurate
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness and then command would still have restrictions on a unit from multi-action perks such as close encounters, Hit and Run, etc.
- Fixed a bug where a sectopod cluster bomb would show 0/0 ammo in the F1 panel
- Fixed a bug where stunned aliens would show as bleeding out
- Typos
Version 1.38.23
LW Rebalance v1.38.23
Tactical:
- Improved AI for floaters so they will fly more often when they should and not when they shouldn't - QoL
- Crashed UFOs deal 25-75% damage to 50% of aliens (from 0-50% damage to 100% of aliens) - Makes more aliens likely to be at full HP
- Improved some of the tactical buff/debuff displays - QoL
- Mutons are much more likely to appear at alien level 2 now - Makes alien level 2 not as easy and level 3 less of a spike
- Enrage triggers 33% less often - Slight tone back
Perks:
- Mind control deals 1 + 20% of max HP in damage (from 1 + 10% of max HP) - Makes it more damaging
- Orbital Ray reworked into 2 Stages - Improves interactivity
- Orbital Ray - Stage 1: This drone can call in orbital support to holo target it's enemies. After requesting orbital support for a turn each enemy will have an 80% chance to be holo targeted and locked for an orbital ray. This chance is reduced by half (stacking) if the target is: Hunkered, in cover, or indoors. Can be interrupted by any damage. Requires 2 AP. Does not trigger reaction fire.
- Orbital Ray - Stage 2: This drone can act as a forward targeter for orbital support to guide a neutrino ray at targeted enemies. After a turn, targeted enemies will be hit with a fully penetrating ray that deals 4 + Alien_Level/2 damage. Can be interrupted by any damage. Requires 2 AP. Does not trigger reaction fire.
- Shock and Awe increases the radius of concussion grenades by 2 (from 1) and deals 15% of the targets current HP in additional damage (from 10%) - Significant boost to the support and shooter rocketeers as well as S&A on the shogun
- Danger Zone grants +35% explosive radius only (from +35% explosive radius and +1 damage) - Was too strong with both
- Bombard grants +30% throw range (from +40%) - Was getting too far (for gameplay purposes) with 40%
- Repair Servos reworked: it now uses half of the remaining servos at the end of turn with a minimum of 1 if available (from up to 2 servos if available) - Allows quicker healing after a lot of damage but prevents getting all the servos back for a while, kind of a mix between the previous two versions that serves both ideas
Equipment:
- Radius of rockets back to 5 tiles (from 4) - Too weak at 4, needed a buff
- Battle Scanners grant +15 aim (from +10) - Siginficant boost as the 1 turn is pretty restrictive
Aliens:
- Seeker damage to 4 (from 6) but no longer take additional damage when strangling - makes the strangling clearly the worst option and encourages fighting them in a manner to minimize it and/or protect against it
- Significant AI upgrade on use of long distance auto-hit abilities (psychic storm, orbital ray) to help prevent frustrating situations for the player - QoL
- Cyberdisc HP to 24 (from 20) - Was too low and probably a little overnerfed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the home ground bonus would not be granted in certain countries
- Fixed a bug where mind deterioration was not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where dead XCOM units would sometimes count twice on the mission summary screen under the Operatives Lost information
- Fixed a bug where aliens could be on overwatch while panicked
- Fixed a bug where when loading a save game some of the variables were not reloaded correctly (e.g. Close Encounters being triggered without using it)
- Fixed some log spam
- Maybe fixed a bug with the Sectopods firing at walls/nothing during the middle of engagements
- Fixed a bug where drones were healing for too much sometimes
- Typos
Version 1.38.22
LW Rebalance v1.38.22
Strategic:
- Failing an Exalt mission increases panic by 4 (from 20) - much more manageable and reasonable to fail
Tactical:
- Improved some display indicators for buffs/debuffs always showing the most relevant buffs/debuffs on units - QoL, buffs and debuffs were quite easily forgotten simply because it was too cumbersome to always remember, this should make things a lot more apparent and help the player stay engaged
- Improved Floater AI for not staying flanked in cover or the open more often - QoL
- Improved healing AI so they'll accommodate for the new healing mechanics
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness was not being saved in save games
- Typos
Version 1.38.21
LW Rebalance v1.38.21
Tactical:
- Improved the AI a little more for floaters and when they should be flying
- Suppression now also increases the crit chance against the suppressor by 30 - Consistency
- Crashed UFOs will only damage enemies by 0-50% of their HP (from 0-99% of their HP) - the missions could be a little too swingy with everyone at full or close to 0 HP
Bug Fix:
- Tried to fix the double exalt reminder bug (again)
- Fixed a bug where floaters would sometimes launch to a location that was indoors
- Maybe fixed a bug where overwatch could still trigger more than 1 reaction shot
Version 1.38.20
LW Rebalance v1.38.20
Orbital Ray tweaks:
- Orbital Ray damage reduced to 1 + Alien Level/4 (from just Alien Level) but double to units that are already affected by holo rounds - Prevents it from getting so high into the late game
- Orbital Ray now requires the drone to be at full HP to trigger - Helps give some ability to mitigate
Version 1.38.19
LW Rebalance v1.38.19
Tactical:
- Alien counts on the first mission are now 5 (ease into it), 7 (Easy), 8 (Classic), 8 + 1 outsider (Brutal), 9 + 1 outsider (Impossible) - With the recent buff in difficulty the first mission was made too hard and it needed to be reduced in difficulty at the high end
- Improved the AI of various units to be more capable when xcom breaks LoS - QoL
- Units steadying their weapons or on overwatch are now 30% more likely to be critically hit - Makes sense as they are not in a defensive position and often sticking out of cover, provides an interesting draw back to the aliens and XCOM using these abilities
Healing Changes:
- Using a Medikit/Repair/Restorative Mist now heals a unit for 50% of their missing HP (max 5 HP). The max increases by 3 for each medikit upgrade (savior/macrophages/medikit II) and by 5 for master mechanic on repair. Restorative Mist is 10 HP. - Makes it so healing is really effective when you need it most and much harder to 'top everyone up' to perfect fighting shape.
Perks:
- Ready For Anything grants 30 crit resistance when overwatching - Counter acts suceptibility to crits, important because it's a forced ability and feels bad if you're forced into a worse situation
Aliens:
- Drones gain a new perk - What could it be? :)
Equipment:
- Mists have 2 charges (from 1) - Boost to MEC healing
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where repair was healing for more than intended
- Fixed a bug with audio warnings of reinforcements not being accurate on exalt covert op extractions
Version 1.38.18
LW Rebalance v1.38.18
Difficulty Changes:
- Normal difficulty renamed to Easy - I have received multiple complaints about the game being too hard for some newer players and accessibilty is something I want for the mod. It is not reasonable for brand new players to expect to be able to check off second wave options either, so instead, the lowest difficulty will be made easier.
- Aim and will differences on easy/classic/brutal/impossible to -20/-10/0/+10 (from -10/-5/0/+5) - Makes impossible more challenging
- Difficulties will now modify alien mobility as well as follows: Easy -2.0, classic -0.6, brutal 0, impossible +0.6 - further distinguishes the difficulties
- Impossible difficulty aliens now have an additional +2 HP and +1 damage - Significant increase in early game difficulty on impossible as the difficulty curve should be more flat for a player who selects impossible, not giving them time to learn the game
- Aliens on Easy difficulty have half the defense - Helps the game not be too challenging for players
- Desperate Odds (Second Wave Option #25) now doubles the cost of soldiers and triples the cost of SHIVs - Accomodates for using fewer guys
- Despearte Odds (Second Wave Option #25) rounds up when calculating number of soldiers on Exalt missions - Otherwise exalt missions are too hard on the game mode
Tactical:
- Included a new indicator above alien heads "M" that when hovering over an empty tile, shows whether or not the alien unit could move there in 1 action and still fire - QoL, very useful for quickly telling if a unit can flank you or not
- Leaders occuring is now based on x% per alien level where x is 3/4/5/6% for normal/classic/brutal/impossible - Makes leaders more common on impossible, less on normal
- Ironman save games will again save after each action (instead of each turn) - prevents having to redo the turn if for whatever reason the game closes
- SHIVs are removed from early covert op extraction missions - Was a little too hard on those missions
- Alien units enter the Temple Ship invulnerable only 50% of the time on brutal and never on classic and normal - Makes the mission easier on lower difficulties
- Desperate Odds (second wave option #25) will now trigger enrage and berserk twice as often - Accommodates for fewer guys
- Desperate Odds (Second Wave Option #25) no longer prevents SHIV xp sharing - Made them too useless
- Killing aliens leaders now grants 30xp (from 20xp) - Boost to accommodate for losing officer bonus xp, especially as more leaders appear late game, makes terror missions grant a lot more experience
- Repair (ability from Mechanic and Master Mechanic) heals 4 (from 6) - Lower overall sustainability during engagements
Perks:
- Commanding officer no longer grnats +10%xp/rank - Made officers too essential to the effective progression of a campaign
- Psychic Storm will no longer affects VIPs - Added little benefit if it hit them and late game could lead to a poor situation
- Psychic Storm Level is now equal to will/40 (from will/50) but the aliens will no longer start if a storm if they are further than 25 tiles away - Prevents chain triggers from spamming psychic storm and makes it much more reasonable to stop psychic storms
- Countercharge deals will/20 damage (from 3 + PsiRank/2) - More fluid on enemy types and evolves with enemy upgrades and difficulty levels better
- Deflection shield grants 10 defense per tile away (from 5) - Just makes it less easy to bypass (as reaction fire, close range shots, and/or explosives all already bypass it quite easily)
- Repair Servos again heals only 2 per turn (from 4) - was a little too much at 4 and is strong enough at 2
- Savior grants +2 healing to medikits (from +3) - Tone back on overall healing
Equipment:
- Shotuns mobility to -0.6 (from 0) - Despite the negative of an aim malus further than 10 tiles, the aim bonus within 10 tiles and 150% base damage more than made up for it making it the superior and only choice for many builds, this should tone back the strength and open up other weapons as possibilities
- Medikits heal for 2 (from 3) - Tone back on overall healing
Aliens:
- Seeker base damage to 6 (from 4) and aim to 70 (from 60) - Makes them decent damage dealers when revealed
- Chryssalid leader damage to 2/2/2/2 (from 2/3/3/3) - Tones back their strength on the temple ship so they aren't so devestating
- Berserker leader damage to 3/3/3 (from 4/6/10) - Tones back their strength on the temple ship so they aren't so devestating
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would sometimes recolor when fighting them - Thanks to szmind for the help
- Fixed a bug where close range (<18 tiles) squadsight vision was not being used to help with spotting when it should
- Fixed a bug where you could have a unit scamper, save teh game, load the game, and then scamper again
- Fixed a bug where units could be invulnerable for more than 1 turn
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would act like human SHIVs for reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs could be staggered when it's not their turn
- Typos
Version 1.38.17
LW Rebalance v1.38.17
Strategic:
- Minimum resources for aliens set to #_of_days_passed/5 - Was always supposed to be working, but the LW 1.0 code wasn't working (I assumed it was) b/c it was accidentally not including dynamic war
- New Second Wave Option: Desperate Odds (replaces We Are Legion): XCOM can only deploy half as many soldiers to all missions and SHIVs no longer share experience - A new option for those who want a real challenge
Perks:
- Shock and Awe change: Rocket/Grenade/MiNE Launchers gain an additional use. Collateral Damage and standard shots gain bonus damage equal to 10% of their target's current HP. Concussion and psi grenades gain +1 tile radius. - Boost to shooter and support rocketeer, especially since GSGT perks are all explosive orientated only; makes shock and awe more competitive on the Shogun
- Overload (perk from arc rifle and arc pistol) now has twice the chance to disorient mechanical targets - Buffed as it was too small before, especially with no supercondctors buff
- Onslaught grants bonus damage equal to 25% of the targets current HP (from 20%) - Buffed
Equipment:
- Electropulse no longer affects the MEC using it and damage to 12 (from 14) - was too detrimental to the MEC to hurt itself, significant buff overall
XCOM:
- Jetboot Module on Shogun replaced with Repulsor Plating - Buff to tank Shogun
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD that sometimes occured when berserkers tried to bullrush units with elevation differences
- Fixed a bug where partial cover was providing the DR benefit of full cover in the DR preview
- Fixed a bug where Exalt missions would sometimes skip the first turn when the blitz timer was turned on
- Typos
Version 1.38.16
LW Rebalance v1.38.16
Strategic:
- All UFO research has it's alloy cost reduced by 90% - Makes it more of a research sink than an alloy sink
- Destroyed UFOs provide 25-50% of their alloys (from 75-100%) - makes fighters and destroyers a much worse source for alloys
Perks:
- Growth now occurs 25% of the time when inactive and 50% of the time when active (from 20% of the time when innactive and 100% of the time when active) (Note: difficulty still modifies the chance of growth) - Significant reduction in the rate of growth when active, makes large landeds easier when outsiders chain activate
Equipment:
- Electropulse (MEC 2ndary weapon) has 8 range (from 4) and deals 14 damage (from 8) but has a chance to stun targets equal to the % of HP they lost (from 100% stun chance) - makes it more about damage and less about stun
- Electropulse now also affects outsiders (instead of just mechanical units) - Buff to the situations it is useful in
- Arc Rifle and Arc Pistol no longer receive upgrades with supercapacitors - It wasn't ideal to have early game weapons replacing late game ones through upgrades and it's main role was early anti-mech capability which it still serves nicely
Aliens:
- Level 6/9 Mechtoid leaders gain 4/4 damage (from 2/2) and 20/20 aim (from 10/10) - Makes their damage output slightly stronger
- Level 9 Heavy Floater and Floater Leaders gain shredder ammo - Make them more dangerous enemies on the temple ship
- Level 6/9 Thinmen leaders gain 10/20 HP (from 6/10) and level 9 thinmen leaders gain repulsor plating - Buffed, especially for temple ship
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug which would force all exalt elite to spawn on certain exalt missions
- Fixed a double popup on SHIV being ready for battle
- Fixed a double popup for Exalt scan warnings
- Fixed a bug where the final mission count of dead soldiers was often inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where the blitz timer would be set to 0 for the first turn on some exalt missions
- Invulnerable units will no longer lose their invulnerable status by using reactive abilities (e.g. CCS)
- Typos
Version 1.38.15
LW Rebalance v1.38.15
Strategic:
- The extra sectoid commander and ethereal on UFO missions now only occurs 50% of the time - The overall goal was to make a reliable source to fight these enemies (which was accomplished) but they were more frequent than needed (and more than ideal)
Tactical:
- Bounty for Heavy Floaters increased to 10 meld (from 2) - Feels more reasonable
Perks:
- New Perk: Repulsor Plating: The first damage received from within 15 tiles each turn grazes this target - Useful for minimizing the strength against single shots
- Unhinged is +1 damage for every 2 enemies in sight (from every 3 enemies in sight) - Buffed
- Onslaught now grants bonus damage equal to 1/5th of the target's current HP to the kinetic strike module - Buffed, makes it more of a boss killer
- Psychic Storm no longer has a range limit - Prevents players trying to sit at 30 tiles to avoid it
- Distortion now requires line of sight to damage share - Prevents damage sharing through walls and things like that which would be quite unfair for XCOM if ethereals/sectoid commanders did this
XCOM:
- The Marauder TSGT perk Shock-Absorbant Armor is replaced with Repulsor Plating - Buff to the reliability and capability of the Marauder for getting in close
- The Jaeger GSGT perk Shock-Absorbant Armor is replaced with Repulsor Plating - Buff to the reliability and capability of the Jaeger for getting in close
- Lowered the chance the AI will use psychic storm when they are out of vision of XCOM but XCOM is fighting other aliens - Prevents getting as punished during bad chain activations
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the final cinematic would freeze half way through the game - was kinda anticlimactic
- Fixed a bug where medics actually didn't have Hit and Run and still had CE
- Fixed a bug where the extraction zone in friends and low places did not work for XCOM units besides the VIP
- Fixed a bug where saving and loading a game could reset the trigger that detects if a unit moved (for crit bonuses, ready for anything, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where death perks could be assigned to units left behind
- Typos
Version 1.38.14
LW Rebalance v1.38.14
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where sometimes if you would eliminate all aliens the game would still force you to retreat to win the mission
- Fixed a bug where psi xp levels were incorrect
- Fixed an infinite loop causing a CTD when SHIVs tried to complete a mission
Version 1.38.13
LW Rebalance v1.38.13
Strategic:
- Psionic xp required for level ups to 200/400/600/800/1000 (from 400/800/1200/1600/2000) - Twice as easy to accumulate psi xp (similar to 2 patches ago)
Perks:
- Savior heal after damage no longer stacks with combat drugs - Prevents healing from damage
Version 1.38.12
LW Rebalance v1.38.12
Strategic:
- Combat patrols increase in cost after each patrol by 50 + AL*10 (from just AL*10) - Makes it more difficult to use repeatedly, especially early and mid game
- Bombing Runs are half changed back from random to refocused on specific countries - Prevents spreading out of panic so early making losing countries not common early, hopefully the best of both worlds
- Bombing run panic increased by 33% - Helps the aliens target countries
- Soldiers only gain 100 psi xp per mission (from 200) - Slows down the overall progression of psi within battles as it was too fast
- Psi xp requirements for psi levels changed to 400 per level (from 200 for first level and 400 per level after) - Consistency
- Advanced Surgery decreases biosoldier wound times by 35% (from all units wound time by 15%) - Buffed, but more specific, needed to be more significant
- Injury time slows down MEC conversion success rate by 1% for every 10 days of injury (from 1% for every 20 days) - Slight buff to move it into the consequential area while still being minor
- Exalt SHIVs are a little more common on exalt missions - QoL
Tactical:
- Rocket scatter reduced by 10% - Slight buff to rocketeers - Just a slight buff, probably puts them in the right spot as the previous nerf I think was a little too much
- Sectoid Commanders, Muton Elites, and Heavy Floaters are a little less likely to occur on regular missions - Prevents the early late game from ramping up in difficulty so quick
- Ethereals and Sectopods appear less frequently (~ half as often) on regular missions - Makes late game missions less punishing
- Combat Readiness grants +0.6 mobility - Boost to classes that utilize the mobility more
Perks:
- Psychic storm now deals double damage vs mechanical units (including SHIVs) - Buff to it's effectiveness against XCOMs high HP units
- Command will now not trigger overwatch - It's more intuitive this way as many players just assumed it would not trigger overwatch
- Savior now heals back 40% of any damage taken - Buffed, accommodates for medic tank nerf, similar to combat drugs
- Extra Conditioning grants +2 HP (from +1) - Slight buff to the perk to make it a more competitive choice
- Hit and Run grants +35% weapon damage (from +1 damage and +25 aim) - The aim push was moving the perk towards distance shooting and it was never the ideal, this version encourages the flanks and increases the damage ceiling as it used to be
- Inner Fire grants 10% DR (from +1 DR) - Prevents stacking problems on volunteer
- Psi Mastery upgrades inner fire to increase throw range and DR by 50% as well (10% throw range -> 15% throw range, 10% DR -> 15% DR) - Consistency, makes it a little more competitive on that psi level
- Commading Officer no longer grants injury reduction or DR in cover - Was still too weak and to make officer's competitive tanks was just not feeling right, so I think it's reasonable to just say officer's aren't competitive biotanks
- First aid no longer lets medikits cost 1 AP - Tone back in strength for balance on trees
Equipment:
- All gauss weapons lose 0.6 mobility - Overall nerf to guass to make it not such a power spike in the weapons progression
- Combat Stims no longer prevents crits - It's pretty strong as is
XCOM:
- Medic loses close encounters and it is replaced with Hit and Run - The ability was supposed to encourage close engagement and some versatility to the medic tank but it ended up being much too strong. Hit and Run more closely resembles what the medic is supposed to be while not being too powerful. It also makes CCS more reasonable due to less ammo use.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where certain changes in Incursion Strength were not occuring
- Fixed a bug where the exalt scan reminder wasn't very accurate - I hope? It's really hard to understand this stuff =P
- Fixed a bug where MECs with HP less than 8 were still losing bonus stats
- Fixed a bug where an eletric jolt would appear on some units when loading save games in tactical battles
- Fixed a bug where seekers would remaing flying when strangling
- Fixed a bug where allied SHIVs would appear as enemies on the F1 list
- Fixed a bug where cyberdiscs were a lot more rare (~50%) than intended
- Fixed a bug where some multiaction abilities were not saving correctly on save and reload
- Fixed a bug where the temple ship could freeze after some spawns occured
- Added some code to prevent the wrong unit from diffusing the bomb when clicking to defuse the bomb
- Fixed a bug where battle scanners would spawn as sectoid on the temple ship
Version 1.38.11
LW Rebalance v1.38.11
Strategic:
- Aliens no longer gain additional research for each dead XCOM - Was already punishing enough to lose guys
Tactical:
- Critical wound timer decreased from 4-7 turns to 2-4 turns - Makes it important to try to get to a critically wounded soldier ASAP instead of just usually ignoring until the engagement/battle is over (note: at the beginning of each XCOM turn is when the turn timer ticks down and soldiers may bleed out, this means 2 turn bleed out only grants xcom 1 turn to intervene)
- Bleeding out soldiers now count for full towards the berserk and enrage abilities - reasonable due to the decreased time
Perks:
- Shadowstep now only prevents reaction shots when moving and NOT dashing - Prevents fast movement, makes sense, decrease in ability to move quickly through overwatch with it
Equipment:
- Respirator Implant grants +1.3 mobility (from +0.6) - Buffed, makes it more competitive as a mobility booster
- Cognitive Enhancer grants a 10% chance for any idle-ending action to cost 0 AP and def to 0 (from 5) and grants awareness instead of tracker - Buffed, makes it more suitable for power leveing
- Extrasensory vest renamed back to LW 1.0 Chameleon Vest: Loses Tracker and Awareness, mobility to -0.6, and gains shadowstep - Should make it much more appealing as an anti-reaction fire piece of equipment, especially useful on covert operatives
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the aliens were gaining too much research (double) when at high resources causing mid-late game really fast acceleration of alien levels
LW Rebalance v1.38.11
Strategic:
- Aliens no longer gain additional research for each dead XCOM - Was already punishing enough to lose guys
Tactical:
- Critical wound timer decreased from 4-7 turns to 2-4 turns - Makes it important to try to get to a critically wounded soldier ASAP instead of just usually ignoring until the engagement/battle is over (note: at the beginning of each XCOM turn is when the turn timer ticks down and soldiers may bleed out, this means 2 turn bleed out only grants xcom 1 turn to intervene)
- Bleeding out soldiers now count for full towards the berserk and enrage abilities - reasonable due to the decreased time
Perks:
- Shadowstep now only prevents reaction shots when moving and NOT dashing - Prevents fast movement, makes sense, decrease in ability to move quickly through overwatch with it
Equipment:
- Respirator Implant grants +1.3 mobility (from +0.6) - Buffed, makes it more competitive as a mobility booster
- Cognitive Enhancer grants a 10% chance for any idle-ending action to cost 0 AP and def to 0 (from 5) and grants awareness instead of tracker - Buffed, makes it more suitable for power leveing
- Extrasensory vest renamed back to LW 1.0 Chameleon Vest: Loses Tracker and Awareness, mobility to -0.6, and gains shadowstep - Should make it much more appealing as an anti-reaction fire piece of equipment, especially useful on covert operatives
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the aliens were gaining too much research (double) when at high resources causing mid-late game really fast acceleration of alien levels
Version 1.38.10
LW Rebalance v1.38.10
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the game could CTD at the end of a mission
- Fixed a bug where the aliens could double tap and overwatch on the same turn
- Fixed a bug where the aliens were gaining 10% more research from some missions than intended
- Fixed a CTD on the temple ship when multiple MECs were in OfA
- Fixed a (minor) inaccuracy on scatter calculations if the rockteer has any sort of scatter reduction perks in play
- Typos
Version 1.38.09
LW Rebalance v1.38.09
Strategic:
- Combat Patrol effectiveness is now decreased and increased if more or less council nations are in a continent (assuming an average of 3) - Makes combat patrols evenly useful in all continents
- Aim ranges for soldiers is now 60 to 70 (from 53 to 77) - Aim was by far the most significant class and subclass determining factors and was so much more significant than the other stats that it made many builds feel unviable (e.g. a shooter rocketeer and an OW gunner, or a Bullseye strike rifle scout with any sniper, or an OW medic with a DT engineer, etc.), with this change it should feel more like the other substats do, where they help determine class and subclass but are not so determining that getting the wrong class feels like the soldier is not worth investment
Start Bonus Balances:
- Ghost in the Machine grants SHIVs +25 aim (from +30) - With the plethora of SHIV buffs they have become much more central to squads and a +30 aim buff is a little too strong
- Cadre now grants the starting 5 soldiers Perseverance [Fatigue and injury times reduced by 35%] and overall grants +0 xp/day (from +3 xp/day) - Significant buff as it makes those soldiers useful into the late game
- NeoPanzer grants SHIVs/MECs +1.3 mobility but only reduces costs by 50% (from 70%) - Buffed
- Bred Tough now grants the +1 DR and +2 HP to MECs as well - Buffed
- Survival training now reduces all injury times by 40% (this is on top of the 16% injury time reduction from the bonus 4 HP) - Buffed
- Kiryu-Kai Commanders now both start with Perseverance [Fatigue and injury times reduced by 35%] - Helps them be useful into the late game
- Jai Vidwan now grants 150 elerium (from 50) - Buffed
- Research Focus now grants 100 elerium (from 25) - Buffed
- Assembly Line now grants 200 alloys (from 50) - Buffed
- Militarization decreases soldier costs and arrival times by 50% (from 30%) - buffed
- Quai d'Orsay Country item requests occur 50% faster, fulfilled requests provide 50% additional defense, and intel scans cost 50% less (from 40% of all) - Buffed
- Global Networking increases grey market sell prices by 35% (from 30%) - Actually works out to a significant buff
- Argentina and Brazil both start with 300 more starting cash - Buffed
- Stagger now effects mechanical units (it has no effect on melee only units but is not nullified by hardened) - Makes OW and reactive fire more effective against more enemies
- Stagger is twice as likely to trigger - Makes it easier to prevent double actions with overwatch and harder to just 'tank' OW shots on XCOM units with double actions
- Actions that set units to 1 AP but have a restriction (e.g. close encounters) will now trigger after actions that cost 1 AP when the unit is at 2 AP (e.g. grenadier) - Means the unit defaults to using the most effective ability, QoL
- Blitzkrieg will no longer set the timer to 0 on save/load/esc menu and will save the current timer in between saves - Makes it much more reasonable to use
- Dashing now grants 30 defense against reaction shots (from 20 defense) - Buff to make it more reasonable as it's rarely worth it
Perks:
- Grenadier no longer grants a 10% throw range increase - Tone back on strength of grenades
- Bombard throw range to 40% (from 35%) - another slight increase for support rocketeer and to be more competitive on explosive grenadier
- Impact makes reaction shots 50% more likely to stagger (from 100% more likely) - Accommodates for stagger buff
- Sapper no longer bypasses flat DR but instead grants +20% throw range - Buff to Greandier Engineer and slightly to Shogun
- Master Mechanic grants +2 penetration (from +1) - Buff to mid-late game engineers and drones
- Dense Smoke grants 30% DR (from 20%) and 2 smoke grenades (from 1) - Buffed
- Combat drugs heals back 40% of the damage taken (from 45%) - Slight nerf, very minimal
- Perseverance decreases injury and fatigue times by 35% (from 40%) - Slight tone back
- Stay Frosty reduces fatigue times by 15% (from 10%) - Slight buff to make it more competitive
- Natural leadership grants the officer 20 will (from 15) - Slight buff for balance
Equipment:
- Cognitive Enhancer grants Tracker - Buffed
- Neuroregulator grants +20 will (from +10) - Buff to Exalt artifacts, makes it quite effective and increasing psi strength
- Illuminator Gunsight grants +10 crit (from 0) and killer instinct - Buff to Exalt artifacts, makes it a significant item for increased damage
Aliens:
- Mechtoids/Sectopods all gain Absorption Fields (from just Mechtoid/Sectopod Leaders) - Buff to their resiliency
- Mechtoids gain 7 will per alien level (from 10) and Mechtoid leaders gain 20/40/60 will (from 30/60/90) - Makes mechtoids more suceptible to psionics, slight buff to psionics
- Secotpods gain 1 DR (to 8 from 7) - Slight increase in their resiliency
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would have incorrect armor HP
- Fixed a visual bug where precision shot would show a crit chance bonus twice in the F1 panel with strike rifles
- Fixed a bug where the game would sometimes crash after killing the sectopod on the temple ship
- Fixed a bug where the stun rifle showed an incorrect number of charges in the startegic layer panel
- Fixed a bug where defusing a bomb took a turn before the mission was considered a victory
- Fixed a bug where hit and run didn't grant bonus aim and damage on non-standard shots
- Fixed a bug where bleedouts that died were not being presented correctly on the mission summary screen at the end of a mission
- Fixed a bug where killing an Exalt SHIV the camera would bug out
- Fixed a bug where players could bypass the reset mission code on exalt causing odd save bugs and odd SHIV bugs
Version 1.38.08
LW Rebalance v1.38.08
Strategic:
- Daredevils increases the effect of combat patrols by 50% (from double) - Was too strong with the recent boosts to combat patrol effectiveness
- Combat Patrol repair times on aircraft are no longer affected by campaign length - It should be separate from campaign length
- Soldier costs now decrease by 5 for each unit lost and increase by 5 for each month passed (from 10 and 10) - Stops it from escalating or decreasing so much
Tactical:
- SHIVs can once again capture and hold capture zones in data recovery missions - Makes more intuitive sense
- Ready For Anything will now trigger if a reaction shot culd trigger but won't because it is under 30 aim - QoL, makes intuitive sense
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where flying units that were reinforcing would sometimes launch into outer space and freeze the game =P
- Fixed a rare bug where council missions could be delayed from the original timer
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs could cause a crash to desktop when assigned weapons more than their basic sentry gun
- Fixed some missing descriptions of air game weapons in some windows
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would not appear in the F1 display correctly
- Fixed a bug where Exalt SHIVs would sometimes try to trigger a non-existant reveal cinematic causing them to warp to outer space and CTD
- Fixed a bug where you could move at the beginning of exalt missions that needed to reload, throwing off the camera
- Typos
Version 1.38.07
LW Rebalance v1.38.07
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where ironman games could crash on exalt missions
- Fixed a bug where SHIVs would appear on multiple missions they were not supposed to
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would sometimes cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where Incursion Strength wasn't being adjusted properly
Version 1.38.06
LW Rebalance v1.38.06
Strategic:
- Covert Operative Extracions start with 1 less exalt, Data Recoveries start with 2 less exalt - easier data recoveries, and covert operative extractions, especially early game
- Fighters have 600hp (from 800hp) and Destroyers have 1500/2000hp (from 2000/3000hp) - Makes them significantly easier to down and take less damage doing so
- Incursion strength is now capped at 80 to 120 (from 80 to 130) - Prevents IS from being too punishing when it's high
- Incursion strength is now lowered for each soldier killed by 1 for every soldier, 2 for every soldier that is ranked SGT or higher, and 4 for every soldier that is ranked higher than the number of months passed (from only caring about high ranked soldiers) - Improves accuracy a little
- Incursion strength now increases by 1 whenever a UFO is destroyed in the air and decreases by 2 whenever an interceptor is killed - Improves accuracy a little
- Incursion strength now has an x% chance to regress back to 100% each day where x is how far away from 100 it is (e.g. at IS of 85 there is a 15% chance each day to gain 1 IS, and at IS of 120 there is a 20% chance each day to lose 1 IS) - Helps keep IS around 100%
- Council missions now occur every 15-30 days instead of guaranteed once per month and are not affected by campaign length changes - makes timing of councils less predictable and makes different campaign lengths scale more appropriately
- Reduce frequnecy of large UFOs by replacing them with medium UFOs for Research and Harvest missions during alien levels 1 to 7 - Makes landings a lot more consistent and reasonable
- Ghost in the Machine no longer grants additional SHIVs - helps stop it from being so strong early game
Tactical:
- Exalt now gain access to SHIVs which will appear on Exalt missions - QoL
- Leader names are now announced when revealed - QoL
- Smoke now prevents reaction fire for the full movement or action as long as you start your movement or action in smoke (instead of requiring running 2+ tiles through smoke and triggering a reaction shot in smoke) - QoL
- Smoke will still prevent reaction fire if the movement did NOT start in smoke but the reaction shot that could hit the unit tried to hit the unit when in smoke - QoL
- You can now retreat from all missions after securing the VIP or defusing the bomb and get a victory - QoL as there were some missions that still required you to finish off the aliens
- Any available medikits will be used to stabilize bleeding out soldiers at the end of a mission - QoL, helps with the next point
- Bleeding out units will now die unless they are stabilized and on the sky ranger at the end of a mission. - Makes more intuitive sense, prevents a bug where bleeding out soldiers would sometimes survive
- Having a bleeding out soldier die will no longer panic the squad - Didn't really make sense
Perks:
- Tricks of the Trade grants +10% xp (from +20%) - Toned back for balance and encouragement to strengthen lower ranks
- Commanding Officer (first perk all officers get) now reduces injury time by 50% and grants +20% DR when protected by cover - Makes officer's significantly more resilient, and the possibility of an officer tank much more reasonable
- Bombard grants a 35% throw range (from 30%) - Buff to rocketeer support
- Sapper increases enviromental damage by 3x (from 2x) and the chance to disorient to 3x (from 2x) - Overall buff to the perk
- Iron Skin grants +20 crit resistance - Buff to gene modded tanks
- Dual Heart grants 15% throw range and scatter reduction - Buff to support, grenadier, and rocket gene mods
- Hit and Run grants +25 aim and +1 damage (from +20 aim and +1 damage) - Slight buff
- Fragmentation no longer grants +1 pen but instead has a 50% chance for double damage (from 35%) - Buffed and simplified
- Grit grants +2 armor HP but DR toned back to 10 + half of HP lost (from 15 + half of HP lost) - Buff on gunner tank
- Cover Tenacity grants +3 base HP (from +2 DR) - the flat DR was too strong early game
XCOM:
- Medics lose 5 base will - Balance between the classes
- Scouts gain 5 base will - Makes them more capable of becoming psionics, really helpful for hit and run builds
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc base HP to 20 (from 26) and all cyberdisc leaders lose 5 HP - Tone back in their strength, especially when you first see them
- Mecthoid base HP to 40 (from 36) - Buffed, increases alien resiliency, especially at AL 5
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where battle scanners were giving 3 instead of 2 scanners
- Fixed a bug where suppression was only reducing aim by 50 (from 30)
- Fixed a bug where some permanflying units would sometimes not be flying
- Fixed a bug where maimed aliens may still display their OW status
- Fixed a bug where shred wasn't applying the damage resisted, only the damage taken after damage resistance
- Fixed a bug where salvaging from UFOs had different rates if the campaign length was changed
- Fixed a bug where going on overwatch would sometimes trigger more than 1 reaction shot
- Typos
Version 1.38.05
LW Rebalance v1.38.05
Strategic:
- Bringing fatigued soldiers on missions only increases their previous fatigue by 20% (from 100%) - Makes it a lot more reasonable to use fatigued soldiers, but still not ideal
Tactical:
- Overwatch will only ever trigger 1 reaction shot (from sometimes triggering multiple against XCOM) - Parity between aliens and xcom
Perks:
- Ready For Anything no longer grants an aim bonus - Tone back on aim stacking on reaction fire, decreased strength of gunner and medic overwatch
Aliens:
- Floater HP to 10 (from 12) - A little too resilient at 12
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where opportunist and suppression were ignoring cover DR
Version 1.38.04
LW Rebalance v1.38.04
Tactical:
- Shred % additional damage taken now is 20 + 1x shred damage dealt (from 20 + 2x shred damage dealt) - Accommodates for the previous bug fix that made shredder stack significant more damage
- Uber Ethereal no longer loses mobility or AP when mind controlling units - Makes the final boss stronger and not able to be gimped by feeding him a pawn
Equipment:
- Breaching ammo alloy cost to 115 (from 40) but completely bypasses hardened DR (from bypassing half of hardened DR) - Buff to breaching ammo to give it more of an expensive premium item role
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where red fog was acting like it was always at max on all full HP units
- Fixed a bug where flat DR was being modified on XCOM units on lower difficulties (supposed to just be aliens)
Version 1.38.03
LW Rebalance v1.38.03
Strategic:
- Aliens will only have a 50% chance to target the highest panic country (from 85%) - Prevents hammering countries in danger as much, helps XCOM recover
Tactical:
- The uber ethereal no longer has 100% DR while allies are alive, but instead has an ability that extends the damage sharing effect of distortion to 30 tiles - Feels more reasonable and happens to be less buggy
- Reaction fire now bypasses 50% of cover def and 50% of cover DR (from 100% cover def only) - Makes it a lot less guaranteed to hit, but a lot less suceptible to DR
- Berserk will now no longer target mind controlled units - Took some finagling with the code but should work well, helps make the comeback mechanic not inadvertently more punishing
Perks:
- Psi Mastery no longer gives immunity to reaction fire on the first use - Makes OW much stronger against psionic units, especially with the potential to stagger them
- Opportunist grants +10 aim and allows crits on reaction shots (instead of bypassing cover DR and allowing crits) - Means that cover is still effective against units with opportunist and allows opportunist OW classes to work better vs units that don't take cover
- Ready for Anything grants +10 aim on reaction fire (from +15) and no longer will trigger if in danger of triggering reaction fire - Prevents OW spam back and forth on turns, and tones back the strength
Equipment;
- Battle Scanners again reveal Seekers - Native code was bugging out causing this to happen anyway
- Battle scanners now last until the end of the current turn (from 2 full turns) - Reduces their effectiveness, especially against stealth units, accommodates for their ability to reveal seekers again
Aliens:
- Uber Ethereal regeneration to 10/5/5/5 (from 6/3/3/3) - Helps it stay alive and discourages trying to strike it down while there are other biological units in the area
- Floater leaders lose snapshot, Heavy floater leaders lose snapshot and shadowstep - They didn't really need it with their high defense and it will help OW classes in strength throughout the campaign
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where concussion grenades could cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where snapshot was not triggering as much as it should be after a free action was already used (e.g. battle scanner, LeU, bullseye, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where bombing UFOs could still cluster bomb too much
- Optimized some code to avoid some code that was so dense it would sometimes cause a CTD
- Typos
Version 1.38.02
LW Rebalance v1.38.02
Tactical:
- The blitzkrieg timer displays every 5s (from every 10s) - Helps players keep an eye on how much time they have left
- The temple ship will now spawn many more random aliens with only 1 of each alien type in each encounter being set - Makes the temple ship a lot less predictable
- Number of soldiers allowed for the temple ship increased to 12 at all difficulties - Makes it much more reasonable to fight through and helps accommodate for any bad RNG you might have, also, it's fun to get to use everyone :)
- The reaction fire Danger indicator is now a orange/red targeting icon and the AP pips of units in danger of reaction fire are once again orange - QoL
- Decreased the number of exalt on late game data recovery missions - They were a little too challenging still
- The AI will use Psychic storm 50% less often - Helps reduce the spam
Aliens:
- Muton Elite lvl 9 lose Brawler - Helps tone down the difficulty by allowing them to be more flankable and killed by close range abilities
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some errors with the tech tree image (thanks snackhound)
- Fixed a bug where scout and medics were not receiving their mobility on class selection
- Fixed a bug where steadied units were taking more damage (specifically penetration) from reaction fire than intended
- Fixed a bug where tile scanning was sometimes possible again
Version 1.38.01
LW Rebalance v1.38.01
Perks:
- Distortion prevents healing on the volunteeer (from 50% reduction) - It's really strong, and with healing is a little too good (thanks Obsidian for testing and finding balance)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where seekers still had CST (thanks Eliwoodno)
- Fixed a bug where Shred was using travel damage, not damage dealt for application (thanks Eliwoodno and Snackhound)
- Fixed a bug where the code for fixing the perma concealment bug would activate in situations that the unit should still be concealed (thanks nalew for save file and pointing it out)
- Typos
Version 1.38.00
LW Rebalance v1.38.00
Strategic:
- A lot more UFO missions with destroyers will be replaced with fighters and a lot more UFO missions with battleships will be replaced with destroyers - Makes the air game much more engagable
- Bombing runs will now occur much more randomly around the world instead of directed at a specific country repeatedly - Makes them feel a lot less punishing
- Thermal Generator cost to 200 (from 350) - Makes it more appealing to build, slight buff to ring of fire start and cheyene mountain start
- Removed the code that prevented hunts from targeting your home continent in the first 6 months - It just wouldn't work, despite it looking perfect, szmind and I both can't figure it out, but with the new bombing runs spread out it shouldn't be as much of a problem, especially since they will include more fighters that can be shot down
- Countries now roll a leave chance at the end of each day but the leave chance is 1% per panic above 80 (from 5% per panic above 80 only at the end of the month) - It never made sense that countries would only leave at the end of the month, makes countries much more likely to leave while in the red
- Any country that reaches 100 panic by the end of a day will automatically leave - Prevents overkill in that country from the aliens and encourages players to manage panic earlier, helps accommodate for significantly less panic generation
- Alien Propulsion no longer reduces the speed at which interceptors arrive - Made it too easy to just skip repairs and dismiss low level pilots which didn't feel good
- Repair times for all aircraft reduced by ~33% - Helps keep your aircraft afloat, especially with more engaging hunts/bombing runs and the more important need to keep panic down
- SHIV Advancements I requires 160 weapon fragments (from 60) - It's quite strong and this makes it come on later so it's not so strong early game (accommodates for buffed repairs servos and recently buffed hardened)
Tactical:
- Exalt Data Extractions have 2 less exalt early game, and 1 less mid game - Some of the previous accommodatiosn were made with the bugged IS which led to exalt being overtuned when IS was correct for, this should make them more managable
- Rockets now display a numberical value of 2 standard deviations and are capped at a max deviation of 2 standard deviations - Prevents ridiculous rockets and knowing the max range is more important for players (note: the only functional change is a cap on scatter, despiting looking like there is more scatter as the number displayed should be higher than norma)
- Improved Ethereal AI - So it doesn't act so brain dead and either charge or flee
- Temple ship # of soldiers allowed increased to 10 on impossible (from 9) - So now it's 10/10/11/12 for impossible/brutal/classic/normal, makes the final mission a little easier on impossible and allows use of more of your soldiers you worked so hard to groom and prepare
- Basic reaction shots now bypass ALL of cover def (from half of cover def) - General buff to reactive fire abilities
- Units on the temple ship that 'spawn in' start with invulnerability that lasts until the end of their first action - Helps prevents them from just being alpha striked (note: overwatch does not work on them)
- Suppressive Fire deals 40% damage (from 35%) - slight boost to suppression damage
- Suppression reduces aim, mobility, and throw range by 50 (from 30) and increases scatter by 50% (from 30) - Significant buff to it's effectiveness as a debuff
- Disorient causes -30 defense, -30 will, -60 aim, -60% ability range, -60% mobility, -60% melee damage, +60% scatter (from 50 of all of them) - nerf to the offensive strength of the disorient (as it's supposed to be a disabler, not an enabler)
- Steady Aim is +50 aim and +2 pen (+35 aim and +1 pen for 1 AP) - Buff to the usefulness, works better against targets not in cover as well, buff to 1 AP steady
Perks:
- Transform (Cyberdisc open/close) when in the closed state grants 0 flat DR (from 5) but instead grants 50 def and immunity to crits - Makes the closed state of the cyberdisc less bypassable into the late game
- Overpower now also reduces the damage of melee attacks as well - Helps Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals resist the KSM more
- Predictive Tracking now grants Reaction Shots +10 aim (from bypassing all of cover def) - Accommodates for reaction fire now always bypassing all of cover def
- Repair Servos now heals up to 4 HP per turn (from 2 HP) - Significantly increases the rate at which you get the health back with Repair Servos, buffed
- Critical System Targeting grants +65% damage and +65 crit (from 50 and 50) - Significant buff to make the perk more competitive and lower the viability of mechanical tanking units
- Double tap grants -20 aim on the second shot if taken at 1 AP - Tone back on the strength of this perk as the ability to move or bullseye and fire twice is very strong
- Packmaster no longer affects flamethrower charges - Was too insignificant
- Mind Fray increases rocket scatter by 25% (from double), reduces aoe attack range by 25% (from 50%), and reduces mobility by 25% (from 40%) and only lasts 2 turns, but uses 100% of will for hit calculations (from 66%) - Makes it a reliable damage hit against aliens and not so lingering against xcom
- Cover Tactics grants 1 defense in cover per activated enmey (from 2) and grants officers 10 defense (from 20) - Was still too strong and made it difficult to effectively taunt with some lower defense cover-based units
- Seeker stealth has a maximum number of turns of 3 (from 5) - Prevents them from being stealthed for too long, always been annoying, QoL
- Killer Instinct only works with primary weapons - It felt odd to have the marskmans scope effect sidearms
Equipment:
- Thumper damage to +4 and penetration to +2 (from +8 and +4) - Tone back in strength, as it's quite strong, and so is the KSM, and a 25% damage increase is still strong
- Battle Scanners no longer reveal invisible units - Makes scouts feel a lot less mandatory
- Breaching ammo mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Slight boost
- Flak ammo mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Slight buff, consistency
- Autosentry Turret mobility to -0.6 (from -1.3) and grants Reactive Targeting Sensors (from Sentry) - Pushes the SHIVs into a more hybrid role, slight buff on Alloy SHIV, slight nerf on Hover SHIV
- Adaptive Tracking Pods grants 0 aim (from +5) - Toned back as Sharpshooter is quite strong
- Plasma Grenade damage to 12 (from 10) - Buffed so grenades are better end game
- Flamethrower damage to 6 (from 7) but ammo to 8 (from 2) - Significant buff for multiple uses and longer missions
- Incinerator module damage boost to 6 (from 7) and ammo to 4 (from 2) - Accommodates for flamethrower buff
- Chitin plating makes melee attacks graze (from reducing their damage by 50%) - Similar expect prevents abusive stacking
- Titan and Archangel armor HP to 14 (from 16) - Slight tone back in strength
- All LMECs gain 5 def - Helps them avoid being the lowest defense targets
XCOM:
- Sniper base aim to 30 (from 25) - Buffed
- Scout base stats to 15A, 15W, 1HP, 0.6M (from 10A, 10W, 1HP) - Significant overall buff to Scouts
- Medic base stats to 15A, 20W, 1HP, 0.6M (from 10A, 15W, 1HP) - Significant overall buff to Medics
- Jaeger Sprinter replaced with Jetboot Module - Buff to mobility perk at CPL
- Jaeger Jetboot Module replaced with Vital Point Targeting - Significant buff to damage potential of Jaegers vs biologic units
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commander leaders gain 5 HP per alien leader upgrade (from 2) - Makes the leaders stronger as there wasn't enough distinction between non-leaders
- All thinmen gain Tactical Mobility (from just level 6 alien leaders) - Increase in early game difficulty that only benefits them while they are in cover
- Thinmen level 6 leaders gain Advanced Perception (from level 9 leaders) - More durability on the lvl 6 leaders, no change on lvl 9 leaders
- Floater base HP to 12 (from 10) - Increases their resilience, makes early game harder
- Max level Muton Elites pick up brawler - Helps make them a little more resistent to getting killed at close range, forces more of an engagement
- Sectoid will reduced by 10 - Accommodates for mindfray hit chance buff (though mindfray won't last as long)
- Seekers no longer have CST and base HP to 8 (from 10) - With the lack of ability to detect them as well they didn't need the extra damage
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some popups would occur on aliens that were not visible inadvertently revealing their location
- Fixed a bug where some melee damage wasn't properly being estimated in the targeting preview panel
- Fixed a bug where aliens on the temple ship were being generated with a level reduction equal to normal on impossible, classic on brutal, brutal on classic, and no level reduction on normal.
- Fixed a panic popup on distortion sharing damage
- Typos
Version 1.37.03
LW Rebalance v1.37.03
Strategic:
- Condensed Plasma costs 180 elerium (from 50 elerium) and 0 alloys (from 120 alloys) - Shifts it much more towards an elerium sink rather the alloy
- Bombing Run panic increase reduced massively to 6 panic (from 12) - Helps reduce the alien's ability to just push a country to 100+ panic
Tactical:
- Ethereal and Sectoid Commander bounties halved - With them being mandatory on UFOs it led to an unintended influx of elerium
Perks:
- Psychic storm no longer requires full HP - The ability didn't really need the restriction as it really encourages engaging
Equipment:
- Weapon Supercooler costs 25 Elerium (from 5) - Was supposed to have a cost associated with it but kinda get left off, increase in late game elerium sink
Bug Fix:
- Fixed a bug where the strategic AI would sometimes attempt more bombing runs in a row than reasonable causing countries to be lost very quickly
- Fixed a bug where the Hover SHIV audio would sometimes not be turned down mid-mission
- Fixed a CTD when using multiaction abilities with enemies that also had multiaction abilities
- Fixed a CTD when mind controlled units attempted to use area of effect abilities
- Fixed a bug where armor HPs were not being calculated correctly on a large portion of aliens
- Fixed a bug where unfettered UFOs that were undamaged would sometimes not raise panic
- Fixed a bug where Exalt Sabotage operations were not being scaled for campaign length (they were actually reversed scaled (!)) - Note this doesn't affect the first one
- Typos
Version 1.37.02
LW Rebalance v1.37.02
Strategic:
- Losing a soldier of Rank SGT or higher than # of months passed lowers IS by 4 (from 8) - Helps prevent encouraging abusive situations
- Losing a country lowers Incrusion Strength by 12 (from 10) - Slight tone back to not plummet it into the late game as easily
Bug Fix:
- Fixed a CTD when using certain Area of Effect abilities
- Fixed a bug where using a battle scanner on units with Hit and Run would cause a CTD
- Typos
Version 1.37.01
LW Rebalance v1.37.01
Tactical:
- Blitzkrieg mode now grants 10s per all activated units (from just XCOM activate units) - Makes difficult situations not such a rush
- Blitzkrieg now gives additional time if new units are activated - Makes activating a pod with 10s left not a death sentence =P
- Chance for Enrage/Berserk to trigger reduced to 3/1% (from 5/2%) and will only trigger if the aliens could see XCOM at the beginning of their last turn - While a great comeback mechanic, having it be reliable is not good for gameplay, this makes it a lot less reliable and a lot less gamey when you are trying to rely on it
Perks:
- Bring 'Em On grants +1 damage and an additional +1 damage for every 2 enemies in sight (from +1 damage for each enemy after the first) - The previous iteration was highly subject to being abusively strong
Bug Fixes:
- Blitzkrieg now should stop counting down anytime the camera is locked - Prevents the camera counting down when vahlen or bradford pause the game
- Fixed a bug where Battle Scanner would say it won't affect any units
- Fixed a bug where alien grenade environmental damage wasn't correctly reduced
- Fixed a bug where reaper rounds still have a mobility malus when they shouldn't
- Fixed a bug where Muton Berserkers accidentally got increased to 30 HP (instead of at 22 HP where they should be)
- Fixed a bug where exalt scan costs and rewards were not scaling with campaign length
- Fixed a bug where you could keep moving the camera around to artificially inflate the time you have during blitz games
- Alien armor HP now accommodates for perks that specifically give armor HP (e.g. tenacious defense)
- Typos
Version 1.37.00
LW Rebalance v1.37.00
Note: This version will require a new campaign or using the game console to change your second wave settings to match campaign lengths
Strategic:
- New default campaign length is half of normal - As most players found the game took too long
- New 2nd Wave Campaign Length settings: Not So Long War is now half of the new default (half of previous), Very Long War is now double the new default (same as LW 1.0), and a new setting "Epic Long War" is 4x the new default (double of LW 1.0) - QoL
- Chance a rookie rolls your least common supra class reduced from ~50% to ~33% - Will likely force more accommodation during campaigns, can be edited in the dgc.ini (LATE_UFO_CHANCE)
- Incursion strength now affects the number of aliens at the beginning of each covert op mission (instead of the strength of the individual aliens on the mission) - Consistency with how it affects the rest of the game
- Bombing runs increase panic by 6 (from 9) - Decreases the effectiveness of aliens when they try to over-panic a country
- Panic generation from losing a satellite toned back to 7 in the country and 3 in the continent (from 10 and 5) - Significant reduction of penalty for losing a satellite
- Combat Patrols are now twice as effective at reducing alien resources and continent panic - Makes them a more useful tool
- Daredevils country start bonus now increases the effectiveness of combat patrols by double (from triple) - Actually a buff as combat patrols are twice as effective
- Temple Ship Assault crew now gains stats bonuses only (but up to 16 countries now) and squadsize is always set to 9/10/11/12 based on difficulty (instead of granting an extra soldier at 5 countries) - Buff to ease of temple ship and the importance of number of countries
- Crashed UFOs now have all of their units roll for injury (from 50%) - makes crashed UFOs a lot easier
- Alien Grenade Foundry project no longer grants +1 damage to rockets - Tone back on rocket strength
Tactical:
- Combat Readiness now grants a 10% chance for incoming attacks to graze - Makes it slightly more useful
- Muton Elite, Heavy Floater, and Cyberdisc grenade damage reduced to 4 (from 7) and range reduced to 8 (from 10) - Makes not using a grenade not such a poor AI decision anymore, while still keeping them impactful at closer range
- Concussive blast is now half as likely to disorient - Tone back in strength of explosives
- Drop-ins on early council missions toned down - Helps accommodate for stronger thinmen
- Base Flat DR of aliens is now reduced based on difficulty: Normal 50%, Classic 75%, Brutal/Impossible 100% - Makes the easier difficulties not require working around flat DR as much
- Beserkers will only intimidate 35% of the time they take damage - It was a little extreme seeing this guy yell at everyone and them panic - didn't feel great and felt a little off due to the frequency
- Overall rocket scatter increased by 10% - Slight tone back on rocket strength
- Strangle (from seekers) doesn't shred anymore - it was pretty overkill
Perks:
- Hit and Run grants +1 damage and +20 aim when it hits targets that are damaged/suppressed/disoriented - Buff to the perk: after testing the conditional use makes it pretty challenging to use and I feel like it was a little overnerfed
- Brawler makes all attacks within 4 tiles graze (from just 65%) - Buff to the strength of the perk, helps units get close with a little less danger and more predictability
- Onslaught reduces mobility by 50% (from 100%) - Buff to the mobility of the Marauder after using the KSM
- Hardened now grants 35% DR (from 30%) - Overall increase in resiliency to both XCOM and Alien mechanical and melee units
- Will to Survive grants 40% DR (from 35%) - Buff to biotanks
- Activated Outsiders will grow twice as fast - It is fairly easy to keep growth disabled and they often don't grow much at all while engaging them
- Adapative Bone Marrow reduces wound times by 70% (from 40%) - Significant buff to injury reduction, overall slight buff to gene modded units
- Muscle Fiber Density increases mobility by 0.6 - Nice buff, overall slight buff to gene modded units
- Killer Instinct increases crit damage to 175% (from 200%) - Toned back for balance
- Mechanic and Master mechanic grants +1 pen (from +2 pen) - Toned back, makes engineers not quite as capable and early drones a little less threatening
- Advanced Perception grants a 40% chance to graze (from 20%) - Buff to gene mod tanks, some alien leaders
- Absorption Fields to 25% DR (from 20%) - Was a little too insignificant at 20%
- Distortion damage reduction to 35% (from 30%), no longer grants additional defence and DR to those around the distorted unit, but instead shares any damage taken with all biologic allies within 8 tiles - This helps make it less obvious to just do everything possible to kill the unit with distortion and perhaps try to kill those around it first
- Dual Heart increases throw range by 10% but also decreases rocket scatter by 10% - Tone back on supports and makes it slightly more useful for rocketeers
- Shock and Awe no longer doubles the chance for concussive blast but Sapper does - Pushes the ability from rocketeers to Engineer grenadiers while leaving it on Shoguns
- Shock and Awe increases the range of MiNEs and the Grenade Launcher by 10% - Buff to accommodate the nerf
- Collateral damage only uses 1 AP but no longer grants a free reload - Gives the Shogun more flexibility after use
- Awareness grants 30 defense (from 20) - buffed
- Acidic (Chryssalid Perk) now corrodes enemy units that are within 1.5 tiles of this unit after each move - Gives lids more capability to affect XCOM even if they can't get a hit off
- Camaraderie grants triple chance of Commanding Officer trigger - Needed a buff to be competitive
- Bring 'Em On grants +1 for each enemy in vision after the first (from +1 damage per 2 enemies in sight) - Large buff to make it competitive
Equipment:
- Concussion grenade/Psi Grenade radius reduced to 2/3 (from 3/5) - Tone back in strength of supports
- Shotguns no longer increase the DR of hardened units - Was complex to remember/figure out (especially for newer players) and made this odd hole where units with shotguns were quite ineffective against units unless they had breaching
- Breaching Ammo bypasses half the DR targets gain from the hardened perk (from 100%) - Makes it so it doesn't melt mechanical units as quickly
- Laser and Pulse weapons no longer grant 175% crit damage but instead grant +10 crit (note: this also changes some crit values on pulse weaponry further) - Tone back on overall damage output for XCOM
- Reaper Rounds damage to +1 (from +2) - Tone back in strength as they are quite strong
- Psi Defender grants 40% DR when in cover (from 20%) - Significant buff to psi tanks
XCOM:
- Jaeger base stat growth to +10A, +0.6M (from +20A) - Focuses a little more on the close range build
- Marauder base stat growth to +10A, +1.3M (from +10A, +0.6M) - Helps the marauder close distances a little easier
- Shogun base stat growth to +10A, +2HP (from +20A, +2HP) - Pushes the non-shooty Shogun builds
- Base Crit Resistance on Alloy/Hover SHIV lowered to 30/20 (from 50/30) - Was a little too good at avoiding crits
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater base HP to 20 (from 16), but mobility reduced to 8 (from 9.3) and aim reduced to 65 (from 70) - Along with their grenade nerf, makes them a little less able to close in and kill (especially with their ability to fly), overall making them less threatening but more resilient
- Muton Elite base HP to 28 (from 24) and base DR to 4 (from 3) but aim to 70 (from 80) - Along with their grenade nerf, increase in their durability but decrease in their offensive power
- Mechtoid HP to 36 (from 30) but aim to 65 (from 70) - Swap some of their offensive power for durability
- Mechtoid lvl 9 leaders gain 10 HP (from 5 HP) - Felt too small for a lvl 9 upgrade
- Drone base HP to 4 (from 3) - Increase to early game difficulty
- Sectoid base HP to 5 (from 4) - Increase in early game difficulty
- Muton base HP to 20 (from 16) - Increase in resiliency and early game difficulty
- Thinmen base HP to 8 (from 7) and gain 5 HP per AL upgrade (from 4) - Increase in early game difficulty and resiliency throughout the game
- Floater base HP to 10 (from 8) - Increase in early game difficulty
- Cyberdisc base HP to 26 (from 22) - Increase in their resiliency
- All Muton Berserkers gain Grit (from just lvl 9 leaders) but their armor is only 30% of their total HP (from 50%) - Makes them harder to finish off but still easy to hit and reduce their damage through red fog
- Level 6 Berserker leaders gain 10 will (from 20) - Makes them a little more suceptible to psionics
- Seeker base HP to 10 (from 16), but all gain holo rounds and critical system targeting - Makes it much harder to nullify them with a tanky mechanical unit
- Sectoid Commanders lose Awareness (except for lvl 9 sectoid commander leaders), regain Distortion, and base HP to 8 (from 18) - Makes them a lot more resilient as they were simply too fragile otherwise
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where equipping a jav rocket on a Shock and Awe Rocketeer would still grant 2 jav rockets
- Fixed a bug where damaged items were not being adjusted for campaign length
- Fixed a bug where the estimated enemy units on using aoe abilities would find invisible and/or out of LoS units
- Fixed a bug where collateral damage would estimate it was targeting no units when it was targeting units
- Fixed a bug where sometimes a satellite shotdown event would half occur but still leave the satelitte intact
- Again, hopefully fixed a bug where dropins could be tile scanned - Though I guess it's not really that important if fixed as the player should know where they are
- Fixed a bug where a unit might become unable to be concealed
- Fixed a bug where tint colors of armor for specific builds on certain classes would sometimes not stick
- Fixed a bug where Incursion Strength was inadvertently lowering the level of mid-late game exalt missions too much
- Fixed a bug where enraged units could still panic
- Fixed a bug where concealed units could sometimes be overwatched against (despite being apparently invisible)
- Fixed a bug where seekers that were strangling units would not estimate at 3x damage in damage previews
Version 1.36.22
LW Rebalance v1.36.22
Tactical:
- Updated some visual information when using area of effect abilities - QoL
- Reduced Hover SHIV volume to 0 - QoL, it was just annoying
- Firing a rocket at 1 AP triples scatter (from double) - Tones back the strength of rocketeers to move and fire, this is necessary as just overall scatter is much lower than it has been in past versions
- If the aliens fire multiple cluster bombs from multiple sectopods each will now have an indicator of approximately where they will be targeted - QoL
Perks:
- Distortion reduces damage dealt to 30% (from 35%) - slight buff to survibility on volunteer and ethereals
- Shock and Awe no longer grants extra equipped rockets an additional use - Slight tone back on strength of rocketeer
Aliens:
- Seeker base HP to 16 (from 12) - increase in survivability, helps make them more effective even when revealed, especially since they lost their 50 crit resistance
- Mechtoid base HP to 30 (from 24) - Increase in survivability, helps offset recent nerfs to mecs in general
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a rare XCOM EU / LW 1.0 bug where XCOM units could sometimes become permanently concealed
- Fixed a bug where a verbal reinforcements warning from your soldier would sometiems occur on exalt missions when no reinforcements were coming
- Fixed a bug where damage previews were not accurate cause I messed them up trying to fix something else =P
- Typos
Version 1.36.21
LW Rebalance v1.36.21
Strategic:
- Gangangplank and Furies Alloys and Elerium rewards reduced significantly - Makes them more reasonable on shorter campaign lengths (e.g. NSLW and MLW)
- UFO Hunt frequnecy now varries by the SQRT of the campaign length as follows for MLW/NSLW/LW/VLW: 0.5/0.7/1/1.4 (from 0.25/0.5/1/2) - Hunts have a defense mechanic that the first doesn't hit and are somewhere between not needing to be adjusted and needing to be adjusted. This is a more appropriate place.
Tactical:
- A steadied weapon at 1 AP (bullseye) grants 35 aim (from 50) - Tone back on strength of bullseye
Perks:
- Hunter no longer grants +20 aim and +2 pen - was too strong, I think this is a nice simple and clean place for Hunter
- Close encounters grants immunity to critical hits within 4 tiles (from 10 crit resistance for each tile closer than 10) - Simplification of the perk as a 'within 4 tiles perk' and helps with predictability
- Hit and Run now also triggers against suppressed and disoriented units - I caved, buff to the ability to use Hit and Run
Equipment:
- Autosentry turrent mobility to -1.3 (from -0.6) - Should have been in last patch to accommodate for buffed Sentry
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV gains 18 base HP and 18 armor HP (from 16 and 16) - Buff to it's ability to tank
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where marksman scope was granting incorrect aim and crit values
- Fixed a bug where the overwatch indicator was saying CCS is on overwatch even when out of ammo
- Fixed a CTD when equipping laser/pulse weapons with certain equipment and trying to enter a mission
- Typos
Version 1.36.20
LW Rebalance v1.36.20
Strategic:
- Exalt clues are acquired approximately 15% slower - Makes figuring out where the exalt base is take a little longer
- OTS: XTP III grants 40xp per day and automatically promotes units to SGT (from CPL) - Significant buff to end game experience gains
- OTS: Col/XTPIII/FCMDR ranks required to 100/130/160 (from 90/110/130) - Means you don't get them online before they are needed and accommodates for XTP III buff
- SHIV Advancements II requires 35 alloys (from 95) - Makes it more reasonable to bring online
Tactical:
- Pressure Play renamed to Blitzkrieg - So the acroynm PP doesn't become a meme
- The Blitzkrieg timer now pauses during animations - Feels more fair
- When Blitzkrieg ends the turn your units with actions remaining will enter combat readiness - Feels better and is reasonable
- Chance of armor injury is now percent of total HP lost (from percent of remaining HP lost) - Consistency and makes it a little less likely to occur
- Updated some tactical information when shooting - QoL
Equipment:
- Smartshell Pod aim bonus to +10 (from +15) - Slight tone back on SHIV aim, balance amoung SHIV items
- Adaptive Tracking Pod aim bonus to +5 (from +10) - Slight tone back on SHIV aim, balance amoung SHIV items
- Targeting Motor aim bonus to +5 (from +10) - Slight tone back on SHIV aim, balance amoung SHIV items
- AutoSentry Turret again costs 0.6 mobility - Accommodation for buff - makes the item more competitive on shooting SHIVs to help diversify their capabilities, balance amoung SHIV items
- Battle Rifle crit to 0 (from 20) - Nerf to Battle Rifles to keep the Assault Rifle as the primary weapon and battle rifles are more of a niche weapon
- Shotgun ammo to 3 (from 4) - Shotguns were actually a little OP, this also opens up more room for other primary weapons
- Javelin rocket scatter reduction to 70% (from 80%) - Was still a little too strong compared to standard rocket
- Marksman Scope grants +15 crit (from +5 crit) and Killer Instinct (instead of Executioner) - With the new bullseye build additional aim isn't as important, this also encourages critting with crit items/builds and flank shots to help diversify the scout as a mobile squadsight unit
Perks:
- Hunter grants +20 aim and +2 pen (from +30 aim and +3 pen) - Accommodation for gaining combined arms
- Snapshot no longer requires a non-steadied shot and grants a 20% chance for a 0 AP action, but no longer grants additional chance for a 0AP action to strike rifles - Makes it work with the bullseye scout, slight buff in general
- Run and Gun no longer grants immunity to reaction fire - It's reaction fire clear capabilities and low profile are quite strong that it received in the last buff and make it a little too easy to use, but the defenseive capabilities are good for it's roll, so removing the reaction immunity should be adequate for balance
- Distortion now also grants +30% DR to adjacent units within 8 tiles who are in cover - Buff to XCOM on the temple ship, makes ethereals better at protecting those around them in cover
- Sentry now also grants +2 ammo - Buff to the ease of use of the perk, it needed quite a buff due to difficulty in use
- Close Combat Specialist no longer has an aim malus - Buff to it's use due to ammo restrictions
XCOM:
- Bullseye and Snapshot swapped on the Scout - Provides a less RNG based main build for the shooter strike rifle scout, removes bullseye from turning the support scout into a shooter imbalancing the scout builds
- Alloy SHIVs have innate 50 crit resist - Helps prevent crits against them and offset the strength of CST against them
- Hover SHIVs have innate 30 crit resist - Similar to above
- Cost for Alloy/Hover SHIVs reduced to 80/60 alloys (from 120/90) - Makes them feel like less of a trap to invest into
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the Blitzkrieg timer was ticking 33% faster than intended, it now accommodates based on whatever game speed is set in the dgc.ini (default 1.33)
- Fixed a bug where ITZ would automatically reload at the end of each chain
- Fixed a bug where multiple abilities could still be triggered after using command
- Fixed a bug where some abilties would still show up as purple on the action bar despite not giving an AP discount
- Fixed a bug where abilities that set AP to 1 would appear purple when the unit was at 2 AP (they should be green to represent 1 AP use)
- Fixed a bug where enemy units with CCS would trigger a reaction fire indicator against XCOM units within 4 tiles, even when panicked
- Fixed a bug in the damage preview system that wasn't accounting for target modifiers when using abilities that could not critically hit
- Fixed a bug where the stun rifle would trigger damage reduction abilities
- Fixed a bug where retired soldiers were not granting xp when an XTP programme was active
- Fixed a bug where steadying a weapon would sometimes not bypass cover DR
- Fixed a bug where units that were concealed/stealthed could still be overwatched
- Fixed a bug where corrosion was removing inaccurate amounts of armor
- Typos
Version 1.36.19
LW Rebalance v1.36.19
New Game Mode - Pressure Play:
- Defective Outsiders (#26) second wave option replaced with Pressure Play (#26): You will have 10s per unit to complete each turn (this value is dgc.ini adjustable). Pressing Esc will set the timer to 1s. Changing game speed is disabled. - An interesting new way to play LWR
- New dgc.ini variable: REFLECT_DMG = 10; (LWR Default = 10) amount of time per unit on a squad for each turn with the second wave option Pressure Play (#26) enabled (minimum 1s, maximum 60s)
Strategic:
- Air Force names updated to some more accurate names - Thanks zdrif
Tactical:
- All free action abilities with restrictions (Close Encounters, Double Tap, ITZ, etc.) will now have those restrictions removed after a free action (or the final free action) is taken - Significant buff to abilities that provide free actions and the ability to command and feels a lot better during gameplay
- Damage previews now accommodate for the second wave options: Predictable Damage (#6) and Damage Roulette (#0)
- Your soldiers will now sometimes warn you before reinforcements arrive on exalt covert op extraction missions - QoL
Perks:
- Hunter now grants Combined Arms - Buff to Jaegers, helps fix the rapid fire bug
- Close Encounters, Hit and Run, and Onslaught will now set the unit to 1 AP after they trigger (instead of costing 0 AP) - Just prevents double use of the perk due to the new lifting of full turn restrictions on free actions
Aliens:
- Mutons and Muton Elites gain Penetrator - While it was removed on all aliens due to making flat DR more important, these two aliens need it to make their suppressive fire damage significant. Also their offensive potential was a little weak and this helps.
- Seekers base HP to 12 (from 9) and base damage to 4 (from 3) - Buff to earlier game seekers, as they need to be a little more threatening, even when revealed, this was partly due to their reduced mobility
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where MECs could not reload when they had less than full ammo but more than 1
- Fixed a bug where in the zone chains would sometimes ignore cover-based DR after the first shot
- Fixed a bug about panic in terror missions not being generated appropriately when the mission was in a location that had already left the council
- Fixed a bug where Overpower was being reduced from it's appropriate value
- Fixed a bug/feature where base defense aliens would have proportionatly more alien leaders than intended
- Typos
Version 1.36.18
LW Rebalance v1.36.18
Strategic:
- Exalt Data Recovery Missions will now start with 4 more exalt - Makes them more challenging, especially early game where they only started with 4
Augmentation:
- Previous:
- For each rank above LCPL before augmentation, the MEC will receive a 50% chance to gain 0-0.6 mobility, 0-2 health, 0-4 aim, and 0-8 will.
- For each base HP above 8 (most starting country bonus attributes not considered) the MEC will gain x positive attribute points. The MEC will then gain 0-0.6x mobility, 0-2x health, 0-4x aim, and 0-8x will. Any bonus stats gained are then reduced by 1 (0.6 for mobility).
- New:
- For each rank above LCPL and base HP above 8 (most starting country bonus attributes not considered) the MEC will gain bonus attributes as follows: 0.2x-0.4x mobility, 0.6x-1.3x health, 1.3x-2.6x aim, and 2.6x-5.3x will. All bonus attributes gained are truncated to an integer except for mobility which is truncated to a multiple of 0.6.
Tactical:
- Included information on how many times a target has been damaged that turn in the F1 popup - Helpful for damage control and hit and run calculations
- Corrossion now strips 1 + 10% of armor HP (from 20% of armor HP) and removes all flat DR - Overall increase in effectiveness of corrosion, will now strip down to base HP on lower armor HP targets, makes it more effective against enemy mechanical units
- Suppressive Fire damage is now 35% of shot damage (from 30%) - Boost to the damage potential of suppression
- Enrage and Berserk count each critically wounded XCOM for only half the value of a dead XCOM - Creates a difference between entire squad critically wounded and entire squad dead
Perks:
- Psi Inspire reduces overpower effects by 50% (from 100%) - Nerf to make psi feel a little less mandatory against overpower enemies
- Mind Merge reduces effects of overpower by 50% (from 100%) - Overall tone back of overpower counters
- Absorption Fields grants 20% DR (from 30%) - Tone back on non-cover tanking and Mechanized Alien Leader resilience
- Psychokinetic Strike radius to 3 (from 4) and cooldown to 3 (from 2) - Was a little too effective at clearing out full screens of cover, it's still quite reasonable and quite powerful with a 3 tile radius without being so absurd sometimes. A lot of this is because the previous bugged version that was balanced for did not destroy cover so effectively and the new non-bugged version is quite a lot stronger.
- Overpower toned back to 15% + will_diff/10 (from 20% + will_diff/10) - Makes it a little less oppressive
- Steadfast grants it's +30 will defense against overpower as well - Increases it's potential in the late game to make it more competitive (e.g. alien trophy)
- Psychic Storm can no longer be resisted - it was too innoccuous
- Body Shield grants a 35% chance for graze (from 50%) - Was more effective than 25% DR, making them, in some ways, better at tanking than HMECs, needed to be toned back
- Cover Tactics and Cover Tenacity cap at 10 activated enemies (from unlimited) - Prevents situations where you are gaining too much
Equipment:
- Rocket Radius reduced to 4 tiles (from 5) - It was quite large, and sometimes even unweildly, but this is more to tone back the strength of rocketeers slightly due to their increased strength in the recent patches for clearing psi abilities and lowering units from max health and clearing overwatch
- Javelin Rocket scatter reduction reduced to 80% (from 90%) - Accommodation for above and it was a little too low
- Combat Stims mobility to 0 (from -0.6) and reduces effects of overpower by 50% (from 100%) - Buffed, and overall tone back of overpower counters
- SAWs and LMGs weigh 0.6 less - Buff to mobility of gunners
- Arc Rifle damage vs mechs to 6 (from 4) and is upgraded to 8 (from 6) - Makes it generally more useful
- Arc Pistol damage vs mechs to 4 (from 3) and is upgraded to 5 (from 4) - Makes it generally more useful
Aliens:
- Sectoid base will to 65 (from 55) - Makes them a little more dangerous early game
- Sectoid Commander base will to 100 (from 80) - Makes it harder to resist their abilities mid game
- Muton Elite lvl 9 leaders lose advanced perception - Makes the final room of the temple ship a little less RNG and a little easier on high difficulties
Bug Fixes:
- Nickname generation now accommodates for campaign length
- Alien heads in the bottom right didn't update after an action unless you changed units
- Tracking the number of times a unit was damaged in a turn was not being cleared correctly all the time
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug (crazy that this one is still there with how LW has been released and playtested) where Rapid Fire would not work with less than full ammo on certain MEC weapons - Thanks to szmind for helping diagnose and guide me towards the fix for this one
- Fixed a bug where thinmen would spawn on some exalt missions
- Fixed a bug where upgrade arc pistols were doing 10+ damage
- Fixed a bug where you could tile scan for drop-ins
- Typos
Version 1.36.17
LW Rebalance v1.36.17
Aliens:
- Shock-Absorbant Armor replaced with Kinetic Dampening on leader Chryssalids and Berserkers - SAA on aliens discourages what is more ideal, close gameplay. Kinetic Dampening on the other hand encourages it. SAA was originally placed on them to buff them and because it felt like the type of upgrade they would have, but enemies having weaknesses is OK, especially if that weakness encourages more engaging gameplay.
Perks:
- Hunter now grants 3 penetration (from 25% of weapon damage in penetration) and also grants +30 aim against targets at full HP - Large buff and simplification, helps the Hunter perform it's role more cleanly
- Squadsight now only reduces aim by 2 per tile (from 4 per tile) and sniper rifles reduce this to 1 per tile (from 2 per tile) - With the restrictions already on squadsight the aim maluses being so extreme were not necessary
- Disabling Shot has a 30 aim malus (from 20) - Seems to be the sweet spot between 20 (too consistent) and 40 (to penalizing)
- Natural Leadership grants 15 will (from 30) - While officer's aren't psionic and don't benefit from will as much, it's still quite useful for psi resistance and fatigue reduction and the amount they got was a little too strong
- Strength in numbers grants 10 will (from 20) - Same reason as above
XCOM:
- Gunner base will to 10 (from 5) - Slight boost, makes psionic gunners slightly more possible
- Marauder base mobility to 0.6 (from 0) - Slight boost, helps with setting up onslaught
- Goliath base aim to 5 (from 10) - Slight further nerf
Aliens:
- Exalt Elite gain half as much damage with alien level increases - Prevents them from hitting so hard in the later game
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Storm was not accurately being resisted based on the target's will
- Fixed some unnecessary pans during alien turns to speed things up
- Fixed a bug where psychokinetic strike was actually hitting a smaller radius than intended and what was shown in the targeting sphere leading to some cover not being destroyed at the periphery, especially since the bug was worse on low will soldiers
- Possibly fixed a bug where Exalt Elite were spawning too commonly making exalt missions too difficult
- Fixed a bug where snipers were not getting low profile on gaining squadsight (if yours doesn't have it you can retrain to pick it up)
- The distance indicator should no longer appear over units that are scampering - Just QoL, and kind of a bug fix
- Typos
Version 1.36.16
LW Rebalance v1.36.16
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a fatal crash on start up
- Typos
Version 1.36.15
LW Rebalance v1.36.15
Strategic:
- EMP Cannon aim to 35 (from 40) and cost to 80 elerium (from 20) - Nerf so that it's not so important or effective to rush
- Panic increase for losing a satellite toned down to 5 country and 5 continent (from 8 and 8) - makes losing a satelite not as harsh
- Failing a MEC augmentation refunds 50% of the augmentation cost - Makes it less punishing if RNG is bad for you
- Cooling Coils Foundry project requires Heavy Floater Interrogation (from Advanced Aerospace Concepts) - Makes Heavy Floater Interrogation feel more worthwhile
- The chance for alien leader level bonus on the Temple Ship change to 25/50/75/100 (from 20/40/60/80) - Makes Impossible guaranteed all gold leaders (removing RNG)
Perks:
- Hunter grants penetration equal to 25% of the base weapon damage when targeting units at full HP - Large buff to it's strength against units in cover and mechanical units
- Squadsight on the Sniper and Run and Gun on the Assault grant Low Profile - General sniper and assault buffs
- Body Shield also grants a 50% chance for all incoming shots to graze - Significant buff to the resilience of MEC1 and LMECs
Scout Nerfs:
- Perk tree swapped around - Tones back early and mid game strength of support scout by moving packmaster later
- Snapshot grants 50% chance for a 0 AP shot (from 60%) - Tones back consistency of snapshot scout
- Hit and Run no longer grants bonus damage when hitting (from +35% weapon damage) - Less impactful when they connect
Aliens:
- Mongo (lvl 9 berserker leader) gains 80 will (from 30) - Makes them less trivial to deal with through psionics
- Archon (lvl 9 heavy floater leader) gains 60 will (from 10) - Makes them less trivial to deal with through psionics
- Level 6/9 drone leaders gain 1 damage (from 2) - Slight tone back, helps further with the first room on temple ship
- Level 6/9 sectoid leaders gain 5 HP (from 10) - slight tone back, helps further with the first room on temple ship
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire was not doing the intended amount of damage
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would have a "?" perk
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would get the hunter perk
- Fixed a bug where the Jaeger had 2 copies of Lone Wolf in it's perk tree
- Typos
Version 1.36.14
LW Rebalance v1.36.14
Tactical:
- Blueshirts no longer count towards triggering enrage or berserk - Prevents using them as fodder as much
- On the Temple Ship Assault the leader level is randomly decreased by 1-6/0-3/0-1 on normal/classic/brutal - Makes the mission much easier on lower difficulties
Perks:
- New Perk: Hunter: Standard shots that hit targets at full HP cost 0 AP.
- Neural Damping no longer grants additional defense against psionic attacks - Nerfed as it was quite strong as a gene mod choice
- Inner Fire no longer resists Overpower - Was too strong as was and made psionics a little too dominant near the end game
- In the Zone back to only granting 2 extra shots (from the full ammo clip or 2-3 extrta shots) - Tone back in strength
- Damage Control is 15% per hit (from 20% per hit) - Tone back on stacking DR on both HMECs and aliens
- Jetboot Module to 2 turn cooldown (from 3) - Slight increase in use
- Killer instinct upgrades all critical hits to 200% Crit damage (from 225/200% with the former for beam weapons) - Nerf of strength of KI on laser/beam
- Shock-Absorbent Armor and Kinetic Dampening now consider the location of the explosive when calculating distances (instead of the unit that used the explosive) - Makes a lot more intuitive sense, bit of a buff to Shock-Absorbent Armor
- Overpower minimum effect to 20% (from 15%) - Boost in it's effect, especially with the uber ethereal will nerf and lower overall ethereal will
- Steadfast grants 30 defense vs psionic attacks (from 50) - Tone back on it's strength
- Additional shred now increases damage by 2% per shred damage dealt (from shred damage received) - makes the growth way more effective on armored targets, significant buff
- Mind Control cooldown to 3 turns (from 2) - Tone back on rate of losing actions for your soldiers
- Mind Control reduces the AP of the mind controller by 1 while mind controlling a victim - Significant decrease to the effectiveness of mind controllers when mind controlling (now they'll be -1 AP and -50% mobility each turn)
- Distortion grants 80 crit resist (from 70) - Slight decrease in predictability of critting distortion units
Equipment:
- Alien trophy now grants +10% xp gains - Buff to the item's appeal
- MEC1 HP to 8 (from 10) and Def to 20 (from 30) - Nerf to survivability of early MECs
- HMEC2/HMEC3/UHMEC3 HP to 12/14/18 (from 14/16/22) - Slight nerf in overall strength
- Arc Rifle damage vs MEC lowered to 4/6 (from 7/11) - Less max end damage
- Arc Pistol penetration vs mechs increased to 4 (from 3) but damage vs MEC lowered to 3/4 (from 4/6) - Same as above
- Restorative Mists now heal units that have it equipped by 1 HP anytime they take 2 or more damage and there are charges remaining (passive healing does not consume charges) - Buff to the item
- Regular and Alloy SHIVs gain 20 defense (from 0) - helps them survive throughout the various stages of a campaign
- Marauder Sharpshooter swapped with Reactive Targeting Sensors - Brings on the RTS + Sentry combo earlier
- Jaeger Perk Tree reworked - See Perk Tree Image
- Goliath Perk Tree reworked - See Perk Tree Image
Aliens:
- All Muton Leaders gain Close Combat Specialist and Close Combat Specialist moved from level 8 Muton Elite Leaders to all Muton Elite Leaders - Muton and Muton Elite leaders gaining CCS help increase their effectiveness on the battlefield
- Level 6/9 Thinmen leaders gain 6/10 HP (from 12/20 HP) - Significant decrease in thinmen leader HP to tone back their durability
- Level 6/9 Drone leaders gain 10/10 aim (from 15/30 aim) and 5/10 HP (from 15/20 HP) - Decrease in drone leader strength, specifically the difficulty of the first room on temple ship
- Level 9 Cyberdisc leaders gain 10 aim (from 20 aim) and 10 HP (from 15 HP) - Decrease in cyberdisc leader strength, specifically the difficulty of the first room on the temple ship
- All aliens no longer gain mobility through alien levels except for: Berserkers, Zombies, and Chryssalids
- Uber Ethereal will to 160 (from 240) and mobility to 10.6 (from 13.3) - Tones down the offensive power on the last room of the temple ship
- Level 1 Ethereal leaders gain 4 HP (from 8 HP) - makes leader ethereals a little less resilient
- Ethereals gain 5 HP per alien level (from 10) - makes later game ethereals easier to take down
- Ethereals start with 22 HP (from 26 HP) - Makes all ethereals a little easier to take down
- Overpower removed from Beserker leaders - it's mostly specific to sectoid commanders and ethereals from now on and should rarely be seen otherwise
- Sectoid Commanders lose Distortion and Close Combat Specialist but base HP to 18 (from 12) - Makes them MUCH easier to engage and kill (subjectively dropping from 36+ HP to 18)
- Overpower moved from Sectoid commander leaders to all sectoid commanders - helps accommodate for no distortion
- All Chryssalid leaders gain awareness - Makes it more challenging to hit the leaders
- Level 9 Chryssalid leaders gain advanced perception - Makes the Queens more resilient
- All Berserker leaders gain iron skin - Makes the leaders harder to take down
- Level 9 Berserker leaders gain deflection shield - Mongo no go down easy
- Level 9 Heavy Floater leaders gain Fortified - Archon will not be crit
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where having too many items too late in the game would cause a crash when trying to build something - Optimized code that determined total number of items XCOM has so that 1 million loop errors were avoided
- Fixed a bug where Shock-Absorbent Armor and Kinetic Dampening weren't doing anything
- Fixed a bug where Jetboot Module was granting 1.3 mobility where it should have been granting 2
- Fixed a bug where armor tint changes from LCPL promotions were not being retained
- Fixed a LW1.0 bug where hunts on satellites started as if all satellites had already been hunted once - Thanks to szmind for finding this one =D
- Maybe fixed a bug where overwatch wouldn't trigger on floaters launching
- Typos
Version 1.36.13
LW Rebalance v1.36.13
Strategic:
- Abductors upgraded to tier 7 armor - makes them harder to shoot down, making it harder to prevent abductions late game
- Sat Hunts increase in frequency by 12.5% per satellite in orbit (from 10%) - Makes it slighty more challenging to obtain more continental coverage
- Sat Hunts increase in frequency by 25% (modified by campaign length) for each UFO successfully raided each month - Represents the aliens ramping up hunts to help protect their UFOs each time one is raided, will overall make it difficult to continously supply an airforce to down UFOs when hunts accelerate so much
- Overall Sat Hunt frequency decreased by 25% - Accommodates for new increases to have a lower baseline
- All UFOs will now have a guaranteed Sectoid Commander in November and December and a guaranteed Ethereal in January and later - Gives more access to required corpses/interrogations and makes the missions more challenging
Air Game:
- Foundry project Penetrator Weapons replaced with Cooling Coils: Increases rate of fire of aircraft by 15% - Penetration was used to gate and control aircraft weapons but penetrator weapons was bypassing that too much and was too strong on some encounters and not useful on others, this should be more universally useful while not being as mandatory
Tactical:
- Enrage now also prevents panic - QoL and buff to bad situations
- Exalt can now go off-guard and be unprepared again, but reinforcements enter active so will never be unprepared or off-guard - makes sense, consistency
Perks:
- Bombard grants 30% throw range increase (from 25%) - Buff to support rocketeers, makes it more competitive for grenade rocketeeers
- Kinetic Dampening grants 3% DR per tile further than 10 with no cap (from 3% DR per tile further than 10 up to 30% at 20 tiles away) - There really was no reason for a cap and it really helps the ability reduce long-range damage
Aliens:
- All outsiders gain kinetic dampening (from just outsider leaders) - Helps make UFO command pods more resilient against distant defense traps and setups, significant buff to outsiders resisting damage further than 15 tiles away, encourages closer engagements
- Outsiders no longer get neural dampening but instead have +30 will - Just reduces the laundry list of perks they have
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where CE wasn't reducing mobility after use
- Fixed a bug where double tap wasn't triggering off of precision or disabling shot
- Fixed a bug where alien reinforcements could sometimes be 'off-guard' - They are now active as soon as they land
- Fixed a bug where F1 DR display would be 0 (99%) all the time
- Typos
Version 1.36.12
LW Rebalance v1.36.12
Strategic:
- Council requests that reduce panic will reduce panic by a lot more - They felt like some of the weaker requests previously
- Retired soldiers now offer twice as much experience - Makes the mechanic a lot more reasonable
- Special Warfare School grants 40% more exp to XTPs and Retired soldiers (from 60%) - Accommodates for new retired strength
- Standard Plasma Weapon research requires 240 time (from 500 time) - Bring plasma on earlier, accommodates for increased pulse research times
- Compat Plasma Weapon research requires 80 time (from 210) - Makes more sense for sidearms
- Pulse Lasers research requires 200 time (from 90 time) - Brings pulse on later
- Advanced Pulse Lasers research requires 225 time (from 80 time) - Brings pulse on later
- Advanced Flight requires 16 floater corpses (from 4 cyberdisc corpses) - Cyberdisc corpses were hard to acquire
- Gollop time to build to 30 (from 5) and power to 140 (from 120) - You can still rush it, so its not a huge effect, both are another late game nudge towards a little more time before the temple ship
Tactical:
- Corrossion now reduces remaining armor HP by 20% at the beginning of each turn (instead of just 1 armor HP) but no longer affects flat DR - Makes the damage effect quite significant into the late game when units have more than 5 armor HP, helps against sectopods and other large units with lots of armor, makes it less effective against early game units with less than 4 armor HP
- Stagger now occurs with a chance equal to the percent of HP lost (from half the percent of remaining HP lost) - Simplification, consistency with other abilities not using remaining HP, increase in occurance without the 0.5 modifier
- Red Fog no longer reduces flat DR but Flat DR is instead reduced by 0-100% (from 0-50%) with any damage (from just base HP damage), this is now just the nature of flat DR - Accommodates for the need to break through armor first and it didn't make sense that red fog (soldier fatigue) was affecting armor and things like psi inspire would remove it
- Hardened now prevents a unit from being exposed (like flying) instead of granting 60 crit resistance - The effect of this is that flying mechanical units can on longer double up on crit resistance from no exposure and being hardened
Equipment:
- LMG has 5 ammo (from 6) - Slight nerf, accommodate for mayhem's easier effectiveness against high defense units
- Vortex Armor requires 200 meld to produce (from 100) - Makes it a little more difficult to acquire
Perks:
- Collateral Damage now reloads the weapon at the end of the turn IF the last action taken was collateral damage - Prevents a bug where the Shogun wouldn't reload sometimes after using collateral damage
- Mind control can be interuppted by disorientation or any explosive damage (from 10% for each set of any damage type taken only), it's success rate of hitting is based +50% of the casters will (from -50% the casters will), targets lose 10% of their HP at the end of each of their turns (from just 1 HP at start), and mind control will now slow the mind controller by 50% when active. - The result is that mind control is much more commonly landed, but also much easier to break. This changes mind control from "an ability that, if you play well, rarely lands and you're OK and sometimes it does like and your'e screwed" to "an ability that often lands but you can break it pretty readily", Also makes explosives more effective at clearing mind control. Prevents units that mind control your units from being able to run and hide as well.
- Psychic Storm can only be interrupted by explosives or disorientation (from disorientation and any damage) - makes it slightly harder to interupt, consistency with mind control
- Suppressive Fire damage no longer calculated damage as hit chance * damage but instead is just 30% of damage - Consistency and effectiveness vs high def targets. including aim was not leading to ideal gameplay and was making the ability too complex
- Mayhem increases the damage of suppressive fire by +1 - Buff to bullet wizards
- Impact now doubles the stagger chance (from triple) - Accommodates for approximately double stagger chances
- Distortion no longer removes all DR from units but instead reduces any healing by 50% in human users - Allows the volunteer to be a tank if desired and to benefit from various DR abilities while not being overly abusive
- Inner Fire now grants immunity to overpower - Another option to help deal with overpower
- Will to Survive grants +35% DR (from +40% DR) - Nerf to the general tankiness of biotanks in cover
- Cover Tenacity reduced to 2% per activated enemy (from 3%) - Balance vs the defense one as defense doesn't realy help when tanking
Aliens:
- Awareness on Heavy Floaters now only occurs on heavy floater leaders - Significant nerf to the difficulty in landing shots against large pods of heavy floaters
- Cyberdiscs have penetrator replaced with impact - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Level 5 Heavy Floater leaders lose penetrator - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Muton Elites lose penetrator - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Level 9 Sectopod leaders lose penetrator - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Seeker leaders lose penetrator - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Drone leaders lose penetrator - Helps make flat DR more viable on XCOM units
- Sectoid Commander base HP to 12 (from 16) - Makes it slightly easier to down, accommodates for increased DR from cover through new distortion
Bug Fixes:
- Tons of log error fixes and minor bugs that may have been slowing things down, but definitely cluttering the log - This one is more for szmind and me =P
- Fixed a bug where Double Tap would trigger on abilities other than shooting
- Fixed a bug where free action abilities triggering on One For All wouldn't grant full free actions
- Fixed a bug where suppressive fire wasn't acting like real damage and was bypassing certain aspects of damage (like applying shredder)
- Fixed a bug where CE would be unreliable for triggering when throwing grenades
- Fixed a bug where conduit wasn't granting +1 damage to everything
- Fixed a bug where melee damage wasn't being reduced by disorientation properly
- Fixed a bug where saving and reloading the game would reset psychic storms
- Fixed a bug where MiNEs would have incorrect explosion time when saving/reloading - Thanks to szmind for helping with this really tricky one
- Maybe fixed a bug where collateral damage would sometimes deal no damage
- Fixed a bug where a really large base with lots of items (i.e. end game) could cause a crash to desktop when loading up the build item menu
- Fixed a bug where having an incorrectly assigned genemod code (programming level variable only) would cause a permanent lock of the strategic layer
Version 1.36.11
LW Rebalance v1.36.11
Strategic:
- Classes with different LCPL perks will now have different tints to their armors - QoL
- New dgc.ini variable: BARRACKS_CAPACITY=10; (LWR Default = 10) Percent of extra fatigue soldiers take for each mission they have completed
- New dgc.ini variable: SOLDIER_COST_CLASSIC=1; (LWR Default = 1) Set to 1 to have the tint of armors change to hardcoded values on LCPL promotions, Set to 0 to use the SPEC armor tint changes defined in this dgc.ini only
- The Gollop Chamber requires 120 power (from 80) and 300 credits, 50 alloys, 50 elerium (from 30 credtis, 5 alloys, 5 elerium) - Encourages destroying the entire base to build and slows down the very end of the game slightly, also feels cool to sacrifice everything to power the chamber and gives a nice gap between recovering the device and using it
Tactical:
- Finally reworked native double tap code so that it works like other discounting abilities - Should help prevent bugs with the ability
Perks:
- Countercharge now only stops working if the unit has lost any base HP (from armor HP) - Buff to the use on XCOM
- Countercharge will no longer proc when using Run and Gun - Makes sense as using run and gun isn't an action
- Overpower reduces stats by 15% minimum (from 10% minimum) - Slight increase in its effect, acts as a buff to berserker leaders and ethereals
- Ready For Anything grants +15 aim (from +10) - More of a boost
- Clarified the description of Indomitable such that it only works against non-psionic damage - Clarification
- Critical System Targeting deals 150% damage vs mechanical units (from 140%) - Approximately 7% more damage vs mechanical units for a slight buff for more balance on the gunner trees and slight tone back of the strength of CST to push back mechnical units (both for XCOM and Aliens)
- Brawler makes 65% of attacks within 4 tiles graze (from 50%) - Buffed as it was too weak for a perk that only worked within 4 tiles
- Aggression grants +15 crit per enemy in sight (from +10) - Buffed
- Jetboot Module grants +2 mobility (from +3.3) and a 3 turn cooldown (from 2 turn) - Nerfed to make other options more competitive on the trees
- Fortified no longer grants +1 DR - was strong enough without it
- Shock and Awe now also doubles the chance that Concussive Blast disorients a target - Buff to the perk on the Shogun and later game rocketeers
Equipment:
- Psi Retaliator renamed to Psi Defender and grants +20% DR (when protected by cover) (from 0) and 40% Crit Resist (when protected by cover) (from +40% crit resist at any time) and no longer affects countercharge - Accommodation for relative nerf due to countercharge change, focus on tanking capabilities. Stops it from feeling bad if you equip it on tanks that don't have countercharge.
- Psi Conduit no longer grants +20% DR or +30% explosive damage but instead simply grants a +20% chance for a free action (from 10%) and +1 damage to all sources - Simplification and focus on offensive actions
- Psi Frayer deals double damage (from triple) - Toned back as it's quite strong on really high will units
- Grenade Launcher starts with 3 rounds (from 2) - Buff to help grenadier MEC builds
- Electro Pulse radius reduced to 4 (from 8) and damage increased to 8 (from 1) - Significant reduction in the strength, and makes it more difficult to get off, but does some damage so it's useful against more mechanical enemies but more punishing to use
- Skeleton Keys now cost 1 Outsider shard for every Alien Base Assault completed - Makes multiple assaults more and more difficult to attempt
XCOM:
- HEAT Warhead on the engineer replaced with Mayhem - The engineer already picked up +4 pen vs mechanical and posibly another +1 pen on sapper, so HEAT warheads felt a little superfluous. Overall should be a significant a boost to the build.
- Vital Point Targeting and Penetrator swapped on the Jaeger - Penetrator wasn't competitive enough vs CST and new aggression on a high damage class
Aliens:
- Level 3 Outsider Leaders gain Kinetic Dampening - Helps them stay alive from a distance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where tenacious defense was not granting crit resist at point blank ranges
- Maybe fixed a bug where a distance popup would occur when using free aim abilities
- Fixed a bug where aliens that were unprepared would sometimes reload their weapons
- Fixed a bug where some large damage popups would still occur
- Fixed a bug where all units with repair servos would start with 6 charges
- Probably fixed a bug where flanked units were not showing up correctly on the indicator
- Maybe fixed a bug where aliens don't go on OW when they should
- Typos
Version 1.36.10
LW Rebalance v1.36.10
Strategic:
- Terror Missions, Infiltrations, and Bombings (note: not hunts or scouts or other missions) will not occur in your home continent until more than 6 months have passed - prevents campaigns from being lost due to bad strategy RNG
- The items listed in the engineering build menu now list the number of total you have (not just the number available) - Makes it a lot easier to determine when you need to build more or not
Perks:
- Shock and Awe now also increases the charges on the Grenade Launcher and MiNE Launcher - New perk on Shogun
- New Perk: Kinetic Dampening - Grants proximity-based DR if the damage dealer is further than 10 tiles away (+3% DR per tile up to +30% at 20+ tiles).
- Psi Mastery now only prevents reactions shots from triggering if they were used at 2 AP - Makes overwatch builds somewhat more effective against sectoid commanders and ethereals
- Mayhem grants +50% damage to sniper and strike rifles (from +65%) - Toned back for balance on the sniper tree
- Ready For Anything grants +10 aim to reaction shots if they unit did not move and no longer grants additional ammo - This biases the boost to helping low aim OW medic/gunners make their shots hit instead of providing consistency with ammo
- Close Encounters now works with grenades as well as standard shots - Significant buff to close range grenades with the assault grenadier
- Run and Gun grants immunity to reaction fire - Significant buff to the versatility of Run and Gun Assaults
- Psychokinetic Strike cooldown to 2 turns (from 3) and radius increased from a variable 2-3 to a constant 4 tile radius - Buffed
Equipment:
- Aurora and Vortex Armor grant Kinetic Dampening - Buff to survivability of psionics at longer ranges
- All SMGs and Carbines have their cost reduced by ~33% - Makes them more reasonable to use
- Rockets lose their innate 1 penetration but Alien Grenades Foundry project grants them +1 damage - Tone back in early game strength
XCOM:
- Shogun MSGT perk HEAT Warheads replaced with Shock and Awe and swapped with Fragmentation which is then swapped for Extra Conditioning - The penetration wasn't that useful on a MEC (with MiNEs) and since they likely already picked up sapper, focuses more on extended grenade use especially early
- Assault will growth to 10 (from 15) - Lowers psionic potential of assaults - They were pretty competitive, especially with all the recent buffs
- Medic will growth to 15 (from 10) - Increases psionic potential of assaults - The medic support and tank would use the psionic abilities the most and they were slightly less favoured classes. Especially the tank needs to get psionic to get crit resistance.
- Sniper aim growth to 25 (from 20) - Makes them a little more competitive
Aliens:
- Level 9 Heavy Floater leaders gains Grit - makes it more resilient for a champion
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug in minimods where the distance popup could occur on random enemies when trying to grapple
- Fixed a bug where melee damage was not showing up in popups
- Maybe fixed a bug where drop-ins would still not OW when they should
- Typos
Version 1.36.09
LW Rebalance v1.36.09
Perks:
- Danger Zone upgrades suppression to deal half suppressive damage in an aoe around the primary target (from full suppressive damage) - Toned back so that aoe effect isn't so powerful
- Suppression's suppressive Fire damage is now calculated with the hit chance capped at 50% (instead of the hit chance having a minimum of 25%) - Toned back, especially late game on high aim gunners as it was much too strong
- Predictive tracking no longer affects suppression shots - Necessary for a bug fix and makes it not as mandatory to go gene mods on gunners
- Suppression reaction shots are all now conducted at normal weapon damage (instead of 50% weapon damage) - Accommdoation for no predictive tracking boost
Equipment:
- Plasma Dragon only grants +2 damage to suppressive fire (from +3 damage) - Slight tone back for balance
Version 1.36.08
LW Rebalance v1.36.08
Strategic:
- Raiders now have 8-13 base aliens (from 12-19) - Makes them easier to tackle
- Data Recovery Exalt missions will have significantly less Exalt in the early game and slightly less in the mid game - Makes those missions slightly easier
- XP requirements per soldier rank for CPL/SGT/TSGT changed to 1000/1500/3000 (from 1200/2200/3500) - Earlier mid game ranks
Air Game:
- Boosters are now only useable in their respective stances: Aim Booster in LEAD, Tracking Booster in MID, Dodge Booster in REAR - Makes their use more strategic and proper deployment more important, slight nerf to their strength overall
Tactical:
- Outsiders, Ethereals, and Sectopods can now be wounded during a UFO Crash, but they can still regenerate each turn - Makes crashed UFOs slightly easier to hit and makes a unique opportunity to hit the command pod early
- The AI will use countercharge and psychic storm 75% less on normal, 50% less on classic, and 25% less on brutal - Modification of AI to accommodate for difficulty
Suppression Changes:
- Sprinter no longer grants immunity to being pinned - Leaders were the primary targets for suppression and it not being able to work on them did not feel good
- Suppression now only pins (-1 AP) units protected by cover (from non-melee units) at the start of their turn - Makes more intuitive sense that you can't "pin down" a sectopod or cyberdisc
- Suppression now damages units NOT protected by cover at the start of their turn with "suppressive fire": non-crit damage equal to their hit chance (min 25%) times the damage of a standard shot - Makes sense that you'd unload and actually damage a target without cover
- Suppression now reduces the suppressed unit's mobility by 30% - Makes suppression more effective against units that don't use cover and just in general, can help prevent units from fleeing or flanking or charging
- Suppression now only decreases ability range by 30% (from 50%) and only increases scatter by 30% (from 100%) - consistency with disorient and the other effects of suppression
- Mayhem Suppression no longer does 'set' damage and instead deals "suppressive fire": non-crit damage equal to their hit chance (min 25%) times the damage of a standard shot - Consistency, makes more sense
Perks:
- Disabling shot has a -20 aim malus (from -40) - Significant buff to make it more useful
- Sentry DR to 50% (from 65%) - Tone back as it was too strong on aliens and didn't need to be so strong on MECs/SHIVs
- Lock N' Load no longer grants +1 ammo - Balance in the perk trees, tone back on OW infantry and LnL Jaeger
- Danger Zone grants +35% radius to explosives (from +1 tile radius) - Accommodates new Javelin Rocket
- Disorient only increase rocket scatter by 50% (from 100%) - Consistency with the rest of disorient
- Platform Stability upgrades Suppressive Fire damage by +1 (instead of mayhem suppression damage by +1) - Slight tweak for accommodation of new suppression changes
- New Perk 'Uber' - This is just a perk for the Uber Ethereal that helps explain that the Uber Ethereal has 100% DR until all of it's allies are dead, no mechanical change
Equipment:
- Blaster Launcher range back to 14 (from 12) - It was a little too short at 12
- The Arc Rifle and Arc Pistol gain Overload: Standard shots gain a chance to disorient mechanical units equal to the percent of total HP lost - Acts as a buff to the equipment and a unique ability
- Arc Rifle Penetration to 6 (from 4), Arc Pistol penetration to 3 (from 2) - Buffed
- The Kinetic Strike Module gains 8 penetration (from 0) - Significant buff to it's strength vs DR units
- The Javelin rocket is now a 150% damage shredding rocket that does not destroy cover and has a 1 tile radius - Altered to be a more unique effect
- Plasma Dragon now increases suppressive fire damage by +3 (from upgrading mayhem suppression damage from 4 to 6) - Accommodation for new suppression
XCOM:
- Marauder Tree rework - See Perk Tree image
- Sniper and Scout have +1HP base growth (from +0HP) - makes converting them to MECs a little easier
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater DR to 2 (from 3) and growth per level to 0.5 (from 1) - Makes them less resilient, especially against smaller arms fire
- Repair Servos moved from Lvl 1 leader mechtoids to lvl 5, Reactive Targeting Sensors moved form lvl 5 leader mechtoids to lvl 9 - Makes earlier leader mechtoids more reasonable to deal with
- Chryssalids gain 4 HP per alien level (from 6) - Reduction in strength so they are easier to take out
- Berserkers gain 8 HP per alien level (from 6), and start with 1 DR (from 0.5) and gain 1 DR per level (from 0.5) but Level 9 leader Berserker gains 10 HP (from 20) and grit moved from lvl 5 leader berserkers to level 9 - Overall more resilient with a slight turn down of leader resiliency
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Brawler would activate from Close Encounters instead of Brawler
- Fixed a CTD when trying to reverse an interceptor order
- Improved a bug where alien AI would not utilize all their actions properly on lower difficulty levels
- Typos
Version 1.36.07
LW Rebalance v1.36.07
Strategic:
- Minimum soldier cost is now 90 (from 70) - Was a little too low at 70
- Fusion lance rate of fire to 8s (from 6s) - Slows down it's offensive potential some
Tactical:
- Disorient status now reduces melee weapon damage by 50% - Gives another tool against berserkers and chryssalids (especially with concussive blast)
Perks:
- Brawler grants a 50% chance for ALL attacks to graze, if made from within 4 tiles (from +20 aim and +20% DR) - alteration to make it effective against melee attacks and focused on defense
- Close Combat Specialist has a -20 aim malus (from -30) - Slight buff, accommodates for brawler no longer helping
- Ready For Anything grants +1 ammo - Slight buff to medic and gunner overwatch builds
- One For All grants immunity to critical hits but only +20% DR (from +30% DR) - Buff to non-tank build use, nerf to fortified tank use
- Fortified grants +1 DR - Slight buff
- Collateral damage cooldown to 4 turns (from 2) - Prevents as frequent use as it's quite strong
- Will to Survive grants 0 mobility (from +0.6) and no longer reduces the chance of an armor injury by 50% but instead reduces all injury time by 50% (from 30%) - Simplification. Also was too strong vs other perks and is a pretty loaded perk already with steadfast and half injury time
- First Aid no longer reduces the chance of an armor injury - Was a little too convoluted for a minimal effect
- Run and Gun cooldown to 2 turns (from 3 turns) - Slight buff
- Kinetic Strike Module requires alien biocybernetics to produce (from floater autopsy and MEC Warfare Systems) - Allows it to produced with MEC 1 so the Marauders primary perk doesn't feel useless if rushed
- Javelin rocket reworked: radius to 5 (from 4) and damage to 100% (from 200%) - The javelin was in a weird place where it wasn't that useful early game, ok mid game, and overpowered late game. This should make it a more standard way to augment your team with shred throughout the game at the cost of 1 tile radius and not destroying cover.
- Regenerative Plating grants +1 DR - Buffed for balance
XCOM:
- Fragmentation and HEAT Warheads swapped on Shogun - HEAT wasn't as competitive and the MEC grenadiers have a lot of penetration already
Bug Fixes:
- Possibly fixed a bug where soldiers were not aligned with the stats box during loadout screens pre-mission on the skyranger
- Fixed a bug where corrosion popups would appear on out of sight aliens
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements and launching floaters would sometimes not correctly go on overwatch
- Possibly fixed a bug where some alien's overwatch would be cancelled at the beginning of XCOM's turn
- Fixed a bug where a unit hacking an array or defusing a bomb could be stuck doing so multiple turns later
- Maybe fixed a bug with erroneous exalt scanning times
- Possibly fixed a bug where ethereal kill cams would prevent the player from seeing what was occuring
- Fixed a bug where chitin plating melee damage reduction was not working
- Removed some erroneous damage popups that would occur in some missions
- Fixed a bug where some units would move (like from flush) but still retain their OW status
Version 1.36.06
LW Rebalance v1.36.06
New Air Game Armor System:
- All DR and Penetration changed to a tier (e.g. Fighters have tier 3 Armor, Phoenix cannons have tier 2 Penetration) - More clean display that makes more sense than something have 150% DR
- For each tier of armor greater than the penetration of the weapon the damage will be reduced by 25% - Same as previous
- For each tier of penetration greater than the armor the weapon will gain 10% crit (from 2.5% crit) - Bonus to higher tiers of penetration
- Maximum DR is capped at 90%, so even a weapon with no penetration vs tier 8 armor will still deal 10% damage - Helps make all weapons somewhat useful against all aircraft - Plasma and EMP cannon penetration to Tier 4/5 (from Tier 6/6) - Slight nerf at capability against larger UFOs
UFO Hunt System:
- The first hunt against any satellite is now just an observation mission - Think of it as finding out approximately where the satellite is
- The second and further hunts against any satellite will have a 50% chance of success (from 90%) - Makes hunts that you couldn't stop less likely to be punishing
- Stealth Satellites now decreases the chance of hunting UFOs from finding satellites to 25% on subsequent hunts - Makes the project more worthwhile
Air Game Shot Down vs Destroy System (UFO Shielding):
- All Fighters/Destroyers are always destroyed - As previously
- UFO Shielding no longer occurs - Won't be necessary due to next point
- The chance for UFO Destruction is the amount of overkill beyond 600 dmg divided by 5 (instead of just the amount of overkill divided by 5) - Massively lowers the destruction chance of the majority of aircraft weapons. Means you can often guarantee the downed ship in the early game. The RNG of destruction vs shot down was not productive towards an enjoyable game and had almost 0 effect towards making the air game engagements more engaging. The only weapons that can destroy now are Stringrays (23%), Plasma (43%), and Fusion (100%) [Or some weapons that crit].
Strategic:
- UFO Scout HP to 500 HP (from 700) but gains 150% per alien level (from 100%) - Made it too difficult to down early and the focus was supposed to make it more challenging late game, not early
- Studier UFOs replaced with Multitasker and Predictable Damage turned back on - Sturdier UFOs is no longer needed due to new UFO destruction mechanics
- XTP II now comes online at 50 missions, Majors now come online at 70 missions (from 70/50) - Sometimes the officers weren't even that needed at that time and the XTP is quite beneficial earlier
- Research Focus start grants 25 Elerium and 10 scientists (from 50 elerium and 20 scientists) - Accommodation for stronger laboratories
Tactical:
- Crashed UFOs will now never kill units, but will injur 50% of them (from 33%) - Makes captures more reasonable
Bug Fixes:
- Augmented (MECs, SHIVs, Mechtoids, Sectopods, etc.) units no longer 'step out' - They weren't supposed to, it's a core game bug that should be fixed now (note that they can still see pointblank around a corner as that is still straight line vision)
- Fixed a bug where Iron Skin was granting 1 less DR than intended during some tactical games
- Fixed a bug where buying new interceptors could cause a hang with the new Alien Propulsion research
- Maybe fixed a bug where AP pips would be elongated and short
- Maybe fixed a bug where unit's wouldn't be in their spot when entering loadout for a mission
- Maybe fixed a bug whre enemies going on OW would lose their OW at the start of XCOM's turn
- Possibly fixed a bug with hunts occuring in North America
- Fixed a bug with the hyperwave relay not showing correct numbers of units during missions
- Typos
Version 1.36.05
LW Rebalance v1.36.05
Strategic:
- You will now only have 1 base defense mission in each campaign - Figured out how to limit it, prevents having multiple base defense missions in a row
- Destroyer/Improved Destroyer HP to 2000/3000 (from 1500/2500) and growth to 30% per AL (from 20%) - Makes them much harder to deal with
- Scout HP to 700 (from 600) and Raider HP to 5000 (from 4000) - More tanky, accommodates for XCOM earlier air game upgrades into plasma/fusion/supercapacitors
- Plasma Cannon Damage to 1000 (from 1500) - It was too strong
- Supercapacitors costs 80 weapon fragments (from 280) and 70 alloys (from 300) - Makes it much more attainable since it was competing with earlier fusion and plasma
- Satellite cost to 400 (from 550) - Makes expansion slightly more reasonable
- Roscosmos grants 60% satellite cost reduction (from 40%) - Buff to accommodate new satellite cost
- Alien Propulsion (tech required for Firestorms) now reduces interceptor cost by 50% and build time to 5 days (from 20 days) - Makes late game expansion more reasonable and makes interceptors more reasonable in the face of firestorms
- Cheyenne Mountain excavation cost reduction to 70% (from 80%) - Slight tone back for balance
- Second Wave option Predictable Damage replaced with Multitasker: Big Sky can control multiple SHIVs per turn (removing the restriction of 1 SHIV acting/moving per turn)
Tactical:
- Exalt missions are slightly more challenging in the mid-late game
Perks:
- Dense Smoke grants 20% DR (from 30% DR) - Slight tone back, balance amoung supports
- One For All grants 30% DR (from 40% DR) - Tone back on overall tanking capability of MECs
Equipment:
- SMGs grant 40 crit (from 30) - The role of the SMG is to be the only item to guarantee the crit on flanks or give more reliable crits during regular fire but the shotgun was recently making this advantage not clear enough. This extra crit should help the SMG further empahsize its role as a weapon with the most reliable crits.
- Conduit back to 20% DR in cover and 10% chance for a free action (from 30% and 20%) - Psi was strong enough and conduit felt too mandatory
- Sawed-off Shotgun crit to 60% (from 40%) - Buff to pull it further from obscurity into the lime-light
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV mobility to -0.6 (from -1.3) - Slight boost in mobility to make it less of a turtle
Aliens:
- Replaced the Exalt Elite Sniper's weapon with a Gauss Strike Rifle (from Laser Strike Rifle) - Consistency with the rest of Exalt and the bonus aim and mobility and crit damage was nasty with their attribute growth making the laser strike rifle arguably superior to the gauss strike rifle
- Exalt Sniper and Exalt Elite Sniper lose 1 and 2 damage, respectively and 0.6 mobility - Lowers their offensive capability
- Mechtoids gain 5/15/20 HP with alien leader levels (from 10/30/40) - Makes leader Mechtoids a lot more reasonable to encounter/engage
- Heavy Floater HP to 16 (from 20) with 3 DR (no change) - Slight compromise between the 12 HP 2 DR version and the 20 HP 3 DR version
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where combat stims were ending turns
- Possibly fixed a bug where reloading a save game would delay a MiNE from exploding for a turn
- Possible fixed a bug where the position of soldiers when loading them out on the skyranger were not correct
- Fixed a bug where MECs/SHIVs at close ranges where they could flank didn't show as a flank in the indicator
- Fixed a bug where Exalt would sometimes not have their intended perks
- Fixed a bug where Chitin plating was not reducing melee damage at all
- Fixed a bug where the flank locator above the green LoS eye was not always accurate for SHIVs/MECs
- Fixed a visual display bug with iron skin
- Typos
Version 1.36.04
LW Rebalance v1.36.04
Tactical:
- Damage numbers are in red again with a yellow explosion for crit damage - QoL
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the flank indicator would sometimes show flying units as flanked
- Maybe fixed a bug where units would not overwatch when launching/reinforcing
- Fixed a bug where close encounters would sometimes give too much reaction fire immunity
- Hopefully fixed a bug where kill cams were still activating too much
- Fixed a bug where the overwatch icon would sometimes overlap the cover shield
- Changed and re-did some of the maim code and some of the small item charge code in hopes that one or the other would prevent the unpredictable T-Posing XCOM soldier who can't use a stun rifle anymore bug
- Fixed a bug where concussive blast could clear disorient status on some units
Version 1.36.03
LW Rebalance v1.36.03
Tactical:
- Replaced the double damage sign for crit with simply the text "CRIT" - Feels better
Equipment:
- Alloy plating alloy cost to 40 (from 30) - Makes it slightly harder to acquire
- Chitin plating alloy cost to 15 (from 25) and reduces the duration of corrosion by 2 turns - Makes it easier to acquire and a little more unique
- Reinforced plating mobility to -1.3 and HP to 4 (from -0.6 and 2) - Makes it more distinct from other plating
- Regenerative plating mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Buffed
Aliens:
- Zombie base damage back to 5 (from 7) - It's ok if they are a little easier, and fairly fitting
- Chryssalid base mobility to 12 (from 14.6) and mobility growth to 1 per level (from 2) - Makes it a little easier to position against them and helps prevent things like off-screen dash attacks
- Berserker base mobility to 10 (from 11.3) - Makes it a little easier to position against them and helps prevent things like off-screen dash attacks
- Chryssalid and Berserker damage growth to 2 per level (from 4) - Accommodates for previous penetration buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the flank indicator wouldn't show up on distances greater than 11 tiles
- Fixed a bug that would show excessive damage numbers on bleedouts and civilian deaths
- Fixed a bug of incorrect glam cams showing up
Version 1.36.02
LW Rebalance v1.36.02
Strategic:
- Quenchguns requires 360 alloys (from 130) - Makes it more difficult to bring online mid campaign as it's supposed to be a late game just pre-plasma tech that will not always be viable
- Beam Strengthening requires 220 fragments (from 360) - Makes it not as unreasonable to bring on with it's competition with weapon fragments for plasma tech
Tactical:
- Reverted the kill cinematics happening on misses and non-kills - They made it so you couldn't see what damage you did, if the unit died or was OK -- especially during the enemy turn it was quite frustrating
- Injury through armor damage only occurs when the damage is greater than 1 - Single damage injury felt frustrating and this avoids a lot of small cases of injury
- Corrosion lasts 4 turns (from 6) and causes units to lose 1 armor HP (from take 1 armor HP in damage) so it no longer triggers damage control - QoL, decrease in strength
- Mind Deterioration causes units to lose 1 HP (from take 1 damage) so it no longer triggers damage control - QoL, consistency
- The distance indicator now also indicates whether a unit would be flanked or not - QoL
Equipment:
- Combat Stims last 4 turns (from 3) - Buff to offset overpower nerfs and the fact that it's less ideal to bring fatigued units
- Chryssalid Claw (Chryssalid weapon) and Muton Blade (Berserker weapon) penetrate all DR - Buff to melee attacks
- Chittin plating reduces melee damage by 60% (instead of granting 60% DR) - Works with new penetrating melee attacks
Perks:
- Opportunist grants +50% weapon damage to sniper and strike rifle reaction shots - Slight boost to make it more competitive on even non mayhem builds
- Absorption Fields grants 30% DR (from 35%) - Slight tone back on MEC/SHIV tanking
- Collateral damage deal 20% damage per ammo spent (from 15%) and automatically reloads the weapon after use, but has a 2 turn cooldown - Buffed while still encouraging use of other tactics
- Extra Conditioning grants +1 armor HP (from +2) - Slight nerf as the +10% action is really strong
Aliens:
- Mechtoid base HP to 24 (from 32) but base aim to 70 (from 60) - Makes them significantly less tanky so they aren't such walls but they are a little more offensively dangerous
- Zombie base damage to 7 (from 5) - Slighty more threatening
- Chryssalid base damage to 5 (from 7) - Accommodates for penetration
- Berserker base damage to 10 (from 14) - Accommodates for penetration
- Thinmen gain 1 damage per level upgrade (from 2) and 15 crit per level upgrade (from 20) - Slight tone back
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where alien leader HUD icons were not being lengthened
- Fixed a bug where damage resistance displays were not popping up
- Fixed a bug with AP pips being squashed when loading some maps
- Fixed a little line graphical error in the loadout screen - Thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where maim only fired 1 shot
- I think fixed a bug where the stun rifle would bug out
- Fixed a bug where the stun rifle ammo counter wasn't working properly
- Typos
Version 1.36.01
LW Rebalance v1.36.01
Tactical:
- Removed the Sectopod + Mechtoid pod as an option to spawn - I hope
- Shred is now 20 + 2 times shred damage taken (from 20 + 3) - Tone back on strength of damaging applications of shred
- Shot Cinematics will now trigger on misses - QoL so you can't tell from a cinematic if you're guaranteed the kill
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the hp pips on certain aliens would go invisible - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where the alien HUD icons would not be colored correctly - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where corrosion was doing too much damage - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where the tile distance indicator would show random values when ontop of a unit - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where grapple icon was blurred out and showed 0 charges - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where certain icons on perk trees would be replaced with "img:" - thanks szmind
- Fixed a bug where the rocketeer's perk tree was reverted to an earlier version
- Fixed a bug where salvage after ufos missions displayed less than the actual amount you would receive
- Fixed a bug where gamespeed was defaulting to 5 (even if set to 4) making the game appear too fast
- Fixed a bug where a corrosion cleared popup would occur on units not corroded
- Fixed some scout perception grammatical errors
- Fixed a bug where some reinforcements would not have correct perks
- Typos
Version 1.36.00
LW Rebalance v1.36.00
Strategy Game:
- Laboratories grant +50% research (from +30%) - Buff to their significance, increase in mid and especially later game reserach speeds
- Jai Vidwan boost laboratories to +75/15% research (from +50/10%) - Slight buff, accommodation for increased laboratory strength
- Workshops reduce item build time by 40% (from 20%) - Buff to their significance, increase in mid and especially later game production speeds
- Home Continent bonus grants 800 credits (from 500) - Buff to overall cash flow
- Fusion Weapons are now unlocked through EMP weapons (from Standard Plasma weapons) - Brings fusion technology online much earlier
- Perks that give free items are now displayed in the loadout - Thanks to szmind for the great code
- The first Exalt sabotage operation is now always a credit hack for 100-200 credits - Makes RNG less important in this hit
Air Game:
- UFO Hunt missions occur 33% less often overall - Reduction in hunt spam
- UFO Hunt missions increase by 10% for every satelitte in orbit (from 100% for every continent with coverage) - Significant reduction in hunt spam and allows for more air game expansion and more diverse air game expansion (2 vs 4 country continents)
- Aim Boosters require 28 floater corpses (from 12) - Much more rare, accommodates for increased access to plasma/fusion cannons
- Sending up a damaged aircraft has a -10 aim malus (from -20) - Makes it much more reasonable
- Improved Destroyers have 150% DR (from 125%) and 3000 HP (from 2000 HP) and Abductors have 150% DR (from 100%) - Makes later game UFOs more difficult to shoot down without EMP or higher
- Raiders have 4000 HP (from 4500 HP) and gain 30% HP per level (from 20% HP per level) - Easier to down early game but increased difficulty to take down in the mid and especially later game
- Fighters have 800 HP (from 600 HP) - increased difficulty to take down throughout the game
- Plasma Cannons have 150% penetration (from 100%) - Makes them superior end game weapons
- Plasma Cannon credit cost to 400 (from 1200) and Fusion Cannon credit cost to 600 (from 1800) - Makes them more reasonable acquisitions
- Fusion Cannon aim to 10 (from 15) and fire rate to every 6s (from 3s) - Makes a more experienced pilot more important and also accommodates for increased access to the weapon so it's not so overpowered
- Alien Fusion Cannon fire rate to 2s (from 3s) - Makes dodge boosters less effective against them
Tactical:
- All explosives gain the "Concussive Blast" ability: clears enemy overwatch and has a chance to disorient targets (including mechanical targets) equal to the percent of base HP they lost - Boost to the strength of explosives throughout the game
- Orange AP pips representing 'danger of receiving reaction fire' have been replaced with a red target icon - QoL, thanks to szmind for this awesome code
- A grey shield on the unit flag of each unit now represent the approximate level of % DR - QoL, thanks to szmind for this awesome code
- A green eye will now more clearly represent Line of Sight where the cursor is (instead of a blue eye) - This removes the problem of the blinking red/blue eye when a unit was on overwatch but also could see the cursor, thanks to szmind for this awesome code
- Above each green eye (showing which units you can see) will be the number of tiles away the unit is from the cursor - Large QoL upgrade - This means you can move your cursor to a flanking position on your unit and see if, for example, a thinman has the mobilty to reach it
- The green eye representing Line of Sight will turn red when only a unit with squadsight would be able to fire at that unit - Large QoL upgrade - We can now use the LoS indicator to determine if we can see units at squadsight!
- Ready For Anything will no longer activate on maimed aliens - Half bug fix, half feature change: it's more intuitive this way
- Ammo counts for weapons are now displayed in a graphical bar
- Reaction Fire will no longer trigger if the unit that could reaction fire is stealthed/concealed/hidden - Prevents abilities like CCS or OW from breaking, QoL
- Exalt Data Recovery missions increase in difficulty a little slower as the campaign progresses - Makes them a little less challenging as the campaign progresses
- Any unit that moves (including those that are flushed) have overwatch removed - Accommodates for flush nerf and some odd buggy situations
Perks:
- Squadsight now allows units to target enemies around obstacles more easily - For example: a tree will not block as much of the view as much for a squadsight unit as it would a normal unit
- Insentient Crush deals 40% of max HP in HP loss to SHIVs (from 20%) - Prevents soloing etherals with SHIVs
- Flush now only causes units in cover to move, including hunkered units - Prevents the annoying situations where you move units that you don't want to move - QoL
- Flush no longer clears enemy overwatch (though it will clear if the unit moves), but no longer has a cooldown (from 1 turn cooldown) and has no crit malus (from -50 crit) - Nerf to the predictability OW clearing capability and buff to it's damage output
- Rapid Fire now grants -5 aim per tile away (from -30 aim always) - Buff to closed range use, nerf to long range use
- Opportunist now grants reaction shots from sniper and strike rifles +35% weapon damage - Buff to the strength of reaction shots on the sniper with opportunist
- Close Encounters now grants 10 crit resist for each tile closer than 10 (from 5% chance of graze for each tile closer than 10) as well as immunity to reaction fire within 4 tiles - More predictable and prevents the high crit damage which is really what can be fatal to CE units that get too close, also makes assaults great at dealing with outsiders helping further carve out a niche for them
- Sprinter now grants immunity to being pinned (from suppression) - Makes suppression a lot less effective at controlling alien leaders
- Suppression has 1 turn cooldown (from 2 turns) - Not needed with it not being as strong against leaders
- Sapper no longer 'clears enemy overwatch' as all explosives now do this but instead grants explosives the ability to ignore flat DR - Tweak to more damaging role
- In The Zone no longer has a restriction on the number of extra shots per turn - Buff to ITZ builds
- Growth (on outsiders) no longer increases DR - Makes large outsiders MUCH more managable
- Camaraderie now makes Commanding Officer grant double the chance for end-in-idle actions of squadmates in vision to cost 0 AP - alteration as the stacking of it wasn't ideal as it was often either useless or overpowered
- Combined arms grants +1 damage (from +2) - Was too strong at 2, balance on the tree
- All officer perks now grant an attribute bonus when selected (see wiki or in game for detail) - Makes officers much stronger and more comparable to psi/gene/MEC
- Onslaught now only grants the KSM a free action (from both KSM and Flamethrower) - Flamethrower was too strong used back to back
- Sentry grants 65% DR (from 50%) but no longer grants additional ammo - Focus more on the resiliency role of the perk
- Carbines now gain +10 aim and +10 defense (for ballistic/laser), +15 aim/defense (for gauss/pulse), and +20 aim/defense (for plasma) - Buff to progression of carbine aims
- Sniper Rifles now have 2/2/3/3/4 penetration (from 1) - Buff to armor piercing capability of sniper rifles
- Blaster Launcher range to 12 tiles (from 14) - Toned back in strength due to earlier access
- Plasma Reflex Cannon (shotgun) grants the perk Penetrator (from +2 damage against targets within 4 tiles) - Buffed
- Plasma Carbine grants biologic shredder (from bonus defense) - Buffed and accommodates for carbine changes
- Mayhem Suppression bonuses are now 2/2/3/3/4 (from 2/2/4/4/6) - Fix of strength of mayhem suppression so that it doesn't accelerate past normal damage levels (fixed at 50% of base damage)
- Plasma Dragon (LMG) grants 6 damage mayhem suppression (from 8) - Nerfed to accommodate toned back mayhem suppresison damage
- MEC Grenade Launcher range to 12 (from 10) and damage to 10 (from 8) - Boost to reach and damage for MEC grenades
XCOM:
- Hover SHIV aim and defense bonus to 20/20 (from 30/30) - Tone back in strength as they are quite strong
Aliens:
- Exalt Snipers and Elite Exalt Snipers have 10 less aim and half as much health - Makes them much easier to deal with
- Exalt Operatives and Elite Exalt Operatives have 5 less aim - Slightly less offensive punch
- Muton Elite and Heavy Floater pods will more likely consist of regular mutons and floaters (as oppossed to full pods of muton elites or heavy floaters) - Note: this is MORE likely, not guaranteed
- Sectopod aim to 90 (from 100) and base damage (for cluster bombs and main cannon) to 14 (from 16) - Reduces damage output, makes it a little less oppressive end game
- Ethereal will to 130 (from 160) - Lowers it's damage output and overpower strength, makes it a little less oppressive end game
- Chryssalid defense to 50 (from 40) and base HP to 8 (from 6) - Increase in terror mission difficulty
- Chryssalids gain 6 HP every alien level upgrade (from 4) and 2 mobility (from 1.5) and 4 damage (from 3) - Increase in later game difficulty
- Zombies gain 7 HP every alien level upgrade (from 5) and 3 damage (from 2) - Increase in later game difficulty
- Cyberdiscs deal 12 base damage (from 10) and 3 damage per level upgrade (from 2) - makes them a little more threatening
- Floaters gain +2 base HP, Heavy Floaters gain +6 base HP - Increase in overall difficulty/resiliency of these enemy types
- Floater/Heavy Floater aim to 60/70 (from 55/65) - Slight increase in offensive strength
- Heavy Floater base DR to 3 (from 2) and gain 1 DR per alien level upgrade (from 0.8) - Increase in resiliency
- Muton Elite base DR to 3 (from 2) and gain 1 DR per alien level upgrade (from 0.8) - Increase in resiliency
- Outsiders gain 1 DR per level upgrade (from 0.5) - Accommodates for growth not increasing DR at all
- Thinmen mobility to 9.3 (from 10) but gain 1.3 mobility per AL upgrade (from 0.6 mobility per AL upgrade) - buff to the strength of later game thinmen
- Seekers gain 1 damage per AL upgrade (from 0.5) and 4 HP per AL ugprade (from 2) and 1.3 mobility be AL upgrade (from 0.6) and 0.5 DR per AL upgrade (from 0) - buff to the strength of later game seekers
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where collateral damage was doing 1 damage
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm wasn't correctly getting interrupted from concussion grenades
- Fixed a bug where Muton leaders did not show that they had Shred in their F1 panel
- Fixed a bug that was causing lag during the alien turn (thanks szmind!)
- Fixed a bug where scavenging after UFOs was not adjusting for campaign length
- Fixed a bug where One For All would not cancel if a unit went on overwatch
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would go on overwatch when they had not be activated yet through squadsight
- Maybe fixed a bug where staggered alien units would overwatch at the end of their turn
- Fixed a bug where daredevils was giving 40% less damage during combat patrols (instead of 50% less)
- Fixed a bug where corrosion would not trigger on panicked units
- Fixed a bug where Mecthoid non-leaders would sometimes get Absorption Fields
- Maybe fixed a bug where panicked exalt units could still enter overwatch
- Fixed a bug whre the remaining ammo count on enemies would not always be accurate - Thanks to szmind for this one
- Fixed a bug where non-ironman games were being recorded as ironman
- Fixed a bug where maimed units could be left on Overwatch
- Fixed a bug where units on Overwatch that scampered could reenter overwatch
- Fixed a bug where stagger could still sometimes cancel actions mid-action
- Maybe fixed a bug where exalt radar hacks would provide data on covert operation
- Fixed a bug where retired soldiers were only granted 40% more xp on Special Warfare School when it should have been 60%
- Fixed a bug where Psionic abilities triggering reaction fire with psi mastery against Reactive Targeting Sensors
- Typos
Version 1.35.16
LW Rebalance v1.36.16
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a fatal crash on start up
- Typos
Version 1.35.06
LW Rebalance v1.35.06
Bug Fixes:
- Hopefully fixed a bug where Stagger wouldn't properly remove AP from some units
- Fixed a bug where Exalt units would sometimes overwatch while panicked
- Fixed a bug where corrosion cleared would appear on all medikit uses
- Fixed a bug where corrosion could do more than 1 damage
Version 1.35.05
LW Rebalance v1.35.05
Strategic:
- Exalt spawn with 2 less initial soldiers on data recovery missions - Makes those missions easier
- Special Warfare School provides a 70% discount (from 95%) on OTS projects but also grants 60% more experience from retired soldiers - buffed, accommodates new retired mechanic
- Ancient Artifacts starts with an Illuminator Gunsight, Cognitive Enhancer, and Neuroregulator (from 2 Illuminator Gunsights) - Buffed
- Meld cost significantly increased on genetic modifications - They were too cheap for how strong they are
Tactical:
- Countercharge no longer displays a % chance of success when activating - It wasn't possible to get the accurate number based on the way the mechanic works without it bugging out (false popups) or being inaccurate without using a lot of processing power
- You can now see crit values in the F1 display (small number beside the aim) - QoL
- Aliens now have armor HP - works with new acid (corrosion) mechanics
- Red Fog now only occurs on base HP (it has no effect if the soldier has only lost armor HP) - QoL, makes sense, feels cool
New Acid Mechanics:
- Corrosion lasts 6 turns - Makes it temporary
- Corroded units lose 1 armor HP at the beginning of each turn - Makes it still quite impactful
- Corrosion can no longer be removed while the unit is in an acid cloud - Always should have worked this way
- Light 'em up grants +1 damage AND +10 crit for each time their target has been damaged (from just +1 damage) - Buff to the perk and the crit rates on various shooters
- Killer Instinct grants the full +50 crit damage to laser/pulse weapons (from just +25 to laser/pulse) - Boost to laser/pulse crit weaponry
- Sentry only grants 50% DR on the first hit when on OW (from just anytime on OW) - Prevents unintended situations where the unit cannot effectively discharge overwatch and Sentry acts as permanent +50% DR
- Close Encounters grants a 5% chance for graze per tile closer than 10 (from 10%) - Nerfed
Equipment:
- Beam Laser and Pulse Laser weapon tiers grant +10 aim (from +5 aim) - Boost to laser and pulse weapons
- Both laser/pulse pistols gain +10 crit - Accommodation for not gaining aim
- Cognitive Enhancer provides +35% xp (from +50%) - Toned back slightly
XCOM:
- Reworked Rocketeer perk tree - see Perk Tree Image
Aliens:
- Slight improvement in overall alien AI - QoL
- Exalt Snipers no longer have Impact - Tones them back slightly
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where elerium reward was 50% more than intended on gangplank/furies
- Fixed a bug where melee attacks were acting as shots for abilities like CST, VPT, graze, etc.
- Fixed a bug where a visual for countercharge would occur when no actual countercharge attack would trigger
- Fixed a visual bug where graze was showing more damage than was actually done
- Fixed a bug where genetically modified soldiers could become officers
- Fixed a bug where you couldn't use combat patrols if you had the required credits
- Fixed a bug where the Stagger chances were not being displayed correctly (despite working correctly)
- Fixed a bug where the Javelin rocket indicator would suggest that it did not do damage around cover
- Typos
LW Rebalance v1.35.06
Bug Fixes:
- Hopefully fixed a bug where Stagger wouldn't properly remove AP from some units
- Fixed a bug where Exalt units would sometimes overwatch while panicked
- Fixed a bug where corrosion cleared would appear on all medikit uses
- Fixed a bug where corrosion could do more than 1 damage
Version 1.35.04
LW Rebalance v1.35.04
Strategic:
- Architects of the Future reduces cost and upkeep of labs/workshops by 65% (from 50%) - Buffed, increases cash flow for campaigns that capture Africa, helps accommodate for low credit values on the countries
- Starting credits increased by 100/150 for all South American/African country starts - Helps increase available cash for weaker continents
Tactical:
- Lowered Hover SHIV volume more - QoL
- Reinforcements on Exalt covert operative missions occur 1 turn earlier - Slight increase in engagement
Perks:
- Dual Heart grants 15% throw range (from 20%) - Slight tone back
- Bombard grants 25% throw range (from 30%) - Slight tone back
- Fragmentation grants a 30% chance for double damage (from 20%) - Buffed
- Flush grants +20 aim (from +30) - It was a little too strong, especially with the gene mod
- Extra Conditioning grants +2HP (from +1) but no longer grants +10% DR - simplification of the perk as the small DR wasn't doing much
- Grit grants 15% base DR (from 10% base DR) - Buffed
- Suppression is on a 2 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - Tone back of gunners, and control on aliens, especially the bullet wizard
Equipment:
- LMG ammo to 5 (from 4) - Slight buff, helps offset suppression nerf and makes the LMG slightly more competitive for later game non-bullet wizard builds
Version 1.35.03
LW Rebalance v1.35.03
Aliens:
- Tweaked Exalt and their perks slightly
Bug Fixes:
- Removed the aim/crit chance displays - it would cause some games not to load and those that did to be quite laggy and sometimes cause problems like step out bugs (on regular LW it might work, but LWR has a lot of extra code so calculating and displaying those hit chances is too intensive for the engine)
- Improved some code to make the game a little less laggy
- Fixed a bug where Meld healing required 120 meld in order to be able to use it (where it should only be 50)
- Fixed a bug where the countercharge popup % chance was not always accurate
- Fixed a bug where Gangplank and Furies were awarding more alloys than intended
Version 1.35.02
LW Rebalance v1.35.02
Strategic:
- Xenoneurology research time to 10 (from 80) - Slowed down research too much at 80 and felt bad at a longer research since it grants very little now
- 2nd wave option strict screening grants every soldier 38 will (from 35) (so a total of +8) - When the minimum will was raised to 20 (from 5) there was no accommodation for strict screening
- Every month the cost of soldiers increases by 10, everytime a soldier, SHIV, or pilot dies the cost of soldiers decreases by 10, the lowest soldier cost can go is 70 - Makes losing soldiers easier to replace
- Any soldier who enters a mission with fatigue will have that fatigue doubled after finishing the mission (does not affect fatigue accumulated on the mission, just previous fatigue) - Discourages fatigue stacking, especially on officers
Tactical:
- The enemy ammo count is now always available in the F1 view - Good players are able to check the wiki for ammo amounts, then count ammo used; and for verisimilitude soldiers would be able to do the same. Since the former is tedious and the later is reasonable, ammo counts will now be displayed.
- AP Pips of XCOM units will now highlight to help identify characters: Purple = Psionic, Yellow = Commander, Green = Genetically Modified, Grey = Mechanical (Note: danger of OW fire and enrage will overwrite these) - QoL
- Hit and crit chances are always displayed on the alien HUD icons - QoL (thanks to szmind for the great idea and code help)
- Commanding officer's health bar no longer turns yellow - Not needed with the new AP pips
- Turning AP pips yellow after 1 action no longer occurs - Would get confusing with new AP pip indentification system
- Turned up the early difficulty up on both exalt missions - They were a little too easy
Perks:
- Critical System Targeting no longer works with the Arc Rifle or Arc Pistol and no longer gains an additional +50 crit vs fliers - The Arc equipment was designed to grant anti-mechanical capabilities to squads that didn't have enough, not to amplify squads that did, this helps achieve that end. The extra crit against fliers made the perk a little too strong on the jaeger due to it's high damage output capitalizing on the +40% damage.
- Command (from Officers) is now a free action - Large buff, allowing them to chain commands and also makes picking the officer less build dependent
- Tactical Brilliance no longer has a chance to make command a free action - As it always is now
Equipment:
- Sawed-off Shotgun gains +40 crit - Buffed, makes it more reliable for critting
- Stun Rifle now maims targets when they are at or below half health (from just below half health) - QoL, prevents situations where you think it should get maimed and doesn't
- Grenade Launcher no longer requires Gauss Weapons to unlock - Brings it on much earlier
- Motion Tracker now has 2 base charges and also grants the Tracker perk - Makes the item more competitive vs the newer stronger SHIV items and also gives another unit capable of acting as anti-seeker and another unit capable of acting as a scout
- Arc Pistol alloy cost to 0 (from 2) - Makes sense
XCOM:
- Original SHIV armor HP to 12 (from 8) - Helps the SHIV last longer in the early game
Aliens:
- All Cyberdiscs get Penetrator (from just cyberdisc leaders) - Since they will no longer come in pods of all dics, their main cannon should pack a punch, and the reduction in it's damage has made it a little weaker than intended
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where mayhem would grant 2 separate suppression abilities on units with suppression
- Fixed a bug where CE was granting graze too often still
- Fixed a bug where Mechtoids were still getting sentinel Opportunist
- Fixed a bug where snapshot was not working correctly with Exalt overwatch
- Fixed a bug where mayhem suppression was doign too much damage on laser/pulse
- Typos
Version 1.35.01
LW Rebalance v1.35.01
Strategic:
- Genetically Modified Psionics renamed to Super Soldiers - Fixes a spacing issue
- Consistent Fatigue is now 4 days (from 6) - Accommodation for new lower fatigue
Perks:
- Critical System Targeting grants +40% damage (from +20%) - I was off and miscalculating it's strength and after analysis I believe it's more reasonably balanced with this change
- Collateral damage now deals 15% weapon damage per ammo spent (from 50% weapon damage) - Makes additional ammo more valuable on the Shogun
- Secondary Heart renamed to Dual Heart and also increases throw range by 20% - Buff to genetic modification for support classes and grenadiers
- Predictive Tracking also allows Flush and suppression shots to deal 100% weapon damage (instead of 50% weapon damage) - Buff to gene mods on the gunner
- Adaptive Bone Marrow decreases injury times by 40% (from 25%) - Buffed gene mods on tanks
- Inner Fire also increases throw range by 10% - Buff to psionic supports and grenadiers
- Psychokinetic Strike to 3 turn cooldown (from 4) - Buffed for level balance
- Mind Merge grants +40 DR, +40% mobility and -40% scatter to the target (from 25 of each) - Buff to psionics
Equipment:
- Stun Rifle is unlocked by Xenobiology (from Xenoneurology) - Allows earlier access to captures without making xenoneurology so mandatory so early
- Elerium emitter now has 5 charges (from 2) and 0 mobility (from -0.6) - Buffed for longer missions
- Aurora and Vortex armor now both grant +2 mobility (from +1.3) - Buff to psionics in general
Aliens:
- Mecthoids replace Sentinel + Opportunist with Sentry - Makes them more defensive and less offensive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Close Encounters was granting 100% chance for graze at all ranges
- Fixed a bug where soldier costs were left at 120 inadvertently (instead of 140 as intended)
- Fixed a bug where all research times were inadvertently increased by 15%
Version 1.35.00
LW Rebalance v1.35.00
Strategic:
- Furies and Gangplank now both reward 90-110 alloys and 1-2 UFO Power Cylinders - Makes the rewards more reasonable and set
- Advanced Repair is a 35% reduction in repair time (from 30%) - Buffed, helps with later game SHIVs, MECs, and the air game
- Cost for hiring soldiers increased to 140 (from 80) - Accomodates for decreased fatigue time and less soldiers neccessary (you still acquire soldiers through the game)
- Meld sell cost reduced to 3 (from 4) - Decreases the use of it as a cash substitute, encourages use of things that use meld (meld healing, MECs, gene mods, equipment, rushing, etc.)
- Augmentation of a soldier to a MEC resets the mission count - Allows older soldiers to become MECs without feeling like they are so useless due to fatigue
- 2nd Wave Option "Mind Hates Matter" changed to "Genetically Modified Psionics" - Allows psionic Soldiers to receive genetic modifications and vice versa
- Plasma II UFO Air Weapon damage/cooldown to 400/0.5s (from 1500/2s) - Slight increase in damage per second, but massive decrease in per hit damage so it makes it impossible to one shot an interceptor from full HP - Helps reduce RNG
- LMEC3 and HMEC3 research time to 250 (from 90), Xenoneurology research time to 80 (from 25), all interrogation times doubled - Makes research acquisition more challenging, encourages building of more labs
- Armored Fighters foundry project costs 550 credits (from 200) - Makes it more difficult to get online as early
Start Bonuses:
- Daredevils now triples the effect of combat patrols - Boost to it's strength for balance
- We Have Ways reduces autopsy and interrogation times by 65% (from 80%) - Nerf to accommodate increased interrogation times
- Foreign Legion starts with 12 extra soldiers (from 20) - Accommodates for decreased barracks sizes
- Advanced Preparation starts with 5 extra soldiers (from 8) - Accommodates for decreased barracks sizes
- Legacy of Uxmul grants +10 bonus will for the purposes of psionic training (from +8) - Buffed due to the fact that psi is a mutually exclusive path for soldiers now
Soldier Upgrades:
- Augmentation, promotion to officer, psionic training, and genetic modification now represent 4 different 'paths' that a soldier can take and each are mutually exclusive to each other (meaning you can only pick 1 for each soldier) - Lowers the ability of biosoldiers to become such super soldiers, increases distinction of soldiers
New Meld Heal Mechanic:
- Meld healing now costs only 50 meld (from 120) but effectiveness decreases from 80% by the formula: 80/(1+uses) - Makes it much more reasonable to use a few times on the majority of your soldiers but much less reasonable to use more than a few
New Retirement Mechanic:
- Retiring a soldier now sends them to the OTS, and for every 10 missions (modified by campaign length) that retired soldiers have accumulated in the OTS, every active soldier in the barracks gains +1xp/day - Significant buff to the effect, but more delayed effect
Tactical:
- Fatigue is now 8 hours per turn (from 12 hours per turn) - Significant reduction in fatigue accumulation resulting in a smaller barracks size overall
- Cyberdisc pods will no longer spawn full pods of cyberdiscs - Was too much of a difficulty spike to fight against
- Experience gained for missions/long missions/kills reduced to 70/100/4 (from 100/140/5) - Accommodates for lower fatigue accumulation to not overpower the smaller barracks
- The Temple ship now grants 8/9/10/11 soldier capacity for impossible/brutal/classic/normal (from 9) and grants +1 soldier capacity at 5 countries only (from an additional at 5 and 10 countries) - Makes the mission significantly easier on easier difficulties and slightly harder on impossible with less dependency of number of countries beyond 5
- The Bonus chance for +1 leader level (and thus possible max level leaders) on Terror Missions, Alien Base Assaults, and the Temple Ship is now 20/40/60/80% on normal/classic/brutal/impossible (from just 50% always) - Makes the challenging enemies more common on higher difficulties and less common on lower difficulties
- The volunteer now gains Distortion - Massive boost to the strength of your squad on the temple ship, makes it a lot easier and feels cool to not have to always hide the volunteer
- Cash rewards for destroying UFOs mid-air increased 5x to make destroying have some unique advantages (in terms of additional cash flow) - Helps make it feel less frustrating if you miss out on a crashed UFO, overall credit boost
Exalt Rework:
- Covert Operative Missions:
- - The number of XCOM members allowed is 3 - Results in 3 + 1 (covert op) = 4 on field
- - The missions start with 2 small exalt pods
- - Approaching or activating relays no longer has any effect on triggering reinforcements - Means there is no gaming around feeling like it's bad to get close to relays
- - The first set of exalt reinforcements now arrive on turn 6/7/8/9 (on impossible/brutal/classic/normal) and will reinforce again every 3 turns
- - Each time exalt sends in reinforcements there will be an additional set (e.g. for impossible: 1 set on turn 6, 2 sets on turn 9, 3 sets on turn 12, 4 sets on turn 15, and 5 sets on turn 18)
- - Reinforcements will stop completely if you make it to turn 24
- - Mission success is extraction of data from 3 towers (2nd will always fail) and extraction of the covert operative - The reasons for the 2nd tower fail are due to coding limitations
- Data Recovery Missions:
- - The number of XCOM members allowed is 5 (from 6) - Results in 5 + 1 (covert op) = 6 on field
- - The missions start with 2 medium exalt pods
- - Reinforcements occur every 2 turns starting on the 3rd-4th turn and will occur 3 times
- - Upgraded AI: Exalt on this mission will be half as likely to try to capture data devices (thus, more likely to engage XCOM) - Reduces the amount of derping by Exalt (note: I did not say eliminates derping, just reduces it)
- - Mission success is protection of one or both of the data areas and elimination of all exalt
- All Exalt soldiers are re-designed, are stronger (as you'll be fighting significantly less), and more closely resemble their XCOM counterparts - See the wiki (aliens section) for more details
- Elite Exalt are now more like mirrors of their non-elite versions except with enhanced stats and gene mods
Perks:
- Sentry now grants +50% DR when overwatching and +2 ammo as well - Buffed, makes it better at tanking a single shot
- Cover Tenacity grants 3% DR per activated alien (from 4%) - Slight nerf
- Hit and Run only works on damaged units (from damaged, suppressed, or disorientated) - Limits the use a little more
- Critical System Targeting grants +20% damage (from +30%) - More focus on the crit aspect, tone back in strength
- Close Encounters grants a 10% chance for every tile closer than 10 to have shots graze (from 50% of shots within 10 tiles) - The range felt too large (as it wasn't really 'close' at 10 tiles), this makes the range feel more important and gives higher consistency at point blank
- Transform (Closed state) grants cyberdiscs 5 DR (from 4) - slight buff to resiliency when closed
- 2 New Alien Perks: Hive Mind and Eagle Eye: Spotters for this unit can spot targets for the purpose of squadsight regardless of their AP - The AI simply cannot effectively use squadsight otherwise
- Blood Call no longer grants double mobility but instead grants +3 flat DR and only lasts 2 turns (from 3) - more fitting for the ability, prevents out of line of sight charges from berserkers
- Distortion grants +30 defense to surrounding units in cover (from +50) and removes all DR from the user - Slight tone back so it's not as mandatory to kill the distorting unit first, prevents abuse on the volunteer and helps make sectoid commanders in cover not as hard to kill from range
- Inner Fire now also grants +1 DR - overall strength boost, buff to psionic tanks, keeps them competitive vs genetically modified tanks
- Telekinetic Field grants 40 Def (from 30) - Buffed
- Sapper now upgrades explosives to clear OW on any unit they damage - Buffed so that it's not so unidirectional in it's role
- Shock-Absorbent Armor grants +5% DR per tile closer than 10 tiles (from +2% DR per tile closer than 15 tiles) - Buffed but closer range
- Laser SHIV weapons, SAWs, and LMGs no longer upgrade mayhem suppression and pulse versions only upgrade mayhem suppression to 4 damage (from 5) - Tone back on pulse/laser mayhem suppression weapons
- Conduit grants +30% DR when in cover (from +20%) and has a 20% chance to grant a free action (from 10%) - Significant buff for most psionics, buff to psionic tanks, keeps them competitive vs genetically modified tanks
- MiNE Launcher, Grenade Launcher, and Restorative Mists can only be equipped once per MEC - Encourages use of multiple different weapons for more diverse gameplay (similar to biologic class items)
- AutoSentry Turret grants Sentry (from CCS) - Buff for another way for SHIVs to tank (the first shot) as CCS was a little too slow on them, gives them a nice ammo boost as well
- Adaptive Tracking Pod and Targeting Motor aim to +10 (from +15) - Balance vs other modules
- Shielding Pod cost reduced to 25% of it's previous cost - Makes it much easier to bring online, makes SHIVs tankier earlier to help keep the relevant before alloy SHIVs
- Shogun perk tree and base stats rework - See Perk Tree Image
Aliens:
- All non-exalt aliens with squadsight gain either Hive Mind - Improved AI
- All exalt snipers gain Eagle Eye - Improved AI
- Aliens with AP discounting actions will now act much more appropriately with them - Improved AI
- Cyberdisc base HP to 22 (from 18) - Buffed to accommodate for fewer possible in a pod
- Floater/Heavy Floater will to 10/20 (from 15/40) - Makes them more suceptible to XCOM psionics
- Mechtoid will to 25 (from 40) - Makes them more suceptible to XCOM psionics
- Muton Berserker will to 10 (from 20) - Makes them more suceptible to XCOM psionics
- Sectoids gain 10 will per alien level upgrade (from 14) - Lowers later game sectoid will strength
- Seekers gain 2 HP per alien level up (from 3), Seeker leaders gain half as much HP with each level up, but seeker leaders all gain tactical mobility - Makes them less about being a damage sponge but the leaders compensate by being a little harder to hit
- Thinmen gain 10 aim and 20 crit per alien level (from 20 aim and 10 crit) - Slight tone back on hitting capabilities
- Thinmen mobility to 10 (from 11.3) - Helps with preventing extreme range flanks and negating the effectiveness of cover vs these units
- Mechtoids and Sectopods only gain absorption fields if they are leaders but gain +1 and +2 flat DR - Makes high damage weapons and penetration more effective against them
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD infinite loop that would occur when alien reinforcements spawned in odd positions
- Fixed some bugs with combat patrol acting wonky (too much cost, wrong damaged time display on different campaign lengths, and sometimes not able to be activated)
- Fixed a bug where the volunteer would not have access to psychokinetic strike
- Fixed a bug (I think?) where exalt elite would spawn too early on some missions
- Fixed an old rare LW 1.0 CTD that would occur when trying to enter specific Exalt missions
- Fixed a bug where smoke/hunker/steadfast were not granting defense vs psychic storm
- Fixed a bug where countercharge was activating based off of base will units entered the mission with and not their current active will
- Fixed a bug where the Targeting Motor was not granting its penetration
- Fixed a bug where SHIV Advancements II was not granting shredder
- Fixed a bug where AP discounting actions could occur on some reaction shots (though it did nothing)
- Typos
Version 1.34.17
LW Rebalance v1.34.17
Strategic:
- Robotics start to +12 aim for SHIVs/MECs (from +16) and moved to Australia - Nerfed and moved to something further from Ghost in the Machine
- Abductions now have 12 hour times to respond but after completing one the others disappear - makes having them automatically eliminated due to time constraints not a problem anymore - QoL
- Council Missions have 2 hour times to respond (from 1.5 hours) - makes it easier to have the 1 hour warning trigger - QoL
Air Game:
- Scout HP to 600 (from 1000) but gains 600 HP per alien level (from 500) - Makes earlier scouts easier to down
- The 2nd and 3rd UFOs on all recon missions will always be Raiders (players will still have the 1 guaranteed scout in a country with coverage) - increased representation of raiders, reduce crashed scout missions
- Scout UFO Missions renamed to Recon UFO Missions - Helps prevent confusion with the actual Scout UFO
- Combat Patrol rework:
- No longer affects alien research
- Initial cost 50 (from 100)
- Cost still decreases by 50 each month but down to a minimum of 50 (from a minimum of 100)
- Cost increases by 10 x the current alien level (from just always 100) (e.g. so on alien level 3 each combat patrol increases the cost of the next combat patrol by 30 credits)
- Overall Result: Combat Patrols are a lot more affordable, especially early game, but are mostly just used for panic instead of lowering alien research/level
Tactical:
- Scouts now have command crews of 2 which upgrades to 3 outsiders (from 1 that upgrades to 2) - Increased difficulty of scouts. Reasonable considering the first downed scout can have multiple specialists attacking it now.
- Raiders now have command crews of 4-5 outsiders (from 3-4) - Increased difficulty of raiders
- Covert op missions have ~15% less (on top of the previous decrease) rate of reinforcements - Makes it slightly easier to push through
- Covert op and data recovery exalt missions start with ~20% less soldiers - Makes them slightly easier off the bat
- Number of drop-ins on council missions reduced by ~33% - Makes them a lot easier to deal with
- Flame damage (from the flame thrower) is no longer affected by DR - Buff to the flamethrower's consistency and damage output
Alien Pod Compositions:
- The following changes are to increase consistency of mid and especially later game missions:
- Sectoid pods will stop spawning when Sectoid Commander Pods fully spawn
- Drone pods will stop spawning when Mecthoid Pods fully spawn
- Muton pods will stop spawning as Muton Elite pods emerge
- Floater pods will stop spawning as Heavy Floater pods emerge
Perks:
- Countercharge now does 3 + PsiRank/2 damage (from 3 + PsiRank damage) and trigger rate back to will/5 - Lowers the upper damage limits so it's not so much stronger later game and reduces overall occurrance
- Grenadier grants +10% throw range - General buff to grenade builds
- Bombard increases throw range by 30% (from 35%) - Slight tone back... It got more of a buff from the grenadier throw range boost and was a little strong
- Close Encounters no longer grants 40% DR to units within 4 tiles but instead causes 50% of all shots within 10 tiles to graze, dealing only half of their original damage - Buff to Assault and medic tank's ability to tank up close and prevents it from working against melee attacks and explosives
- Disabling Shot aim malus to -40 (from -60) - Makes it much more reasonable to use
Equipment:
- Cost of Aegis and Banshee armor lowered by ~50% - Makes them more reasonably attainable
- Shotguns have 4 ammo (from 3) - Encourages increased use of short range weapons
- Arc Rifle and Arc Pistol only grant their pen vs mechanical units - As it was always intended
- Arc Pistol penetration to 2 (from 4) - Toned back
- SMG crit to 30 (from 40) - Toned back
XCOM:
- Engineer swaps Danger Zone for Tandem Warheads - Slight buff to engineer grenadier
Aliens:
- Thinmen now gain 2 damage every 2nd alien level (from 1), 20 crit (from 10), and 4 HP (from 3) - Increased strength of mid to late game thinmen
- Thinmen leaders gain 2/3/4/5 damage for each leader upgrade (from 2/1/2/2) - Increased threat to mid to late game thinmen leaders
- Thinmen level 6 and 9 leaders gain indomitable - Increased resiliency to late game thinmen leaders
- Chryssalid base damage to 7 (from 6) - Slight increase to their damage output
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where gentle aliens and elite aliens second wave options were not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where biological and mechanical shredder were applying to non-shot abilities
- Fixed some missing perks in the F1 panel on exalt
- Typos
Version 1.34.16
LW Rebalance v1.34.16
Strategic:
- SHIV Advancements I and II require half as many weapon fragments - Makes them more accessible
- SHIV Advancements II grants Shredder (from Brawler) - Significant buff to mid and late game utility of SHIVs
- Modified the XCOM Base Defense to not require certain aggression and resource limits so that it will always occur in campaigns (as it could rarely not occur) - Makes campaigns feel more complete
Tactical:
- Countercharge now displays a % chance - QoL
- VIPs mobility to 125% (from 150%) - They were slightly too quick, the goal was to encourage early evacuation, not speed-run single turn missions
- Going on overwatch when in One For All now breaks One For All (instead of leaving the unit in OFA with no ability to overwatch) - QoL
Perks:
- Reactive Targeting Sensors now automatically enters One For All after activating but only grants +30 aim (from +50) - Tweak/buff to the perk
- Overpower minimum effect increased to 10% (from 5%) - Makes it so Berserker overpower isn't so insignificant
- Rapid Reaction renamed to Sentry: grants only 2 reaction shots (from 3) but +40% DR when on OW - It was common to not get all 3 reaction shots off anyway so this not only buffs it, but also make it synergize much better with RTS. Now Sentinel is the double shot damage reaction perk and Sentry is the double shot tank perk.
- Ready For Anything no longer grants an aim bonus (from +10) - Simplification of the ability and tone back of multi-action perk strength of RfA
Equipment:
- Incerator Module damage to +7 (from +6) - buffed
- Flamethrower damage to 7 (from 6) - buffed
XCOM:
- New Goliath Perk Tree - makes CPL level more competitive while not overpowering the SGT level
Aliens:
- Floater Leaders and Heavy Floaters have gained Sentry instead of Rapid Reaction - Obvious, but I should put this note to make others understand it's intentional
- Cyberdisc HP to 18 (from 14) - Were slightly too easy for enemies
- Heavy Floater HP to 14 (form 18) - Accommodates for new Sentry perk
Equipment:
- Elerium cost of Pulse weapons reduced
- Adaptive Tracking Pod grants SHIVs +15 aim (from +10 aim) and Sharpshooter(from Predictive Tracking) - Significant buff to offensive use of SHIVs
- Smartshell Pod grants SHIVs +20 aim (from +10 aim) - Significant buff to offensive use of SHIVs
- Targeting Motor grants SHIVs +15 aim (from +10 aim) and +1 penetration - Significant buff to offensive use of SHIVs
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the meld sell price was still sometimes randomized
- Fixed a bug where sometimes height aim and defense bonuses would be incorrect for a reason I still don't understand =P
- Fixed a bug where the Close Combat Specialist range indicator wouldn't show properly on units with Run and Gun
- Fixed a bug where double tap that could not activate the 2nd shot would not allow for the unit to be a spotter
- Typos
Version 1.34.15
LW Rebalance v1.34.15
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the engineers didn't actually swap CST for BeO
- Fixed a CTD when access items in the strategic layer
Version 1.34.14
LW Rebalance v1.34.14
Strategic:
- Meld prices no longer fluctuate in the Grey Market - Was too much of a resource for players to leave to RNG
Perks:
- Hit and Run deals +35% bonus weapon damage (from +50%) - Slight tone back, it wasn't intended to be so effective as a hard hitting damage dealer, especially with the full mobility. Hit and run was easier to trigger than anticipated.
- First Aid boosts medikits to cost only 1 AP - Buff to the perk
- Close Encounters grants 40% DR within 4 tiles (from 30%) - Buff to resiliency during close range combat on assaults and CE medics
- New Perk: Biologic Shredder: Shreds biologic units - for new equipment bonus
- New Perk: Mechanical Shredder: Shreds mechanical units - for new equipment bonus
- Countercharge has a will/4 chance to activate (from will/5) - Slight buff
Equipment:
- Javelin rocket radius to 3 (from 2) - Significant buff to the ease of hitting with the rocket
- Shredder ammo cost to 50 credits (from 120) and 5 alloys (from 20) - Makes it more reasonable to bring online
- Plasma Novagun grants +2 penetration vs mechanical units (from +2 penetration vs all units) - slight tone back
- Plasma Rifle no longer grants +3 damage vs biologic targets but instead grants Biologic Shredder - Buff to the rifle, increased late game access to shredder
- Plasma Battle Rifle no longer grants +5 damage vs targets at full health but instead grants Mechanical Shredder - Buff to the rifle, increased late game access to shredder
XCOM:
- Engineer Perk Tree: Critical System Targeting replaced with Bring 'Em On - CST didn't work well with the engineer's innate pen as it was still low damage, this also helps the DT engineer be relevant when there are no mechanical units
- Engineer base aim to +10 (from +15) - Slight nerf to accommodate for new BeO perk
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where snapshot would not prevent reaction fire triggering from exalt when entering overwatch
- Fixed some bugs on the defense values of elevated position
- Fixed a CTD when shooting from squadsight at a target with multiple spotters
- Typos
Version 1.34.13
LW Rebalance v1.34.13
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppression only worked with 2 AP
- Typos
Version 1.34.12
LW Rebalance v1.34.12
Strategic:
- Phoenix Cannon aim to 30 (from 35) - Makes it slightly less effective
- UFO Scout HP to 1000 (from 800) - makes them slightly harder to take down
- Aircraft Booster Foundry project costs 16 seeker corpses (from 28) - Makes it easier to obtain at a more reasonable time
Start Bonuses:
- Home Country bonus increased to 500 (from 300) - Increased influx of credits to XCOM
- Wealth of Nations bonus grants 10% more credits (from 15%) - Toned back even more
- Kiryu-Kai Commander renamed to Kiryu-Kai Commander"s" and grants 2 GSGT soldiers (from 1 MSGT soldier) - Buffed
- Pax Nigeriana: All non-mechanical units start with +1.3 mobility (from just +0.6 mobility)
- Advanced Conversion: MEC augmentation acts if all soldiers have +3 HP (from +2 HP)
- Bred Tough: All biosoldiers start with +1 DR and +2 HP (from 1 DR)
- Survival Training: All non-mechanical units start with +4HP (from +2HP)
- Per Ardua Ad Astra: All non-mechanical units start with +2 HP, +4 aim, and +4 will (from 1, 2, 3)
- Robotics: +16 aim bonus for new SHIV's and MEC troopers (from +10)
- Special Air Service: All non-mechanical units start with +8 aim (from +5)
- Legacy of Uxmal: 8 bonus will, only for the purposes of psionic training (from 7)
- Jungle Scouts: All non-mechanical units start with +0.6 mobility and +2 HP (from just +1 HP)
- Sandhurst: 20% reduction in fatigue and ranks requires for OTS projects (from 15%)
- Xenologic Remedies to 7/8/9/10x sales (from 8/9/10/11x) - Slight tone down
Tactical:
- Height advantage now grants +5 aim and defense per tile higher (capped at 30 aim/defense) [Flying units always just gain 30 defense] (from +20 flat aim and never defense if you were 3 tiles or more higher) - Makes strategic use of the battlefield and flying more valuable, makes it less frustrating when you are right at the cut-off for height bonuses, feels better even when you get small height bonuses
- The number of aliens on abductions and terror missions no longer increase by 1 every 4 months - Makes these missions a little less difficult at month 4 and especially month 8
- Rocket scatter reduced by 10% - makes rockets a little more accurate
- Shred is 20 + 3x shred damage taken (from 20 + 5x shred damage taken) - Stops it from scaling so heavily into the late game
- Stagger chance is now half as likely to trigger - Makes it a little harder to stagger
Perks:
- Snapshot to 60% chance for a 0 AP action on strike rifles (from 50%) - Support scout and HnR scout feel quite strong and are actually putting the snapshot a little down due to unpredictability, so the goal is to slightly overpower the snapshot but have the drawback be unpredictability
- Bring 'Em On no longer grants an additional damage to reaction shots - Strong enough without the reaction fire buff
- Mayhem grants 65% damage to sniper/strike rifles (from 70%) - Slight tone back
- Rapid Fire has a -30 aim malus (from -50) - Buff to mid-late game assaults
- Impact increases the stagger chance by 3x (from 2x) - Buff due to lower stagger base chances
Equipment:
- Battle Rifle base crit to 20 (from 10) - Slight boost for balance between weapons
- Psi Retaliator grants 40 crit resistance (from 20) - Significant boost to crit resist potential for psionic units
- Extra Conditioning now grants an additional 10% DR - Boost to the resilient nature of the perk, makes it more appealing on tanks
- SMGs can only be equipped by Scouts, Infantry, Assault, Medic, and Engineers - Didn't feel right on some of the other classes (long overdue change)
XCOM:
- Jaeger tree rework (see Perk Tree image) - Brings some key perks online earlier and Bring 'Em On helps define the Jaeger as stronger when there are lots of enemies
- Gunner and Rocketeers gain 4 base HP (from 3) and Rocketeer base aim to 10 (from 5) - Slight buff to Gunners/Rocketeers/Goliaths
Aliens:
- Floaters, Heavy Floaters, Drones, Seekers, and Cyberdiscs lose 5 aim - Accommodates for height advantage aim boost
- Mutons only upgrade to Rifles at alien level 5 (instead of 3) - Makes them a little less dangerously offensive for the early levels
- Muton Elite HP to 24 (from 30) and Heavy Floater HP to 18 (from 22) - Makes them less resilient
- Sectoid Commanders now all have Awareness (+20 def) but their HP is 8 (from 16) - Makes it easier to kill them quickly if you can accommodate for their extra defense (e.g. flank shots or KSM or explosives or countercharge, etc.)
- Sectopods no longer have RTS except for Sectopod lvl 9 leaders - It felt too strong on the majority of sectopods to have such resiliency to being attacked
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where panic reduction could pass 99% on council requests
- Fixed a bug where save games with the 'xenological remedies' starting bonus were not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where the pulse battle rifle and pulse assault rifle had 10 less crit than intended
- Fixed a bug where improved destroyers had 50% less DR than intended
- Fixed many erroneous crit values in descriptions
- Fixed some font display issues
- Typos
Version 1.34.11
LW Rebalance v1.34.11
Strategic:
- Home Continent bonus increased to 300 per month (from 200) - Larger influx of guaranteed credits to XCOM
- Asia Continent bonus increased to 35% (from 25%) - was too weak for a 4 country continent
- Jai Vidwan starts with 50 elerium - bonus to help with early research
- Research Focus moved to a Canadian start (from Indian) - Spreads out the research starts
- Ghost in the Machine only grants 2 extra SHIVs (from 4) but all SHIVs receive +30 aim (from +20) - Boosted as SHIVs can be difficult to use offensively
- NeoPanzers boosted to 70% reduction (from 65%) - Buffed for balance
- Roscosmos start reduces Sat costs by 40% (from 50%) - Slight tone back in strength for balance
- Xenological Remedies now grants different rewards based on difficulty (11,10,9,8x for normal, classic, brutal, impossible) - Makes it useful on lower difficulties as the corpse count was less, slight tone back in strength
- Legacy of Uxmal grants 7 bonus will for the purposes of psionic training only (from 6 bonus will) - buffed for balance
- We Have Ways reduces autopsy/interrogation time by 80% (from 90%) but now also grants the "Elerium Batteries" foundry project - Buffed for balance
- UK Special Air Service grants +5 aim (from +6) - Slight nerf
Perks:
- Ready for Anything aim bonus to 10 aim (from 15) - Nerfed again; it's simply that the extra free action is really powerful, balance b/w the overwatch classes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where units were losing half their flat DR only if they weren't corroded
- Misc fixes
- Typos
Version 1.34.10
LW Rebalance v1.34.10
Strategic:
- The overseer mission has 21 aliens (instead of 27) - Makes it a little easier as it's quite a challenging mission
- UFO shielding now also prevents destruction of UFOs up to June (from March to May) - Prevents destroyed UFOs from impacting campaigns as much in the early to mid game
- New color coding for many descriptions and abilities - Thanks to CptnHappyTimePie for this
Tactical:
- Reduced the reinforcement rate on covert op exalt missions by around 15% - Makes them slightly easier
- Corrossion now only removes half of a unit's flat DR (from all of the unit's flat DR) - Makes flat DR now so poor due to acid
Perks:
- Overpower further reduced to 5% + 1/10th of the will difference (from 10% + 1/10th of the will difference) - Makes it a little less oppressive for an ability that is 'always on'
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic now grant their +2 penetration to explosives as well - Buff to engineer grenadier
- All exalt have 15 less aim and 15 less will - Makes fire fights with exalt more reasonable and psi a little more effective, doesn't reduce the speed at which you kill exalt but it means leaving some alive is not as deadly
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where pscyhokinetic strike was not destroying some cover and was unpredictable: it is now 100% predictable and destroys ALL destructible cover
- Fixed a bug where you could use One For All on scamper
- Fixed a bug where pressing "J" to trigger combat readiness would often not carry over to the next turn
- Typos
Version 1.34.09
LW Rebalance v1.34.09
Tactical:
- The AI will use Psychic Storm less often when out of sight - Minimizes spam from a single unit out of sight
- Spotted and non-spotted aliens heads on the HUD are easier to see - QoL
Perks:
- Mayhem grants 50% weapon damage to grenades (from 35%) - Makes it a little more reasonable to take a grenade on a mayhem sniper/gunner and acts as a slight boost to the infantry grenadier
- Snapshot grants a 15% chance for shots to be a 0 AP action (from 10%) - Slight further buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppression (without mayhem) would sometimes 'hit' and then cause shredder to apply
- Clarified some ability descriptions to make them more intuitive
- Typos
Version 1.34.08
LW Rebalance v1.34.08
Strategy:
- Anti Grav systems requires Heavy Floater Autopsy (from heavy Floater Interrogation) - Allows some of the more fun flying equipment to come online earlier
Perks:
- Overpower is now Will_Difference/10 (from Will_Difference/5) but also works even if the unit with overpower has not been actived - Makes it even less oppressive, but more consistent and not reliant on activations
- Steadfast no longer helps resist overpower - Minor tone back on the ability to passively resist
- Platform Stability now grants its bonus if the soldier has not moved (rather than if the soldier is at 2 AP) - Makes a lot more sense and I can now program in this sort of functionality
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle grants +6/+10 dmg vs mechanicals (from +8/+12) - Slight tone back
- Arc Pistol grants +3/+5 dmg vs mechanicals (from +4/+7) - Slight tone back
XCOM:
- Engineer base aim to +15 (from +10) - Makes it a slightly better shooter
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater base HP to 22 (from 28) - Makes them easier to drop
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Impact was not clearing OW with steadied shots when using In The Zone
Version 1.34.07
LW Rebalance v1.34.07
Behind the Scenes:
- Further optimized some code to reduce sluggishness and lag while playing (and potential CTD from too much code being executed at once) - QoL
- Reduced some log spam as per szmind's recommendations - QoL for coders
Strategic:
- Global Networking sale prices are 30% higher (from 35%) - Was supposed to be 30%
Tactical:
- Spotting now requires the spotter to be to be at 0 AP (from 2 or 0 AP) - Prevents some edge abuse cases, acts as a slight nerf to squadsight
- Non-Spotted units at squadsight are now indicated by a very transparent alien head - QoL
- Steadying a weapon only bypasses cover DR if the unit is at 2 AP - Prevents bullseye from being so effective against units in cover while still being just as effective against flying units or other uncovered units
- Stagger will no longer cancel abilities mid-ability - Prevents bugs, makes it less oppressive
Perks:
- Critical System Targeting grants +100 crit against flying targets (from +50 crit) - Helps offset the innate crit resistance flying mechanicals have
- Snapshot also grants a 10% chance for non-steadied shots to cost 0 AP - Boost to the perk on infantry/shogun
- Overpower's effect reduced by 5% - Makes it a little less oppressive
Equipment:
- Rocket Launchers start with only 1 rocket (from 2) but gain +1 penetration - Buff to the strength of rockets at the cost of their uses (3-5 rockets on an ability you can only use every 3 turns meant 7-13 turns to get them off, and that's if you could spam it -- this was longer than many missions)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Light 'Em Up was working on non-standard shots
- Fixed a bug where spotting aliens in squadsight was not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where mind merge's defense bonus was not being shown in the F1 panel
Version 1.34.06
LW Rebalance v1.34.06
Strategic:
- Meld healing cost reduced to 120 meld (from 200) - Makes it more useful, but still fairly restrictive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where mecthoid drop-ins would sometimes be missing some perks
- Fixed a bug where some interactive devices on DLC missions would say it takes 2 turns to deactivate when they don't
- Fixed a bug where In The Zone was activating with 1 more shot than intended
- Fixed a bug where the game was processing so much code that it would cause a CTD, especially on large missions (base assualt, exalt, crashed UFO) and especially when loading a save or starting or mission
Version 1.34.05
LW Rebalance v1.34.05
Strategic:
- Incursion Strength now ranges from 80 to 130% and # of aliens on missions is no longer affected by alien resources - Makes alien resources specifically a strategic level alteraion and gives more flexibility to the come-back mechanic on incursion strength
- Battleships are 50% less likely to be used for scouting/hunting/bombing missions (on top of the previous 50% decrease) - Gives the player more agency over the strategic game
- Abductions now occur in 2 sets of 2 spaced a day apart (upped to 2 sets of 3 at 6 months in) - Allows players to always deal with 2 abductions and only 2 abductions and have more control over which they deal with, prevents feeling 'abduction flooded' in the late game
- You only have 1.5 hours to complete council and abduction missions (from 2 and 9 hours) - Shorter time but still allows a 1 hour warning for misclicks
- Panic Increases for failed abductions lowered to 2 in the country and 1 in the continent (from 3 and 3) - Accommodates for increased failed abductions
- Brazil and Argentina starting cash to 900 and 800 (from 1200 and 1100) - Accommodates for abduction time not mattering anymore
- New Warfare (Asia coverage bonus) foundry cost reduction to 25% (from 30) - Accommodates for abduction time not mattering anymore
- Air Superiority (North America coverage bonus) airspace cost reduction to 15% (from 20%) - Accommodates for abduction time not mattering anymore
- Repairing items requires 40% of their normal build time (from 80%) - Makes it easier to come back after damaging items
- Decreased the # of exalt on exalt missions slightly - There were a little dense
Tactical:
- Shred is now: Damage received is increased by x% where x is 20 + 5 times shred damage taken (from just 5x all shred damage taken) - makes shred more useful both early game and on first application (is this full circle?)
Perks:
- Tactical Brilliance now triggers with a will/2% chance (from will% chance); the cap is still 50% chance - Makes will less important on officers, makes command charges less common
- Danger Zone also increases the damage of explosives by 1 - Buffed
- Bombard increases throw range by 35% (from 30%) - Slight boost
- In The Zone can only trigger twice each turn (3 times with Lock N' Load) - Lowers it's strength as a 'set up' perk decreasing its strength on initiations
- Fragmentation has only a 20% chance for double damage but now also grants +1 penetration to explosives - Change to make the perk more consistent
XCOM:
- Infantry base aim to +20 (from +15) - Boost to it's shooting capabilities
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where 0 damage shots would interrupt psychic storm
- Fixed a bug where Vigilis was giving 8 more will than intended for psi training
- Fixed a bug where raiders would go on Hunts/Bombing Runs
- Fixed a bug where a pilot who died could enter the memorial multiple times
- Fixed a bug where civilians saved on a terror mission would sometimes show as -2
Version 1.34.04
LW Rebalance v1.34.04
Air Game:
- Raider HP to 4500 (from 6000) - Created too much dichotomy between anti-armor and pure dps loadouts for raiders/destroyers
Tactical:
- Staggered now display a % chance - QoL
Perks:
- Light 'Em Up no longer grants +20% crit but instead grants +1 damage for every instance of damage their target took this turn - Buff to shooting on infantry/rocketeer and feels right for the perk, also buff to using sidearms on infantry
- Psychic Storm can now be interrupted by disorientating the stormer - QoL
- Danger Zone boosts the radius of explosives by 1 tile (from 30%) - Boost to grenade version of danger zone, slight nerf to rocket version
- Mayhem grants 70% damage on both sniper and strike rifles (from 60%) - Nerf was not warranted on sniper rifle, further buff to strike rifle snipers
- Lone wolf minimum range for bonus to 6 tiles (from 7) - Slight buff
- Disabling Shot has a -60 aim malus, no longer needs to be steadied to activate, and has a 4 turn cooldown (from 3) - Nerfed, makes it less important for dealing with late game enemies, makes it easier to use without the steady requirement
- Close Encounters reverted to previous version: It grants 30% DR against enemies within 4 tiles (from immunity to reaction fire vs enemies within 4 tiles) - This version more reasonable and the immunity to reaction fire felt more like a niche use
Officer Perks:
- Commanding Officer no longer has a will/10% chance to grant a 0 AP action to squadmates but instead has an Activated_Enemies% chance to grant a 0 AP action to squadmates - helps offset bad situations, makes will a little less important on officers
- Battlefield Aptitude renamed to Natural Leadership grants the squad +4 will per enemy in sight (from +10 will straight up) - Standarization and helps offset bad situations, rename helps standardize the Colonel perks
- Inspired Tenacity renamed to Cover Tenacity and grants the squad +4% DR per activated enemy when protected by cover (from +20% DR when protected by cover straight up) - helps offset bad situations (note: it stacks multiplicatively: 0.96 ^ Activated_Enemies), rename helps standardize the Captain perks
- Cover Tactics grants the squad +2 defense per activated enemy when protected by cover (from 10 defense when proteced by cover straight up) - helps offset bad situations
Equipment:
- Psi Greande range to 10 (from 12) - It was always 10 due to a bug, just never officially changed
- Arc Pistol penetration to 4 (from 2) - Buffed
- Arc Rifle now grants Disabling Shot - Makes the ability more accessible
XCOM:
- Modification of Rocketeer tree (see perk tree image)
Aliens:
- Sectopods gain 4 damage per alien level upgrade (from 8) - Lowers their damage as late game progresses so they don't hit so hard
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the death perk "Survivor" was granting way more DR than described
- Typos
Version 1.34.03
LW Rebalance v1.34.03
Strategy:
- Vigilis grants +20 will (from +15) - Further buffed
- Brazil starting cash to 2400 (from 1800) - Buffed
- Fixed a bug where all aim calculations were completely fubared cause of a hex code mistake I made
- Fixed a bug where 1 less abduction than intended was being spawned during an alien abduction blitz
- Fixed a bug where Jungle Scout HP gain was being added to augmentation chances
Version 1.34.02
LW Rebalance v1.34.02
Strategic:
- Abductions and Terror missions only decrease in frequency by 5% per month (from 10% per month) - Makes late game not so barren of these mission types
- Abduction and Terror rewards only increase in value by 5% per month (from 10% per month) - Accommodation for terror/abduction rates
- Overall country/continent panic increases by 5% each month (from 10%) - Accommodation for terror/abduction rates
- Reserach missions only increase research gains by 5% per month (from 10% per month) - Accommdation for long time ago change to 5% decreased rate of these missions per month
- The excavations you start with are a little more static - Helps prevent the feeling that you need to reroll
- Beam Strengthening costs 360 weapon fragments (from 180) and 12 power sources (from 8) - Makes beam strengthening later to come online and more costly, making gauss weapons and quench guns more appealing
- Quenchguns costs 130 alloys (from 260) and 18 Muton Corpses (from 36) - Same reason as above, especially helpful for bullet wizards due to the new penetrator perk not granting flat pen
- New Warfare (Asia coverage bonus) foundry cost reduction increased to 30% (from 25) - Balance due to longer abduction times
- Air Superiority (North America coverage bonus) airspace cost reduction increased to 20% (from 15%) - Balance due to longer abduction times
- Born to Fly start bonus increased to 4 aim per kill (from 3) - Buffed
- Ready For War starts with 200 alloys (from 100) - Buffed
- Patriae Semper Vigilis renamed to Vigilis and grants 15 will (from 12) - Buffed
Air Game:
- Reduced the rate that battleships occur for multiple UFO missions by a further 50% - Helps with late game battleship spam now that it's not needed for panic generation
Phoenix Coilgun upgrades penetration by 25% (from 50%) - Doesn't supplant EMP as much
- Laser Cannon / Laser Cannon Upgrade damage to 400/600 (from 300/450) - Significant boost in laser cannon strength, balance vs other weapons
- Destroyer HP reduced to 1500 (from 2000) - Makes them easier to shoot down when you don't have high penetration weapons
- Abductor DR increased to 100% (from 75%) - They were a little too easy to shoot down
- Raider HP increased to 6000 (from 4000) - Makes them a little more challenging to deal with so that more air game priority is placed on them
Tactical:
- New Mechanic: Stagger: All reaction shots have an x% chance to deplete the targets remaining AP and cancel some actions, where x is the % of remaining HP the target lost - It's BAAAAcccckkkk! =D Makes all reaction fire stronger, without needing impact.
- First terror mission has a group of 2 lids and a group of 3 zombies (from 2 groups of 2-3 lids and a group of 3-5 zombies) - makes it a little more reasonable
- Abduction and (non-first) terror missions have 1 less enemy but once again increase in number of enemies by 1 every 4 months - Makes earlier missions easier, later missions harder
- All Covert Operatives now gain the perk "Quick Draw" - See below
- The first mission will only use rookies - Prevents losing someone or having someone injured off the bat from being so punishing
Perks:
- New Perk: Quick Draw: Pistol shots at point blank cost 0 AP - Note: this can be used repeatedly on the same turn
- Hardened now grants immunity to stagger - Accommodation for new stagger mechanic
- Grit no longer grants +2 armor HP or reduces armor HP wound chances - nerf to the gunner tank and MEC tanks
- Mayhem no longer grants 50% weapon damage to flush - nerf to the bullet wizard
- Mayem grants 60% damage to sniper/strike rifles (from 70/50%) - buff to strike rifle sniper, slight nerf to sniper rifle sniper
- Fortified no longer reduces armor HP wound chances - nerf to MEC tanks
- Penetrator now bypasses all flat DR (from granting straight up +2 DR) - Makes it more useful against high DR targets where you don't have acid, makes acid less mandatory
- Danger Zone increases the radius of explosives by 30% (from 20%) - Buffed
- Ready For Anything grants 0 ammo (from 2) - Nerfed, as the perk is quite strong, and you can just reload anyway to still trigger RfA. Also, simplification of the perk
- ITZ no longer grants crit on the first shot (from +50%) - Toned back, simplification
- Impact no longer depletes AP on reaction fire but instead doubles the chance of Stagger occuring - Accommodation for new stagger mechanic
- Executioner no longer grants +1 damage against targets at or below 50% HP - Nerfed for balance on the trees
Equipment:
- Sniper, Arc, and Strike rilfes lose 16 aim per tile within 10 tiles (from 8 aim per tile) - Makes them quite unweildy in close range, encouraging sidearm use
- Marksman Scope grants +5 aim and crit (from 0) - Buff to accommodate for executioner nerf
Bugs:
- Fixed a bug where impact would sometimes not clear OW status on steadied shots
- Fixed a bug where zombie groups would appear as lids during terror missions
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where the December report would have the wrong year date
- Fixed a bug where during the alien turn sometimes a lot of code would execute at once causing a CTD, now it skips some of the code during alien turns that is not needed which should remove reduce a lot of (all?) alien turn CTDs
- Fixed a bug where VIPs still got hit by psychic storm (they aren't supposed to)
- Typos
Version 1.34.01
LW Rebalance v1.34.01
Strategic:
- Bonus resources from continent coverage for deciding alien UFO types is changed from 0/20%/40%/80%/100% for 1/2/3/4/5 continents covered to 0/10/20/30/40% for 1/2/3/4/5 continents covered - Makes the alien air game a lot less punishing, especially when you start to get multiple continents covered (i.e. this should significantly reduce the number of battleships they send and replace them with fighters and destroyers)
- Meld healing now lower both fatigue AND injury times by 80% - Significant buff and makes it feel more useful and fair
- Updated the 2nd wave description "Save Scum" to explain that in LWR many abilities always use a random number and will be reset on save/load - Accuracy
- New Function: You can now 'RETIRE' uninjured soldiers which will dismiss them and share 50% of their xp with all soldiers with a lower rank and lower experience - Gives an option for older soldiers that aren't as needed anymore
- Wealth of Nations bonus (European continent bonus) lowered to 15% income (from 25%) - Was much too strong and too important to get coverage in Europe, this should open up more options for coverage
- MEC Augmentation chances now consider campaign length when applying injury maluses - Should have always been this way
- Added a new 2nd wave option (#28): Elite Aliens: Aliens gain 10 aim, 10 will, and 1 damage - Replaces Hidden Chances, gives players more control over the type of campaign they play
- Alien Research is now multiplied by 0.75/0.8/0.85/0.9 (from 0.7/0.8/0.9/1.0) - Overall standardization in difficulty, but it was important for campaign pacing. This makes the aliens progress at a more similar rate on different difficulty campaigns. Makes brutal and impossible campaigns slightly easier, and normal campaigns slightly harder.
- Abductions now start as 3-4 at a time and increase by +1 every 3 months (from 2-3 and +1 only at 3 months and 6 months) - Increases late game panic generation due to weaker hunts
- Abductions now only give 9 hours to complete (from 12) - This reduces the possible abductions down to 2-4 (from 3-6), increasing panic generation (especially late game) and making the choice of which abductions to do more prevalent from the start
- Failed Abductions only raise alien bonus research by 2 (from 3) - Accommodates for effect of losing more abductions
- Instead of starting a campaign with 10 soldiers at SPEC, you now start with 5 soldiers in the barracks at LCPL - Makes sense as the first 5 soldiers would become SPEC from the first mission anyway and gives you a little more experienced soldiers to help give more agency during the early game
Tactical:
- Berserk and Enrage will now also trigger off of critically wounded units and stabilized units - Prevents unideal behavior like trying to kill your own guys to get an advantage and feels more reasonable in how the mechanic should work
- Dashing now reduces the chance to be hit on a reaction shot by 20 aim - Feels reasonable and has been around in LW for a long time. Gives RnG assaults as little more use. Doesn't feel too abusive as it does require a double AP action.
- Mission Fatigue now decreases by 2% each turn up to a 50% reduction at 25 turns - Makes longer missions much less punishing on fatigue and reduces overall fatigue more to help reduce barracks size
- Variation in aim and will per difficulty lowered to intervals of 5 (from 10) - Makes the difficulties a little more similar, and makes normal/classic a little more challenging and impossible a little easier.
Equipment:
- Laser and Pulse weapons no longer gain +10 crit vs other weapons - Helps put ballistic/gauss on more even footing
- HMEC3 and UHMEC3 lose 2 and 4 HP respectively - Slight nerf, balance among MEC choices
Bug Fixes:
- Psi XP requirements for psi ranks were slightly lower than intended
- Fixed a display bug where hovering over nodes in DLC missions would say that nodes take 2 turns to deactivate when they actually deactivate immediately
- Fixed a bug where ghost aliens would be left around the site of crashed UFOs
- Typos
Version 1.34.00
LW Rebalance v1.34.00
Fatigue Modifications:
- Fatgiue now increases on soldiers by 10% for each mission they've gone on (modified by campaign length): so double fatigue at 10 missions, triple at 20, etc - Instead of late game increasing fatigue on all soldiers evenly it targets the most used soldiers to encourage using all soldiers and not stacking the A-Team - This more than accommodates for the above point creating a barracks that is more well roundeded and more resilient to loss but overall smaller
- Fatigue is no longer increased by 0.5 per month on each mission - Removed due to new mission-based fatigue mechanic
- Any soldier that was previously fatigued now increases new fatigue by 1% for each day of fatigue they had when they went on the mission (modified by campaign length) - Not a huge effect, but encourages using soldiers that have no fatigue for min/maxing
- Will modifies fatigue by 0.5% per will (from 1% per will) - Means low will soldiers are less poor soldiers and prevents really high will soldiers from being super human
- Officers no longer acquire an additional 30% fatigue - This is now accommodated for with the new fatigue system
- Meld injection reduces injury/fatigue by 80% for 200 meld (from 30% for 30 meld) - The design is supposed to be to have a severely wounded soldier able to be brought back into the game through an expensive cost and not to power level specific soldiers - this modification should push meld healing more in-line with the design goal
- Every turn spent in a mission reduces fatigue acquired from that mission by 1% (capped at a 50% reduction at 50+ turns) - Reduces fatigue on longer missions
- Consistent Fatigue sets fatigue per mission to 6 days (from 7) - Accommdation for new fatigue #s
Strategic:
- Modified council requests so they won't request corpses or captives that would be unreasonable for the player to acquire within a short time frame - QoL
- Aircraft pilots are now added to the memorial - QoL
- Exalt Reminder: Instead of a reminder of approximately when an exalt cell will occur, you will now simply get a warning each time an exalt cell establishes itself - Removes the guessing game which was just not fun, be careful though, the warning is just a little text message in the lower left and could be easy to miss (it will pause the Geoscape though)
- Elerium now requires a hyperwave beacon to research - Allows it to be more obvious in the research list to help newer (and older) players realize what they need to acquire it
- Alien Communications no longer requires a hyperwave beacon to research - Accommodates for Elerium tech change as you only get 1
- Destroyers have 125% DR (from 75%) - Increases their resiliency in the air game
- Fighters have 600 HP (from 400 HP) - Increases their resiliency in the air game
- Advanced Conversion starts with 4 UFO Flight Computers (from 8 UFO Power Sources) - The power sources weren't as needed due to minimums now and not getting flight computers could lock you out of MECs for too much of the early game
- Psi XP required for each psi rank reduced to 200/600/1000/1400/1800/2200 (from 200/600/12000/2000/3000/4200) - accommodates for reduced missions on soldiers being as feasible
Tactical:
- Gamespeed readjusted to a scale of 1 to 10 with the default level being 4 - QoL
- Steady Weapon no longer has a cooldown - The negative of the cooldown outweighted the positive, reverted
Perks:
- Executioner grants 30 aim and +1 damage vs targets at or below half health (from 40 aim and +2) - Toned back, makes it less competitive on sniper and jaeger trees
- Snapshot has a 50% chance to trigger (from 40%) - Accommodates for executioner nerf
- Ready For Anything no longer grants +2 penetration when the OWer didn't move - Toned back as it's quite strong with reaction fire immunity on OW, +20 aim, +2 ammo, and free OW
- Close Encounters grants immunity to reaction fire from anyone within 4 tiles but no longer grants additional DR - helps assaults and medic tanks deal with CCS units
- Impact only deplets AP on OW shots on non-hardened units - Toned back so it's not quite as ubiquitous at cancelling enemy actions (especially against melee units)
- Psi Inspire no longer prevents fatigue/exhausted - It didn't really anyway since it didn't last more than 1 turn, so this is just a technicality
- Hit and Run's trigger condition changed to targets that are damaged, disorientated, or suppressed this turn (from targets that are uncovered) - Prevents abuse and encourages multiple unit attacks
- Hit and Run now grants +50% weapon damage (from +35% weapon damage) against targets that are damaged, disorientated, or suppressed this turn (from targets that are uncovered) - Buff due to more difficult trigger condition
- Jetboot Module grants +3.3 mobility on activation (from +2) - Was slightly over nerfed, this feels like a reasonable compromise
- Collateral Damage deals damage in a 5 tile radius (from 6) - Slight nerf
- Overpower range reduced to 30 tiles (from 45) - Makes it a little easier to move out of range
Equipment:
- Psi Frayer will bonus to +15 (from +10) - Slight buff
- Psi Retaliator will bonus to 0 (from +15) - Nerfed, will wasn't that important for countercharge anyway
- KSM damage to 16 (from 20) - Was a little too strong early game
- Thumper grants 8 damage and 4 pen (from just 5 pen) - Buff to the KSM in the mid-late game
- Plasma grenade range to 10 (from 8), weight to 0 (from -0.6), and damage to 10 (from 12) - Slight boost as a long range option with less weight
- Respirator Implant defense to +10 (from +5) and cost to 20 credit and 20 meld (from 40 credits and 40 meld) - Buffed
- Battle Rifle crit to 10 (from 0) - Slight buff
- Carbine aim to 15 (from 10) - Slight buff
- Strike Rifle mobility to +0.6 (from 0) - Includes it in the list of mobility boosting weapons, makes it more reasonable to equip on non-damage builds
- Core Plating costs 550 alloys (from 380) - Nerfed, makes it more difficult to acquire
- Elerium Turbos grants +4 mobility (from +2.6) - Helps accommodate for low mobility on SHIVs, especially the alloy SHIV
XCOM:
- Jaeger aim growth to +30 (from +40) - Slight tone back, as it's aim was a little too high
- Shogun Fortified swapped with sapper - Gives earlier access to sapper for the grenadier build and prevents comboing grit and fortified on the tank builds, nerf to Shogun tank strength, pushes the hybrid builds more
- Scout perk tree reworked slightly (swap Shadowstep and Ranger, then swap MSGT with GSGT perks except for precision shot) - Allows earlier access to Ranger and makes covertop choices more balance
Aliens:
- Thinmen awareness and tactical mobility moved from level 1 leaders to level 6 leaders - Makes early thinmen easier to kill
- Thinmen Close Combat Specialist and Impact moved from level 1 leaders to level 9 leaders - Makes early thinmen easier to kill
- Thinmen level 6 leaders gain 12 HP (from 10) and thinmen level 9 leaders gain 20 HP (from 10) - Makes later thinmen leaders more dangerous
- Sectopod damage to 16 (from 20) - Tones back their primary damage some (they still scales with higher damage)
- Cluster Bomb base damage to 16 (from 20) and now deals half damage - Significantly decreases damage making it possible to survive some cluster bombs
- Ethereal and Uber Ethereal will +20 and +40 - Makes them offensively more potent
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where enemies would proc RfA after moving
- Fixed a bug where XCOM countercharge was doing 2 more damage than intended and alien countercharge was doing 2 less damage than intended
- Fixed a bug where the weapon on an aircraft sent for a combat patrol was not correctly modifying the effect of that combat patrol
- Hopefully fixed a bug where Exalt would sometimes steady their weapons instead of reload (If anyone notices crashes on exalt missions again, this would likely the be cause and I can remove this fix)
- Fixed a bug where corpse and captive requests would sometimes offer up to 192x as much as intended
- Fixed a bug where dead units would rarely come back alive
- Fixed a bug where disabling shot would sometimes not activate maim
- Fixed a bug where VIPs were not gaining 50% mobility
- Typos
Version 1.33.18
LW Rebalance v1.33.18
Strategic:
- Countries now gain +2 panic per month but -3 panic per defection on impossible, -4 on brutal, -5 on classic, -6 on normal - Makes the set point of # of countries lost per month to be less overall and especially less on easier difficulties
- Research Focus start bonus now grants +50 elerium - buffed for balance and usefulness
- Assembly Line start bonus now grants +50 alloys - buffed for balance and usefulness
Bug Fixes:
- Updated code the prevents multiple SHIVs from acting so the restriction occurs immediately and prevents 'rush' moving/acting with multiple shivs
- Fixed a rare CTD when reloading a weapon quickly after performing a move
- Fixed a CTD when doing base assaults and using laser or pulse weapons
- Fixed a CTD when killing the uber ethereal
- Fixed a CTD when fighting exalt and the AI decides multiple Exalt need to reload
Version 1.33.17
LW Rebalance v1.33.17
Strategic:
- Stingray missle penetration to 50% (from 75%) - Makes them slightly weaker against fighters/destroyers mid-late game
- Fatigue on a mission only increases by 0.5 days per month (from 1 day per month) - Reduces mid and especially late game fatigue, reduces the overall required roster size, increases overall xp on soldiers, reduces roster credit requirements
- At the beginning of each month, countries no longer randomly gain 1-4 panic based on difficulty but instead gain 2 panic for each month passed and lose 2 panic for each country defected - Acts as an overall standardizer to strategic game progression reducing the effect of RNG -- if you have barely any countries defected then your panic will increase more and if you got unlucky and have lots of countries defected, panic might even decrease
- Damaged Power Sources will yield twice as much elerium - Raise the minimum amount of elerium each campaign gets to help prevent bad RNG from having too much of an impact on the campaign
Tactical:
- Steady weapon has a 1 turn cooldown - prevents using every turn on bullseye classes
- The VIP now has 50% more movement - Makes escorting him out of extraction missions more reasonable
- Number of XCOM allowed on temple mission is now 9-11 (from 7-9) - Makes it a little easier and makes it feel a little more epic
- Exalt never come off-guard or unprepared - Was not necessary for their mission, slight difficulty increase on their missions, fixes a drop-in bug
Perks:
- Psi Inspire now also grants immunity to overpower, radius to 6 (from 2.5), can only be cast around the caster, and lasts until the beginning of the next turn (from 3 turns) - Makes it easier to counter overpower
- Bombard increases throw range by 30% (from 20%) - slight buff for balance on the rocketeer tree
- Hit and Run no longer grants +1 damage but instead grants +35% weapon damage against uncovered targets or when steadied - Boost to progression of HnR builds so that they don't feel as early-game centric
- Critical System Targeting to 30% damage and 50 crit - focus on the crit aspect
- HEAT Warheads no longer clears OW - was minor enough that the extra complication of the perk did not seem waranted, slight nerf for both
- Impact now only clears OW on steadied shots - Restricts the use but makes it predictable, makes the Scout and Shogun premier OW clearers due to having snapshot, impact, and bullseye
- Snapshot to 40% chance for a 0 AP action (from 50%) - Was too strong
- Tenacious Defense to +3 armor HP (from +2) - Buff to Inf/Ass tank
- Grit to base DR to 10% (from 20%) - Toned back (it now caps near 60% DR, from 70%)
- Psychic Storm will no longer work on mind controlled units - Felt unfair and triggered at the wrong time
XCOM:
- Assault Mayhem replaced with HEAT Warheads - Buff to dealing with units with DR for the later game assault grenadier
Aliens:
- Chyrssalids back to 40 defense and gain +1 HP - The defense was more frustrating and further pushed them into explosives required
- Sectopod Penetrator moved to level 9 leaders only - They did enough damage on their own that the extra damage from penetrator was not needed so regularly
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed a bug where psi inspiring would still change AP pip colors
- Fixed a bug where collteral damage could be used without full ammo
- Fixed a bug where 0 AP granting abilities would not work with double tap
- Fixed a bug where mind merge could show as inactive despite not being on cooldown
- Fixed a bug where aliens would overwatch without seeing any targets
Version 1.33.16
LW Rebalance v1.33.16
Strategic:
- UFO shielding now guarantees UFOs will be shot down (instead of destroyed) for the first 3 months of the game (instead of just the first month and 2nd -4th month had a % chance) - Eliminates a portion of early campaign RNG
- Wolverine Blood 2nd wave option is now available for modification in the dgc.ini: SW_MORE_POWER - Allows some more customization for players
Tactical:
- Smoke radius is decreased to a 5x5 tile area with the corner tiles missing (from a 7x7 tile area with 3 tiles from each corner missing) - Reduces the capability to mitigate alien OW
Equipment:
- Battle Scanners grant +10 aim to units in vision (from +5) - Makes it a more significant aim boost to make the scanner stronger in its aim-assist role
Perks:
- Dense Smoke grants 30% DR (from 25%) - Slight buff to support engineer
- Will to Survive is only 40% DR (from 50%) - Was slightly too tanky in cover
- Mind Fray and Psi Panic hit chances are calculated using 66% of will (from 75%) - Slight tone back in the strength of sectoids and psionic XCOM
- Impact now grants an x% chance to clear enemy OW (from 100%) where x is twice the % of remaining HP the target lost - Makes it far less consistent at removing OW, making enemies not waste their turns when they go into OW
- HEAT Warheads now grants an x% chance to clear enemy OW (from 100%) where x is twice the % of remaining HP the target lost - Makes it far less consistent at removing OW, making enemies not waste their turns when they go into OW
- Psi Inspire no longer grants immunity to reaction fire - Removes OW avoiding abilities, makes enemies not waste their turns when they go into OW
- Psi Inspire now lasts 3 turns (from 1) - Accommodation for reactive fire immunity nerf
- Extra Conditioning to +1 HP (from +2) - Slight nerf
- Hit and Run grants +1 damage against uncovered targets or steadied shots - more synergy with bullseye and slight buff to HnR builds as they both felt a little weak
Equipment:
- Platform stability now grants +1 damage to mayhem suppression - makes the alloy bipod more useful on bullet wizards
XCOM:
- Assault gains Lock N' Load instead of Opportunist at MSGT - Helps with ammo problems and allows unique strategies like RnG to gain full ammo and Dash into CCS range to reload
Aliens:
- Sectopod DR to 5 (from 8) - Makes them a little more reasonable to tackle without acid
- Thinmen gain 10 aim/crit per level (from 6) and all leaders gain Close Combat Specialist - Makes mid to late game thinmen less of a walk over
- Impact on Thinmen moved from level 6 leaders to level 1 leaders - makes their OW more effective
- Seeker base HP to 9 (from 6) - Makes them more durable and more difficult to fight at a distance
- Seekers now take triple damage when strangling (from double) - Makes them much easier to destroy if they strangle
- Chyrssalid defense to 50 (from 40) and base HP to 5 (from 4) - slight buff
- Mechtoid HP to 32 (from 28) and all mecthoids gain impact - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where exalt would sometimes steady their weapon
- Typos
Version 1.33.15
LW Rebalance v1.33.15
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD when countercharge would trigger
Version 1.33.14
LW Rebalance v1.33.14
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater HP to 26 (from 20), Mechtoid HP to 28 (from 24), Muton HP to 16 (from 14) - Increase in resiliency
Tactical:
- Shred is now: Damage received is increased by 5 times all of the shred damage taken (from 6x shots and 10x explosives) - Simplification, was too strong previously, made it too mandatory and melted high HP units too quickly
Equipment:
- Javelin rockets no longer reduce scatter by 30% - They felt too mandatory to take on Rocketeers, especially later game, opens up the option for not taking javs
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a long time CTD bug that occured I think because of the UTF formatting of the hex files - Confusing as hell, but I was actually able to remove hundred of lines of old code that are now unnecessary cause I moved some code lines around - tested with 4 different old CTD saves that all work flawlessly now
- Fixed a bug where the new alien AI would sometimes reload when they weren't out of ammo yet
- Typos
Version 1.33.13
LW Rebalance v1.33.13
Strategic:
- Xenologic Remedies increased to 10x sell cost (from 7x) - Buffed as it was too little cash previously
- You start the game with 10 specialists now, but only 2 soldiers from your home country - Makes the early game more interesting as you have some SPECs already
- You start the game with 1-4 SHIVs (based on difficulty) - Makes the starting roster more restricted on harder difficulties
- Combat Patrols now cost 100 more after each use (from 50 more) but lower by 50 every month (down to the minimum of 100) - Encourages use in the early campaign and use throughout the campiagn of just over approximately 1 patrol every 2 months
- UFO Research Missions grant aliens twice as much reserach but at half the chance - Accommodation for MLW
Tactical:
- Steady weapon now grants full(50) aim at 1 AP (from 35) - Buff to bullseye
Perks:
- Ready For Anything aim bonus to +20 (from +15) - Buffed
- Ready For Anything grants +2 penetration to reaction shots when the unit has not moved - Boost to RfA reaction fire
- Dense Smoke DR to 25% (from 20%) - Slight boost to support engineer
- Penetrator grants +2 pen (from +1 pen with +2 vs covered units) - Buffed and simplification, with the boost to CST this didn't need to be as weak
- Impact now has 100% chance to deplete the AP of a target - Makes OW much more effective against units with multi-action turns
- Shock and Awe no longer grants +15% chance for fragmentation - Was strong enough without the extra boost
- Fragmentation boosted to 35% chance (from 25%) - Buff for tree/build balance
- First Aid grants 2 medikits (from 1) - With the nerf to how injuries work it needed a boost
Equipment:
- Thumper grants 5 pen (from 10) - Was too mandatory and made the thumper too strong for bypassing DR, it's still really good at 5
- LMG ammo to 4 (from 5) and mobility to -2.6 (from -2) - Nerfed as danger zone is really good and the bullet wizard is a little too effective, also makes ammo more relevant on LMG users, slight boost to late game walker servos
- Plasma grenade damage to 12 (from 10) but range to 8 (from 10) - Pushes the grenadier builds more into short range high damage, slight nerf
- Psi Retaliator Crit Resist to 20 (from 30) - Further toned back
XCOM:
- Alloy SHIV base speed to 7.3 (-1.3) (from 7.3 +1.3) - They were too mobile making them too offensively strong. This puts them more into the cover granting tank role instead of the offensive juggernaught role.
- Hover SHIV base speed to 7.3 (+1.3) (from 7.3 +2) - Slight tone back
- Rocketeer: Critical System Targeting replaced with Ready For Anything - CST was too weak, especially with not synergizing well with an arc rifle, and RfA plays an interesting additional role on a rocketeer
Aliens:
- Ethereal and Uber Ethereal gain 40 will - Makes them offensively more damaging
- Heavy Floater Leaders and all exalt lose will to survive - Less durable in cover (now only mutons and muton elites have will to survive)
- Exalt Medics gain Smoke and Mirrors - Helps them stay relevant during battle
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the camera would sometimes pan around on the alien turn
- Fixed a bug where Show 'Em The Ropes was not correctly applying to SGTs
- FIxed a bug where reinforcements could be offguard or unprepared
- Fixed a bug where units on OW could countercharge and it would mess up there overwatch
- Fixed a bug where sectoid commanders pods could generate support aliens as sectoid commander as well (I hope - if this isn't true please send me a save)
- Fixed a bug where tile scanning could occur right after aliens were revealed
- Fixed a bug where aliens would OW when no XCOM were in sight (I think?)
- Fixed a bug where Exalt would rarely steady their weapons when out of ammo
- Fixed a bug where off guard was not working many times when it should
- Fixed a bug where off guard was not triggering correctly when multiple pods were activated
- Typos
Version 1.33.12
LW Rebalance v1.33.12
Strategic:
- UFO Analyses no longer require weapon fragments - Didn't really make sense and was not needed
- Elerium and Alloys now sell for a base price of 2 (from 3) but council requests for them are increased by 100% - Makes selling them off less of a reliable source of income
- Injuries are now 3 days + %hp lost of 30 days (from 1 day + %hp lost of 30 days) - Makes them more significant when smaller
- Cash and Meld cost of all gene mods reduced by 50% - Massive increase to the viability of gene mods in campaigns
- Deus Ex starting bonus to 90% reduction (from 75%) - Accommodation for cheaper prices
- Condensed Plasma grants +1 damage to explosives (from +2) - It was too strong for late game explosives
- Abduction and Terror mission frequency is dereased by 10% each month (from 5% per month) - Late game is supposed to have less missions and simply due to higher generation it wasn't being reduced enough
- Phoenix Cannon aim to 35 (from 30) - Boosted for balance
Tactical:
- HP above and below average alters throw range by 2% (from 4%) - Tone back on throw range and the importance of HP
- Covert Operative Extraction missions now have reinforcements spawn automatically MUCH later during the mission (note: triggering a relay still automatically starts a given spawn) - Gives players ample time before triggering each relay
- Covert Operative Extraction mission reinforcements spawn 50% slower but continue to ramp up - Makes it much harder to get overwhelmed
- Covert Operative Extraction mission reinforcements continue to spawn up to 30 turns (from 16) - Makes it difficult to ever clear the missions as the reinforcements will get very strong past 20 turns
- Covert Operative Data Recovery missions start with more exalt - Makes the missions slightly more challenging
- The frequency of additional mechtoids and cyberdiscs in mechtoid and cyberdiscs pods has been decreased by around 50% - Makes it much less likely to run into full pods of discs or mechtoids
- Sectopods, Ethereals, and Sectoid Commanders will never spawn as more than 1 in a pod (except for scripted missions) - They are dangerous enough and this makes them feel more like leaders. Doubled or tripled up these enemies often amount to a difficulty spike the is more frustrating than engaging.
- Scouts have 2-3 less aliens - Makes them a lot easier, more so than mediums
- Improved the robustness of when aliens have units on overwatch or not - Should make it much less common to see aliens taking OW shots at units that were out of sight originally
- Certain aliens on alien base assaults will always gain additional leader levels: Sectoid Commander and Chryssalids (+2), Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters (+5), Ethereals and Sectopods (+8) - replaces the old system that was not working where the extra aliens were supposed to gain extra levels but didn't, now all aliens of that type will gain extra levels
Perks:
- Shredder is now: 6x shots/stangle, 10x explosives (from 4x for shots/strangle, 8x for mayhem suppression, and 12x explosives) - Buff to shredding shots, slight simplification of the perk
- Grenadier no longer grants +10% throw range - Tone back on strength and versatility of grenade-focused classes
- Collateral Damage no longer requires 2 AP to use - Buff to the ability to use it in a good position
- Disabling Shot now also maims any biologic target but has a 3 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - Buffed in usefulness, can act as a 2 turn disable, but can't be spammed to avoid abuse
- Light 'Em Up grants +20 crit (from +30) - Was a little too polarizing towards critting with infantry (as it was just supposed to be a boost)
- Ready For Anything grants +15 aim on reaction shots if the unit did not move - Buff to the stationary fire role
- Critical System Targeting grants 40 crit and 40% extra damage - Toned back as it was too strong
- Double Tap no longer grants +10 aim - It was a little too strong with the ability to move and fire and when it was moving it firing it didn't get the 10 aim anyway so this focuses its role a little more
- Shock and Awe no longer maims biologic targets below 50% HP - It was a little odd, it could be too strong in certain aspects, and it was buggy.
- Shock and Awe increases the trigger rate of fragmentation by 15% - Makes it competitive on it's place on the tree
- Run and Gun cooldown to 3 turns (from 2) - Slight nerf for tree balance, especially considering grenadier assault got nerfed too
- Close Encounters no longer grants +1 ammo - Balance on the medic tree, was making CE too strong of a pick
- Close Combat Specialist has -30 aim (from -40 aim) - Slight buff, accommodates for less ammo from CE, better balance on marauder
- Overpower now has a base 15% effect (from base 30% effect) and no longer requires line of sight and instead effects everyone within 45 tiles - Prevents feeling like you need to abuse LoS mechanics, overall nerf, but harder to avoid
- Relentless (Miller's personal perk) reduced to a 25% chance (from 50%) - Was too strong
- Psychic Storm can now be interuppted with any damage - Makes it much easier to avoid it
- Jetboot Module grants +2 mobility (from +4) - Makes it more about reaching heights than reaching further, nerf for balance on the trees
- Lock N' Load again grants +1 ammo - Buff to LnL Jaeger
Equipment:
- Electric weapons can no longer crit (arc rifle and arc pistol) - Tone back on their strength, especially in synergy with CST
- Plasma Battle Rifle bonus grants +5 damage against targets at full HP (from +3 damage) - Buffed as it was too insignificant before
- Combat Stims lasts 3 turns (from 4) - Their ability to negate overpower and fatigue are quite strong making them a little too useful
- Psi Retaliator no longer grants triple the activation rate of Countercharge - Was too strong, the will, crit resist and activation not at full HP were strong enough, especially after the countercharge buffs
- Plasma Grenades no longer gain 3 penetration - Not necessary as they are enough of an upgrade already
- Grenade Launcher damage to 8 (from 10) - Nerfed as it's quite strong on MECs
- Marksman Scope no longer grants any aim/crit (from 5 aim / 5 crit) - Slight nerf
- Rocket Launcher mobility to -0.6 (from -1.3) - Gives the rocketeer a little more mobility back
XCOM:
- Engineer: Bullseye and Critical System Targeting swapped - Balance for the tree, holo was too good vs bullseye and CST with its buff is more reasonably competitive, especially with mechanic and master mechanic already encouraging shooting at mechanical targets
- Engineer: Base mobility to 0 (from 0.6) and aim to +10 (from +5) - shift to more aim from mobility
- Engineer: Danger Zone, Tandem Warheads, and HEAT Warheads swapped - Slows down early game strength of grenadier engineer, opens up the possibility of hybrid grenadier engineer
- Rocketeer: Shock and Awe, Ranger, and Fragmentation rotated - Provides more reasonable options at GSGT, makes Ranger more viable
Aliens:
- Outsiders start with 14 HP (from 8) - Makes them much tankier as they were quite weak before 20 turns
- Improved the AI of aliens so that if they end their turn with extra actions they will perform basic tasks (reload, overwatch, etc.)
- Tried to change the AI so that mind controlling psionic units will not always flee - Not 100% sure if it works
- Heavy Floater DR to 2 (from 1) and gains 0.8 each upgrade (from 0.5) - Buff to their resiliency in the air, requires more penetration to deal with
- Outsider leaders no longer get shadowstep and snap shot - Buff to OW against them
- Muton Elite: Grit moved from all muton elites back to only leaders - Reduced resiliency for the non-leaders
- Exalt Heavy and Exalt Elite Heavy aim reduced by 10 - Makes them less offensively effective
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where maim was doing full damage against mechanical targets
- Fixed a bug where units that were critically wounded wound receive significantly less wound time than intended
- Fixed a bug where some exalt operatives did not have Lock N' Load
- Fixed a bug where panic changes from terror missions were not being modified by campaign length
- Fixed some bugs with incorrect triggering of off-guard and unprepared
- Fixed a bug where overpower would not update correctly after a unit with overpower died
- Fixed a bug where xp bounties from killing leaders would sometimes grant double
- Fixed a bug where aliens were losing too many resources from destroyed UFOs
- Fixed a bug where autopistols were doing 1 more damage than intended on critical hits
- Fixed a bug where the uber ethereal did not have insentient crush
- Fixed a bug where the aim malus of overpower was not a % of base aim but was being applied directly
- Fixed a bug where some suppression reaction shots would not bypass cover DR
- Fixed a bug where you got resources from UFOs when retreating or losing the mission
- Fixed a bug where sectopods would seemingly shoot off into the distance at no one
- Fixed a bug where the hypwerwave relay species list would overflow
- Fixed a bug where OTS autopromotion was assigning full xp to the rank when it should be rank - 1 xp
- Typos
Version 1.33.11
LW Rebalance v1.33.11
Strategy:
- Gene Lab power to 2 (from 4) - Consistency and makes it slightly easier to bring genes online
Tactical:
- There is an extra pod of 2 low level exalt on all exalt missions - Makes the initial situation require more firepower before chaining relays
Perks:
- Collateral Damage radius to 6 (from 2.5), weapon damage to 50% (from 100%), and only destroys 25% of most cover - Acts as consistent large area damage with unreliable cover destruction, it also works really well with boosts like impact, AJRs, Penetrator Ammo, or the plasma stellerator
- Opportunist replaced with Impact on the Marauder - Nerf to OW Marauder as opportunist pushed the RR Marauder to hard vs the other marauders and did not fit with the 'close range' theme of the marauder
- Bring 'Em On grants an additional +1 damage to all reaction shots - Buff to the perk on OW due to having less enemies on OW than when firing (just due to battle flow) - Impact has a 50% chance to deplete ap (from 30%) - buffed
Aliens:
- Exalt Elite Operatives have the following perks moved to leaders only: Shock-Absorbant Armor, Will to Survive, and Tenacious Defense - Made them too difficult to deal with in larger numbers
- Exalt Elite Operative Leaders and Exalt Operatives Leaders lose shadowstep - Made them too resilient against overwatch builds
- Exalt Elite Heavies and Exalt Heavies gain Critical System Targeting and lose Penetrator - Focuses them more on anti-mechanical duty
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where IS was dropping by 20 after the aliens took a base (instead of 12) - Thanks Foyboy for the detailed report
- Fixed a bug where alien research would erroneously fluctate by 10% at the end of each month
- Fixed a bug where mimic beacons worked with Smoke and Mirrors
- Typos
- Misc fixes
Version 1.33.10
LW Rebalance v1.33.10
Strategy:
- Geoscape now pauses on fatigue and injury recovery separately
Tactical:
- The initial chance for a pod to be off-guard on the 1st/2nd turn is reduced to 0/0% (from 80/40%) - It was a little too frequent and not necessary with the new engaged enemies offguard/unprepared mechanic. After careful though, I believe the additional 'rush/push' that it encourages did not offset the negative of trivializing some pods off the bat.
- Unprepared now has a 10% chance to occur per each alien more than 5 that is engaged (from 10% of per any engaged alien) - Makes it much less likely to occur with smaller groups
Equipment:
- Illuminator Gunsight no longer grants +1 damage (the +15 aim was enough) - Slight nerf to increase competition for the slot later game and make the gunlink still viable
- Alloy Carbide Plating to -0.6 mobility (from 0 mobility) - Makes it harder for LMECs to supplment their weakness as easily
- Flak ammo aim to 0 (from -5), Breaching Ammo aim to 0 (from -10), Shredder ammo and AP ammo weight to 0 (from -0.6) - Boost to special ammos
- Alloy cost of various gauss weapons decreased slightly - makes it more reasonable to delve into gauss tech
Perks:
- Tactical Mobility no longer grants extra defense against reaction shots - Makes OW a little more effective against units with tactical mobility, slight overall buff to OW
- Collateral damage to 2.5 tile radius (from 3 tile) - slight further nerf, in accordance with sapper nerf. Also, 5 tile 100% hit 100% weapon damage is still very strong.
Bug Fixes:
- Compact Plasma Weapons no longer requires alien weapons to produce
- Fixed a bug where aliens were being unprepared more often than intended
- Fixed a bug where soldiers were not autopromoting from the XTP
- Typos
Version 1.33.09
LW Rebalance v1.33.09
Strategic:
- Injury and Fatigue are now separate: when a soldier recovers from injury his fatigue timer starts - Nice QoL, feels more fair
- Soldiers with over 30 days of fatigue have all extra fatigue converted into injury time (instead of just receiving an injury for being deployed with >30 days of fatigue) - Makes more sense
- Meld healing reduces the fatigue or injury time (not both) by 30% (from 20%) and only costs 30 meld (from 40) - Accommodation for separate times, slight buff overall
- UFO analyses now require significant amounts of weapon fragments to complete - Gives an outlet to fragments and also makes them more of an optional research
- All autopsies require 1 corpse (from 8) - while indeed this is slightly unfair for campaign lengths, it is NOT a fun mechanic to require RNG to have such a drastic restriction on campaigns. Plus, at such a low value the difference in campaigns will be more negligible. Yes, this means you can technically bag your sectoid commander interrogation early on the ABA, but that doesn't even seem like that's bad or abusive gameplay.
- The cost to repair damaged items is 10% (from 50%) - Makes it much easier to recover from getting items damaged
Perks:
- Combat Drugs heals units for 45% of damage taken (from 35%) - Significant buff to its unique strength
- Dense Smoke reduces normal and psionic hit chance by 60% (from 50%) and grants all units in the smoke 20% DR - Significant buff to its unique strength
- Run and Gun no longer grants immunity to reactive fire but cooldown to 2 turns (from 3) - Nerf to the strength of the RnG assault
- Sapper no longer grants +1 damage and +1 penetration - It's cover clearing aspect was competitive enough
- Jetboot Module cooldown to 2 turns (from 4) - Makes it a lot more available
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs no longer have Impact and mobility reduced to 9.3 (from 10.6) - Reduces their offensive potential as it was too strong in groups, makes tanking the shots more viable
- Mechtoids no longer have Ready For Anything or Impact - Reduces their shots per turn and damage as it was too strong in groups, makes tanking the shots more viable
- Sectoid Commanders no longer have Shadowstep and Overpower is restricted to Sectoid Commander Leaders - Makes overwatch more effective against them, makes them not so oppressive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where RTS would still activate when the unit was in OfA (it should not)
- Fixed a bug where unprepared was triggering too often
- Fixed a bug where units would miraculously revive after missions
- Typos
- Fixed a bug where some unique perks were not being granted correctly
- Fixed a bug where destroying airborne UFOs did not properly increase alloy rewards for alien metallurgy and the research technology of the specific UFO
- Fixed a bug where beam strengthening wasn't working unless you had specific items equipped
Version 1.33.08
LW Rebalance v1.33.08
Tactical:
- All injury times cut in half - Decreases how punishing injuries feel and how controlling fatigue felt
- Armor HP injuries: Anytime you take any damage you take a chance of injury equal to double the percent of current HP lost - Increases frequency of injuries, makes taking any damage more consequential
- Enrage has a 5% chance per ally dead per enemy in sight (from 3%) - Makes it 66% more likely to trigger, helps in dire circumstances
Perks:
- First aid and Savior no longer reduces base HP Injuries but instead reduces the chance of an armor HP injury by granting 50% chance (stacking) to prevent armor HP injuries - Works on new armor HP injures
- Will to survive reduces the chance of an armor HP injury by 50% - helps tanks deal with damage
- Grit reduces the chance of an armor HP injury by 50% - helps tanks deal with damage
- Fortified reduces the chance of an armor HP injury by 50% - helps tanks deal with damage
Bug Fixes:
- Rewrote some portions of code that were leading to the AI 'fluttering' - I think this should solve a LOT of crashes and weird AI behavior, or it might do nothing =P
- Fixed a bug where selecting the covert-op for a mission would cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would popup an 'off-guard' message even though they weren't off-guard
- Fixed a bug where multi-action perks would not work with rapid fire
- Fixed a bug where the number of activated aliens was incorrect leading to AI oddities
Version 1.33.07
LW Rebalance v1.33.07
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the AI was causing multiple CTDs
Version 1.33.06
LW Rebalance v1.33.06
Strategy:
- Extra aliens on the alien base assault are no longer cumulative, but distinctive with additional leader levels for the 1st try, 2nd try, 3rd try, and 4th plus try, all pods now have a leader, and alien base assaults will behave like terror and temple ships where +1 leader levels (up to lvl 9) have a 50% chance of occuring - Stops a bug that was overflowing XCOM resources due to too many enemies on the alien base assault
- Alien Metallurgy, ALien Nucleonics, and Improved Salvage grant 15% more resources (from 20%) - Goal is to make them optional, there were pretty much still mandatory at 20%
- Gentle Aliens is -10 aim, -10 will, and -1 damage (instead of that as well as -1 DR and -25HP) - Makes it more of an 'inbetween' difficulty
- IS now has a lower cap of 80 (from 70) - It made recovery a little too easy
Tactical:
- Increased the liklihood additional mecthoids and cyberdiscs will appear in pods - They were too rare before, this should help with corpse requirements
- Medics and Engineers can also be Covert Operatives - Opens up selection
- The entire squad now receives +10 bonus xp for a leader kill and +40 bonus xp for a level 9 leader kill - Makes killing them feel more rewarding
- All covert op missions contain 2 more normal exalt - Makes them slightly more dense before reinforcements arrive
Perks:
- Ready For Anything now grants +2 ammo (from +1) - Makes it more distinct
- Countercharge base damage to 3 (from 2) - Boost to early game strength (on sectoids too)
- Psychic Storm requires 2 AP - so suppression prevents it, felt unfair when suppressed targets used Psychic Storm
- Inspired Tenacity grants 20% DR in cover (from 15%) - Slight boost (also it was previously bugged and providing 25% DR)
- Grit further changed to grant 2 HP (from 3) and 0 DR (from 1) but 20 + half of the HP lost in % DR (from 10 + half) - Boost to the ability of units with grit to take big shots
- Mechanic grants +2 pen to shots against mechanical units (from +1) - Boost to strength of early game shooter engineer
- Collateral Damage radius to 3 (from 4) - Slight tone back
- Vital Point Targeting to 30% dmg (from 20%) - It was just too weak at 20% to be competitive (despite the 50% at point blank bonus)
Equipment:
- The extrasensory vest grants tracker as well - Acts as an upgrade to the proximity sensor
XCOM:
- Medic: Lock N' Load replaced with Bring 'Em On and then swapped with Sharpshooter - Grants more damage to the OW build, also LnL wasn't as necessary with +2 ammo on RfA
- Goliath: Rework of tree - see perk tree image
Aliens:
- Level 9 Sectopod Leaders gain Grit - Increase to their resiliency
- Level 9 Muton Elite Leaders, Heavy Floaters Leaders, and Thinmen Leaders gain Advanced Perception - Increase to their resiliency
- Exalt Operatives and Exalt Elite Operatives gain Lock N' Load - Make them more resilient against relays
- Sectoid Commanders gain Close Combat Specialist - One of the problems with sectoid commanders is that their AI would derp pretty hard when surrounded, this makes it much harder to capitalize on this
- Sectoid Commanders gain Overpower - Boost to strength of sectoid commanders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where the # of engaged aliens was incorrectly set during the loading of saved games
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Storm would hit civilians
- Fixed a bug where you needed multiple hyperwave relays for research when you should only ever need 1
- Fixed some AI so that psionic users will be a little smarter with their AI use (a LITTLE smarter, don't expect them never to derp)
- Fixed the aformentioned inspired tenacity bug
- Fixed a bug where RTS shots were not firing because the aim threshold was not considering the +50 aim from RTS
- Fixed a bug where you could trigger off-guard when there were no engaged alien units after turn 3
- Fixed a bug where bonus elerium from UFOs that were researched was being reduced to 1
- Fixed a bug where if you were over the max number of soldiers in the barracks, the free monthly soldiers would cause a CTD
Version 1.33.05
LW Rebalance v1.33.05
Strategic:
- Damaged UFO Power Cylinders now provide: 1-2 intact UFO Power Sources and 10% of elerium of a normal UFO Power Cylinders - Helps give minimal amounts if RNG is bad
Tactical:
- Reduced the chance for pods to go off-guard to 10% per engaged alien (from 20% per engaged alien) - It was a little too common
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a typo on Light 'Em Up
- Fixed a bug where the AI would derp TOO often when unprepared
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where stunned enemies were not removed from the 'engaged' list for aliens
- Fixed a bug where UFO Power Sources were not being modified correctly on different campaign lengths
- Typos
Version 1.33.04
LW Rebalance v1.33.04
Strategic:
- Progeny DLC missions II and III should start approximately 3.5 months earlier - Makes their recruited soldiers a lot more reasonable
- Losing a satellite has twice the effect on panic - Makes it more reasonable to defend them
- Satellites now cost 550 credits (from 300) - Makes it more reasonable to protect them instead of just letting them fall and replacing them, slows down expansion
- Alien resources now only increases alien numbers by 1/2 if it's at or above 50/80% (from 1/2/3 above 40/60/80) - Decreases alien numbers slightly, accommodates for IS buff in alien numbers
- Jai Jawan starts with 12 additional power sources (from 8) - Buff due to more frequent acquisition
- Advanced conversion starts the player with 8 UFO Power sources - Buff to help players make early MECs
Incursion Strength:
- Incursion Strength now ONLY affects alien counts (as opposed to the plethora of things it used to) and is capped between 70 and 110%
- Incursion Strength is only decreased by: 4% for a significant death (modified by campaign length) and 12% for a country lost
- Incursion Strength is only increased by: 1% for successful mission (modified by campaign length) and it gets set to max after a successful base assault
- Reasoning: Incursion Strength is now mostly ideal to have as low as possible. It acts as a bandaid when you're doing bad and makes things slightly more challenging when you're doing well. Overall it has gone from a massive factor of every campaign to a smaller alien stat: similar to alien resources and aggression. It failed to meet its original goals but its current goal of just helping players who just did poorly it should be effective for.
Tactical:
- Extra pods that activate when you are already engaged with other pods will have a 20% chance per unit currently engaged to activate off-guard - One of the highest difficulty spikes in LWR is when you activate too many pods at once. This makes it so a consecutive pod that activates will take a little longer to engage you and soften the difficulty spike of multiple activations.
- New Mechanic 'Unprepared': Extra pods that activate when you are already engaged with other pods will have a 10% chance per unit currently engaged to be unprepared and out of ammo - One of the highest difficulty spikes in LWR is when you activate too many pods at once. This makes it so a consecutive pod that activates will take a little longer to engage you and soften the difficulty spike of multiple activations.
- The chance to gain bonus attributes after each mission is decreased by half - reduction in the number of super soldiers by end game and the viability of newer recruits
- New specialized bonus perks will be granted to soldiers that survive battles in which multiple soldiers of rank have perished - Makes losing soldiers a little less bitter and a little more bitter sweet
Perks:
- Psychic Storm now triggers at the end of XCOMs turn (from the beginning of XCOM's turn) - Allows XCOM a chance to kill the psychic causing the storm and prevents cancellation of steadied weapons on the turn before
- Psychic Storm will on longer hit VIPs - QoL
- Psychic Storm range is now limited to 30 tiles - prevents aliens triggered far away from hurting you and allows you to retreat to avoid the damage
- Light' Em Up no longer grants +1 damage to non-reaction shots but instead grants +30 crit to all shots - Buff to reaction fire on the infantry and standard fire crit effectiveness in general (Goliath, Rocketeer, Infantry)
- Will to Survive grants +0.6 mobility - buff to biotanks
- Iron Skin now grants 2 DR (from 1) - Buffed
- Advanced Perception grants a 20% chance for a graze (from 10%) - Buffed
- Countercharge now deals 2 + Psi Rank damage (from 2 + Psi Rank/2) - Significantly more damage, especially as psi users get higher ranked (Note: for enemies, sectoids count as psi rank 0, sectoid leaders as psi rank 2, and sectoid commanders as psi rank 4). Max XCOM damage would be (2 + 6[volunteer]) * 1.5[psi mastery] = 12 damage
- Danger Zone effects enemies in a 2.5 tile radius around the primary target (from 1 tiles adjacent/diagonally) - Buff to bullet wizards
- Distortion grants +70 crit resistance (from +50) - Gives ethreals (who are always exposed) 20 crit resistance to further help make crit based builds not the primary method of removing them
- Collateral Damage area of effect further increased to 4 tiles radius (from 3) - Makes it much easier to hit air targets with, overall significant boost
- Snapshot grants a 50% chance for strike rifle to have a free action (from 55) - slight nerf
XCOM:
- Impact and Snapshot swapped on Infantry - Give earlier access to penetration
Aliens:
- Sectoid base HP to 4 (from 5) and will to 55 (from 65) but they gain 14 will every 2 alien levels (from 10 will) - Makes them and early game a little easier and also fits their frail nature
Equipment:
- Plasma Stellerator no longer grants +50% base damage vs units with distortion - It made it too necessary of an item (both strategically to acquire and produce and tactically to equip) and also sectoids and ethereals a little too easy to drop. Opens up options for other items.
- SAW aim malus to 0 (from -5) - Further buff to the shooter gunner
- LMG damage to 200% (from 175%) - Makes it more distinct from the SAW and a reasonable alternative for higher aim gunners to accommodate it's aim malus, slight buff to bullet wizard
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where planes did not repair correctly on Mini Long War
- Typos
Version 1.33.03
LW Rebalance v1.33.03
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm would occur as a free action to aliens
- Fixed a bug where XCOM wouldn't properly resist psychic storm
- FIxed a bug where psychic storm would sometimes still kill bleeding out units
Version 1.33.02
LW Rebalance v1.33.02
QoL:
- Added Salt and Salty to potential mission names - Improves realism
Strategic:
- Minimum will of all soldiers is now 20 (it was too punishing to have will less than this) - This effect just boosts the minimum, so it will not affect the # of high will soldiers, the actual calculation is just providing +15 will to anyone with less than 20 will, you can fix ongoing games buy using the console and typing [`giveperk stat will 15] on any soldier with less than 20 will
Tactical:
- Psychic Storm will no longer target bleeding out units and each soldier has a will/storm_level chance to resist the effect - makes it not feel so unfair and makes the alien trophy useful against it
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm was not triggering reaction shots
- Fixed a bug where aliens that launched were going on OW too often on lower difficulties
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Storm would sometime increase in level (and thus damage) if a psychic was buffed in will AFTER using psychic storm
- Fixed a bug where first aid would let severely fatigued soldiers not get injured
- Fixed a bug where bonus stats listed characters with their first name twice
Version 1.33.01
LW Rebalance v1.33.01
QoL:
- Hover SHIV volume reduced again from 20% volume to 10% volume - QoL, relative volume buff to other sounds
Strategy:
- Militarization only grants double bilets from the Captain and Colonel OTS upgrades - Was still too strong with so many officers due to how restricted officers are now, relative buff to cadre
- Arc Pistol is unlocked with Alien Computers (instead of Beam Lasers) - Was supposed to be this way but I forgot, relative buff to alien computers
Tactical:
- Bringing a soldier with over 30 days of fatigue (modified by campaign length) will automatically result in an injury - Prevents accumulating ridiculous levels of fatigue, relative buff to fatigueless campaigns
- Blaster Launcher range to 14 (from 16) - Slight nerf, relative buff to AP grenades
- Collateral Damage radius increased to 3 (from 2) - Significant buff to area of the effect, relative buff to perks that synergize with collateral damage
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where units would get OW against units that they should not have OW against (I think?), relative buff to OW
- Name of the campaign length options set to the proper names, relative buff to naming schemes
- Typos, relative buff to grammar nazis
- Fixed a bug where the game would sometimes crash after firing a shot, relative buff to ironman campaigns
Version 1.33.00
LW Rebalance v1.33.00
New Feature of Aliens: Incursion Strength
How to modify:
- Starts at 100%
- Increases by 1% after XCOM successfully completes any non-UFO mission
- Decreases by 1% for any soldier that dies with a rank greater than either the number of months passed or 5 (SGT)
- Decreases by 5% for an exalt/abduction loss
- Decreases by 15% for a council/DLC loss
- Decreases by 20% for terror site/defense mission/alien base assault loss
Effects (each of the following are modified directly by the Incursion Strength %):
- Modifies the # of aliens on all non-scripted missions
- Modifies the xp gain of all XCOM soldiers
- Modifies the rate of xcom research and xcom engineer production
- Modifies the amount of Alloy, Elerium, Weapon Fragments, and most alien artifacts recovered after each mission
- Modifies quick mission bonuses, council missions rewards, terror missions credits, council requests offers
Extra info:
- A loss applies to any mission where the skyranger landed and the mission was not a success
- UFO mission losses do not decrease Incursion Strength
- Incursion Strength is capped between a minimum of 50% and a maximum of 200% and the minimum increases by 5% per month
- Incursion Strength at or above 120 will be donated with an additional + sign on landed UFO, terror, and abduction missions
Strategic:
- New Campaign Length SW options: Mini War: 1/4 the campaign length of Regular Long War - So the 4 campaign lengths are now: MLW(Mini Long War: 1/4), NSLW(Not So Long War: 1/2), RLW(Regular Long War: 1), VLW(Long Long War: 2) - I realized that almost NO ONE played VLW let along VVLW and so many people played NSLW that having an even shorter campaign length would probably be ideal for many players. It took a lot of rework of programming functions to make MLW work.
- The estimated alien #s on UFOs will now be more accurate - QoL
- Mutliple foundry projects will now appear in the foundry list and in an unlock list after research is complete even if you dont' have the prerequisite items - QoL: makes it a lot easier to figure out what you need for projects without going to the wiki
- Aliens gain 3 research per failed abductions (from 5) (still modified by campaign length) - Makes skipping/losing an abduction less punishing
- XTP I/II/III to 5/10/20 xp per day (from 3/5/10) - Significant boost to the lower ranked soldiers in a campaign
- Fusion Weapons requires Standard Plasma Weapons (from Heavy Plasma Weapons) - Makes it a little more reasonble to acquire during a campaign
- Meld injections (soldier recovery) significantly nerfed: They remove 20% of the fatigue/injury (from 80%) and cost 40 meld (from 40 meld + 0.5 meld per day fatigued/injured) - Discourages use except for severely fatigued/injured soldiers
- Retraining causes 10 +3 days per rank (from 10 +5 days perk rank) - Makes it slightly easier and more reasonable to swap perks as you progress through a campaign
- Only Infantry and Scouts can be covert operatives - They are the most enjoyable this way, removes RnG from being too strong on the covert op
- All Autopistols renamed with Autopistol in their name - Consistency
- Laser Heater removed as a weapon
- Abduction rewards are calculated by a 20% chance for 1-3 reward units (from a 40% chance for 1 reward unit) - Accommodates new MLW game mode
- OTS project required missions spread out a little more: XTP 1-3 (20, 70, 110), Officer 1-5 (10, 30, 50, 90, 110) (from 20, 60, 100 and 10, 30, 50, 70, 90) - Slight increase to later game requirements
- Gangplank (especially) and Furies DLC missions provide significantly less alloys and elerium - Helps balance these missions from granting too much reward (vs those who play without the DLC) as it was borderline ridiculous how much they gave
- Scout-Sniper supraclass renamed to Marksman supraclass - Just a little more reasonable of a name
- Alien Grenades Foundry project no longer requires alien grenades - It was frustrating to try to figure out if the muton you were capturing had it, if you already had it, and to even know how to get it
- Plasma Weapon research projects no longer requires alien weapons - Same reason as above, and you basically always already had the items when you got there
- Each civilians saved on a terror mission rewards 10 credits (from 20) - Makes the mission a lot more on par with other missions for cash influx
- Researching a UFO now increases the fire rate against that UFO by 30% (from increasing damage by 30%) - Prevents extra mid-air destructions
- Corpse and Captive council requests will now offer more for fullfillment - They were a little too low
Resources:
- Soldiers cost 80 (from 90) - Makes it slightly easier to fill out the barracks
- You now acquire 4-6 UFO power sources from each intact UFO Power Cylinder (from 1-3) - Triple the amount of power sources for building and researching
- Bomb Disposal council missions now award 3x the cash (from 1x) while still awarding a significant decrease in panic - Makes them more ideal missions to get
- Assault council missions now award 3x the cash (from 2x) - Makes them more ideal missions to get
- Alloys and Elerium from UFOs increased by ~25% - slight boost to help with resources in the mid game
- All Autopsies require 8 corpses - Balances out the campaign lengths (as it was previously unfair)
- Plasma weapon research requries 4 of each alien weapon (from 1) - Consistency over campaign lengths
- Beam Lasers, Advanced Beam Lasers, and Advanced Pulse Lasers requires 10, 50, and 80 elerium (from 0, 0, and 30) - Makes elerium more useful early game
- Tactical Rigging requires 80 elerium (from 30) - Makes elerium more useful early game
- Psi Warfare systems requires 60 elerium (from 20) - makes elerium more useful early game
- Xenopsionics requires 8 UFO Power Sources and 50 elerium (from 5 meld) - Makes power sources and elerium more useful and coveted early game, slows down psionic progress
- Salvage rewards start off a little higher and do not progress as steeply - Gives the player more access to alloys and elerium exchanges to help bad RNG campaigns renormalize resources
Air Game:
- Stingray aim to 35 (from 30) - Slight boost to their usefulness
- Firestorms require 8 UFO Power Sources (from 4) - Accomodation for increased acquired
Foundry:
- Alien Metallurgy, Alien Nucleonics, and Improved Salvage now grants 20% additional resources of their respective resources (from 50%) - Significant nerf to the projects, makes them feel less mandatory and more of a choice
Country Bonuses:
- Resourceful now grants both Alien Metallurgy and Alien Nucleonics - Buff due to decrease in strength of foundry projects
- Militarization only reduces soldier cost/arrival time by 30% (from 60%) - The officer bonus is really strong
- Special Officer school grants +60% more xp (from double) - nerf to accommodate stronger XTPs
Tactical:
- Suppression no longer clears a steadied weapon - Finally got the code working
- Terror missions only have monster pods + 7 enemies (from monster pods + 10 enemies) - Makes them easier, as in some ways, they are even worse than missions you can retreat from (due to the country loss on losing)
- Removed the Sectopod + multiple cyberdisc pod from spawning - Was a little too dangerous to tackle and never really felt fair
- Camaraderie stat improvements will now be displayed post-mission
Perks:
- Camaraderie is a 20% chance to gain 5 aim and 10 will (from 40% chance to gain 1 aim and 2 will) - Buffed, accommodates MLW games
- Mechanic grants 2 charges of repair (instead of 1) - Buff to the engineer and the early game SHIV
- Close Encounters now also grants +1 ammo - Grants more ammo for close engaging in close quarters combat
- Awareness reworked: Provides +20 defense and steadied weapons do not become unsteadied after taking damage (from 10-30 defense and boosting combat readiness) - Makes it much better on the Jaeger and not so abusive on the extrasensory vest RfA classes
- Will to survive grants 50% DR in cover (from 40%) - Significant boost to the strength of biotanks
- Psychokinetic strike to 4 turn cd (from 5 turn) - Slight buff
- Critical System Targeting grants 50% more damage and 50 crit against mechanical units (from 40% and 40) - Buffed for balance on the trees and to make MEC tanky a little more difficult
- Psychic Storm is now active anytime and the AI wishes to use it (Note: range is unlimited and max 1 storm per turn) - Increases the strength of psionic units
- Psi Mastery allows psi abilities to avoid reaction fire but no longer grants a damage boost to mind fray - The avoiding reaction fire allows nice combinations like psi inspire while under overwatch, while providing another counter to OW builds. The mind fray already received the 1 AP boost and there was no need for Psi Mastery to double boost it.
- Mind merge grants the target 25 defense and +25% mobility in addition to it's other assortment of benefits - Buff to mind merge, makes the target harder to kill when it's in a dangerous situation (e.g. it got holod or mindfrayed)
- Distortion now grants 50 crit resistance - Makes sectoid commanders and ethereal more resilient against crit damage units
- Telekinetic Field defense bonus to 30 (from 50) and reduces the damage of explosives to 1/5th (from 1/10th) but cooldown to 4 turns (from 6 turns) - Nerfed, but more readily useable. Reason was to stop waiting for the ability which was bad gameplay and also to balance that level on the psi tree.
- Run and Gun now has a 3 turn cd (from 2 turn) - Was a little too strong for balance on the tree, toned back a little
- Mind Control grants a 5% chance per damage taken to break (from 20%) - Makes it harder to break mind control
- Commanding Officer no longer gives officers +30% xp - Was not necessary, officers are stacked anyway so they end up with ample xp as it
- Jetboot Module grants +4 mobility (from +5.3) - Toned back as it's quite strong
- Grit grants +1 DR (from 0) and +3 HP (from +4) - Slight boost to strength of the perk for mitigating damage
- Ready For Anything no longer grants +20 crit resistance and will not activate if the unit moved, but instead grants +1 ammo- It's strong enough without the crit. Encourages multi-shot perk instead of assault point blank attack perk.
- Fortified no longer grants +1 DR - Slight nerf
- Disabling Shot has a 1 turn cooldown (from 2) - Slight buff
Equipment:
- SAW aim to -5 (from -10) - Boost to shooter and OW gunner
- Battle Rifles and Carbines crit to 0 (from 10) - Slight nerfs
- If the Stun Rifle fails to stun a target below 50% health, it will maim them instead. The stun rifle also gains an extra charge - Makes captures easier
- Arc Rifle does 1 damage (from 4) but has 4 pen (from 0) - Buff to the strength of the arc rifle against mechanical units, and makes it more specialized - Encouarges uses of sidearms with the arc rifle as it didn't feel as good using it for normal damage purposes and the poor use against bio encourages diversification on the soldier (e..g equipping nades, or using sidearm)
- New Electric Weapon: Arc Pistol: Dmg: 1 (+4 vs mech / +7 vs mech upg), Pen: 2, Crit: 0, Aim: 0, Ammo: 2 (+1 upg), Mob: -0.6, Range: 18, {Maim}, Aim penalty beyond 10 tiles, Equippable by all biosoldiers - Gives soldiers a sidearm option to help deal with mechanical units
- Javelin rockets again reduce scatter by 30% - Makes them more viable
- Chitin plating provides 60% DR vs melee attacks (from 40%) - Important as melee units will often crit bio units so they need more DR
- KSM damage to 20 (from 24) - Nerf, primarily towards the Marauder
- MEC1s and MEC2s each require 4 UFO power sources to build, MEC3s each require a fusion core - Makes the resources more useful, accommodates for different campaign lengths
- Plasma weapons require 4 UFO power sources to build (from 1) - Accommodates for different campaign lengths
- Rocket Launcher and Recoilless Rifle range to 18 (from 20) - Prevents squadsight rocketing
- Cognitive Enhancer increases xp by 50% - At 100% it was borderline broken
- Rocket Launchers have -1.3 mobility (from -0.6) - Slight nerf to rocketeers
- Psi Retaliator now grants +30 crit resistance (from +20) and allows Countercharge to work regardless of unit HP - Buff to it's use on tanks
- Walker Servos now set the mobility to 8.8 and ignore all mobility altering effects (e.g. enrage, red fog, acid, etc.) - Makes it a lot more useful
XCOM:
- Infantry, Engineer, Assault, and Shogun all gain +0.6 base mobility - Slight buff to those classes
- Marauder Impact replaced with Opportunist - Gives more interesting choices with both the Rapid Reaction and Close Combat Specialist builds
- XP required for soldier ranks increased for GSGT/MSGT to 6000/9000 (from 5100/7000) - Spreads out the late game ranks more due to the signficant increase in XP soldiers get late game
Aliens:
- Ethereal defense to 50 (from 40) - Relative boost to non-aim attacks (e.g. KSM / Explosives) against ethereals
- Sectoid Commander/Ethereal HP to 16/26 (from 20/32) - Accommodates for their increase in crit resistance and defense and OW avoidance
- Muton base HP to 14 (from 12) - Slight increase in durability
- Level 5 Outsider leaders gain grit - Boost to the resiliency of higher level outsider leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Maybe fixed a bug that caused some exalt missions to soft lock
- Fixed a bug where some missions would not end until you actually evacuated your squad
- Fixed a bug where rapid fire wouldn't properly trigger free action abilities
- Fixed a bug where smoke wouldn't grant reaction fire immunity after moving through it more than a tile if the aim within the smoke was less than 30 and wouldn't trigger a reaction shot
- Fixed a bug where the expected crit damage display was not properly taking into consideration some damage modifiers on the target
- Fixed a bug where a hit chance would be displayed when stabilizing a soldier
- Fixed a bug where the leaders on the exalt base assault were not high level like they should be
- Fixed a bug where stat promotions would show the characters first name twice if it was a soldier without a nick name
- Fixed a bug where some techs would not show if you had not acquired the required items when they should show
- Fixed a bug where impact would not work on low HP units sometimes
- Fixed a bug where indomitable could prevent impact from clearing overwatch
- The motion tracker will no longer be usable on a scamper move
- Fixed a bug where meld costs for foundry and tech projects were being reduced on shorter campaigns when they shouldnt' have been
- Fixed a bug where the Uber Ethereal would start using psychic storm on XCOM before even being revealed
- Fixed a bug where overpower wasn't updating correctly when units were moving
- Maybe fixed a bug where some floaters would not go on overwatch after launching
- Fixed a bug where researching UFOs was giving additional resources from bounties
- Fixed a bug where Exalt would sometimes fall off ledges when they spawned
- Fixed a bug where the # of civilians on a terror mission would sometimes display as a weird value (e.g. -2)
- Fixed a bug where the "home sweet home" popup would sometimes occur multiple times
Version 1.32.17
LW Rebalance v1.32.17
Strategic:
- Adjusted mission descriptions for UFOs to be more clear what they are doing
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where sorting the soldiers by class would sometimes lead to crashes (e.g. on a base defense mission or after a DLC mission)
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would sometimes not enter on overwatch
- Fixed a bug where reinforcements would sometimes cause the game to soft-lock
- Fixed a bug where the automatic reloads from Lock N' Load and In The Zone were not working correctly with free actions
- Fixed a bug where units firing at a unit that is steadied would cancel the steady if they missed6
Version 1.32.16
LW Rebalance v1.32.16
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that would cause reinforcement units to soft-lock the game when the entered the map
- Removed a bug that prevented half of the oversseers from not generating each month
- Fixed a bug where close combat specialist shots would still fire if the chance to hit was less than 30%
- When you finish a mission (by saving the VIP, diffusing the bomb, or getting the data out) the popup will now properly say 'extract units' instead of 'abort mission'
- Fixed a bug where aliens would use overwatch even though there were no active XCOM in sight
Version 1.32.15
LW Rebalance v1.32.15
QoL:
- Soldier Progression notices include the soldier's nickname - QoL
Strategic:
- The base defense mission will always occur before the new year (from always before April of the 2nd year) - Makes it less likely to be skipped by campaigns
Tactical:
- All explosives will deal full damage to anything within 1 tile of the center of the explosion - Required to fix a bug
Equipment:
- Psi Retaliator triples the activation rate of countercharge (from doubles) - Buffed as item slots are really valuable and needed more to be competitive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a rare bug that would occur when you grappled to a unseen location that actually had an enemy pawn there
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm would sometimes trigger despite being in vision of the enemies (thanks obsidian127 for the save file, helped a lot)
- Fixed a bug where explosives could be reduced in damage at the center of an impact: Now all explosives will deal full damage within 1 tile of the center of the explosion
- Improved the code to try to ensure reinforcements will properly enter overwatch after spawning
- Fixed a bug where units on OW lists were not carrying over between turns sometimes allowing units that did not have an enemy in LoS to fire on them anyway
- Fixed a bug where floaters that launch would go on OW before they launch - looked a little silly
- Fixed a bug where berserk would sometimes not grant the unit a turn after going berserk
- Fixed a bug where berserk would sometimes force a player to fire a shot after moving after going berserk
- Fixed a bug where berserk would double the chance for berserk or enrage to trigger, so instead of doubling them or forcing them to stack, just lowered the chance of berserk to 2% (from 5%) and enrage to 3% (from 5%)
- Fixed a bug where ITZ would not interact properly with berserk
- Fixed some typos and incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where rarely muton and muton elite grenades could cause a shred effect
Version 1.32.14
LW Rebalance v1.32.14
Strategic:
- Consistent Fatigue 2nd wave option set to 14 turns (from 20) - More reasonable
Perks:
- Psychic Storm: When this unit has full HP and the aliens have had no enemies in vision on their turn for more than a turn: it has a (will/10)% chance to create a Psychic Storm that will deal will/50 damage to all enemy units at the beginning of their turn - It needed to be changed as it didn't feel good. Now it strictly works only when XCOM breaks LoS for more than 1 turn but can be more damaging.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes move more than allowed on their turn
- Fixed a bug whre aliens were cheating by sometimes moving twice and activating overwatch
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots against units that are steadied would ignore their cover DR as if the unit firing the reaction shot was also steadied
- Fixed a bug where psychic storm was damaging SHIVs
- Fixed typos
Version 1.32.13
LW Rebalance v1.32.13
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all units had psychic storm :o
- Fixed a bug where units were going on OW seemingly randomly
Version 1.32.12
LW Rebalance v1.32.12
Tactical:
- Improved sneak mode slightly
- Made reinforcements and launch more consistent when it comes to overwatching
Perks:
- Psychic Storm chance to activate changed: When this unit is active and has no enemies in vision, it has a (will/10)% chance to deal 1 damage to enemy units at the beginning of their turns. - Makes the will more relevant
- Psi Mastery increases the activation rate of psychic storm by 5x - Makes sectoid leaders, and more dangerous psionic foes, more dangerous to break LoS on
- Mind Fray, Psi Panic, and Mind Control use 75/75/50% of the user's will (from 50/50/33%) - Boost to the hit chance of psionic abilities
Aliens:
- Sectoids gain psychic storm - makes them harder to play LoS games with
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
Version 1.32.11
LW Rebalance v1.32.11
QoL:
- Creating a naming system for semantics:
Biosoldiers = all 8 bio classes
Soldiers = all 8 bio classes and MECs
Units = all XCOM units
Mechanized Units = MECs and SHIVs
Strategic:
- Abductor HP lowered to 3000 (from 4000) - Even easier to shoot down
Tactical:
- Disorient reduces defense by 50 (from 20) - Makes them more offensively useful, helps push the 'breach and clear' aspect of them
Perks:
- Vital Point Targeting deals 20% damage (from 30%) when not at point blank - Nerfed as it was too strong, especially with the recent pick up of steady
- Psychic storm will now only activate if the psychic user has no enemies in sight - Focuses more on the anti-LOS_Break effect
- Reactive Targeting Sensors will trigger Cluster Bomb if a sectopod is charging a cluster bomb - Vanilla mechanic that would take a lot of work to fix (not sure if I even can fix it) so I'm going to leave as is
- Overpower now reduces attributes by 30 + will_diff/5 (from 20 + will_diff/10) - Significant boost to the oppressive strength of berserker leaders and ethereals
Equipment:
- Concussion grenade and Psi grende radius reduced to 3/5 (from 4/6) - Accommodates for stronger disorientation
XCOM:
- Maruader aim to 10 (from 20) - Nerf to the strength of shooting on the Marauder
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc DR when closing grants 4 DR (from 6) - makes it easier to deal with even when closed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the battle scanner would sometimes still act as a spotter
- Fixed more typos
- Fixed a bug (again) where the psionic cinematic would soft lock the strategic game
- Fixed a bug where Psychic Storm would sometimes work on the aliens
- Fixed a bug where bleeding out units would sometimes count as an active unit for aliens
- Hopefully fixed a bug where reinforcements would sometimes overlap other units
- Fixed a bug where the VIP would sometimes gain stats and shouldn't
Version 1.32.10
LW Rebalance v1.32.10
Strategic:
- Improved the display of item information in various places
- Gentle Aliens also reduces alien DR by 1 - Only works if they had flat DR to begin with (note: this mostly makes mechanical enemies easier)
Tactical:
- Reduced the formula for aliens leaders from 25 + 5% per alien level to just 5% per alien level - Makes them feel more special when you see them, instead of such a common occurance, overall lowers difficulty some, especially earlier game when you might have as many tools to deal with difficult leaders
- Temple Ship has 50% chance for champion leaders (from 10% - like terror missions) - Increases difficulty of the mission, but also makes sure that terror missions dont' feel harder than the temple ship
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed multiple typos
- Fixed a bug where SHIVs were getting free actions from the commanding officer
- Fixed a bug where seekers would sometimes get lost during 'sneak' mode
Version 1.32.09
LW Rebalance v1.32.09
Strategic:
- Terror missions have 2 more aliens - Increase in difficulty
Equipment:
- Psi Frayer grants +10 will, still prevents strangulation, and triple damage to mind fray; but no longer grants mind fray or +1.3 mobility - More focused on psionics specifically
- Psi Retaliator grants +15 will, still grants 20% crit resistance, and doubles the activation chance of countercharge; but no longer grants countercharge or +0.6 mobility - More focused on psionics specifically
- Neuroregulator grants +10 defense (from 0) and +1.3 mobility (from +0.6) - Boost to strength
- Conduit grants +40% damage to explosives (from +50%) - Was too strong at +50%
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where gunners and rocketeers would not correctly act as spotters for squadsight units
- Fixed some text display issues
- Fixed a bug where item unlock screens would take up too much realestate and cause players that didn't know about pressing 'space' to be soft-locked out of the game
Version 1.32.08
LW Rebalance v1.32.08
Quality of Life:
- A complete reformating of almost all information fields in the game - Thanks to CptnHappyTimePie for all the weeks of work he put into creating this
Strategic:
- Moderate increase of costs of multiple late game items - Creates a little more tension on what to purchase
Tactical:
- Van Doorn special perk changed to "Cool Under Pressure: Has an [enemies in vision]% chance for end-in-idle actions to cost 0 AP." - more universally applicable, less encouraged into certain classes/builds
- Zhang special perk changed to "Gunslinger: Deal +1 damage with pistols." - more universally applicable, less encouraged into certain classes/builds
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Sneak mode was being activated in situations where it shouldn't (e.g. drop-ins)
- Improved the AI on sneak mode so the aliens more accurately aim to move to a good flanking position and not just a position near the enemies that might flank
- Fixed a bug where aliens would warping eradicly at the beginning of their turn
- Fixed a bug where getting mind merge would sometimes cause the game to lock up
- Did another attempt to remove the alien's ability to use grenades inappropriately (I think I got the last situations they might be doing this with)
- Fixed a bug where Van Doorn's rank upon acquiring him sometimes wasn't scaling correctly
- Fixed a bug where saving and reloading in the middle of a turn would mess with 'sneak' mode
Version 1.32.07
LW Rebalance v1.32.07
Strategic:
- Elite Aliens replaced with Gentle Aliens: Aliens lose 1 damage, 10 aim, 10 will, and 25% base HP - Feels better for players
Perks:
- Growth now occurs at a 50% chance (from 66%) but increases amount of growth by 5x when the outsider is activated - encourages engagement once they are activated and discourages breaking LoS and cheesing them
- Distortion no longer prevents squadsight shots - Not necessary with the spotter requirements, opens up more options for squadsight units against distortion units
- Distortion reduces damage to 1/3rd (from 1/4th) - Makes it feel like your damage matters more, because at only 25% damage truncation and small damages could feel too frustrating
- Ready For Anything will no longer activate on units with deflection shield - Felt a little unfair to have both activate
- New Perk: Psychic Storm: When this unit is active, it has a 50% chance to deal 1 damage to all enemy units (even those not in line of sight) at the beginning of their turns - Discourages camping sectoid commanders and ethereals
- Grenadier grants a 10% throw range increase (from 20%) - Tone back on range of destructive grenades
- Each trigger of countercharge has an additional will/10 percent chance to double activate, dealing double damage - Think of it like a crit
Items:
- The skeleton key requries 60 engineers (from 30) and 80 meld (from 20) - Makes doing alien base assaults really early more difficult. This is good as doing so is likely not in the player's best interests
Equipment
- SMGs have 40 crit (from 30) - Boost, pushes them more into the role of predictable flank crits
Alien AI:
- When you lose vision of all aliens for more than a turn, they enter a new "sneak" mode where they are 1) more aggressive and 2) try to actively flank XCOM. During this mode they will try to remain hidden (e.g. not use abilities like mind merge).
- Pods and aliens will retreat 75% less often - Tested and this IS working, please note that they WILL still retreat, just much less often
Aliens:
- Outsider regeneration permanently stays at 1 (from 3-13) - Makes it much easier to keep them from growing when activated and encourages engaging them (discouraging breaking LoS and trying to cheese them). Also makes damage against them (e.g. overwatch) not feel so wasted.
- Sectoid commander pods ONLY spawn with sectoids (not mechtoids and not outsiders) - Makes their fights more interesting as there are enough outsiders already
- Sectoid commanders and Ethreals start with 20 and 32 HP (from 12 and 24) - helps accommodate for weaker distortion and weaker pod composition
- Sectoid commander mobility to 9.3 (from 8) - Slight increase to their mobility for using various abilities
- Ethereal regeneration halved - It felt frustrating to have your hard earned work against it so invalidated
- Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals gain Psychic Storm - Helps prevent slow long abusive engagements like breaking LoS against them
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed all instances of using Native code to determine if a target is shredded (might fix rare situations where units are not receiving extra damage from being shredded)
- Units gaining bonus HP from missions are no longer automatically injured
- Rewrote countercharge code so that the popup should only display when it actually activates
- Fixed a bug where will was not be calculated correctly for psionic abilities when maluses were applied to targets
Version 1.32.06
LW Rebalance v1.32.06
Bug Fix:
- Fixed a bug where reaction fire was avoided as if units were in smoke when they weren't
Version 1.32.05
LW Rebalance v1.32.05
Strategic:
- First mission has 1 less sectoid (ease into is only 5 sectoids) - Makes it slightly more predictable
- Alien Base Assaults ramp up in difficulty much quicker - See wiki, basically twice as fast, discourages farming as multiple of these missions can be tedious
- Toned back the size of salvage requests into the late game - They were a little too large
- You only get bonuses for the temple ship up to 9 countries with XCOM, any more than that have no effect - Helps prevent the feeling of needing to cover the world
- After 3 months, the aliens can send 3-4 abductions at a time, after 6 months, the aliens can send 4-5 abductions at a time - Makes it harder to stop abductions, even if you shoot them down, allowing the aliens to finally get some through. Also note you may not be able to get to all abductions and will have to priortize some. Also note that you will only be able to select 3 of the 5 at any one time.
Second Wave Options:
- Elite Aliens (replaces Quick and Dirty #27) now grants aliens gain 10 aim, 10 will, and 1 damage - Acts as a difficulty modifier
Air Game:
- Elerium Afterburners increases aircraft battle speed by 10 (from 5) - Buff to air game upgrades
- Improved Avionics increaes air weapon aim by 10 (from 5) - Buff to air game upgrades
- Penetrator Weapons increases air weapon penetration by 25% (from 15%) - Buff to air game upgrades
- UFO Countermeasures increases aircraft dodge by 10 (from 5) - Buff to air game upgrades
- Abductor HP to 4000 (from 6000) - Makes them even easier to shoot down
Tactical:
- Non-suppression reaction fire will not trigger until the hit chance is at least 30% - Prevents wasting ammo, makes sense, feels better
- Steady only grants +35 aim if the unit is at 1 AP - Tone back on the strength of bullseye
- Commanding Officer's now have gold armor HP - Helps distinguish them
Perks:
- Squadsight spotters can no longer be concealed to act as a spotter for squadsight - Prevents using concealed units for squadsight purposes
- Fragmentation to 25% chance (from 30%) - Slight tone back
- Camaraderie grants 2 will per mission (from 1) and does not require the mission to be deathless - Buffed
- Snapshot to 55% chance to proc with strike rifles (from 50%) - Slight boost to Snapshot Scout
- Reconnaissance grants 1 battle scanner (from 2) - Nerf to the scout, relative buff to the battle scanner item
- Commanding Officer grants a will/10% chance for anyone the officer can see to have end-in-idle actions cost 0 AP - Encourages keeping in sight of the officer, buff to the on-field strength of officers
- Critical System Targeting grants +40% crit against mechanical units as well - Slight buff
- Penetrator grants +1 penetration and an additional +1 against units in cover (from +2 at all times) - Nerf for balance on the trees
Equipment:
- Reinforced plating back to 2 DR and alloy cost back to 20 (from 40) - Was too strong at 3
- Regenerative plating to 0 HP (from 1) - Toned down a little more
- Battle Scanner range increased to 12 tiles (from 8) - with the inability to abuse them, their range no longer needed to be so restrictive
- Shotgun reaction fire range increased to normal vision range (from 8 tiles) - Not longer necessary with the reaction fire accuracy filter
Aliens:
- Sectoid will to 65 (from 50) - Buff to their strength of psionic abilities
- Tactical Mobility moved from level 6 thinmen leaders to level 1 thinmen leaders - Makes early thinmen leaders more resilient
- Sectopod DR lowered by 4 - Makes them a little more reasonable to take down if you dont' have acid
- Mechtoids lose Lock N' Load - With disabling being weaker they didn't need the extra ammo resiliency, relative buff to disabling shot
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the gamespeed would sometimes slow down during reveals and other matinees
- Finally fixed the bug where grapple would send you flying away - YAY. I did it simply by letting grapple do what it wants, and if it does throw you way off target, it changes the target to move your soldier back - I tested 200 times, reproduced a bad grapple 7 times, all of which were immediately redirected =D
- Hanse Graf renamed to Hans Graf - Was always just misspelled
- Fixed a bug where outsiders that were hunkered still triggered an orange AP pip and a CCS circle
- Fixed a bug where rapid-fire wouldn't proc extra actions correctly
- Fixed a bug with countercharge was not always applying correctly
- Fixed a bug where countercharge was doing incorrect damage amounts sometimes
- Removed the code for minimizing the chance the AI retreats - It seemed like it wasn't doing anything so I removed it just in case it was causing a bug and left the code as it was in LW1
- Fixed a bug where countries were not granting the appropriate stats before the temple ship to the soldiers
- Fixed a bug where rapid fire wouldn't correctly trigger end-in-idle free actions
- Fixed a bug where sectoid commander pods would sometimes spawn mecthoids
Version 1.32.04
LW Rebalance v1.32.04
Perks:
- Squadsight now only works if you have a spotter (a unit that is not in the middle of their turn (i.e. at 0 or 2 AP) that can see the target) - Prevents some abusive situations, encourages engagement of the enemy
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed an error where players would earn 1-2% less alloys and elerium than intended - more of an OCD fix
- Fixed a bug where dead unit could sometimes still trigger countercharge
- Fixed a bug where countercharge would sometimes only partially activate
- Fixed a bug where squadsight would sometimes not allow you to hit targets in normal vision that had distortion
- Fixed a CTD if combat patrols were used really frequently
Version 1.32.03
LW Rebalance v1.32.03
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all the changes from 1.32.02 were not working in the last upload
- Fixed a bug where cyberdiscs could spawn on early terror missions
Version 1.32.02
LW Rebalance v1.32.02
Strategic:
- The bonus DR from the "Bred Tough" start now shows up in the strategic soldier loadout screens
Tactical:
- The first mission has 2 less sectoids - Accommodates for harder early aliens
- Ethereal and Sectopods occur much more rarely when they first appear and grow in frequnecy over 5 aliens levels (instead of 2 alien levels) - Significantly reduces their frequency at the beginning of the late game
- Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters are slightly less likely to occur in the late game - Increases the diversity of aliens encountered in the late game
Perks:
- Shred application is x4 for shots/strangle, x8 for mayhem suppression, and 12x explosives (from 3/9/12) - Balance
- Mind Control has the caster's will at 33% for calculating hit chance (from 50%) - Was too strong with the soft cap
- Psi Panic and Mind Fray has the caster's will at 50% for calculating hit chance (from 66%) - Was too strong with the soft cap
- HEAT Warheads now lets explosives clear enemy overwatch - Buff to utility
Equipment:
- Alloy Bipod reduces scatter by 30% (from 15%) - Buff to use on the rocketeer
Aliens:
- Ethereal defense to 40 (from 60) - They were too difficult
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Bred Tough would sometimes award soldiers a single defense
- Fixed a bug where Dare Devils would sometimes award soldiers a single aim
- Fixed a typo on the perk tree image
- Fixed a CTD when trying to use F1 during the tactical game
- Fixed a bug where hitting an alien with a grenade who was using countercharge would sometimes cause the grenade to do 0 damage
- Typos
- Ready for Anything and Cluster Bombs will no longer trigger on units that are electropulsed
- Fixed a bug where the game would CTD when you researched certain technologies (e.g. advanced Gauss)
- Fixed a bug where the chances for psi panic to work were not correct
Version 1.32.01
LW Rebalance v1.32.01
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where downed and landed UFOs would often cause crashes to the desktop
- Maybe fixed a bug where countercharge would imcompletely activate?
Version 1.32.00
LW Rebalance v1.32.00
Starting Bonuses:
- Ring of Fire grants 150 credits per month (from 100) - Buffed
- New Brazil Bonus: Born to Fly: Pilots gain 3 aim per kill instead of 1
- New Germany Bonus: Militarization : Soldier costs and arrival time are decreased by 60% and the OTS grants double the officer bilets at each upgrade
- New Japan Bonus: Global Networking: Intel Scans cost only 50 credits, Grey Market Prices are 30% higher, and sightings on downed UFOs occur twice as often
- New Nigeria Bonus: Bred Tough: All biosoldiers start with 1 DR
- New USA Bonus: Daredevils: Combat Patrols are twice as effective and cause half as much damage to the aircraft
- Xenologic Remedies now also boosts captive sells costs - Easier to use
- Cadre grants 3xp per day (from 2) - Buffed
- Cheyenne Mountain starts with a 2nd steam vent - Buffed
- Advanced Preparations starts with 8 extra soldiers (from 5) - Buffed
- Jai Jawan starts with 8 UFO Power Sources (from 4) - Buffed
Second Wave:
- Elite XCOM and Friendly Skies bonuses to 15% (from 25%) - So they are not as game altering (this value is still dgc.ini adjustable)
Strategic:
- Players now gain significantly more resources from missions in the mid and especially late game (as the 10% bonus per month was previously not working and now is) - Massive influx of mission resources into the mid and especially late game (double resources at 10 months in)
- The Exalt reminder is reset back to the default value from the original mod and acts as a reminder but scans can occur earlier or later than this - Native coding prevents me from defining this accurately so I'll let players figure this out and just have a reminder for QoL
- Light Plasma Weapons requires Advanced Pulse Lasers and EMP Weapons (instead of Alien Biocybernetics and Alien Power Systems) - Encourages more standard progression
- Number of officer spots availabled decreased to 7x Lieutenant, 5x Captain, 3x Major, 2x Colonel, 1x Field Commander (from 10x Lieutenant, 7x Captain, 5x Major, 3x Colonel, 1x Field Commander) - Makes the spots worth more
- Range of prices of items sold on the grey market is now ~66% to ~133% (from 33-185%) - Reduces the RNG of the strategic game (Note this can still truncate to 0)
- Abductions and Terror missions no longer gain an additional alien for every 4 months that have passed - Make them feel less congested and less difficult in the later game especially
- Terror missions have 1-2 less pods and ~30% less aliens on all missions, but each pod now has a guaranteed leader with +2 levels, and the chance for a level 9 leader 5x as high - Makes them feel much less crowded but still retains the difficulty
- Council Missions expire in 2 hours (from 1) - Makes it more reasonable to not miss them
- Council Requests with significant rewards will no longer reward scientists or engineers - They were often not worth it
- After each mission, all soldiers can gain bonus stats (instead of just MSGTs), but the chance is decreased from 100% with MSGT, to 50% with GSGT, to 25% with TSGT, down to 1% with SPECs - creates a sense of progression of stats even when the base stats aren't growing
Difficulty Changes:
- XCOM Funding and Starting cash is now standardized across difficulties (at 50%) - Significant nerf to cash influx on normal, classic and brutal difficulties, makes less of a step between the difficulties on a strategic level, balances out cash flow problems being different on different difficulties
- Initial HQ Power is now 30/30/30/30 on normal/classic/brutal/impossible (from 50/40/35/30) - Reduces the difference between difficulties on the strategic level
- Initial Panic is now 500/600/700/800 on normal/classic/brutal/impossible (from 200/400/600/800) - Reduces the difference between difficulties on the strategic level
Air Game:
- The cost for combat patrols starts at 100 credits, the bonuses granted to the effects are halved (from fire storm, stronger weapons, more xp pilots), and the base effect is increased to 3-5 (from 2-4) - Makes them much more viable early and mid game
- Firestorms require 120 alloys (from 20) - Puts pressure back on alloys and their competition from other areas, especially with the significant increase to acquisition
- Abductors have 75% DR (from 225%) and 6000 HP (from 12000 HP) - Makes them reasonable to down in the mid+ game, opens up some new maps
- Overseers have 2000 HP (from 3000 HP) - With the more difficult crew it wasn't as necessary to require a strong air game
- Raiders will not appear until alien level 4+ (from alien level 2+) - Makes the early game less RNG based
- The more continents that XCOM has satellite coverage on will encourage the aliens to send out stronger UFOs - Makes it harder and more challenging to get world coverage, helps prevents the aliens from getting 'shut out'
- The Aliens will now send out satellite hunt missions for each continent (instead of just a single set for the entire world) - Makes it harder and more challenging to get world coverage, helps prevents the aliens from getting 'shut out'
- Alien resource determination of alien mission UFOs no longer jumps at levels 8 and 13 and instead increases granularly from level 1 to 15 - Makes more sense
Unique Units:
- Peter Van Doorn, Annette Durand, Shaojie Zhang, Hank Miller, Hans Graft, and Stanislav Orlov have unique perks - Makes them feel more special without interfering with their class perks
- Annette and the Furies all arrive with 3 extra levels than previously - Makes them easier to use as you get them rather late
Tactical:
- All experience gained is now increased by 10% each month - This is a huge influx to xp gains over a campaign and an especially large increase in the late game. This should make leveling up lower soldiers significantly easier, again, especially in the late game.
- Covert Operative missions now allow for 3 soldiers (from 2), have 3 relays to hack (from 2), spawns occur 2 turns earlier, and the mission no longer reduces the operative's mobility - More engaging missions
- All significant bounties reduced by 50% - Due to the increase in resources these are actually doubled at 10 months in so this is more of a wash than it seems
- You now get bounties for units that are captured (instead of just units that are killed) - Feels better
- The overseer now contains a much more dangerous crew (larger pods and an additional cyberdisc and sectoid commander pod) - Makes it harder to do the overseer earlier, as it is a retreatable mission
- The alien base assault will no longer have an extra elite exalt pod on it or cyberdisc pod. As well, the additional pods after retrying the mission are tweaked slightly (see wiki) - As a mandatory mission where there is no retreat, it can't be too difficult. Also, it can't take too long with possible outsiders at the end and no way to retreat.
- Officers now gain 30% more xp from missions but also accumulate 30% more fatigue from missions - Makes it so a good chain of officers is important but xp gain on officers isn't reduced
- Steady now bypasses cover DR regardless of AP (instead of granting 2 pen when at 2 AP) - Significant buff, especially to bullseye
- Suppression will now cancel the steady effect - so it's not inconsistent
- Fixed some map bugs ala LiQuiD911's Map patches for LW1.0 mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/780?) - Should help with some weird pathing and cover
Perks:
- Reactive Targeting Sensors will no longer trigger if the unit with RTS is panicked - Consistency with the rest of the game
- Snapshot grants a 0/50% chance for a 0 AP shot (from 20/60%) - nerf on infantry/shogun but more accommodation on the snapshot scout due to executioner on marksman scope
- Extra Conditioning grants +2 HP (from +1) and a 10% chance for any idle-ending action to cost 0 AP but no longer grants fatigue/injury reductions - Alteration to something more for the tactical game and buff
- Close Combat Specialist is -40 aim (from -50 aim) - Buffed for balance
- Tactical Mobility grants 30 defense against reaction shots - Significant buff, creates more situations where using OW is not strong
- Ranger no longer grants 20 aim on sidearms but instead doubles the sidearm close-range aim bonus - Didn't feel good how strong it was at range and now it has the highest accuracy at close range
- Hit and Run will now trigger on steadied shots (as well as targets that are not protected by cover) - Buff to the use, synergy with bullseye
- Vital Point Targeting will now trigger on steadied shots (as well as targets that are not protected by cover) - Buff to the use, synergy with bullseye
- Brawler is 20 aim and DR (from 30) - Nerfed for balance
- Mind Control grants control of the target. Final hit chance is reduced by 50%. Does not work on mechanical units. Mind controlled targets receive 1 damage and -1 AP each turn. There is a 20% chance per damage taken by the mind controller to have the effect broken.
- Countercharge only works against biologic units, only on idle-ending actions, and only activates if the casting unit is at full HP - It felt weird when it worked against robotic units and actually was often a negative against cyberdiscs (due to closing), the full HP is to reduce the amount of triggering, the idle-ending actions is to reduce bugs
- Shred is multiplied by x3 for shots/strangle, x9 for mayhem suppression, and 12x explosives (from x3, x7, x10) - Buff to shred effect of mayhem suppression and explosives
- Collateral damage does 100% damage (from 50%) - With the 2 AP restriction it's pinned in enough that it doesn't also need the damage to be so low, especially since the 2 AP restricts the ability to remove cover as well
- Camaraderie has a 40% chance to trigger (from 20%) - Buffed, especially for a Field Commander perk
- Combined Arms grants +2 damage (from +1) - Buffed, especially for a Field Commander perk
- Rapid Fire has an aim malus of 40 (from 15) - Toned back to stop assaults from becoming so strong at TSGT+
- Mind Fray, Psi Panic, and Mind Control are now SOFT caps (instead of HARD caps) calculate their hit chances with reduced portions of the caster's will, and the reduction on fray and panic is 33% (from 25%) - Means you can scale up as high as you want
- Marksman Scope aim to +5 (from +10), penetration to 0 (from +1), but grants executioner as well as squadsight - Perk granting for this item is reasonable and fun, as the scout can't get executioner otherwise now, buff accommodated by decreased snapshot chance, though it acts as a straight buff on HnR and S&M scouts
- SMG costs are now similar to Carbine costs - A long-time overdue change
- Pulse weapons are a little more affordable - makes them less ideal to skip
- Flying armors no longer grant an additional 10 defense - balance due to tactical mobility buff
- Illuminator Gunsight also grants +1 damage - Buffed
- Reinforced Plating DR to 3 (from 2) but alloy cost to 40 (from 24) - Buffed but costs more
- Regenerative Plating HP to 1 (from 2) - Slight nerf
- Conduit grants 50% weapon damage to explosives (from 40%) - Buffed (due to truncation this results in more significant of an increase than the 10% it actually is)
- SMGs can no longer be steadied - Didn't really make sense, slight nerf
XCom:
- Shogun has Critical System Targeting replaced with Vital Point Targeting - Synergizes better with bullseye and Hit and Run
- Shogun has Snapshot, Fragmentation, and Impact rotated - Bring the snapshot -> Impact combo on a little earlier and pushes the grenade strength a little bit later
- Jaeger has Vital Point Targeting replaced with Aggression - Gives the Jaeger more of an option for a high crit build
- Gunner has Penetrator and Shredder swapped - Still provides shredder to the shooter builds and the CST vs Penetrator is still a reasonable choice with penetrator being great for the bullet wizard
- Engineer has Bullseye and Critical System Targetting swapped - Pushes the shooter engineer into an even stronger anti-mechanical role while not making the stronger bullseye (from steady boost) too strong on the tree as it's up against holo on a DT class
Aliens:
- Ethereal defense to 60 (from 50) - Makes them a little more resilient
- Outsiders grow 33% slower - Makes longer missions significantly less punishing
- Alien Pod AI is 4x less likely to enter 'retreat' mode - This means a few things: 1) Chasing down a lone enemy as they flee will be 4x less common, 2) Aliens will tend to pull back and activate other pods 4x less commonly, 3) when you kill a bunch of members of a pod they will be 4x less likely to turn tail and flee so they can be more deadly
- Floaters and Thinmen lose the ability to suppress (only mutons and muton elites can suppress now) - Significant decrease in the amount of suppression XCOM will face - Note this is NOT a buff, it just prevents some annoying aspects of gameplay when suppression is too frequent. An enemy that doesn't suppress is more likely to shoot which can be just as dangerous (or more so).
- Sectoids and Seekers gain 15 aim to make up for the 20 aim loss on ranger
Increase in Early Game Alien Strength/Difficulty:
- Sectoid will to 50 (from 55) and gain Countercharge
- Drone base HP to 3 (from 2)
- Floater base HP to 6 (from 5)
- Thinman base HP to 7 (from 6) and mobility to 11.3 (from 10.6)
- Chryssalid defense to 40 (from 30)
- Muton base HP to 12 (from 10)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Exalt missions were slightly too fast on NSLW games and slightly too slow on VLW games
- Fixed a bug where researching a UFO was NOT giving an additional 30% resources to the player
- Fixed some descriptions
- Fixed a bug where sorting the soldiers by class (instead of rank) would cause the base defense mission to break sometimes
- Attempted to fix the out of sight Muton grenades problem (AGAIN) - I hope this works, but without a reproducible save it's hard to tell
- Fixed a bug where the fatigue for retraining soldiers was not correct
- Typos
- Fixed a bug where countercharge was triggering during XCOMs turn
Version 1.31.10
LW Rebalance v1.31.10
Strategic:
- Added required items to the research image and wiki - QoL
Tactical:
- Grapple only works at 2 AP - This fixes a really inconsistent bug where native code sometimes causes a unit with grapple to NOT end their turn after use - After over 30 tries with ap discounting abilities, free actions, etc. I still can't figure out what circumstances causes it, it's like it's certain scenarios are more likely to cause it and then it's also random
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where ending a unit's turn would sometime select a unit that had already ended their turn which was annoying - QoL
- Fixed a bug where the OTS experience gains were not rewarding xp past SGT and Cadre was not working correctly
- Fixed a bug where the popup of Shock-Absorbent Armor was not accurate or easy to read
- Fixed a CTD when Mechtoid shields were broken with a unit with impact
- Fixed an AI bug that caused floaters and heavy floaters to think xcom was closer then they actually are and then just derp trying to set up flanks
- Fixed a bug where the explosive damage from sectopods dying could trigger impact
- Fixed a bug where the nigeria bonus "advanced conversion" was not granting extra bonus stats
- Fixed a bug where overpower was granting many units invisible shields that would prevent damage
- Attempted a fix at where suppression would sometimes knock off the steadied bonus
Version 1.31.09
LW Rebalance v1.31.09
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where scavenging was not awarding proper resources
Version 1.31.08
LW Rebalance v1.31.08
Tactical:
- New dgc.ini entry: HQ_STARTING_MONEY=2 ;Set to 1 to have Mouse Buttons during the tactical game, Set to 2 to hide the Mouse Buttons during the tactical game (LWR Default: 2)
Perks:
- Countercharge does 2 + psirank/2 damage (from 3 + psirank/2 damage) - Slight tone back
Bug Fixes:
- Council rewards for quick missions should be working now
- Countercharge will no longer trigger an intimidate from a Muton Berserker
Version 1.31.07b
LW Rebalance v1.31.07b
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where council rewards for quick missions were not granting credits
Version 1.31.07
LW Rebalance v1.31.07
Tactical:
- Mouse controls now appear again
- Any abduction, terror, or council mission that is completed in under 10 turns has a chance (10% per turn under 10) to have the council offer a 50-100 credit bonus - Makes the result of tactical missions matter more
XCOM:
- Infantry Lock N' Load swapped with First Aid - Improves the options when choosing perks (instead of feeling like you're choosing bad perks) and allows players to decide how versatile they want their infantry to be
- Goliath base aim to 20 (from 10) - Boost to the shooter/OW goliath
Equipment:
- Marksman Scope aim to +10 (from +5) and grants +1 pen - Significant boost to strike rifle use on the scout
Aliens:
- Added a new level 8 exalt elite operative alien leader - Acts as someone a step below Iago for the Alien Base Assault
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the shredder effect wasn't updated correctly
- Fixed a CTD that was occurring when shredding enemies with high levels of shred already on them
- Fixed some typos
Version 1.31.06
LW Rebalance v1.31.06
Strategic:
- All autopsies require only a single corpse - Allows autopsy research to be conducted after the first encounter of any alien that isn't destroyed by explosives, regardless of campaign length, also, it makes seeing a rare alien type earlier more valuable
- Command and Control research requires ethereal interrogation (from ethereal autopsy) - Delays the endgame a little, especially with the corpse requirement of autopsies decreased
- Special Warfare School projects costs are reduced by 95% (from free) - Helps avoid something seeming like a bug
- Injury and Fatigue alterations per difficulty changed to -15/-10/-5/0% (from 0/+10/+20/+30%) - Significant XCOM buff. Fatigue and Injury was overtuned as far as a large roster size is concerned. This makes fatigue and injury a lot more managable while still keeping the monthly fatigue increases to encourage multiple team usage. This means if you previously needed 60 soldiers in a campaign you would now only require ~48. Indirectly adds more credits to each campaign due to the lack of need for so many recruits.
- The alien base assaults only gain a single pod between subsequent tries (instead of double pods) but all start with a max leader level 8-man elite exalt squad - Makes them more challenging/engaging from the get go and they taper a little more gradually in difficulty. I like the idea that the exalt were helping the aliens with their alien bases too.
Tactical:
- Shredder damage taken is increased by 3x shots and 7x mayhem suppression (from 2x and 5x) - Significant increase in effectiveness of shredder ammo and Mayhem Suppression
Perks:
- Grit grants %DR equal to 10 + half of the %HP lost (from just half of the %HP lost) - Buff to the pick on the Gunner and Goliath, makes the DR more significant
- First Aid grants 1 medikit (from 2) - Nerfed, the injury reduction is quite strong
- Aggression grants 10 crit per enemy in sight (from 5 normally and 10 for shotguns) - Makes the perk much stronger on non-shotguns
Equipment:
- Medikits now weigh 0 (from 0.6) - Makes them more reasonable to equip as an additional item on many soldiers and builds, reduced reliance on the medic, significant xcom buff
XCOM:
- Jaeger: Aggression replaced with Shadowstep - Helps the Jaeger maneuver through OW if it needs to and still can grant crit after moving
- Infantry: Bullseye replaced with First Aid - Bullseye was really not a good pick for any build (especially with LeU), this increases the versatility of the infantry
- Scout: Executioner replaced with Impact and swapped with Packmaster - The support scout was a little too strong with such S&M + Bullseye + Packmaster and didn't lose enough for the versatility, acts as a buff to the snapshot scout
- Rocketeer: First Aid replaced with Bombard and swapped with Packmaster - The support rocketeer suffered from being at the back lines due to being slow and for positioning and not having the range to effectively use support grenades. Bombard and the rockeer's naturally high HP should sufficiencly accommodate for this weakness.
- Assault: Tandem Warheads replaced with Mayhem - Differentiation of the greandiers. Both are fairly similar in strength, mayhem being strongest against single targets, tandem being stronger against multiple targets at the edge of the periphery
- Goliath: Lock N' Load replaced with Holo Rounds - Grants the shooter Goliath some strong support as well, and helps with it's aim, LnL wasn't as great on the shooter due to already having LeU for action economy and was a little too strong on a RR RfA build. Overall slight buff to the shooter and slight nerf to the OW.
- Scout base will to 10 (from 15) - Nerf to the class overall
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where countercharge pops up as neural feedback
Version 1.31.05
LW Rebalance v1.31.05
Strategic:
- Cadre no longer grants the xp up to the CPL rank (so the 5 CPL soldiers start at LCPL xp) but instead grants all active or fatigued soldiers 2xp each day - Makes the bonus less front loaded for experience, overall a buff
- Basic Gauss and Basic Pulse research requires half the resources - Helps accelerate the player toward some reasonable weapons in the mid game
- Experience gain for completely a normal/long mission increased to 120/170 (from 100/140) - Approximately 20% increase in experience gains, accommodates for less xp gains from XTP and officer perks
- NeoPanzer reduces cost of SHIV/MECs and their primary weapons by 60% (from 45%) - Significant buff due to restriction on # of MECs and 1-battle limit of SHIVs
Tactical:
- Shred damage is now: This unit takes x% more damage where x is the previous shred damage taken (x2 for shots, x5 for mayhem suppresion, and 10x explosives) (from 20 + normal shred damage taken + 5x explosive shred damage taken) - Makes the actual damage done more important and subsequent applications more effective, also makes explosives more significant. Also makes shredder on the gunner not so dominant a pick with the penetrator move and helps rocketeers stay more useful late game with javelins.
- Shock-Absorbent Armor now has a popup with the amount of DR it applied - Helps the player realize what's reducing their damage, QoL
- Rocket scatter reduced by 12% - Increases accuracy of rockets to make them slightly more useful throughout the mid and late game when HP really picks up as rocketeers were falling off a little more than most classes
Perks:
- Lock N' Load no longer grants a free ammo, it just allows a 1AP reload or a free reload on dash - Pulls it back on various builds for balance
- Fragmentation to a 30% chance (from 25%) - Slight buff for balance
- Plasma Battle Rifle grants +3 damage against targets at full HP (from +5 damage against targets in cover) - Improvement to use, as firing at targets in cover is often not ideal
- MEC1 alloy and elerium cost reduced by half - Makes an early MEC more reasonable
XCOM:
- Critical System Targeting and Penetrator swapped on the gunner - The TSGT defining perk being CST didn't fit well with some of the builds, whereas penetrator is useful on all builds and feels useless against less enemies
Aliens:
- Seekers now take double damage when they are strangling someone - Makes it easier to recover as the damage they do, and the disabling they do is punishing enough and the original purpose for their resiliency when strangling was to make it more dangerous than revealing them which has definitely been accomplished
Bug Fixes:
- Disabled the constant saving after every action in ironman games because it was causing a bug with some ability tracking
Version 1.31.04
LW Rebalance v1.31.04
Strategy:
- Ring of Fire no longer starts with all elevators built and thermogenerators are no longer free - It was too much credit accumulation over a campaign as I underestimated the ability to get all of the thermogenerators up quickly, this still grants the cash but stops making it so easy to get it
- XTP I/II/III programmes offer 3/5/10xp but for ALL soldiers (instead of 10/20/30 for just 2 ranks each) - Prevents feeling like you have to 'game' the XTP system to max experience gains
- Show 'Em the Ropes grants double xp for SGT ranks and lower (from triple for CPL ranks and lower) - Makes it more viable
- Tricks of the Trade grant +20% xp for SGT ranks and higher (from +35%) - Balance vs SETR
- Retraining the perks on a soldier costs 10 + 5/rank in days (from just 5/rank) - Makes it a little less reasonable to retrain soldiers throughout the game. Prevents 'early game builds' from getting prioritized then dropped as often through campaigns, though still quite possible.
- Adjusted the exalt reminder so it should NEVER miss an mission and always alert you before - Please let me know if anyone ever has a mission that occurs before the reminder as the code is native and I can't easily test it but it SHOULD work
- Alien Metallurgy requires 20 drone corpses (from 30) - Makes it a little less campaign breaking if you're low in drone corpses
- Alien Nucleonics requires 50 sectoid corpses (from 30) - Makes sectoid corposes a little more useful, especially since you don't need this tech as early
Tactical:
- New ability berserk for XCOM: triggers similar to enrage but will have the unit reload, move towards the nearest enemy, and shoot, and then have all of their actions refunded be enraged - Helps with the comeback mechanic and feels cool
- Removed the tutorial (intolevel) map - while a fresh and newer map, it had some cover bugs (more than usual) and no evac zone
- Removed the mouse controls from the bottom left - Clears up some real estate for something that was used more often as a misclick than something you'd purposely click
Perks:
- Rift cooldown to 2 turn (from 4) - Stops the ethereal from just unloading and then spamming psi lance after, this is much more reasonable with the lower damage
- Mind Control cooldown to 2 turn (from 4) - Stops the sectoid commander and ethereal from just unloading and then spamming psi lance after, this is much more reasonable with the hit chance
- Clarified Countercharge with the following line: 'Multiple triggers of Countercharge will result in only the highest PsiRank Countercharge dealing damage' - Helps players understand the underlying mechanics, QoL
- Bloodlust now also causes each unit that dies within vision of the berserker to increase this berserker's damage by 1 and mobility by 0.6 - Buff to berserkers and not dealing with them first
- One For All to 40% DR (from 30%) - Significant buff in tanking for MECs - With the offensive potential for MECs pretty high, it has made their tanking lag behind a little bit
XCOM:
- Assault: Fragmentation and Tandem Warheads swapped - No change in late game strength, but tappering off of early game strength as assaults are already quite strong early game it was creating an unreasaonble spike in the Assault Greandiers strength through progression vs other grenadiers
- Medic: Brawler replaced with Lock N' Load - Boost to the strength of the at range medic while also still boosting the CCS medic, also relinquishes the close-range master from the medic and back onto the assault
Aliens:
- Thinmen no longer leave an acid cloud when they die - It was too unpredictable. The mechanic felt more frustrating than engaging.
- ExaltOperative/ExaltEliteOperative base HP to 7/12 (from 10/16) - With the improved AI they were a little too strong
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Ready For Anything would prevent regular shots from triggering reaction fire (it should just be going on overwatch)
- Fixed a bug where the movement display in F1 could be inaccurate sometimes
- Fixed a bug where hit chances against flanked units would sometimes secretely be less than intended due to the game engine not updating the cover status quick enough
- Fixed a bug where the game would freeze when an exalt could not decide whether or not to capture an area
- Fixed a bug where even when indomitable triggered the unit would still die
- Maybe fixed the squadsight grenade bug on Mutons (?), again, without a reproducible save it's difficult to know, but maybe this works
- Various Typos
- Fixed a bug where a unit that lost suppression mid turn would sometimes still have "Suppressed" in their F1 which is misleading
- Fixed a bug where mobility wasn't displayed correctly in the tactical game sometimes
- Fixed a bug where various multi-action abilities could sometimes still occur after being commanded
Version 1.31.03
LW Rebalance v1.31.03
Tactical:
- Suppressing a unit now turns off it's close combat specialist range indicator - QoL, makes more intuitive sense
- Smoke and Acid indicators now highlight the targets that can be hit and should work on ALL missions types - No more arrows as I was able to reroute the function direction to the highlighting code, hopefully the best implementation yet
- Covert Op Extraction reinforcements occur 1 turn later - Even further tone back
- Being stealthed now counts as non-idle for the purposes certain abilities (e.g countercharge, ready for anything) - Prevents breaking stealth to perform certain abilities
Perks:
- Overpower reduces the aim, mobility, throw range, and rocket accuracy of any unit that can see them by 20 + Will_difference/10 percent (from cancelling their turn after they act/move) - Make it much more consistent, prevents frustrating unexpected occurances due to RNG. It's a slight buff as the RNG could really hurt some well laid plans, but it also makes the ethereal more tanky due to defense stacking.
- Rift extra damage is based on will_difference/40 (from will_difference/20) - Helps make it not such a deciding factor in battles by significantly lowering damage
- Will to Survive grants 40% DR (from 35%) - Helps tanks really stick it out on the higher difficulties against high damage hits
- Absorption Fields grants 35% DR (from 30%) - Helps tanks really stick it out on the higher difficulties against high damage hits
Equipment:
- Elerium Emitter charges to 2 (from 3), weight to 0.6 (from 0), and range to 6 (from 10) - Toned back, invisibility is just really strong - Even with this tone back (and the other nerfs) it still does some crazy strong stuff
- KSM damage to 24 (from 20) - It has to be high damage, as requiring point blank is quite demanding
- Standard grenade range of 10.6 change to 10 - Standardization, slight tone back on range by 6%
- Psi Grenade range to 12 (from 13.3) - Slight nerf in range
XCOM:
- Sniper aim to 20 (from 25) - It didn't need the extra aim
- All MECs gain +10 base aim for each class (+5 for the Goliath) - Boost to the general strength of MEC shooting power
Aliens:
- Sectopod Clusterbombs no longer have a shockwave - It was buggy and unnecessary due to the new AI and clusterbomb mechanics
- Uber Ethereal gain 20 more will - Doesn't do that much, but makes sure it's at least higher than the highest ethereals leaders, feels weird when an ethreal leader has more will than the end boss of the game =P
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed multiple typos
- Fixed a bug where grapple could reach 14.3 tiles and not the full 15 tiles
- Fixed a bug where indomitable wouldn't trigger properly
- Fixed a bug where EMP Cannon's cost was never decreased and should have been
- Fixed a bug where the Shogun's aim growth was sometimes lower than intended
- Fixed a display issue causing multiple popups on ethereals when they die
- Fixed a bug where psionic hit chance popups were incorrect
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where grapple would not update any volumes the unit was in (acid, smoke, rift, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where distortion targets in the 18-20 tile "technically squadsight but leniency due to stepouts"-zone were not receiving any chance to be crit (note: squadsight is described as anything over 18 tiles)
- Fixed a bug where the aim display on a unit's F1 tab was not correctly accounting for mind merge and greater mind merge
Version 1.31.02
LW Rebalance v1.31.02
Strategic:
- EMP cannon damage reduced to 350 (from 420) - They were too effective at clearing out fighters and destroyers, making some campaigns have the alien resources plummet and not be able to field enough air game strength into the late game
- Destroyer HP to 2000 (from 1500) - Increased resilience to being shot down and thus less mitigation of panic increases and alien resource pinning
- UFO Scouts have 3 less aliens on average - Significant buff, due to map size they were competing with mediums for difficulty, this should make them easier and feel more fair
- Overseer HP to 3000 (from 4000) - Makes it easier to shoot down, especially with the EMP nerf
- Augmentation changed: you no longer lose stats for having less than 8 base HP, into only requries 10 days (from 15), but your chance of successfully being augmented decreases by 20% for every HP below 8 and by 1% for every 10 days of injury/fatigue - Means that you will never create poor MECs and that it will just be more difficult/costly to turn low HP soldiers into MECs
- Failure to convert a soldier into the MEC will occur immediately (if they fail) and will still cost the augmentation cost and the soldier will accumulate a wound equivalent to the time they would have spent being augmented
- Advanced Conversion no longer makes Augmentation cost 0 meld, but instead grants 2 HP to all soldiers, but only for the purposes of MEC augmentation - Alteration and consistency with psionic training, also the reduced meld cost was broken with the new mechanic
Tactical:
- Enrage is only a 25% chance to trigger a 0 AP action (from 75%) but has a 5% chance to trigger per dead XCOM soldier (from 2%) and also increases throw range by 100%- at 75% it could reasonably lead to streaks of enrage that felt ridiculous. The higher proc rate, weapon damage, mobility, and reaction immunity (plus the new throw range) still make it strong.
- A steadied weapon grants +50 aim, but only grants +2 pen if the soldier has 2 AP - Tones back strength of bullseye by 2 penetration
- Smoke grenades and acid grenades no longer highlight players inaccurately, though it still displays a targeting reticle - QoL, prevents misunderstandings
- Officers no longer have reduced fatigue time - Simplification and makes it harder to only use high ranked officers, spreads the commanding out
- Fatigue and injury increases no longer increase by 5% each month but instead base fatigue time is +1 per month - Later game mission amounts tone down quite a bit allowing consistent use of A/B Team which is NOT intended or ideal, this makes a deep roster important into the end game. This also makes shorter missions still fatigue teams and longer missions not feel nearly as punishing.
- When a unit is overpowered the camera will hover over them quickly - QoL so you know who gets overpowered and the camera won't move away quickly so you don't know
- The first mission of the campaign always occurs on the 'URB_CommercialAlley_EWI' map - Consistency and less unpredictability for a challenging filter mission
Perks:
- Mind Merge now grants immunity to overpower - More effective counters to overpower
- Combat stims now grant immunity to overpower - More effective counters to overpower
- Steadfast reduces the chance to be hit by psionic attacks and overpower by 50% (from 30%) - Significant buff to the alien trophy, will to survive, and Fortified
- Snapshot grants a 60% chance for a free shot (from 50%) - Significant buff - with the lack of synergy with both bullseye and disabling shot, the strike rifle snapshot build took some serious hits and could use a boost
- Indomitable works when the unit has more than half health (from full health) - Prevents just 'ticking' the unit to disable indomitable (like with a bullet wizard or a single grenade)
- Mind Control hit chance is reduced by half (instead of having a -50 hit chance modifier) - Significant buff to XCOM when dealing with really high will psionic enemies. This makes it so that really high will chance of mind control are not always 100% and the hit modifier does nothing, and so that really low will chance of mind control are not always 0% and the ability has no chance to succeed.
- Psi Panic and Mind Fray final hit chance is reduced by 25% - Makes them less powerful and less consistent, balance on the trees and lowering of the disabling strength of psionics
- Extra Conditioning reduces fatigue/injury time by 20% (from 30%) - Was too strong on a strategic level, despite being deceptive in its strength and not picked as often after performing some paper napkin math on soldiers and fatigue it appeared that NOT picking EC on basically everyone was a mistake at 30%. 20% made it still probably the strongest choice, but more reasonable.
- Combined Arms grants +1 damage to all weapons and equipment (from +1 pen) and Comaraderie has a 20% chance for bonus stats (from 50%) - Significant buff to combined arms, balance on the FCmdr rank
- Sapper deals double environmental damage and +1 damage and +1 penetration to explosives (from triple enviro damage) - Significant buff on damage, further nerf on cover destruction - keep grenades from being more utility and minimizing overall cover destruction, especially on late game Engineers (and Shoguns) who can deploy a lot of sapper greandes
- Psychokinetic Strike has a 5 turn cooldown (from 8) - Significant buff, It was not competitive at 8
- Overpower occurs at 20% of the unit's will (from 25%) - Slight nerf
- Neural Feedback rework and renamed to Countercharge: Causes enemies within line of sight that act to take 3 + PsiRank/2 psionic damage. The chance to trigger is Will/5. Target Will: 50.
Equipment:
- Aegis armor HP to 11 (from 9), Titan and Archangel armor HP to 16 (from 14), Banshee armor grants tactical mobility (instead of low profile) - Balance of armor types, removable of perk duplication ala sightings
- Illuminator Gunsight mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Balance vs other options
Aliens:
- Sectopod Cluster bomb deals 20 base damage (from 30) - Significant buff for XCOM, makes it a less likely to be OHKO when you get hit by it
- Ethereal/Uber Ethereal base will lowered by 20 and will growth lowered to 30/40 (from 40/60) - Significant buff for XCOM, makes will modification much more effective against them
- Seekers no longer gain additional DR when strangling - Now that they shred and deal half damage, gaining additional DR seems unnecessary/overkill, previously it was used as a means to make their strangle signifcant and effective, but we have already more than achieved that
- Sectoids will to 55 (from 35) - With the reduction in final hit chance of psi panic and mind fray they needed a boost
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where neural feedback would not activate against mind merge or greater mind merge
- Clarified that Impact only clears overwatch if it actually damages the HP of the unit - Distortion and psi shield and prevent this
- Fixed a bug where seeker strangle shredding was acting as if it was explosive damage for the purposes of shred
- Attempted fix on enemies throwing greandes from squadsight - Hard to verify because I do not have a reproducible save, likelihood is high that it's fixed though
- Attempted fix on enemies prematurely ending their turn - Hard to verify because I do not have a reproducible save, likelihood is less than above, maybe 30%?
- Again fixed SKYRANGER_CAPACITY so that it works on abductions and some other missions where it still was not
- Fixed a bug where the gunner didn't get it's new MSGT perks updated
- Fixed a bug where units stepping out would be considered in squadsight range
- Fixed a bug where the HP pip color wouldn't update as frequently as ideal leading to some inaccurate HP colors
- Fixed a bug where too many enemy units overwatching at the same time would cause a CTD
- Fixed a bug where sharpshooter sometimes wouldnt' give +15 aim against a biologic unit
- Fixed a bug where squadsight aim penalties were not being applied correctly
- Fixed a bug where the ACTUAL reserach for aliens was 0.7/0.8/0.9/1.0 (instead of 0.8/0.9/1.0/1.1) but decided to leave the bug in as a feature as the game is pretty challenging as is
- Fixed a bug where telekinetic field was working on some non-explosive abilities and not working on some other explosive abilities
- Fixed a bug where the exalt scan reminders would sometimes fail to remind before an event occurs
- Fixed a bug where difficult to acquire council requests would not provide enough time to fullfill them
Version 1.31.01
LW Rebalance v1.31.01
Tactical:
- Readded the aiming reticle to smoke/acid (so now you see the reticle AND the arrows) - Probably the best of both worlds
Perks:
- Indomitable reworked to: If at full HP, fatal damage reduces this unit to 1 HP instead - It's originally intention was to prevent OHKOs and alpha striking, so this still accomplishes it without feeling so punishing
- Insentient Crush deals 20% of max HP in damage (from 30%) - It's deadly enough at 20%
XCOM:
- Marauder MSGT perks Killer Instinct and Aggression replaced with Sprinter and Shadowstep - The crit perks were not effective on any of the builds and felt awkward
Aliens:
- Heavy Floater HP increased to base 20 (from 16) - As one of the last enemies in the game, and without the previous strength of indomitable, they needed a little more resilience
Bug Fixes:
- Typos
- Fixed an issue where mobility was beign displayed as 1.9 and 3.9 instead of 2 and 4
- Fixed a bug where Brawler wasn't granting additional aim
- Grapple no longer avoids reaction fire and suppression fire - Turns out it was always bugged and never worked, and the code I thought I could get to work won't
Version 1.31.00
LW Rebalance v1.31.00
Strategic:
- Muton Elites, Sectopods, and Ethereals appear one alien level earlier (and upgrades adjusted accordingly) - There was a problem with not encountering high level enemies, especially on lower difficulties, but this was even occuring on impossible difficulty which was stalling out campaigns unnecessarily and creating a weird dip in the difficulty curve
- Close Combat Specialist on the SHIV from SHIV Advancements II has been replaced with Brawler - Overall a buff, as the hit chance was so low that it was often a forced waste of ammo
- Retraining a soldier now costs 5 days per rank (from just 15 days flat) - Makes it harder to just respec your A-Team as you need, while making it easier to respec low level soldiers, increase in overall difficulty of respecing mid-game
- Mexico start bonus Ancient Artifact no longer grants a cognitive enhancer but instead receives 2 illuminator gunsights - Was a little too strong, the gunsights are enough of a bonus
- Australia start Per Ardua Ad Astra grants +3 will (from +2) - Balance
- Canada start Advanced Preparations grants 5 additional soldiers to start with - Balance
- Canada start Cadre grants 5 CPLs (instead of 8 LCPLs) - In hindsight, the bonus was so front-loaded in a campaign that it was likely not ever OP, just felt that way off the start - the nerf just made this start unreasonable
- China start Assembly Line grants 20 engineers (from 8) - Significant boost, the difficulty in expansion keeps this boost in check
- India start Research Focus grants 20 scientists (from 12) - Significant boost, the limited resources keep this boost in check
- Japan start Ring of Fire now has each Thermo Generator grant $100 credits in production value - Significant boost, this was always a weaker start and is now quite interesting
- USA start Cheyene Mountain now reduces excavation costs by 80% (from 65%) - Significant boost
- USA start We Have Ways now reduces autospy and interrogation time by 90% (from 70%) - Boosted
- Alien base assaults gain more pods after each attempt - Makes them less farmable (see wiki for details)
Tactical:
- Smoke and Acid grenades no longer have a circular targeting reticle but instead just indicate units that would be affected by the smoke/acid with arrow - QoL, prevents quite misleading information from the targeting reticle
- Fixed a bug where all mobility and range for tiles was off by ~7% - Note this will change a bunch of common tile numbers you were seeing in the game
- Fixed an issue with increased bugs on high game speeds: Max speed of the game is now capped at x4 - Too many bugs could be reproduced with 8x speed
- Overwatching with a unit will not trigger all reaction fire, but just a single reaction shot - Coding limitation, szmind and I spent many hours on this only to end up with buggy awful solutions, so this is now a feature =D. And... it's kind of a cool feature. =P
- Being suppressed now counts as NOT being idle - This change affects abilities like Ready For Anything that require an idle unit to activate
- Grapple costs 1 AP (from 0 AP) but has no limit on the number of uses - It was too powerful for rocketeers/snipers and was being used more of as a one-time jet boost than a movement tool which is was intended for, this should hit the intention better while not making it so powerful (note: it still pulls away from suppression/reaction fire)
- Shred does 20 + normal shred damage taken + 5x explosive shred damage taken (from 30) - Tone back on the strength of shredder so that the ammo doesn't feel as mandatory and the gunner tree isn't as imbalanced
Perks:
- New Perk: Indomitable - Damage received is capped at 50% of this unit's max HP - Helps prevent alpha striking and OHKOs
- Neural Feedback no longer affects the cooldown of psionic abilities - It only did in some situations, I couldn't figure out how to control it, this is a lot more simple and clean
- Snapshot now prevents overwatch from triggering reaction fire - Slight buff, makes sense with the perk, feels good
- Brawler grants 30 aim and 30 DR (from 25 of each) - Slight buff
- Ranger grants 10% throw range (from 20%) - Nerf to the strength of the perk on supports and grenadiers
- Concealment again requires that you walk (instead of dash) - The strength is simply too high at revealing pods and getting the jump on all pods. The scout is strong enough on it's own that it doesn't need concealment to be so powerful.
- Reconnaisance will no longer trigger if the scout is dashing - It's hard to hear when you're sprinting -- also serves as a QoL if you're moving quickly and don't want to get the updates
Equipment:
- AutoSentry Turrent grants Close Combat Specialist (instead of Reactive Targeting Sensors) - Since it was removed from SHIV Advancements II it is now still available here, RTS was a little too strong on low aim SHIVs and CCS was a core part of encouraging close range SHIV that I did not intend to remove
- Reduced the alloy and elerium cost of Pulse weapons, alloy cost of Gauss weapons increased - Pulse was not supposed to be so much more expensive than Gauss and act as too much of a barrier to plasma, now Pulse and Gauss should be seen as competitive, with Gauss being quicker to get, but much more expensive on alloys, and pulse being cheaper to produce, but requiring more of the elerium which is needed for plasma
- Aegis Armor was supposed to either have lost DC or significant stats, but it never did, so Aegis loses DC - Balance vs other armors, it was clearly (and inadvertently) overpowered
- Javelin Rocket to double weapon damage (from triple) - I always felt it was effective at double, but was persuaded to move it higher (from players that were not using it very effectively) which I now think was not a reasonable change
- Cognitive Enhancer no longer grants aim and crit - The xp bonus is strong enough on its own
- Flak ammo reduces aim by 5 - Slight tone back in strength as it's very strong
XCOM:
- Assault Mayhem replaced with Fragmentation - Slight tone back on strength of later game Assault Grenadier (was a little too strong)
- Gunner gains +5 base aim - Helps with progression and the nerf didn't need to be so severe with the OW aim fix
- SHIV/Alloy SHIV/Hover SHIV armor HP to 8/16/14 (from 10/22/16) - Slight tone back as they are quite strong and were replacing biotanks a little too easily, a lot of this is due to the paucity of CST that used to exist
- Maraduer Opportunist replaced with Impact - Opportunist was too strong on the RR build
- Marauder Bring 'Em On and Killer Instinct swapped - Prevents a strong crit line from not being able to support any of the major builds
- Gunner Lock N' Load swapped with Bring 'Em On - Makes a more competitive choice for the Bullet Wizard at GSGT while giving the other builds an earlier option for ammo
AI:
- Exalt will not always directly sprint towards the capture location - They will still go for the capture location, but a "little" less rambo style (it's not perfect, but it's better)
Aliens:
- The following units receive the indomitable perk: Muton Elites, Berserkers, Heavy Floaters, Outsiders
- All exalt leaders gain 20 will per leader level (except for Iago who gains an additional 60 will at his level for +100 will total) - Buff to exalt leader will as it felt too low
- Level 5/9 Berserkers Leaders gain +6/10 damage (from +4/4) and +20/30 will (from +10/10) - Boost to strength of Berserker leaders
- Berserker and Chryssalid level 9 leaders gain Brawler - Boost to resiliency of max level leaders
- Sectoid commander will to 90 (from 80), and hp to 12 (from 10) - Slight increase in difficulty
- Sectoid Commander / Ethereal Bounty back to 20/80 (from 40/120) - Reversion - the increase was displacing the need for elerium which was supposed to be more rare
Exalt Elite Gene Mods:
- Exalt Elite Operatives gain Muscle Fiber Density and Advanced Perception
- Exalt Elite Snipers gain Predictive Tracking and Adrenaline Surge
- Exalt Elite Heavys gain Iron Skin and Neural Dampening
- Exalt Elite Medics gain Smart Macrophages and Adaptive Bone Marrow
- Iago gains all 8
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where native code was removing will from units from red fog and my code was doing this as well so it was doubling the effect that redfog was having on will
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots were gaining the cover bonus of flanked units
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots were gaining a 8-15 bonus hit chance
- Fixed a bug where SKYRANGER_CAPACITY was not working from the dgc.ini
- Possibly fixed a bug where trying to select your unit would only show the tiles that another unit could move, especially after using combat readiness "J"
- Fixed mindfray predicted damage (again, but it actually works this time) =D
- Fixed a bug where bullseye was still granting +50 crit
- The gene mods listing on the perk tree image was updated with Advanced Perception
- Fixed various typos
- Possibly fixed a bug where Mutons could throw grenades extremely far
- Tried to fix the bug again where psionics were triggering impact
- Fixed a bug where the SHIV could 'sometimes' hold capture points on data recovery missions - This was supposedly disabled, but sometimes would still occur - should be completely disabled now
- Fixed a bug where enemies would sometimes not go on overwatch when they should
Version 1.30.05
LW Rebalance v1.30.05
QoL:
- Improved some of the country ratios so that countries you start in have a higher proportion - QoL, helps with home sweet home bonus
- Pressing "J" now automatically selects another unit - Just for ease of use when playing
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LOT of bugs on maps where sometimes the alien heads would show a flank but the targeting wouldn't (or viceversa) - Basically I just rewrote the code that decides what is a flank to use the exact same function so they will at least always match up now
- Fixed a bug where everyone within 4 tiles was getting the Brawler +25 aim bonus showing up as an unknown +25 aim bonus
- Fixed a bug where CCS was not reducing the aim by 50 correctly (and in the majority of situations)
- Fixed a bug where the mists were still set to 5 HP
- Clarified the lack of proximity damage estimations on MEC mounted weapons
- Fixed a bug where enemies that were flanked with a distortion bonus would sometimes gain additional defense
- Fixed a bug where the estimated damage for mindfray would often include DR still (despite it actually bypassing DR)
Version 1.30.04
LW Rebalance v1.30.04
QoL:
- Added some info that covert operatives have 50% reduced mobility
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug with smoke: units are now immune to triggering overwatch when in smoke or when moving out of smoke through a full tile of smoke - It's a big work around but it stops the problem with multiple smokes not protecting you from overwatch between them - Feel free to run through multiple chained smokes now!
- Fixed a bug where someone hacking a relay or difusing a bomb would get an action from scamper (they should not)
- Fixed a "BUG" where the arc rifle wasn't doing enough damage, so it now does +8 vs mechanicals (+14 with the supercapcitors upgrade)
- Fixed a "BUG" where the gunner still had aim growth (they now have none) as it was too strong with the SAW/LMG and the suppression/flush combo that all gunners have (note it won't work retroactively so any already promoted gunners are unaffected)
- Overpower no longer works if the overpowering unit is maimed
- Fixed a bug where "Someone is there" tile scanning code would trigger for civilians
- Fixed a bug where AP grenades were not triggering as much shredder application as they should
Version 1.30.03
LW Rebalance v1.30.03
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed a CTD on base defense missions
- Fixed a "BUG" where Shred was too powerful from bullets so shred reworked to: [This unit takes (30 + normal shred damage + 5x explosive shred damage)% in extra damage]
- Fixed another "BUG" where shredder ammo no longer needed it's aim malus, so it's aim is back to 0 (from -15)
- Fixed a CTD at the beginning of exalt missions (again, hopefully for the last time)
- Fixed a bug where holo would grant more aim on reaction shots against units in cover
- Fixed a bug where penetration was not applying correctly on MiNEs
- Fixed a bug where the description of various technologies was misleading
- Fixed a bug where alien aggression would rarely decrease at a faster rate than intended
Version 1.30.02
LW Rebalance v1.30.02
QoL:
- Removed the Ready For Anything popup as it was redundant with the OW popup - Less spam on the screen
- Orange Pips (indicating danger of reaction fire) will now be disabled with abilities that grant immunity to reaction fire (smoke, RnG, etc.) - Makes more intuitive sense so that when you see orange you know you're in trouble
Strategic:
- Increased abduction rewards from starts now occur after randomization and after a minimum of 1 - Makes it feel like the rewards are increased and that it's not a bug
Tactical:
- "Disorient" lowers will by 50 (from 20) and mobilty by 50% (from 60%) - Massive boost. This makes it more effective at lowering the strength of enemy psionics and making enemies suceptible to your own will-based attacks. The mobility reduction was to accommodate for the significantly decreased mobility gains of aliens (as too much mobility reduction really just neuters melee units). Overall this is a significant buff to concussion grenades and significant buff to support classes.
- Tactical Brilliance triggers (from Command) will now cap at 50 will (from 60 will) - Makes them slightly less effective, puts less pressure on high will officers
- The -10 aim and +30 defense from the In Smoke buff now affects psionic abilities as well - Makes smoke an effective deterent for psionic attacks, significant buff to smoke and thus support classes
- Automatic Reinforcements on Covert Op Extractions are reduced by 1 turn - Slight tone back, makes it a little easier to get out before you get overwhelmed
Perks:
- Squadsight penalties kick in as soon as it's being used, i.e. at 18.7 tiles (instead of at 20 tiles) - Slight nerf, makes sense as you're relying on your squad to help you site the target
- Onslaught no longer allows movement after use - This perk is the main reason the Marauder is a little too strong and simply put: 2 KSMs in a row needs more draw-back than just 50% reduced mobility
- Close combat specialist shot damage increased to 100% (from 50%) but has a -50 aim malus - This makes it so being really close (e.g. +80 aim bonus with shotgun) still hits at ~100% but being at max range (4 tiles) with a regular weapon (+30 aim) has a chance to miss (-20 aim total), overall significant buff. Also note that with a shotgun at 4 tiles the aim malus is almsot completely negated by the shotgun close proximity bonus (8*6 = 48).
- Brawler grants 25% DR within 4 tiles (from 20%) and +25 aim (from +1 damage) - Buff to close range combat, offsets the aim malus from CCS, grants additional crit from spill over on regular shots
- Combat Drugs no longer grants additional will (from +10 will) and only heals 35% of damage received (from 40%) - Nerf to accommodate the additional 30 defense vs psionic attacks
- Bullseye no longer grants additional crit (from +50 crit) - The +50 aim and +2 pen was actually quite powerful and sometimes its easy to forget how much of a boost that is, the additional crit was not necessary
- Extra Conditioning grants 30% reduction in fatigue/injury times (from 20%) - Slight boost for balance
- Eagle Eyes remade into "Advanced Perception": allows this unit to react earlier to incoming fire, causing 10% of all shots to graze, dealing only half of their original damage - Eagle eyes was bad for 2 reasons: 1) It focused on only 2 classes and 2) The purpose of squadsight penalites was to prevent cheese and eagle eyes was circumventing this. Advanced Perception is now a perk that all soldiers can use but is specifically helpful for tanks.
- Disabling Shot now affects all enemies (from just biologic enemies) but requires 2 AP and a steadied weapon to work - Means it requires a lot more setup, but still works against the most effective enemies to disable
- Adrenal Neurosympathy triggers at 5% per enemy in sight (from 10%) - Was a little too strong and too frequent, especially in dense battles
Equipment:
- Restorative Mist heals for 7 (from 5) - Significant boost to MEC healing (especially due to packmaster only granting 1 additional mist)
- Marksman Scope no longer reduces the squadsight penalty - It actually was bugged and never did, theoretical nerf to mobile squadsight, but technically no change
- Strike Rifle crit to 20 (from 30) - Slight tone back, balance
- SMG and carbine ammo to 2 (from 3) - Significant tone back in flexibility while not changing their hitting power, their strength mostly comes from how effective extra mobility is
- Carbine crit to 20 (from 10) and SMG crit to 40 (from 30) - Buffs to both to accommodate ammo loss
- Shotgun Mobility to 0 (from -0.6) and ammo to 3 (from 4) - Buffed, it was too slow for a close range weapon, slight nerf of consistency with the decreased ammo
- Neural Gunlink crit to 20 (from 10) and no longer grants aggression - Slight nerf, and prevents overlapping with class perks
- Illuminator Gunsight aim to 15 (from 10) and no longer grants executioner - Slight nerf, and prevents overlapping with class perks
- Shredder ammo aim malus to -15 (from 0) - It was replacing other shred options and forcing players to stick to gauss despite advancing due to it's sheer strength, this should put it more in-line with the other ammos and not be such a stopper towards progression
- Javelin rocket deals triple damage (from double) - Helps make it relevant when it hits and helps it apply more shred
- Conduit now grants 20% DR (from 15%) and 40% weapon damage to explosives only (from +20% weapon damage to all weapons and equipment) - Slight tweak, slight buff, takes the focus off of shooters who have the neural gunlink and gives a psionic item for both tanks and explosive users to use
- SAW/LMG Ammo to 4/5 (from 5/6) - Tone back on gunner strength
XCOM:
- Rocketeer Executioner replaced with Critical System Targeting - Increased access to anti-mechanical shooters
- Infantry Suppression replaced with Critical System Targeting - Increased access to anti-mechanical shooters, reduced access to suppression
- Marauder Run and Gun replaced with Opportunist - Run and Gun was a little too strong (the original reason it was removed) on a unit that doesn't require cover
- Marauder Sentinel replaced with Rapid Reaction - Lowers the damage on reaction shots (no opportunist) and grants consistency of OW style with MECs
- Marauder Impact replaced with Bring 'Em On - Encourages straight shooting as opposed to overwatch as the CCS + Impact combo was a little too strong
- Assault Shadowstep replaced with Opportunist - Shadowstep was redundant on RnG builds and opportunist sinks more into the CCS build
- Gunner Shredder and Holo Rounds swapped - Gives the ability to put shred into non-BW builds
Aliens:
- Outsider Level 1 leaders gain Lock N' Load - Makes trying to run them out of ammo less debilitating
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a typo on the tech tree
- Fixed a bug where Sectoid Commander Autopsy required Xenogenetics instead of Xenobiology
- Fixed typos on some perks
- Fixed descriptiong of meld healing
- Fixed a slurry of slightly misnamed descriptions and abilities
- Shielding Pod was described under muton Autopsy when it should have been muton Interrogation
- Fixed a bug on the display of ready for anything's crit reduction
- Fixed a bug on the display of the Executioner perk
- Fixed a bug with mimic beacons not working correctly
- Fixed a long time bug where some enemies would still go on OW when they couldn't see any XCOM
- Fixed a bug where the # of soldiers allowed on the temple ship mission was off by 1 sometimes
- Fixed a bug where Electro Pulse could last longer than intended on aliens
- Fixed a bug where Iago would sometimes not appear on the Exalt Base Raid
- Fixed a bug where executioner was granting 30 aim instead of 40
- Fixed a bug where Jai Vidwan was not granting double scientists from abductions
- Fixed a bug where psi damage would sometimes trigger Impact
- Fixed a bug where you could accidentally disable a 2nd SHIV by clicking back and forth between 2 SHIVs quickly
Version 1.30.01
LW Rebalance v1.30.01
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed Medic and Engineer being assigned 1.5 base HP (instead of the intended 1 HP)
- Fixed Shogun receiveing 15 base aim (instead of the intended 20 base aim)
- Fixed a bug where you could still get level 1 leaders on the first alien level
Version 1.30.00
LW Rebalance v1.30.00
Strategic:
- OTS costs for officer projects increased by 50% - Makes their purchase more of a consideration, acts a slight cash sink into the mid and late game, slight buff to special warfare school
- The grey market price for all items will be 100% for the first month - Prevents too much variability in campaign starts (encouraging restarts)
- Augmentation base time (for MECs) increased to 15 days (from 10) - Slight increase in time required, lowering overall capacity, trying to make MECs feel a little more like psionic units
- Augmentation bonus stats (for MECs) from HP considers the unit's HP - 8 (instead of the unit's HP - 6) - It was quite common to have units over 6 HP which was giving MECs a lrage unideal stat boost, this makes their stat gains/loses more reasonable
- Legacy of Uxmal grants 6 will for the purposes of Psi Training (from 12) - Nerfed due to the increased strength of psionic individuals
- At alien level 1 the aliens will not send out raiders anymore - Smooths out the variance in the air game during the first few months
- Annette Durand gains 1 HP and mindfray instead of neural feedback - Help satisfy the Annette lovers out there
- Meld healing now costs 40 meld + 1 meld for every 2 days of injury or fatigue - Makes it a lot cheaper for larger injuries and less able to be used for smaller injuries
- Alien Command and Control Research (required for Gollop Chamber) requires Ethereal Autopsy (instead of Sectoid Commander Interrogation) - Requires players to encounter and kill ethereals before finishing the game
Tacitcal:
- Unlimited AP discounting abilities (enrage and conduit) now only affect "idle-ending" abilities - These are abilities that after being executed, the unit is idle. An example is shooting a weapon. Examples of a non-idle-ending ability are suppression or hunker, where after executed the unit is not idle. This was changed to prevent bugs.
- Covert Operatives now have a mobility debuff of -50% - Helps prevent low mobility from being too slow and high mobility units from not being slow enough (note: the leather jacket mobility is significantly buffed), overall decrease in mobility though
- Covert Operative Extraction missions now have reinforcements start spawning 3 turns earlier than before - Means that there is a lot less wiggle room to 'set up' the first hacks
Perks:
- New Gene Mod (replaces Hyper-Reactive Pupils), Eagle Eye: Squadsight aim penalties are reduced by 50% - the missing and then storing the aim for later felt lame
- Impact reworked slightly: it now grants a 30% chance to reaction shots to end their target's turn (from a 20% chance to cancel an action and end the targets turn on non-moving targets only) - The change really helps shut down enemies when they goto move and fire or if they have multi-action perks, but no longer cancels the current action (due to bugs)
- Executioner grants 40 aim (from 30) against targets below half health - Buffed, extra aim can flow over into crit and help eliminate wounded high defence targets (e.g. floater leaders)
- Mayhem reverted to 50% damage on strike rifle and 70% damage on sniper rifles - Slight tone back
- Double Tap grants 10 aim when fired at 2 AP (from 15) - Slight tone back, balance with ITZ, balance on engineer/gunner shooter builds
- VPT grants 50% damage at point blank (from 60%) - It was acting as too much of a damage amplifier on both aliens and XCOM
- CST grants 40% damage (from 50%) - The 50% was high enough to start excluding other options save CST units for dealing with mechanicals, this makes the anti-mechanical role a little less exclusive, and also lightens up the pressure on SHIVs and MECs
- Inspired Tenacity (officer perk) grants 15% DR in cover (from 20%) - The cover DR was stronger than the 10 def overall, this should balance the options out a little more
- Close Combat Specialist grants a 50% weapon damage shot (from 70%) - The free shots were still quite strong making it an imbalanced pick on the Assault and Marauder
- Brawler grants 20% DR and +1 damage to ALL shots (from 30% DR and 30% WEAPON damage to REACTION shots) - Slight rework, makes it a boost to active shooting in close range, toned back in other aspects, not so linked to CCS
- Grit to +4 HP (from +5) - Was really strong on the gunner tank
- Collateral Damage requires 2 AP - Reduces it's ability to destroy cover as easily (as it's quite strong)
- Packmaster now affects mists, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers - Necessary for use on the Shogun
- Telekinetic Field now reduces explosive damage by 90% (from 75%) - makes it a more effective counter to cluster bombs
Equipment:
- Reinforced plating mobility to -0.6 (from -1.2) but HP to +2 (from +3) - Mobility was so important that the reinforced vest stopped being competitive quickly
- Regenerative plating HP to +2 (from +3) - Nerfed to bring it more inline with other tank platings
- MEC1 cost cost increased and DR to 1 (from 2) and mobility to 0 (from 1.2) - Tone back on production efficiency as the MEC1 is quite strong and (due to stats and cheap cost) was making MEC2 feel like a mistake to produce (due to the cost efficiency of the MEC1)
- Conduit toned back slightly to 20% weapon damage, 15% damage reduction, and 10% free action (from 35/25/15) - It was quite strong
- Leather Jacket mobility to 2.5 (from -1.2) - Significant buff due to new mobility malus on covert operatives
- Neural Gunlink to +10 aim/crit (from +15) and grants aggression (from sharpshooter) - Tone back on it's strength, makes it more useful on shotgun builds
- Elerium Emitter radius to 1.5 (from 0.45), range to 10 (from 5), and charges to 3 (from 6) but wears off if the effected unit acts or moves, also does not work on self - Nerf to abusive uses
XCOM:
- Engineer base aim to 5 (from 10) and base will to 15 (from 10) - Tone back on strength of the shooter build, increases psionic potential
- Assault base mobility to 0 (from 0.6) - Toned back, especially affecting the assault tank build
- Medic base HP to 1 (from 0), Rocketeer base HP to 3 (from 2), Infantry base HP to 2 (from 3) - Evens out HP growth to make MEC classes balanced, slight buff to rocketeer/medic resiliency and grenade use
- Marauder base mobility to 0 (from 0.6) - Was probably the strongest MEC and needed to be reigned in a little more
- Reworked Goliath and Shogun perk trees - See perk image
- Shogun base aim to 20 (from 15) - Slight boost due to new tree being slightly weaker and less HP from base classes
Aliens:
- Aliens leaders will only start to appear at alien level 2 and higher - Smooths out the variability in difficulty of the missions in the first month
- Floater HP to 5 (from 7) and mobility to 7.5 (from 8.1) - Nerf to overall strength of floaters, especially in the early game
- Cyberdisc HP to 14 (from 18) - Decreased in strength when you first run into them as they were a little bit too much of a wall for ballistic/laser
- Mechtoid HP to 24 (from 32) - Same as Cyberdiscs
- Heavy Floater HP to 16 (from 20) - Increase in usefulness of explosives to bypass high defense
- Muton Elites no longer have access to holo rounds - Reduce amount of late game holo rounds
- All base mobility upgrades from alien levels decreased by 50% - The aliens were getting too fast in the end game, which was negating some reasonable tactics, this significantly slows down their mobility and thus range to flank and acts as a huge nerf to late game aliens
- Outisder aim growth and crit growth reduced to 4 per 2 levels (from 8) - Decreases the rate that they gain accuracy, making them less threatening in the later game
- Level 1 cyberdisc leaders gain 10 hp (from 3) and 10 aim (from 5) - boost to strength of leaders
- Level 1 berserker leaders gain 10 hp (from 5) - boost to strength of leaders
- Level 1 mecthoid leaders gain 10 hp (from 6) - boost to strength of leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where pscyhokinetic strike did not have a description when being used
- Fixed a bug where the scout would trigger perception against visible enemies
- Fixed a bug where the predicted damage for mind fray was sometimes inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where defusing a bomb or hacking an array would grant you an extra move if you had scamper active
- Fixed a bug where loading a game on a bomb mission after the bomb was diffused would hunker one of your soldiers
- Fixed a bug where using close encounters would sometimes cause conduit not to work
Version 1.29.20
LW Rebalance v1.29.20
Strategic:
- Quai d'Orsay starting bonus to 40% (from 50%) - It was deceptively strong (and still is)
- First mission contains 2 less sectoids (and Ease into it 2nd wave option lowers the first mission to 8 sectoids only) - Makes it less of a hurdle/annoyance, especially with new leaders
Perks:
- Bullseye grants +50 crit on steadied weapons - Buffed
- Disabling shot has a 2 turn cooldown (from 4) but only works against biologic units - Significant nerf, it was too strong of a pick on snipers/scouts and this fits better that it can disable hand held weapons but not a sectopod weapon
XCOM:
- Rocketeer Bullseye replaced with Executioner - Bullseye was a weak pick due to lack of synergy with LeU+Holo and the Holo + exeuctioner on a 2nd hit combo is nice
- Rocketeer Lock N' Load replaced with Bring 'Em On - Pushes the shooter rocketeer into more of a damage role than support role
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Conduit's popup for a free action would use the enrage popup
- Fixed a bug where augmenting a soldier was requiring more time than intended
- Fixed a bug where ITZ was gaining +50 crit on subsequent shots (instead of just the initial shot)
Version 1.29.19
LW Rebalance v1.29.19
Bug Fix:
- Accidentally left some log commands as active which was popping up throughout the game
Version 1.29.18
LW Rebalance v1.29.18
Strategy:
- Augmenting MECs requires only 10 + 20% of previous fatigue/wound time in days (from 25 + 25%) but there is now only 1 MEC augmentation slot - Reverted the previous change. Thanks to Howdyfellowhumans for the great idea :)
Perks:
- Fragmentation has a 25% (from 35%) chance to deal double damage with explosives - Toned back due to synergy on the rocketeer
Bug Fixes:
- Elerium Emitter actually has 6 charges now
- Fixed a CTD that would occur at the end of the month
- Scout actually has Executioner now
- Typos
Version 1.29.17
LW Rebalance v1.29.17
Strategic:
- Lowered the time for the exalt reminder scan so that it should always occur before a possible mission - QoL
- Lower the stats of the DLC bonus characters to make them less 'super hero' and more just 'strong' - Helps prevent them from automatically overshadowing your soldiers
- Council missions now have a 1 hour time limit (this is extended to 6 hours if the mission is generated during skyranger flight) - Helps prevent a bug of overlapping council missions which will prevent them from being completed
- SHIVs are now entered into the memorial - SHIVs have feelings too!
- Tweaked council requests for boosters so they give more appropriate rewards - QoL
- Base stats from bonus starts will no longer effect psi training or MEC augmentation
- Patriae Semper Vigilis grants 12 will (from 6) - Boost since it no longer effects psi training
Augmentation Rework:
- Augmenting a soldier into a MEC now resets all stats to 10 HP, 8.1 mobility, 65 aim, 30 will (instead of keeping 80% of previous will) - Will was a little too prevalent at defining a soldier as good or bad. Now, low will soldiers can be chopped to reset their stats again.
- MECs will have increased or decreased base stats based on their previous base HP (with 4 HP units being weak MECs and 8+ HP units being strong MECs). Note that Per Ardua Ad Astra, Jungle Scouts, and Survival Training bonuses will not effect this conversion and are adjusted for. - This makes HP the most significant stat for a good MEC candidate, boosting the strength of high base HP units. Thus, will makes for good psionics, and HP makes for good MECs. Aim and mobility were always competitive on their own just due to their tactical strength.
- Augmenting a soldier into a MEC requires 25 days + 25% of the unit's fatigue/injury time (from 10 + 20%) - Slows down MEC accumulation, tones back on the deployment capability of MECs to prevent late game full MEC teams from being as common
- Note: high ranking soldiers will still receive their bonus stats per rank above LCPL when augmented
Tactical:
- Clarified that hyper-reactive pupils miss bonus lasts until the unit makes another shot (even over multiple turns) - QoL
- The "In Smoke" buff now makes targets immune to critical hits and only reduces aim by 10 (from 15) - Buff to smoke
- Having a soldier mind controlled no longer causes the rest of the squad to panic - Was too punishing to lose half your squad after 1 action
Perks:
- Combat drugs heal 40% of damage received (from 35%) - Slight buff
- Tracker (from proximity sensor) now detects and uncloaks units within 6 tiles (from 5) - 20% buff in range to make it a more readily replacement for battle scanners
- Hit and Run no longer grants bonus damage (from +1) - nerf to HnR scout, pull back the scout even more
- Snapshot grants a 50% chance for a 0 AP shot (from 60%) with a strike rifle - nerf to snapshot scout, pull back the scout even more
- Mind Control has a -50 hit modifier - Significant reduction in its effectiveness. With the improved AI, both sectoid commanders and ethereals are proving to be too much of a difficulty spike and need to be toned back. The main reason for their strength was the effective use of mind control.
- ITZ now grants steadied weapons an additional +50 crit - Buff to ITZ snipers, Jaegers
Equipment:
- New item, "Conduit": Grants +35% weapon damage to all weapons and equipment, +25% DR when protected by cover, and a 15% chance for any action to cost 0 AP. Psi only. The conduit allows the wielder to channel psionic energy into various objects including weapons, explosives, and cover. Unlocked with Psi Warfare Systems. - Boost to strength of psionic equipment with a focus on non-psionic attacks and non-support units
- Neural Gunlink grants sharpshooter - Boost to strength of psionic equipment with a focus on non-psionic attacks and non-support units
- Psi Frayer and Psi Retaliator both grant 0 will (from 15/10) but mobility to +1.2 and +0.6 (from 0 and -0.6) - Boost to strength of psionic equipment with a focus on non-psionic attacks and non-support units
- Elerium Emitter grants 0 DR (from 2) but has 6 charges (from 3) - Felt like an item that was really stretched in terms of functionality. This was originally back from when I couldn't code well and needed a psi-tank item which is now replaced with the conduit.
- Holo Charger alloy cost reduced to 30 (from 40) and credit cost reduced to 90 (from 120) - Makes it slightly more affordable
- Flamethrower damage to 5 (from 7) - Slight tone back as the panic is quite effective with the recent panic buff
- Reinforced Plating DR to 2 (from 2.5) - Slight tone back
XCOM:
- Scout holo rounds replaced with executioner - Pull back on the support scout, more options for a shooting scout
Aliens:
- Mecthoid aim to 60 (from 70) but now starts with ready for anything - Increase in mid-game enemy overwatch
- Heavy Floater aim to 70 (from 80) but now leaders start with ready for anything - Increase in late-game enemy overwatch
- Sectoid Chief Commander renamed to Sectoid General - QoL
- Sectoid Commander Leaders gain 10 aim per leader level (from 20) and 2 hp (from 4) and all sectoid commanders gain 1 hp per alien level upgrade (from 2) - Tone down on the strength of sectoid commander and sectoid commander leaders
- Cyberdisc aim lowered to 90 (from 100) - Makes defensive tactics against them more effective and tones back their offensive power some
- Cyberdisc bounty increased to 20 alloys (from 10) - Boost to mid game alloy accumulation
- Sectoid Commander bounty increased to 40 elerium (from 20) and Ethereal bounty increased to 120 elerium (from 80) - Boost to late game elerium accumulation
Alien Leaders:
- Thinman Awareness and Low Profile moved from leader level 3 to leader level 1 - Increase in strength of early game thinman leaders
- Muton Elite level 1 leaders to 10 hp (from 0) and Muton Elite level 9 leaders to 10 hp (from 20) - Spreading out of hp gains to make level 1 muton elite leaders more significant
- Muton level 1 leaders gain shredder and lock n' load, muton level 3 leaders lose holo rounds - More consistency with muton elites, boost to level 1 muton leaders
- Seeker level 1 leaders to 10 hp (from 6 hp) - Boost to level 1 seeker leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where reconnaissance was unnecessarily identifying enemies that everyone could see
- Fixed a bug where the laser cannon and upgrade was doing 250 and 400 damage instead of the appropriate 300 and 450 damage
- Fixed a bug where some high level units (muton elites, heavy floaters, etc.) were being chosen for missions at levels lower than intended due to some vanilla code
- Fixed a CTD when a unit received multiple applications of shred
- Fixed a bug where monthly panic increases were being modified by campaign length when they shouldn't be
- Fixed a bug where you could 'quick move' multiple SHIVs on the same turn
- Typos
Version 1.29.16
LW Rebalance v1.29.16
Strategic:
- You get 3 new recruits each month on Normal, 2 each month on classic, 1 each month on brutal, and 0 each month on impossible - Reduced automatic influx of soldiers. Makes reward soldiers and purchasing soldiers more valuable/reasonable
- Alien aggression lowers more often - makes it less likely to have aliens sit at 100% aggression for long periods of time
- A third of the months elapsed are now added to the random roll when determine abduction reward soldier rank - Makes it much more likely to get a higher ranked soldier, especially into the later game
Tactical:
- Units have a 50% chance to break panic each turn (from 65%) - Makes panic more significant, especially with the lower occurance of panic occuring, also a boost to psionic strength (both XCOM and aliens)
- Rocket Scatter increased by 25% - Rocketeers were quite strong and a little too effective when firing even after moving (I think this came from the balance being made before the HP was fixed which was big reduction in scatter)
Perks:
- New perk: Insentient Crush - Non-biologic enemies in sight take 30% of their max health in damage at the beginning of their turn
- Distortion now longer does turn damage to purely mechanical units - simplifies the perk, removes the ability from sectoid commanders
- Mind Fray lasts 3 turns (from 2) but no longer stacks - Makes sectoids and psionic users (both XCOM and aliens) more potent, lack of stacking is for consistency and to prevent it from being too strong
Equipment:
- SMGs and Carbines lose 10 crit - balance vs other weapon options
XCOM:
- Infantry gain +15 base aim (from +20) - Slight tone back on shooting strength on infantry
Aliens:
- Ethereals gain Insentient Crush - Accommodates for distortion losing the effect
- Updated sectoid AI so that they'll seek cover before trying to attack
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where units at squadsight got an indicator suggesting they had RTS active
- Fixed a bug where some terror ships were not granting extra stats/levels to the aliens when assaulted
- Fixed an issue where leader levels were not being calculated correctly (they were being calculated higher and more often than intended)
- Typos
Version 1.29.15
LW Rebalance v1.29.15
Strategic:
- OTS missions required for officers to 10/30/50/70/90 (from 10/30/50/90/120) and OTS missions required for XTP to 20/60/100 (from 20/70/150) - Much easier and earlier access to OTS projects. Campaigns can have variable numbers of missions completed and some would completely miss the higher end projects. I believe the best strategy is to just grant the OTS projects earlier so that reasonably all campaigns will have access to all projects.
Tactical:
- Successfully rescuing the VIP on any mission with a VIP automatically results in a win - No need to mop up the remaining aliens, QoL
- Successfully defusing the bomb on any bomb disposal automatically results in a win - No need to mop up the remaining aliens, QoL
- There are more drop-ins on bomb disposal, extraction, and rescue missions - Keeps the difficulty up
- Diffusing the bomb now causes the unit to hunker down and they will start their next turn with no AP - Keeps the difficulty up
- Hacking an exalt array no longer requires full AP, but after the hack, the unit will begin their next turn with 0 AP - Makes command more effective for covert ops and prevents players from saying "Why can't I click here?!" as it was inconsistent with all other interactable objects, consistency with bomb diffusal
Perks:
- Inner Fire no longer grants additional DR - Balance
- Absorption Fields grants 30% DR (from 20%) - Buff to Shogun Tanks and Goliaths, makes relying on OfA every turn a little less necessary
- Reactive Targeting Sensors no longer grants Opportunist but instead grants +2 penetration - Simplification, similarity to steady weapon, and removal of some synergy that was too powerful on the Marauder
Equipment:
- Phalanx, Carapace, Aurora, and Aegis armors all gain 1 HP - The 0.5 DR didn't fully make up for the 1 HP loss and the armors could benefit from a slight boost instead of a slight nerf
- All SMGs renamed to SMG (from shatterray, shattererer, shigawiggama, shuckawuckalooma, etc.) - QoL, easy to figure out which weapon is an SMG
XCOM:
- Scout loses 0.6 base mobility - Slight nerf
- Sniper gains 5 base aim - Slight buff
- Reworked perk trees on Goliath and Marauder (see perk tree image)
Aliens:
- Seeker damage gain per alien level reduced to 0.5 (from 1) - Makes them less threatening when not strangling
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where steadying a weapon was only granting 1 pen (instead of 2)
- Remove psi drain as an ability on ethereals (it was already inactive, just was still showing up)
- Fixed a bug where stunned aliens would block tiles - Now you can trample them like the dogs they are!
- Typo fixes
Version 1.29.14
LW Rebalance v1.29.14
Strategic:
- Repairing an item now requires 50% of the original resources (from 20%) - Makes building backups more important and the decision to repair somewhat meaningful
- The repair bay now lists how many items are damaged and how many items are being repaired on the menu - QoL
- Augmenting (chopping) a soldier into a MEC now costs 70 meld (from 90) but requires 10 days plus 20% of the soldier's fatigue/wound times (from just 10 days) - Makes it more viable to have more MECs throughout a campaign but slows the process down so that it's not too powerful early-mid game, also means that just chopping the most injured soldiers isn't always so straight forward
- You can now assign a nickname to a soldier of any rank - QoL
- Soldiers will now have a chance to gain a nickname based on the number of missions and their rank when they level up (instead of just automatically at CPL) - Makes more sense
- Alien level progression lowered by 10% for all difficulties - Makes the mid game and especially the end game 'slightly' easier (will work immediately with ongoing campaigns - you may notice the alien level drop after the first day)
- Laser Cannon cost to 310 credits (from 450) - Makes them more accessible
- The number of overseer UFOs is now tripled when you don't have the ethereal device - Makes it easier to find one to down
Tactical:
- Steadying a weapon no longer grants a crit bonus but grants +2 pen (from +1 pen) - Crit overflow was a problem, simplification, makes steadying useful not just for aim but for units with higher DR as well
Perks:
- Shadowstep grants +0.6 mobility - Makes shadowstep more competitive, fits thematically
- Distortion now deals 30% of a unit's max HP in damage to purely mechanical units in line of sight of the unit with distortion at the beginning of their turns - Prevents ethereal cheesing with SHIVs
- Mayhem grants +60/80% damage to strike/sniper rifles - Slight buff to keep the sniper builds in balance
- Close Encounters grants +30% DR against targets within 4 tiles - Makes the Assault and Medic close range builds more resilient at close range
- Flush grants +30 aim (from +40 aim) and -50 crit and will only push a target out of cover 50% of the time (from 90%) - Was too strong, needed toning back
- Steadfast reduces the chance to be hit by psionic attacks and overpower by 30% (from 20%) - Buff to tanks resisting psionics and overpower and a buff to the alien trophy (which grants steadfast)
Equipment:
- Gauss Stuttergun to 55 crit (from 65 crit) - Accommodates for the bonus crit damage that was never taken into account when accommodating for the extra 0.5 damage with crit (0.143 * 0.5 * 4+3 = 0.5 extra damage)
- Gauss AutoPistol to 35 (from 45 crit) - Accommodates for the bonus crit damage (0.143 * 0.5 * 4+3 = 0.5)
- Pulse Stengun to 60 (from 65 crit) - Accommodates for the bonus crit damage (0.095 * 0.75 * 4+3 = 0.5)
- Shotgun mobility to -0.6 (from 0) - They were a little too obvious as a choice for close range classes. Gives more room for SMGs and other items.
- SMGs now benefit from ammo conservation - Consistency with the other 3 basic primary weapons, slight buff
- AP Ammo can now work on SMGs - Consistency with the other 3 basic primary weapons, slight buff
- AP Ammo now grants +2 penetration (from just bypassing all flat DR) - Makes it more useful against more enemy types
- Drum mags now works with SMGs and the appropriate laser, pulse, and plasma weapons - Consistency with High-Cap Mags and SMG change; now works on ALL ARs, SMGs, carbines, and BRs
XCOM:
- Scout base mobility to 0.6 (from 1.2) - Slight tone back for non-HnR scouts
- Assault GSGT Fragmentation replaced with Mayhem - Buff to the Assault Grenadier
Aliens:
- Updated alien AI more (especially on Ethereals) - Nice to have smarter opponents
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a long-time vanilla bug where aliens could overlap on top of each and they'd end up occupying the same space and it would look wierd
- Fixed a bug where Close Combat Specialist failed to activate against units on different elevations - I bypassed the native function and wrote my own code for it which (with tests) seems to work perfectly. It should now be useful against floaters and other flying units as well as just units that are moving up ramps, acts as a reasonable buff to the perk
- Fixed a bug where the tactical info display for sidearms was showing 10 crit more than intended after acquiring High-Capacity Pistols
- Fixed a bug where when throwing a grenade it would say "to hit chance" instead of "enemy dmg"
- Fixed a bug where run and gun and other various abilities were showing "location dmg" on their ability use
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed a bug where the flamethrower was getting extra damage from Hit and Run
- Fixed a bug where blueshirts would get unreasonably high fatigue/injury times
- Fixed an incorrect description of psi lance
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle was recieving an extra ammo from the pistol foundry project
- Fixed a bug where Mutons would show Intimidate in their perk list despite not having it
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes levitate after being revealed
Version 1.29.13
LW Rebalance v1.29.13
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the automatic reloads on LnL and ITZ would often grant the unit a free turn
- Fixed a bug where the hp pip damage preview was applying DR to mind fray
Version 1.29.12
LW Rebalance v1.29.12
Tactical:
- Estimated damage is now what is shown on the target's hp pips as blinking in an out (instead of total possible damage) - More realistic towards what would actually happen
- XCOM will now only panic from damage if they take more than 50% of their remaining HP in damage (from 30%) - Makes damage less likely to cause panic, helps prevent panic spirals from destroying missions, reflects XCOM as more 'elite' soldiers
- Added a new dgc.ini variable --> RAND_DAYS_INJURED_TANK = 50; (LWR Default = 50) XCOM rolls for panic when they take damage more than this % of their remaining HP (set to 100 to never have XCOM panic from damage)
Perks:
- Double Tap grants 15 aim when firing at 2 AP (from 10 aim) - Slight boost as the incentive to not move and fire was an interesting gameplay mechanic
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where ITZ would sometimes trigger without being steadied - Old test code left in
- Fixed a typo on the EMP cannon so it now just says "Increases artifact recovery to 60-90% (from 20-50%)" instead of mentioning elerium separately
- Fixed a bug where scout's recon would predict enemies as being closer than they actually were
- Fixed a bug where higher HP was actually increasing scatter instead of reducing it
- Misc typos
- Fixed a bug where you could repair a critically wounded MEC (which did nothing)
- Fixed a bug where aliens that happened to be on the same tile or tried to move to a tile where another alien is (vanilla bug, happens rarely) would cause the program that prevented tile scanning to create a CTD
- Fixed an incorrect credit issue for EMP Weapons on the tech tree
- Tweaked the combat drugs description to be more accurate
Version 1.29.11
LW Rebalance v1.29.11
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where XTP III and Field Commander required 100 less ranks than intended - Left in from a test version
- Fixed a bug where the HUD would not show a hit chance for regular shots
- Fixed a bug where reconnaissance could give info on dead aliens
Version 1.29.10
LW Rebalance v1.29.10
Strategic:
- Reworked XTPs and added a new one, XTP III: Soldiers autopromote to CPL and CPLs/SGTs gain 30xp each day (See https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Barracks_(LWR)#Officer_Training_School) - Grants easier access to a stronger pool of recruits in the later game
- Special Warfare School grants double xp from XTPs (from triple) - Nerf to accommodate newer XTPs
Tactical:
- Steadying a weapon no longer triggers reaction shots - The gameplay was good if you could react to opposing overwatch by steadying your weapon, despite the lack of realism that OW would trigger reaction fire but steady wouldn't
- There is no bonus xp for high level kills/sightings - The code was wonky and it didn't do much beside confuse players anyway
- The flat DR of enemies and allies is now displayed in their health bar as grey pips (rounded up as DR is effective rounded up due to truncation of damage taken) - QoL
- Made it so that meld sound indicators last longer and center on the listerner - QoL, makes it easier to determine where meld is
- Normal and Classic difficulty aliens now deal 1 less damage overall - Makes the easier difficulties easier
- Normal/Classic/Brutal aliens have -20/-10/0 will (from 0/0/+5) - Makes the easier difficulties easier in terms of attack with and defending against psionics
Perks:
- Reconnaissance will now detect nearby inactivated pods during engagements and warn you of approaching hostiles - QoL, boost to the effectiveness of the Scout
- Ready For Anything makes overwatch avoid triggering non-suppression reaction fire - Necessary to make it not a negative when acquiring, buff to RfA builds
- In The Zone no longer grants +10 aim/crit when active but will grant an automatic reload after any non-steadied non-reaction shot - There were certain situations that were awkward with an ITZ unit: 1) When you wanted to fire a single shot (but didn't want to lower your ammo for your next ITZ chain) and 2) when you did an ITZ chain and had 1-2 ammo left. This helps make both situations less awkward by allowing you to keep full ammo after firing once and allowing you to fire and reload instead of just reloading when you have 1-2 ammo.
- Sharpshooter grants +15 aim (from +10) - Buffed, balance on trees
- Mayhem grants 50/70% damage to strike/sniper rifles (from 70/90%) - Snipers toned back, balance with other sniper options
- Double Tap grants 10 aim on shots at 2AP (from 20 aim) - Snipers, DT gunners, and DT engineers toned back, opens up more room for support/grenadier engineers and RfA/Shredder gunners, balance on the Sniper
- Disabler reverted to Disabling shot - It's no longer necessary on non-sniper/strike/arc rifles and was needlessly complicated, slight nerf
- Repair (from mechanic and on drones) heals for 6 (from 4) - Makes it a lot more useful and more likely to be worth the action. Also acts as a boost to engineers.
- Ready for Anything grants 20 crit resistance - Buff to gunner/medic tanks
Equipment:
- Electro Pulse radius to 8 (from 6) but damage to 1 and penetration to 0 (from 8 and 8) - The most imporant part of the effect was rarely the damage, and this allows much easier use due to the larger radius, especially for multiple stuns.
- Kinetic Strike Module damage to 20 (from 24) - Was a little to strong, especially with Onslaught
- Psi Retaliator grants 20 crit resistance but DR to 0 (from 0.5) and mobility to -0.6 (from 0) - Slightly more useful for a tank psionic
- Mind Frayer grants 0 DR (from 0.5) but mobility to 0 (from -0.6) - Slightly more useful for a non-tank psionic
- Aegis, Carapace, Aurora, and Phalanx armor grant 1 DR (from 0.5) but all lose 1 HP - Slight buff for tanks and the ability to stack flat DR, slight nerf for non-tank units using heavy armor
- Incinerator Module and Thumper weight to 0.6 (from 0) - Slight nerf as they are both really strong and almost auto-equips
- LMG ammo to 6 (from 7) - Slight nerf for balance
XCOM:
- Jaeger base aim to 30 (from 20) - Buffed due to ITZ tone back
- Marauder base mobility to +0.6 (from +1.2) - Slight tone back just because the Marauder is overshadowing some other MECs in strength
Aliens:
- Improved Sectoid Commander and Ethereal AI - This improvement is effective... and ominous.
- Psionic units are less likely to run away when using mind-merge and mind control - While actually good AI, it was annoying to fight against both when it was effective and ineffective, so this is more of a QoL improvement through the AI
- Ethereal aim reduced to 100 (from 130) - With the improved AI, it felt a little too hard to deal with them with such high aim, this helps a little
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where AP grenades would do 0 damage when firing directly on a target - thanks to Snackhound for his help on this one
- You can no longer find enemies in the fog of war with the proximity damage indicator on grenades
- Fixed a bug where deflection shield could activate after flushing a target
- Fixed a typo on supercapacitors foundry project
- Fixed XCOM being able to use some abilities while scampering
- Fixed a bug where enemy unit's going on overwatch after being revealed would sometimes not correctly update their OW list of targets
- Fixed a bug where some unit's would get some cover defense from overwatch shots when flanked or clearly moved outside of cover
Version 1.29.09
LW Rebalance v1.29.09
Strategic:
- Meld heal now reduces injury/fatigue time by 80% (from 50%) - Makes it significantly more effective (especially considering the cost)
- XTP I and II provide +20xp/day (from +10xp/day) - Significant increase to xp gains from XTPs
- Combat Patrols credit cost increases by 50 (from 100) - Gives the player more agency at controlling the air game
- DLC Progeny Mission #2 (Deluge) now has less enemies (note: drop-ins are unaffected) - Makes it a little easier as it was too much of a spike in difficulty due to the difficult drop-ins
- Improved the frequency of "sightings" on UFO missions - increased information for which enemies you might be facing
- Air Superiority (NA continent bonus) grants 15% discount on aircraft and weapons (from 20%) - Slight nerf
Tactical:
- Actually successfully improved the Sectopod AI (yay) - I'd recommend against kiting them now...
- Provided a popup stating what happens when you are using 2 SHIVs and move one - increased tranparency of game mechanics
Perks:
- Distortion reduces damage by 75% (from 65%) and grants adjacent units in cover 50 defense (from 30 defense) - Buff to the presense of both sectoid commanders and ethereals, increase in late game difficulty, increased strength of late game cover for aliens, increased relative strength of psionics against distortion units
- Telekinetic Field reduces explosive damage against units within the field by 75% - Works similar to distortion, reducing the actual damage dealt. Buff to the perk, provides a solid counter to cluster bombs.
Equipment:
- Electropulse range increased to 6 (from 4.5) but has a 4 turn cooldown (from 3 turn) and now affects the MEC that uses it as well - Increased ease of use, while also adding a significant draw back acting as a relative buff to Sectopods
Aliens:
- Thin men aim to 70 (from 60) and mobility to 10 tiles (from 8.7) - Makes them more of a threat as they were a little easier than ideal
- Mutons, Chryssalids, and Berserkers start with 0 DR (from 0.5, 0.5, and 1 DR, respectively) - Nerfs to make them a little more reasonable opponents during the mid game
- Cyberdiscs gain 2 damage/level (from 4), Berserkers gain 4 damage/level (from 5), Mechtoids gain 2 damage/level (from 3), Heavy Floaters gain 1 damage/level (from 2), Muton Elites gain 2 damage/level (from 3) - Decreased incoming damage during mid-late game, making it more reasonable for XCOM to survive a turn with uncontrolled enemies
- Level 8 Muton Leaders only gain 10 HP (from 20) - Prevents an overflow problem
- All Muton Elites gain grit (from just muton elite leaders) - Significant buff to muton elites, increase in late game difficulty to combat the extra strength XCOM has
- All Heavy Floaters regain access to awareness (from just heavy floater leaders) - Significant buff to heavy floaters, increase in late game difficulty to combat the extra strength XCOM has
- Sectoid Commander base HP to 10 (from 14), Ethereal base HP to 24 (from 28) - Accommodation for increased strength of distortion
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where drop-in's didn't update their OW lists correctly
- Fixed a bug where damage causing panic was calculating the 30% damage AFTER the health had already been lost
- Fixed some sidearms now showing proper ammo amounts in descriptions
- Typo fixes
- Fixed a bug where the code that was preventing tile scanning was altering some AI moves
Version 1.29.08
LW Rebalance v1.29.08
Strategic:
- You can now cancel projects even if you have negative cash values - QoL
- Consistent Fatigue 2nd wave option sets fatigue to 10 days (from 7) - It was providing a signficant discount on fatigue (Thanks to LateNight_Rax for providing a detailed summary of the average fatigue during non-consistent fatigue games which was 10.1 over his brutal campaign)
Equipment:
- Machine Pistols have 2 ammo (from 3) - Toned back a little
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Impact (old Stagger) would still cause some soldiers to bug out - should work very smooth now
- Fixed a bug where dead aliens would occupy tiles
- Fixed a bug where using a machine pistol would cause a CTD
- Capped the display of alien level at 15 (as going higher does nothing)
- Trimmed the Assault Carrier and Terror Ship names to be shorter so that it can still display alien level information - Thanks to szmind for this amazing idea =D
- Fixed some typos
- Workshops now correctly reduce item build time without having to save and reload the game
- Fixed a bug where Exalt wouldn't scale on VLW and VVLW campaigns
- Fixed a bug where the Exalt scan reminder would not scale with campaign length, leading to inaccurate scanning reminders
Version 1.29.07
LW Rebalance v1.29.07
Strategic:
- Phoenix Coilgun upgrade slightly cheaper - helps makes it more reasonable to acquire
Tactical:
- You can no longer tile scan to find enemies in the fog - YAY =D
- OW arrows removed - The code was next to useless, no one used it, and it was very slow and could cause slow-downs/bugs
- Stagger no longer occurs naturally and is instead incorporated into the Impact perk - It was too strong and not ideal gamepay to have so ubiquitous, it tones back the strength of early game overwatch
- Overwatch and Steadying now both trigger enemy reaction fire - Note that the damage will hit before the steady so you can still steady if you took damage - Stops overwatch and steadying being 'easy outs' for enemy overwatch
- "L" no longer is a shortcut for steady weapon - I couldn't get it to work with new bullseye and it doesn't work with reactive fire, so I just disabled it
Perks:
- Savior reduces injuries sustained during battle by 1 HP on all soldiers similar to First Aid - Made sense for the medic to acquire this ability. It was frustrating if you wanted that ability and couldn't do it on the Medic.
- Impact now grants reaction shots a 20% chance to cancel the action of a unit and end their turn (similar to old stagger) - Acts as a buff to later game overwatch, more simple application of the ability
XCOM:
- Medic: Lock N' Load replaced with Impact - gives medic access to impact to upgrade their reaction shots (LnL was a little overkill with RfA anyway)
- Marauder: Vital Point Targeting replaced with Impact - grants Marauders access to Close Combat Specialist + Impact combo (VPT was a little redundant right beside Killer Instinct as both were just adding damage)
Aliens:
- Mechtoid base HP to 32 (from 20) - Buffed, makes them much more of a resilient threat
- Toned down Exalt increases with alien levels - makes late game Exalt a little less punishing
- The following units gain Impact: Floater leaders, Heavy Floaters, Cyberdiscs, Mechtoids, Sectopods - Increases their viability vs XCOM tanks and increases the strength of their OW
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where SMGs and Autopistols were not getting their appropriate damage bonuses
- Fixed a bug where getting staggered while using an item would cause you to T-Pose and lock that character out of the rest of the mission
- Fixed a bug where Flak Ammo wasn't correctly removing the air evade bonus (it was replacing it with partial cover)
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed a bug where using another item before being staggered would cause that item to stick as one of your weapons
- Fixed a bug where panicking and being staggered would leave you in the open during step-outs
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug: Elerium is now correctly rewarded based on how many UFO Power Source Cylinders are remaining after an UFO engagement (it was decided randomly before battle previously and didn't take into consideration the battle itself)
- Fixed a bug where the MINE launcher didn't have a confirmation dialogue
- Fixed a bug where Reaper Rounds was causing a CTD when a unit with them tried to act with their weapon
- Fixed a bug where disabling a target would not reset their OW status which caused indicators to misleading show the unit as still capable of OW
Version 1.29.06
LW Rebalance v1.29.06
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a compilation error during the .upk creations that made v1.29.05 a real mess - Whoopsies
Version 1.29.05
LW Rebalance v1.29.05
Strategic:
- Research speed is modified by difficulty: normal(150%), classic(133%), brutal(117%), impossible(100%) - Helps lower difficulties access more research and not feel 'blocked'
- XCOM Base Defense mission has a few less aliens - Makes it a little easier as it's an unavoidable mission and losing on it feels pretty bad
- Quai d'Orsay French start bonus to 50% (from 60%) - Slight tone back
- Advanced Repair foundry project grants a 30% reduction in repair time (from 25%) - Buffed
Tactical:
- Reaction fire now only bypasses half of cover defense (from bypassing all of cover defense) - Makes it less starkly all about dealing with units in cover and makes aim more important on OW units
- New Feature "Staggered": Anytime a unit takes damage during their turn they have a chance to be Staggered equal to the percent of remaining HP lost (half this chance if moving), cancelling the current action/move and ending their turn. This can occur in the middle of a move as well which may leave a unit without cover in a bad position. - Significant buff to reactive abilities like overwatch, CCS, suppression, and even RTS (against multi-action units). This also makes reactive abilities (and builds centered around them) much more useful into the mid-late game.
- Enrage grants +100% weapon damage to all sources (from +50% weapon damage) and mobility by 100% (from 50%) and has a 75% for actions to cost 0 AP - Buff to the comeback mechanic, it should yield 4 actions on average from the geometric series =(1 - 0.75^100)/(1-0.75), each action should hit hard, and the unit should be quite mobile. Previously, enrage was little more than a gimmick before the squad wipe reached completion. Now it just might turn things around.
- Decreases in hit chances are slowed (-1 for every -2) when they reach below 20% (indicated by orange hit chances) and even more (-1 for every -5) below 10% (indicated by red hit chances) - It smooths out the lower end of the hit curve: Previously if someone had a 5% chance to hit you and you gained 5 defense, all of the sudden their hit chance doesn't drop by 5x down to 1% -- now it would take them from 5% to 4%. As well, it helps the AI who loves taking 1% shots which will now more likely be ~10% shots - Improved AI through making their stupidity smart! =P Last, it's more realistic and helps prevent abusive gameplay (e.g. XCOM defense tanks that soak up 1% shots that have plagued LWR on and off for many versions).
Perks:
- Snapshot only grants a 0 AP shot on non-steadied shots (from all shots) - Important to balance the snapshot scout with bullseye, also makes sense as a 'snapshot' could be considered the opposite of a 'steadied shot'
- Clutch Leadership and Battlefield Aptitude provide 10 defense in cover (from 5) - Helps with late game resiliency
- Collateral Damage to 50% weapon damage (from 100%) - The cover destruction is really strong, I tried with 100% weapon damage and well, the cd is so short, simply having a unit that has guaranteed cover destruction at 0% weapon damage every other turn is strong in and of itself
- Predictive Tracking no longer grants +1 damage on reaction shots but instead allows reaction shots to bypass all cover defense (instead of only half of cover defense) - Buff, and the +1 damage didn't scale well
Equipment:
- Adaptive Tracking Pod aim to 10 (from 15) - Was a little too strong at 15, especially with the new predictive tracking
Aliens:
- Shadowstep on Exalt operatives only occurs on leaders - Makes overwatch builds more effective during exalt missions
- The following units have lost Squadsight as leaders: sectoids, mutons, floaters, cyberdiscs, sectoid commanders, heavy floaters, muton elites, mechtoids, seekers - Even just on the high level leaders it was too common with the difficulty in dealing with squadsight enemies. It was not fun. Now the only units with Squadsight are thinmen leaders, drone leaders, outsider leaders, sectopod leaders, exalt snipers, and exalt elite snipers.
- The following units have lost Ready For Anything as leaders: thinmen, drones, outsiders - The only unit with a quasi-RfA at SS is now the Sectopod. This should mostly remove a frustrating part of the mid-late game (squadsight + ready for anything units).
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where the "time to build" was off by 1 day on facilities when it showed what was required to have them built
Version 1.29.04
LW Rebalance v1.29.04
Strategic:
- German Start bonus "Skunkworks" now reduces item build time by 50% and the fission generators are on the 3rd floor left side - Buffed for competitiveness
- The following gene mods have their credit, meld, and time costs significantly reduced: hyperreactive pupils, predictive tracking, secondary heart, adapative bone marrow - Makes some gene mods more reasonable to acquire mid and even early game
Tactical:
- First mission has 3 less sectoids on impossible, 2 less on brutal, and 1 less on all other difficulties - I was emotionally brow-beaten into doing this by my last I/I attempt. While having a difficulty gate is helpful for acting as a litmus test, the main purpose of the game should be fun. With the number of restarts that most players playing this mod do, having the first mission so difficult wasn't ideal.
Perks:
- Bullseye no longer boosts the strength of a steadied weapon but instead makes steadying a weapon only cost 1 AP - Makes it useful to get a shot off on that turn (I think the formula of trying to ultra boost a single shot was just too tight on the risk/reward spectrum unless it started to get ridiculous, so this is a better role for bullseye)
- Cognitive Enhancer can again be equipped by rookies - Restriction not needed to fix a bug
- Reaper Rounds grant 20 crit and +2 damage during critical hits (from just 25 crit) - Buffed
- Armor Piercing ammo now ignores all of a unit's flat DR (similar to corrosion) (instead of just granting +1 pen) - Significant buff against targets with significant amounts of flat DR, acts as 2nd method of dealing with units with high DR (instead of only being able to rely on acid)
- Flak Ammo negates the 30 bonus defense that flying targets receive (from +4 damage against flying units) - Acts as a significant consistency buff while engaging flying units
- Shotguns no longer have -10 aim - Not necessary, slight buff, simplicity
- Flak Ammo, Shredder Ammo, Breaching Ammo, and Armor Piercing ammo weight 0.6 (from 0) - Slight tone back on ballistic/gauss ammo strength
- Arc Rifle mobility to 0 (from -0.6) but loses squadsight - Gives the arc rifle units a little more flexibility in movement while forcing them to engage at least in visual range
- Fixed some typos
XCOM:
- Engineer: Sharpshooter replaced with Bullseye - Sharpshooter felt a little forced given that the engineer was so anti-mechanical
- Shogun: Killer Instinct replaced with Bullseye - Gives the class something more reasonable to do when it's just standing and firing
Bug Fixes:
- Again fixed a spot where fire rocket still says 1 turn cooldown =P
- Updated the steady description to include the +1 pen in many weapon descriptions
- Fixed a bug where MECs couldn't equip a cognitive enhancer
- Fixed a bug where predictive tracking would erroneously appear in the to-hit F1 description (visual bug only)
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where the cognitive enhancer and neuroregulator would not work after saving a game mid-tactical - Szmind basically entirely fixed it. Tons of thanks to him.
- Assault now correctly gains 15 will
- Fixed an issue where swapping units quickly could sometimes cause the alien heads on the HUD to be colored incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where red circles would still appear beneath flying units when they were dead
- Fixed a bug where a unit without the rapid fire perk that was wielding a pistol would look like they actually had the rapid fire perk in the F1 overview
- Fixed a bug where flying units would cause a pause that could lock out a game (e.g. on a base defense)
Version 1.29.03
LW Rebalance v1.29.03
Perks:
- Hit and Run grants +1 damage against uncovered targets (from +2) - Was a little too much of the perk, the boost to VPT makes HnR classes hit hard enough without the extra damage
XCOM:
- Jaeger: RTS replaced with Impact - RTS did not work well with an ITZ build
- Jaeger: Executioner and Sharpshooter swapped - Makes Sharpshooter the main mid-perk for the Jaeger, pushing it into an anti-biologic role a little more
- Medic: Vital Point Targeting replaced Lock N' Load and swapped with Sharpshooter - VPT was too strong on the CE medic tank, the OW tank will now have RfA + Sent/Opp + LnL meaning that you could heal, dash, and still get a full reload and enter Sent+Opp OW
- Engineer: Bullseye replaced with Sharpshooter - Bullseye didn't work well with Double Tap
- Engineer: Danger Zone and Tandem swapped - Bring the engineer grenadier online earlier
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a critical issue causing CTD when steadying a weapon - Whoopsie, thanks mac92 for the report
- Fixed a typo on Fire Rocket suggesting it was still only a 1 turn cooldown
- Fixed a bug where Plasma grenades were accidentally set to 12 damage (instead of 10) and had a 3 radius (instead of 2)
Version 1.29.02
LW Rebalance v1.29.02
Air Game:
- Stringray damage to 800 (from 900) - gives a little more room for phoenix cannons in the air meta
Strategic:
- XTPs now work on fatigued soldiers - Makes fatiguing low level soldiers not feel nearly as punishing
Tactical:
- Alien Heads in the HUD reworked: Exalt get their Alien Head icon back! Alien leaders have larger heads. Flying units have blue heads. Mechanical units have grey heads. Mechanical flying units have light greyish blue heads. Units at squadsight have transparent heads. Overwatching units still have the target icon. - Makes it easier to distinguish who you are firing at quickly and more intuitively. Thanks to szmind for some awesome code he discovered and shared with me a few months ago that allowed me to create this!
- New intro map can now occur for all abductions (from just light/moderate) - it's large enough and has a good mid-way LoS blocker (also, it seems like the code is bugged and not working for the new map to select a difficulty for it, so welcome new feature! =P)
- Number of drop-ins significantly decreased overall, but increased based on how many months has passed - Makes drop-ins a lot more reasonable early game but also less inconsequential in the late game (especially because a lot of them will still be thinmen and I can't change that)
- Steady Weapon now grants +1 penetration as well as +50 aim/crit (from just +50 aim/crit) - Buff to the ability to make it more useful, especially in dealing with early drones
Perks:
- Bullseye no longer grants 20 aim against fliers. Instead it upgrades steady weapon to +100 aim, +50 crit, +50% weapon damage, and +2 pen (instead of just +50 aim/crit and +1 pen) - The goal is to encourage the use of steady as another tactical option against high defense targets. The problem was that steady, taking 2 turns and firing on the 2nd, was not often worth it considering it did just about 2-3x damage and you might not get it off. Now, with bullseye, steady will be very worth it.
- Snapshot free AP chance to 60% with strike rifle and 20% otherwise - Buff to strike rifle scout as both the support scout and HnR scout are quite strong, nerf to regular snapshot as it was a little too competitive vs other picks on the trees
- Close Combat Specialist grants -30% weapon damage (from -35%) - Increases the damage dealt on multiple weapons, makes it more impactful without brawler
- Brawler grants 30% DR and weapon damage to reaction shots (from 35%) - Accommodation for CCS
- Collateral damage does 100% weapon damage (from 150% weapon damage) - It's main draw is supposed to be cover destruction on a tap, not acting as an infinite-sourced high damage grenade. Also, the fact that it grants 100% chance to hit (like mayhem suppression) makes it great against hard to hit targets (e.g. floaters), even if it's only doing 12 damage.
- Will to survive grants 35% DR and 50% reduced wound time (from 30% of each) - Buff to biotanks, makes them much more resilient to suffering from wounds
- Grit grants 5 armor HP (from 3 armor HP) but no flat DR - Makes it amplify it's lost HP -> DR effect and helps it survive high damage shots
Equipment:
- KSM damage is no longer reduced by red fog - Frees up the KSM to do full damage while injured: helps the tank-style MECs still perform well with the KSM (the mobility restriction with red fog seems to be more than enough restriction on the KSM).
- Proximity sensor decloaks seekers and detects units within 5 tiles (from 8) - Was a little too effective at nullifying seekers
- Adaptive tracking pods grant +15 aim (from +5) and grants Predcitive Tracking (from Bullseye) - Accommodation for new bullseye mechanics
- Cognitive Enhancer can no longer be equipped by Privates - prevents a bug of it not working on them
- Rockets now deal 150% base damage (from 100%) but have a 2 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - Signifcant boost to their strength, slightly tappered by the increased cooldown which also encourages other actions, to boost hybrid nature of new tree
- Recoilless Rifle mobility and pen back to normal - With the boost in rocket strength, recoilless did not need an additional boost
XCOM:
- Jaeger: Bullseye replaced with RTS - Gives it a little more dimensionality while removing bullseye which would now be OP on the jaeger, especially works well with the LnL Jaeger due to the increased likelihood to be fired on the and increased ammo capacity (with the ability to reload and steady again)
- Goliath: Tandem Warheads and Danger Zone swapped - With Fragmentation buffs DZ wasn't competitive anymore
- Goliath: Grit replaced with Ready For Anything - Grit was too strong on low HP Goliath's due to their large HP pools: it could create some situations which made them too tanky, RfA works well with picking up opportunist from RTS
- Medic: Bullseye replaced with VPT - The Medic (unlike the engineer, scout, and infantry) had more trouble using bullseye effectively due to lack of multiaction shots. Thus, VPT felt stronger on the OW medic. It seems reasonable too, as the medic always had the option for ranger for a straight damage/mobility boost.
- Assault: Fragmentation and Tandem Warheads swapped - Gives the assault grenadier more predictability earlier
- Shogun: Shadowstep and Killer Instinct swapped - prevents gaining complete immunity to reaction fire, brings damage on a little earlier in the class
- Assault: Gains 5 base will and 0.6 base mobility - Increases chance to become psionic, slightly; makes it slightly easier to get CE off
- Gunner: Loses 5 base will - Decreases chance to become psionic, slightly
- Rocketeer: Tree and base stats reworked - see perk image
Bug Fixes:
- Exalt should no longer waste their turn by steadying their weapons - thanks to szmind for help with figuring out where to look
- Fixed some typos
- Optimized some code
- Fixed a bug where adrenaline surge was still granting 10 aim and appearing to grant 10 crit as well
- Fixed a bug where seekers, cyberdiscs, and drones would sometimes be landed
- Fixed a bug where the Home Ground bonus would not appear on UFO sites
- Fixed some missing in-game perk/ability descriptions
- Tried to include more code to fix the HUD disappearing with Exalt - hopefully this works even better
- Strangle now correctly displays a damage amount popup (was missing before)
- Fixed a bug where the defense value of units in F1 was not showing their correct defense value if they had tactical mobility
- Fixed a bug where both beam strengthening and the plasma stellerator were not giving damage as expected
Version 1.29.01
LW Rebalance v1.29.01
Bug Fixes:
- Fragmentation correctly has a 35% chance to proc
- Fixed a bug where units would randomly get teleported to the center of the map
- Sectoid Commanders now properly have distortion (even if they are drop-ins)
- Fixed a bug where Shogun's perk tree would sometimes be missing a column of perks
Version 1.29.00
LW Rebalance v1.29.00
Strategic:
- Passing a bomb disposal mission lowers panic by 10 (from 5) - Boost to make the harder council missions feel more worthwhile
- Marazuki's extraction mission now rewards 8 scientists - Makes it unique to that mission type
- Mr. Thorne VIP mission now rewards -20 panic due to political effect - makes it unique to that mission type
- Site Recon now provides +100 mission xp to all surviving members of the mission - makes it unique to that mission type
- Assault-style council missions grant double the cash reward - makes it unique to that mission type
- Success on Portent now has a reason the Exalt soldier/survivor doesn't kill himself: he now defects to your side and Anton "Vector" Smits joins your cause - But he was Exalt! Don't trust him!
- Success on the new Thomas Hutch extraction mission grants 2 new soldiers: Jamie "House" Watson and Jake "Snake Eyes" Green
- The "Act of the Game" no longer has any effect on abduction difficulty, and the abduction formula changed to be a little more variable - Act of game was an odd metric to use, and this will mean there should be a few more moderate abductions later on in a campaign (and maybe even a light)
- Added a new abduction map: Intro Level (for light and moderate abductions) - QoL
- Added a new mission: Thomas Hutch (as a council extraction mission) - QoL
Tactical:
- New Ability: Home Ground: Units participating in missions in their home country gain 10 will and 0.6 mobility
- Enrage now also increases mobility by 50% - Buff to it's effectiveness, makes it useful for units that are just moving
- Aliens will no longer auto-target and auto hit the VIPs: they can now miss like they should and will often prefer to hit a soldier that is an easier target if the VIP is in full cover - YAY, been wanting this for MANY MANY versions since the beginnings of LWR
- The moving of the camera and pausing/focusing on an object/unit during a tactical mission has been removed (e.g. van doorn talking, a flight computer description, etc.) - I always found it frustrating having to be forced to wait while the camera slowly pans and stops and bradford or someone talks for a while. I find it now feels much more intuitive where they describe what they are talking about and you can look or not if you want.
- Toned down the size of some of the alien leaders - Some felt a little cartoonish instead of cool
- Late game enemies starting at Sectoid Commanders have an increased chance to appear (SecCmmdr x1.5, MutonE+HyFloater x2, Sectopod+Ether x3) - so that they don't get diluted as much from all the earlier enemies
- The drop-in rate for enemies on multiple missions has been increase - Makes the drop-ins less of a small issue to a more major component of the mission
Perks:
- Neural Feedback always does 4 damage (from 5% of psi defender's will) - Simplification and a bit of a buff, acts to both limit strength on the final mission and buff it during normal missions. Also gives lower will soldiers a non-will based 1st level psi perk.
- Rift now deals 5 + will_diff/20 damage on the initial blast and final blast (from 3 + will_diff/20 on initial and 6 + will_diff/20 on final blast) - A little more concise and packs a little more punch on the first hit when the volunteer uses it.
- Psi Lance now deals 5 + will_diff/20 damage (from 4 + will_diff/20 and some caps) - Consistency and concise
- Fragmentation proc rate to 35% (from 25%) - Buff to assault grenadier and pure rocketeer - With the rocketeer firing every other turn, the pure build didn't need a weak initial perk for balance anymore and the assault grenadier could use some love
- Tactical Mobility back to 15 defense (from 10) - Buff to floaters
- Onslaught now reduces mobility by 50% (instead of setting to 0) - Significant buff to Marauders
- Aggression grants +10 crit per enemy in sight when using a shotgun - buff to shotgun assaults
Equipment:
- Laser Scatterer renamed to Laser Scattershot - Better name
- Guass Pistol changed to a Gauss Autopistol - Now there are 4 pistols and 4 autopistols
- All MECs gain 1 DR - Overall increase to their survivability and makes them even more useful early-mid game
- SMGs grant 40 crit (from 50) but grant +2/3/4 damage on crits per weapon tier (from 1/2/3) - Buff to their damage output
- Machine pistols grant 20 crit (from 40) but grant +2/3/4 damage on crits per weapon tier (from 1/2/3) - Buff to their damage output
XCOM:
- Fragmentation and Holo Rounds swapped on Goliath - Gives a MEC early access to holo, nerfs the grenadier goliath build some for balance
- Shogun and Goliath LCPL and CPL levels swapped - Brings them both online earlier
Aliens:
- Ethereal and Uber Etheral aim increased by 20 each - Makes it harder to focus disable them
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug in the tech tree that said EMP weapons required 80 time when it's actually 350
Version 1.28.22
LW Rebalance v1.28.22
Equipment:
- Recoilless Rifle mobility to 0 (from -0.6) and penetration to 1 (from 0) - Allows the mid-game rocketeer to be a little more effective at avoiding DR and to be a little more mobile
Perks:
- HEAT warheads grants 3 pen (from 2) - Buff for balance on the trees, especially with Recoilless Rifle granting a pen
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the combat patrol cost was not incrementing
- Fixed a bug where the price for selling items in the grey market would modify when loading and saving other games too often (Note: the fix will occur after the first tactical mission)
- Fixed a bug where the assault rifle was doing 40 damage (!) - WHoopsies
- Fixed a bug where battlefield aptitude was not granting a will bonus
- Fixed a bug where battlefield aptitude was granting 5 more defense than intended
- Fixed a bug where all overwatch shots were bypassing cover DR
- Added some code to help prevent the HUD from disappearing when exalt panics - Not sure if this will work as the HUD doesn't disappear for me, but it might do the trick
Version 1.28.21
LW Rebalance v1.28.21
Strategic:
- Conquering an alien base and freeing a country resets panic to 55 and lowers continent panic (including the freed country) by 5 (from setting to 88) - Makes it a lot easier to re-take countries and actually hold them
Perks:
- Fragmentation grants a 25% chance for double damage (from 20%) - Slight buff
XCOM:
- Gunner base will to 10 (from 15) - Slight nerf
Aliens:
- Berserker/Chryssalid mobility gain per alien level lowered to +1.2/1.8 (from +1.8/2.5) - Nerfed, Tone down on how much mobility they get, especially into the end game with stacking their mobility was too high
- Chryssalid mobility to 13.7 (from 15) - Nerfed, Decrease in mobility
- Seekers and Mutons upgrade at alien level 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 (from 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) - Slight buff; makes it so that each alien level has some form of upgrade instead of focusing it mostly on the odd levels
- Berserkers and Mechtoids upgrade at alien level 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 (from 7, 9, 11, 13) - Same reason as above
- Heavy Floaters, Muton Elites upgrade at alien level 8, 10, 12, 14 (from 9, 11, 13) - Same reason as above
- Ethereals upgrade at alien level 10, 12, 14 (from 11, 13) - Same reason as above
- Sectopods start with Reactive Targeting Sensors (from only leaders having it) - Grants some more threat on the non-leaders
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the Hit Chance Reticule was always saying 100%
- Fixed on typo on steady weapon suggesting it could affect overwatch shots
- Units caught off-guard should now correctly update their cover and position
- Suppression now correctly bypasses cover DR when it breaks and shoots
- Double Tap will no longer use the cooldown when the unit with double tap fires a pistol
- Fixed a bug where units throwing a grenade would sometimes speak twice or talk about a rocket being off target
- Fixed some slightly incorrect descriptions
Version 1.28.20
LW Rebalance v1.28.20
Strategy:
- New soldier cost to 90 credits (from 110) - Makes it easier to avoid fatigue spirals with new soldiers
Tactical:
- New feature that identifies how much damage an explosive will have with fall off in the targeting HUD - Helps players figure out how close they are to their targets, QoL
- Explosive fall off is now simply the distance from the target down to 50% (from the distance from the target SQUARED down to 50%) - Makes explosive fall off less punishing
Equipment:
- AP grenades have 2 penetration (from 0), damage to 3 (from 4), and radius to 2 (from 1) - Makes them much better at penetrating hardened targets (as their name infers). Multiple reasons for the changes but the main one was a fall off being bugged at small ranges causing a significant decrease in damage with use.
- Javelin rocket radius to 2 (from 1) and scatter reduction removed (from -50%) - Large increase in hit area (2x radius, 4x area, 8x volume) but no more decreased scatter - necessary to fix damage fall off problem
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where holo rounds was granting +1 penetration even before holo was applied (making it quite OP)
- Fixed a typo where some descriptions still said shredder was damage received and not damage taken
- Fixed a bug where off-guard would popup after turn 2
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed a bug where panicked units were not acting correctly and sometimes would get a free move (almost lost Chilong in my own campaign due to this!)
- Fixed a bug where after a soldier has finished panicking, they still hyperventilate
- Fixed a bug where aliens that were "off guard" would still not process their cover correctly
Version 1.28.19
LW Rebalance v1.28.19
Strategic:
- Reward soldiers start with their current rank, but their xp is set to a rank lower - Acts as newer soldiers taking time to adjust to XCOM, makes soldiers that have "earned" their ranks more valuable, slows down overall xp gain from reward soldiers (note: in the previous version this was bugged and reward soldiers started with 0 xp)
- XTP II auto promotes to LCPL and grants 100 xp (from 0 xp) - Adjusted to new dynamic of autopromotions granting xp to 1 rank lower
- MECs no longer receive additional fatigue - it was minor enough not to warrant the inclusion due to it not really being necessary to hamper MECs as their costs justify their strength
Tactical:
- You can now view abilities on XCOM units during a scamper move and they will be colored red denoting that they cannot be used - Helps identify charges/cooldowns and what abilities each of your units have available
- New dgc.ini value: RAND_DAYS_INJURED=1; (LWR Default = 1) After this many covert operative extraction or data recovery missions bradford will not talk about objectives before new mission - Allows the player to control how often bradford will talk about how to do exalt missions (setting to 0 will mean never)
- Shred is now based on damage taken instead of damage received - This just means it doesn't count the damage that was resisted, only the damage that was taken. This was changed because it was possible to stack high shred counts on some bosses (e.g. the final boss of the game) when they had full DR while still getting very strong shred effects. This way, it's still important to circumvent their DR and shred still stacks indefinitely and exponentially.
Perks:
- Extra Conditioning grants 20% reduction in both fatigue and injury times (from just fatigue at 30%) - Makes the increased use of the soldier work for wounds too
- Squadsight is -4 aim per tile (from -3 aim per tile) - Since sniper rifles and marksman scopes set this to -2, this change only affects Jaegers and enemy SS units, both being toned back slightly
- Sapper grants triple enviro damage (from quintuple) - Slight tone back on end-game cover destruction capability, cover destruction is very strong and not always ideal gameplay to have so strong, at triple enviro damage it will still destroy most things so this is't as large of a nerf as it might seem (e.g. a HE greande will do 180 enviro damage instead of 300, and most objectives have 40-120 enviro HP; a plasma grenade would do 300 enviro damage)
Equipment:
- KSM damage to 24 (from 20) - 20% buff in damage
- SMG crit to 50 (from 40) - Buffed, makes critting easier with them to act as a slight boost to their strength
- MINE launcher radius increased to 4 (from 3) and enviro damage to normal (from double) - Significant buff while also reducing cover destruction capability in the end game
XCOM:
- Shogun loses 0.6 base mobility - Slight nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Added some extra code to make sure that people you are OWing get OW'd when they act (as sometimes this would get missed)
- Fixed a bug where quieting bradford during consecutive exalt missions wasn't working - Thanks to szmind for this awesome code and the fix! =D
- Fixed some typos in-game and on the perk tree
- Fixed a bug where aliens who were panicked would sometimes not lose their first turn during their session of panic
- 2nd wave option "Training Roulette" no longer disables mobility stat gains
- Hit and Run now correctly colors the HUD icons purple for disabling shot and precision shot when active
- Shoguns now correctly have Fortified as a LCPL perk
- Fixed a bug where sectopods would show Hit and Run on their perk list
- Fixed a bug where distortion aura was working on flanked units
Version 1.28.18
LW Rebalance v1.28.18
Maps:
- Removed some especially difficult landing zones from many maps to smooth out the difficulty of many missions
Strategic:
- XTPs that autopromote don't actually grant any xp, just the promotion - Slows down xp accumulation while still making lower level soldiers still useful, making Show 'em the ropes more useful as well - Thanks to snackhound for the idea
Tactical:
- A popup now displays when a unit is in smoke and it prevented a reaction shot - QoL, helps the player better understand game mechanics
- If you click on one of your units that are on overwatch, you can now see which enemies it has overwatch against as there will be a big green arrow over each enemy that that unit is targeting on OW - Provides some additional information if you've triggered more pods or simply had a long turn and want to quickly see who you can OW - thanks to szmind for the code
- Disorientation lowers mobility by 60% (from 70%) - It was a little too effective at 70%
Perks:
- Aggression now grants 5 crit per enemy in sight (from 10 crit and +1 crit damage) - Distinction of the perk and makes it stronger when XCOM needs it more
- Executioner grants +30 aim and +2 damage (from +20 aim and crit, and +2 damage) against targets at or below half health - Extra aim will carry over to crit if it's too much, simplification and buff of the perk, helps finish off low life targets that you just need to tag, and the crit on a unit below half health was usually not that important
Equipment:
- Shielding Pod requires Muton Interrogation (from Heavy Floater Autopsy) and New Combat Systems (from MEC Warfare Systems) - Brings the shielding pod online earlier to help SHIVs through the mid game, also didn't make sense that a SHIV only item was unlocked from a MEC tech
XCOM:
- Aggression and Bullseye swapped on Jaeger - makes the MSGT perk option more competitive
- Bullseye replaced with Sharpshooter on the Sniper - makes more sense for the sniper and still acts a little like anti-floater tech, also, tones down proliferance of bullseye and increases occurance of sharpshooter
- Alloy SHIV armor HP to 22 (from 18), Hover SHIV armor HP to 16 (from 14) - Boost to tankiness
- Hover SHIV defense to 30 (from 20) - Boost to resiliency
- Marauder perk tree reworked some (see perk image)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes avoid multi-turn panics
- Fixed a bug where some abilities would remain on cooldown for an extra turn longer than they should
- Fixed a bug where RTS would trigger against XCOM units with snapshot
- Fixed a bug where "Reaction Fire Avoided" popups would occur when there was no reaction fire to avoid
- Fixed a typo on assault carbine's aim
Version 1.28.17
LW Rebalance v1.28.17
QoL:
- Aliens who are out of ammo will now display this in the F1 panel incase you missed the popup
- Alien max level leaders now have gold HP bars - Distinguishes them from normal leaders
Air Game:
- Combat Patrols now cost 200 credits, but their cost increases by 100 after each use - The cost increase is cause the aliens get more resilient and aware of their effect. =P This makes it much more appealing to use, but not something that can readily be abused. It also presents an interesting dynamic of WHEN you should use them for best effect.
Strategic:
- XP required for GSGT/MSGT decreased/reverted to 5100/7000 (from 5500/8000) - The change wasn't required, the fatigue problem fixed it and the slower progression wasn't as ideal gameplay for the player
- XTP I now also auto promotes all PFCs to SPECs - Prevents ever having to field a PFC after acquiring
- XTP II now also auto promotes all SPECs to LCPLs - Prevents ever having to field a PFC/SPEC after acquiring
- XTP II grants +10xp/day to LCPLs and CPLs (from +10 more to PFC/SPEC and +30 to LCPL/CPL) - Tone back on rate at which XTP provide xp to mid level units. It was sometimes more beneficial to leave your units out of battle than actually bring them in a battle for the purposes of gaining XP. Simply, OTS programmes were much too strong and even sometimes punished players who brought them on missions with less XP.
- Special Warfare School grants triple xp bonus to XTP (from +50%) - Accommodates for decreased XTP rate
- Added new 2nd wave option: Ease Into It (#17): The first mission consists of only 10 sectoids - Gives those who dislike the first mission an easier way around it
Tactical:
- The chance for being fatigued is decreased to 2% (from 3%) - Makes it a little less punishing to bring fatigued soldiers on missions
- The chance for being exhuasted is decreased to 0.2% (from 1%) but is no longer restricted to non-battle situations and fatigue of >10 days - Makes it always a possiblity but much more rare so it doesn't hurt as much when you bring someone with 10+ days of fatigue in, also a simplification
- Chance of Alien Leaders reduced/reworked: Leaders in a pod now have a 25 + 5% per alien chance to appear in each pod - Slowly increases portion of leaders fought throughout the game. Note certain scripted missions will dictate alien leader chances outside of this formula.
- Leader Levels reduced/reworked: Leader level = 1 + rand(alien level/2), it can then be increased by ufo size (+0-3) and alien aggression (+0-2) and capped at 8, and then has a 10% chance to gain +1 - Reduces early and mid game frequency of high level aliens. Note certain scripted missions will dictate alien levels outside of this formula.
- Shaken now only lowers will be 10 per allied death (from 15) - Helps prevent will from plummeting as much during "dangerous" times
Perks:
- Officer Perk: International Warriors replaced with Clutch Leadership: Squad receives +2 aim per enemy in sight and +5 defense when protected by cover - Buffed, removed the continent requirements (as it felt odd) and replaced with # of enemies in sight as a more interesting and engaging mechanic, added some def that requires cover
- Officer Perk: Battlefield Aptitiude now grants +5 defense when protected by cover and +10 will (from just +5 defense at all times) - Buffed, includes cover-based defense and a will bonus
- Officer Perk: Show 'Em The Ropes grants triple xp (from double) but only grants it to CPL or lower (from SGT or lower) - The goal was to accelerate lower ranks quickly. SGT is not really a low rank, and double mission xp really wasn't fast enough for the lower ranks. This also helps accommodate for decreased XTP xp gain.
- Grit grants +3 HP (from +2) - Buff to gunner tanks
- Bombard increases throw range by 20% (from 40%) - Prevents aliens from throwing grenades as far, which was making cover and range less relevant
- Sharpshooter altered to grant +10 aim against bio targets (from +1 pen) - Makes it more unique, and stacks with bullseye against floaters
- Distortion's aura provides 30 defense to those in cover within 8 tiles (from 50 defense) - Toned back so it's not as oppressive
XCOM:
- Sharpshooter on the Sniper perk tree replaced with opportunist - Sharpshooter was a little weak and this helps turn on the mayhem overwatch build for snipers
- Sharpshooter on the Infantry perk tree replaced with aggression - Pushes crit builds a little more on a MSGT infantry
- Grit on the Assault perk tree replaced with Shadowstep - Grit was getting too strong of a choice and shadowstep allows for more crit predictability
Bug Fixes:
- Misc typos
- Fixed a bug where enemies with rapid reaction would still try to go on overwatch even when it would do nothing
- Fixed a bug where reaction fire avoiding abilities would proc even when there was no reaction fire to avoid
- Fixed a bug where impact was working for attacks other than shots
Version 1.28.16
LW Rebalance v1.28.16
Strategic:
- Special Warfare School no longer grants -20% fatigue but instead grants +50% xp from XTPs - Makes more sense as it focuses on the "warfare school" aspect
- Roscosmos no longer grants an additional uplink but instead replaces the starting uplink with a nexus - Makes it easier to build upon, especially in Europe
- Fatigue increases by 5% per month (from 10%) - It was getting too punishing in the late game, and not all missions reduced at 10% per month into the late game
Tactical:
- Shred no longer removes hardened and grants +1 damage per application but instead: Damage to shredded targets is increased by 20 + x%, where x is 5 times all shred damage received - Despite trying to increase it with multiple applications, it was still too weak and not often sought-after (unlike holo). This should give it the boost it needs to make it more main-stream. Remember, you can check the amount of shred in F1 on any target. As an example of use: if you fire at and hit a mecthoid with a shredder ammo Gauss LMG, you will deal 10 damage and, regardless of how much damage was resisted, the mecthoid will be receiving +70% damage from future sources, but will still be hardened. Javelin rockets will also stack up additional damage quickly. There is no cap so on large enemies stacking shred can increase the damage drastically.
- Rocket scatter reduced by 20% - Increases accuracy of rockets
Perks:
- Shock and Awe grants rockets the ability to maim any biologic target that is below half health - Significant buff to the strength and role of rocketeers in the mid and late game
- Tactical mobility grants +10 def (from +15) - Toned back a little, making floaters and other high defense targets a little easier to hit
- Officer Perk: Strength in Diversity renamed to Strength in Numbers and grants will equal to the number of deployed soldiers (instead of number of different countries) - It was frustrating/annoying to have to worry about ensuring different nationalities
- Officer Perk: Stay Frosty grants 10% fatigue reduction (from 7%) - Buff for balance, was underpowered slightly before and the new strength in numbers is even a little stronger
- Holo Rounds no longer grants +1 penetration to shots at mechanical targets but instead, shots against targets that are holo'd will receive +1 penetration - Makes the debuff more significant to play with and around, especially now that the pen works on all units
- Vital Point Targeting grants +60% damage at point blank (from +50%) - Boost to it's strength in close quarters
- Fire Rocket and Javelin Rocket have a shared 1 turn cooldown - Prevents rocketeers from firing their rockets every turn, encouraging them to diversify their playstyle
- Critical System Targeting grants +50% damage (from +40%) - Needed a boost to stay competitive on the trees
- Extra Conditioning grants 30% fatigue reduction (from 20%) - Focuses more on the fatigue reduction aspect of the perk
- Mayhem grants 2 damage to suppression (from 1) and increases the shred effect of mayhem suppression by 50% - Buffed, it accelerated too quick to laser and was too weak at ballistic
- Hit and Run grants +2 damage against uncovered targets - As a single hit shot, it needed more of an impact
- Ranger grants +20% throw range (from +10%) - Buffed to boost builds on the perk trees
Equipment:
- Core Armoring renamed to Core Plating, Regenator Vest renamed to Regenerative Plating, Reinforced Armor renamed to Reinforced Plating - Increases understanding of their use and adds consistency to the naming convention
- Marksman's Scope renamed to Marksman Scope - Simplicity
- Adapative Tracking Pod grants +5 aim (from 0) - Accommodates for Bullseye not being as strong
- SAW/LMG/SHIV weapons grant mayhem suppression 3-6 damage (from 2-5) and plasma lmg grants 8 (from 7) - Accommodates for mayhem buff
- Breaching Ammo no longer bypasses the crit penalty from hardened targets - without shred removing hardened, it's room to work is increased significantly
XCOM:
- Gunner's Holo Rounds and Shredder swapped - Brings Holo on earlier
- Sniper's Holo Rounds and Executioner swapped - Brings Holo on earlier
- Scouts's Holo Rounds and Packmaster swapped - Brings Holo on earlier
- Medic's MSGT perk Grit replaced with Brawler - Tone back on the late game strength of the tank medic while pushing the CCS build
Aliens:
- Chryssalid defense to 30 (from 50) and their innate DR is reduced to 0.5 (from 1) - Accommodates for shredder's inability to remove hardened and makes them less frustrating to hit
- Shredder ammo removed from all muton elites to just leaders - It was too difficult to avoid and felt too punishing for the rate at which you acquired it, this should make it so it is somewhat avoidable by only worrying about the leader
- Holo rounds moved from level 5 muton elites to all muton elites - Accommodates for losing shredder and provides a late game source of holo as drones become less common
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where red fog was modifying will values incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where rapid reaction could still overwatch against units that were unseen
- Fixed a bug where Impact was only granting penetration against mechanical units
Version 1.28.15
LW Rebalance v1.28.15
Strategic:
- XTP I grants +10xp per day for PFCs and SPECs (from +20xp per day for PFCs only) - Toned down in rate, but grants much more total xp
- XTP II grants PFCs and SPECs gain +20 xp per day and healthy LCPLs and CPLs gain +30 xp per day (from +50xp per day for SPECs and LCPLs) - Toned down in rate, but grants more total xp
- You can no longer retrain a soldier unless they are healthy - Makes sense and prevents some abuses
Tactical:
- Bradford will no longer explain to you how to perform a mission if you've already done it before (e.g. covert op missions) - Thanks to szmind for the amazing code
- Outsiders now physically grow in size based on their health - makes the effect of their growth perk more apparent
- Panic has a 30% chance to not break each turn (from 20%) [Still capped at 4 turns] - makes it more effective as it's more likely to be multi-turn
- Injury and Fatigue increases by 10% each month - There was a problem getting into the late game where the missions would start to significantly decrease making too many of your soldiers not needed and the ability to focus too much on just an A and B team, this keeps injury and fatigue times up with mission density
Perks:
- Mayhem grants +25% weapon damage to rockets (from +20%) - It was doing too little at 20%
- Rapid Reaction no longer grants reaction shots at units that were out of sight when the unit went on overwatch - It negated a core mechanic of overwatch, felt unfair a lot of the time, and made movement difficult/slow/unfun
- Psi Inspire lasts 1 turn (from 2) - Was really strong at 2, not needed and made it too competitive
- Psychokinetic Strike cooldown to 8 turns (from 3) - Nerfed as it was too strong (Like unlimited sapper)
- Telekinetic Field cooldown to 6 turns (from 4) - Nerfed as it was too strong as well (Like unlimited dense smoke)
- Inner Fire also grants 1 DR (1.5 DR with psi mastery) - Buffed, useful on tanks too
- Sharpshooter no longer grants any bonus aim (from +10 aim against targets in cover) - It was a little strong, balance on the trees
- Extra Conditioning grants +1 armor HP (from +2) - Nerfed as the fatigue reduction is really strong and it was stronger than ideal for tree balance
- Bullseye grants +15 aim against flying units (from +20) - It's surprisingly strong
- Disabling Shot has a 3 turn cooldown (from 2 turn) - Slight tone back; mostly just prevents consistent disabling which wasn't a common use
- Distortion grants 50 defense against shots to all allies protected by cover within 8 tiles (from 10) - Was too insignificant at 10, encourages either dealing with the distortion unit or bypassing cover
- Tenacious Defense grants 2 HP (from 1 HP) - Toned back for balance on the trees
- Jetboot Module to 4 turn cooldown (from 2) - It was previously a little too weak, and the buff made it a little too strong. However, I wanted to keep the unique role it plays vs other +mob perks so the cooldown was increased instead.
Equipment:
- Neural Gunlink aim to 15 (from 10) - Increased offensive potential of psionics
- Gauss and Pulse SMGs grant +2 damage during critical hits (from +1) and the Plasma SMGs and Plasma Mauler grant +3 damage during critical hits (from +1) - Boost to the damage of higher level SMGs
- Spare Rocket and Javelin Rocket only grant 1 rocket (from 2) - Tone back on # of turns rocketeers will spend just firing rockets in the early and mid game (basically pre-Shock and Awe)
XCOM:
- Gunner base will to +15 (from +10) - Slight boost to allow for a little more psionic potential
Alien:
- Various enemies will no longer receive an alien level stat upgrade at the same alien level that they appear en masse which includes: Seekers, Mutons, Mechtoids, Berserkers, Sectoid Commanders, Heavy Floaters (2 levels), Muton Elites (2 levels), Sectopods, Ethereals (2 levels)
- Muton will to 10 (from 20), Muton Elite Will to 30 (from 50), Floater will to 15 (from 30), Heavy Floater will to 20 (from 35) - Decreased amount of will throughout enemy ranks
- Muton/Muton Elite/Floater/Heavy Floater will gain per level to 6 (from 10) - Decreased amount of will throughout enemy ranks
- Muton base DR to 0.5 (from 1) - Makes them a little easier to down with lower damage weapons
- Muton Elite base HP to 30 (from 24) - Increases resiliency, accommodates for level losses
- Heavy Floater base HP to 20 (from 16) - Increases resiliency, accommodates for level losses
- Sectoid Leader level 1 will bonus to 20 (from 30) - Slight reduction as they are really strong opponents
- Ethereal will per level increased to 40 (from 20), aim per level to 20 (from 10), regen per level increased to 6 (from 3), and hp per level increased to 10 (from 5) - Accommodates for getting half as many levels
- Ethereal base health to 28 (from 24) and aim to 110 (from 100) - Accommodates for getting less levels
Behind the Scenes:
- Streamlined the overwatch code - helps prevent bugs and machine lag
- Streamlined some health display code - helps prevent bugs and machine lag
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Ready For Anything would sometimes not correctly add all units visible to the valid overwatch targets
- Fixed a bug where drop-ins and other reinforcements would trigger inappropriate reaction shots from XCOM soldiers on overwatch
- Fixed a bug where the confirmed sightings on UFOs would disappear if the game was played in languages other than english
Version 1.28.14
LW Rebalance v1.28.14
Bug Fixes:
- Ballistic, Laser, Gauss, Pulse Carbines grant 5 def - They were unintentionally granting 10 def
Version 1.28.13
LW Rebalance v1.28.13
Strategic: - XP required for GSGT and MSGT increased to 5500/8000 (from 5100/7000) - Makes it harder to max out your A-Team Perks:
- Mayhem grants +70% and +90% weapon damage to strike and sniper rifles (from 75/100) - Slight tone back to accommodate for loss of penetration making other sniper builds proportionally weaker
- Sapper no longer grants an additional penetration - Cover destruction is really good
- Smoke and Mirrors no longer increases throw range (just extra grenades and reaction fire immunity with support grenades) - Tone back of offensive disabling potential of supports, was especially too far on the support rocketeer
- Mind Fray lasts through 2 turns (from 1) - It was too weak for XCOM, especially vs psi panic
Equipment:
- Carbines all grant +5 defense - Makes them unique and acts as a buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where newly revealed pods that went on overwatch sometimes wouldn't have their overwatch trigger
Version 1.28.12
LW Rebalance v1.28.12
Air Game:
- Stringray fire time increased to 11s (from 10s) - Slight nerf
- Phoenix Cannon cost to 130 credits (from 300) - Signifcantly more accessible
Strategic:
- Base Fatigue time for going on a mission lowered to 0 days for soldiers and 2 days for MECs (from 1 and 3 days) - Makes fatigue a little less penalizing
- Consistent Fatigue reduced to 7/9 days (from 10/12 days) - accommodates for reduction of base fatigue, assumming 14 turns for a mission instead of 18
- Difficulty modification of alien level to 80/90/100/110% (from 62.5/75/87.5/100%) - Increases the rate at which campaigns will encounter new aliens, prevents easier difficulties from not gaining access to certain aliens before they require their research
- Abduction soldier rewards will have a minimum rank of Specialist - Never felt great to get another rookie
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifle penetration to 1 (from 2) - Was too strong at acting as mobile artillery, simplifying too many encounters
- Strike Rifle penetration to 0 (from 1) - Balance vs sniper rifle and other weapons
- Strike Rifle crit to 30 (from 20) - Slight buff for balance vs other weapons
- Battle Rifle crit to 10 (from 0) - Slight buff for balance vs other weapons
- Elerium Emitter range to 5 (from 10) - Encourages short range use as stealth can be quite abusive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where every unit in the game was getting the damage bonus of brawler up close - Whoopsies
- Fixed an AI bug where some Mutons, Muton Elites, and Floaters would skip their turn when they tried to throw a grenade but their target was out of range - Slight improvement of AI
- Fixed a bug where officer's would sometimes not grant bonus experience to soldiers on 'heavy' missions
- Fixed a bug where Double Tap would sometimes not go on cooldown after using it
- Fixed a bug where a random popup of "Javelin Rocket" would sometimes occur when using javelin rockets that missed
Version 1.28.11
LW Rebalance v1.28.11
Strategic:
- Plasma Weapons research renamed to Light Plasma Weapons, Advanced Plasma Weapons renamed to Standard Plasma Weapons - More intuitive to what they actually unlock
- The Brawler ability now has it's own icon - QoL
Tactical:
- Aliens gain 5 and 10 will on brutal and impossible (from 10 and 20) - Makes psionic abilities more useful against them on higher difficulties
Perks:
- Ranger grants 20 aim to sidearms (from 25) - Slight nerf as them outpacing primary weapons wasn't ideal
- Light 'Em Up now grants +1 damage to non-reaction shots - Encourages straight out shooting on the infantry, pushing the hybrid roles more
Equipment:
- Battle Rifles moved to basic laser/gauss/pulse (from advanced) - Allows unlocking them earlier
- Plasma Battle Rifle moved to Standard Plasma Weapons (from Heavy Plasma Weapons) - Consistency with previous tiers
- Plasma Novagun moved to Heavy Plasma Weapons (from Standard Plasma Weapons) - Consistentcy with previous tiers
- Rocket damage to 100% of base (from 125% of base) but scatter reduced by 20% - Overall nerf: 20% more consistent but less damage. More tone down for early game while not touching mid or late game as much.
- Carbine aim to 10 (from 15) and crit to 20 (from 30) - Was really strong putting it in too much of a primary role
- SMGs no longer grant Killer Instinct and instead grant +1 damage during critical hits - Nerfed, prevents overlap with the perk -- killer instinct was providing more damage than intended for a lightweight rifle (often +2 or more during crits)
- Machine Pistols now grant +1 damage during critical hits - Buffed, makes them more useful
- Pulse Pistol, Laser Pistol, and Laser Heater all lose their 10 aim, but each instead grants 10 more crit - The 10 aim was bugging out and not working in many situations and I couldn't fix it, it should have only been 5 aim so the 10 crit seems a reasonable compromise, gives the Heater a unique roll as highest crit laser tier
Equipment Crit Adjustments:
- Gauss Carbine to 45 crit (from 65) - Should have been 20 base crit with +25 crit to accomodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.25 * 0.5 * 4 = 0.5)
- Gauss Stuttergun to 65 crit (from 75) - Should have been 40 base crit +25 crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accomodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.25 * 0.5 * 4 = 0.5)
- Gauss Strike Rifle to 35 crit (from 40) - It should have 20 crit (strike rifle) and then 14.3 more crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1429 * 0.5 * 7 = 0.5)
- Gauss Pistol to 25 crit (from 35) - It should have +25 crit to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.25 * 0.5 * 4 = 0.5)
- Gauss Battle Rifle to 15 crit (from 20) - It should have 14.3 more crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1429 * 0.5 * 7 = 0.5)
- Gauss Machine Gun to 10 crit (from 15) - It should have 10 more crit to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1 * 0.5 * 10 = 0.5)
- Pulse Carbine to 45 crit (from 65) - Should have been 20 base crit +10 crit for pulse with +16.67 crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accomodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1667 * 0.75 * 4 = 0.5)
- Pulse Stengun to 65 crit (from 75) - Should have been 40 base crit +10 crit for pulse with +16.67 crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accomodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1667 * 0.75 * 4 = 0.5)
- Pulse Strike Rifle to 40 crit (from 45) - It should have 20 crit (strike rifle) +10 crit for pulse and then 9.5 more crit (rounded to nearest 5: 10) to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.0952 * 0.75 * 7 = 0.5)
- Pulse Pistol to 35 crit (from 35) - It should have +10 crit for pulse +10 crit for being a pulse side arm +16.67 crit (rounded to nearest 5: 15) to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.1667 * 0.75 * 4 = 0.5)
- Pulse Battle Rifle to 20 crit (from 25) - It should have +10 crit for pulse 9.5 more crit (rounded to nearest 5: 10) to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.0952 * 0.75 * 7 = 0.5)
- Pulse Gatler to 15 crit (from 20) - It should have +10 crit for pulse and +6.67 (rounded to nearest 5: 5) more crit to accommodate for the 0.5 damage loss (0.06667 * 0.75 * 10 = 0.5)
Aliens:
- Sectoids, Seekers, Sectoid Commanders all have +5 aim - Accommodates for Ranger nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Shadowstep buff was appearing on all units (even those without shadowstep) - Just a display bug, but fixed nonetheless
- Added the "Grants Maim" with description to all relevant sidearms
Version 1.28.10
LW Rebalance v1.28.10
Strategic:
- SHIV Advancements no longer grants Danger Zone - Was a little too strong with Danger Zone especially at a time when the SHIV is already very strong
- Toned back council requests ability to offer high reward soldiers - Prevents situations like getting a request for a TSGT in March
- Retraining a Soldier (reseting their perks) now costs 0 meld but adds 15 days of fatigue - Allows players to reset perks for a more reasonable cost -- meld was a poor cost b/c it was too restrictive in meld starved campaigns and too abdundant in meld plentiful campaigns. This also allows reasoanble experimentation with soldiers that are not seeing as much action.
Tactical:
- Off Guard is a 80/40% chance on the 1st and 2nd turn to catch units off guard (from 100/66/33% on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd turn) - Toned back slightly, as a little too powerful and will still have it's intended effect at 80/40%.
- Overseer missions now contain an extra pod of 3 outsiders - Makes it so players always have access to a shard for creating a skeleton key
Perks:
- Ranger grants a 10% throw range increase - A compromise to boost the throw builds while still boosting other builds. Yes it's more complex but this is kinda a swiss-army knife perk that seems to need it.
- Squadsight penalty now kicks in at 20 tiles (from 22) - Slight nerf to squadsight classes (no change for 0-20 tiles, -~5 aim at beyond 22 tiles)
- Danger Zone only boosts suppression on Gunners (not explosives) - Made little sense that it did, was just I had to (eventually) figure out how to program it as it was tricky
- Snapshot reduced to 25 and 50% chance to trigger a 0 AP action with a normal weapon and strike rifle, respectively (from 30 and 60%) - The strike rifle was buffed significantly which made the strike rifle scout a lot more powerful than the other options, this is to pull it back in line. It also was a little too competitive on both the infantry and Shogun so this pushes it back slightly on them.
- Deflection shield increases defence by 5 per tile (from 3 per tile) - With the reduction on triggering on difficulties and the lack of crit resistance attached, it was a little too insignificant at acting like a form of mobile cover and protecting ethereals, sectoid commanders, and mutons that walk into the open without acting
- Mind Merge reduces rocket scatter by 25% (from 50%) - You could move and fire a rocket, counteracting the extra scatter with mind merge, it was a lot more powerful than intended
- Mechanic grants 1 repair charge (from 2 repair charges) - Early game it was too effective at keeping your SHIV alive (+8 HP) and made the engineer/SHIV combo too strong
Equipment:
- Kinetic Strike Module (KSM) weight to 0 (from -0.6) - Makes it easier to use and move around with
- All support grenade ranges pulled back by 2.5 tiles - Tone back on the ability to disable enemies from long range and encourage supports to care a little more about their position (instead of sniping from the back lines without concern)
- AP grenade range to 10 tiles (from 12.5) - It's ubiquitous use was causing other shred applying sources to be uncompetitive, toned back to open up more room for competition
- Arc Rifle gains +4 extra damage against mechanical units (from +3) with the Supercapcitors Upgrade - Makes arc rifles slightly more useful with pulse
- Markman's Scope reduces squadsight penalty to -2 per tile (from -3 per tile) and grants +5 crit as well - buff to the item for competitiveness
- Respirator Implant grants 0 HP (from +1 HP) - Slight tone back. It made little sense it gave you 1 armor HP and the item was already strong enough to create situations where you'd equip it on everyone making other items less competitive.
- Javelin rocket scatter to -50% (from -60%) - Makes the choice between extra rockets and extra jav more competitive
XCOM:
- Marauder base stats gain 1.2M - Helps the Marauder position close to use Onslaught and CCS. Boost for balance between MECs.
Aliens:
- Squadsight moved from lvl 5 cyberdisc leaders to level 9 cyberdisc leaders and from lvl 5 sectoid commander leaders to level 9 sectoid commander leaders - It's a frustrating perk to work around and should be reserved for more rare leaders
- Seekers now shred and deal 1 + [50% of current HP] damage to any unit they strangle - Makes their strangling a lot more dangerous while not outright killing VIPs and more fragile/damaged units
- HIVE Queens have 5 less HP - They were really tough with fortified and Grit
- Seekers gain 25% less HP with each alien level - Makes them easier to take down as flying robotic units are naturally tanky
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where you could command multiple times on the same unit on the same turn
- Fixed a bug where off guard units would sometimes get cover when they shouldn't have cover and not have cover when they should and also they would avoid certain abilities like psionic abilities and flamethrowers
- Fixed a bug where Danger Zone wasn't boosting the radius of Plasma Grenades or the MINE Launcher
- Fixed a bug where aliens leveling up too early and you'd sometimes see aliens ahead of their level or leaders that were too difficult for what you should be facing
- Fixed a bug where using Run and Gun and triggering a pod would reset Run and Gun and make the unit suceptible to reaction fire again
- Fixed a bug where Brawler wasn't granting the correct amount of DR
- Fixed a bug where multiple devices were not having their throw ranges increased by Grenadier and/or Smoke and Mirrors
- Fixed some misc typos
- Fixed a bug where squadsight would sometimes show up as an aim penalty with -0 aim (which was superfluous)
Version 1.28.09
LW Rebalance v1.28.09
Strategic:
- Cadre boosts 8 soldiers to LCPL (from 5 at CPL) - Toned back on what some consider one of the strongest starts
- Research Focus grants 12 scientists (from 20) - Toned down
- Neopanzers grants a 45% discount (from 35%) - Buffed
Tactical:
- Added the shadowstep buff to the F1 list after moving - QoL
- Sectopod's Cluster Bomb ability now constantly shows a warning of it's target location - really helps a player become aware of the cluster bomb target, especially if they miss it during frantic battle - it was too frustrating not to know where
- Command can only be used on 1 unit once per turn - Stops some ridiculous situations, forces the player to spread the love with command through the entire squad if they are tactically brilliant
Perks:
- Shredder now increases damage dealt by +1 per application of shred (from just +1 damage dealt regardless of number of applications) - Makes using multiple sources of shred more reasonable
- Aggression grants +10 crit (from +20 crit) - Toned back on strength so crits were not as reliable with classes who picked up aggression, balance on the trees
- Holo Rounds Grants +1 penetration to shots against mechanical units (from +1 damage) - Buffed for the unit using the holo
- Impact grants +1 penetration (from +1 damage) - Slight buff, makes more sense with the perk
- Close Combat Specialist reaction shots receive -35% weapon damage - They were too strong for free shots
- Brawler no longer grants opportunist and instead grants +35% weapon damage to reaction shots made within 4 tiles and +35% DR against shots made within 4 tiles (from 30%) - Makes the perk more about reaction fire within 4 tiles than increasing all reaction shots, also counteracts the negative of CCS
Equipment:
- Neural Gunlink grants 15 crit (from 10) - Slight buff to make it feel more significant
- Marksman's Scope grants +5 aim - Slight boost
- Reinforced Vest grants 2.5 DR (from 2 DR) - Slight boost for competitiveness
- Platform Stability reduces rocket scatter by 15% (from 30%) - Makes it less mandatory
XCOM:
- Jaeger swaps Holo Targeting for Jetboot Module - Makes holo less obvious of a choice on CPL
- Marauder loses Rapid Reaction and gains Ready For Anything - Rapid Reaction was really powerful and could still set up some unideal overwatch traps. Also, Ready For Anything works more with the theme of the Marauder and boosts the synergy with Awareness.
- Maruader loses Bullseye and gains Repair Servos - Gives it another option encouraging it to be more aggressive as Bullseye was mostly overshadowed by VPT on a class that likes to get so close
- Shogun loses Awareness and gains Absorption Fields - Awareness was challenging to use on the Shogun and the tanky build needed a little more resiliency
- Assault swaps Aggression for Sprinter - Makes the GSGT picks more competitive
Aliens:
- Outsiders start with Impact - Makes their shots a little harder to tank (helps temper the CCS nerf)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some incorrect ability descriptions
- Fixed a bug where First Aid was sometimes granting 3 medikits
- Fixed a bug where the "Off Guard" pop-up would trigger on the XCOM Base Defense mission
- Fixed a bug where Reactive Targeting Sensors would sometimes give Close Combat Specialist shots +50 aim
- Fixed a bug where combat drugs would sometimes show in F1 as granting 10 crit (even though it didn't)
- Fixed a bug where if your save game # got too high UFO crash sites would stop yielding any sighting information
- Fixed a bug where some descriptions of carbines did not get upgraded with the +5 aim
- Fixed a bug where sectopods would take damage from their own cluster bombs - They are now immune
Version 1.28.08
LW Rebalance v1.28.08
Installation:
- A new directory needs a file to be installed for LWR: "Movies/XEW_ShieldLogo.txt" needs to be added
Strategic:
- MEC Mark 2 research no longer requires Elerium - It already required Mobile Power Armor which required elerium so this was redundant
Tactical:
- Improved the pod reveal system: When a pod is revealed, it will wait 1 second on their location after they are finished moving to help the player clearly understand where they moved to, and if a pod is caught off guard, the popup will be clearly displayed and the camera will wait 2 seconds on the popup - Makes revealing pods a lot more informative and prevents the quick camera angles from hiding pod reveal locations -- This is a really nice improvement that plays really well; probably something that probably should have been in the game since XCOM:EU.
- The chance to become critically wounded (instead of dying) is changed to: 10*(BaseHP - OverkillDamage)% (from BaseWill%) - Makes will a little less important and HP a little more important as well as taking overkill damage into account, note that MECs will become more resistant to straight up dying
Perks:
- Ranger loses the 15% DR in cover and the 20% throw range and instead grants +0.6 mobility - Simplification, tone back on grenadier/support strength
- First Aid grants 2 medikits (from 1 medikit and equipped medikits granting an extra use) - Buffed to make it a more competitive option on the perk trees
- Collateral Damage toned back down to 150% damage (from 200% damage) - Was too strong at 200%, overshadowed other options if you knew how to use it
Equipment:
- Assault Rifle crit back to 20 (from 10) - Balance for weapon options (reversion)
- Scope grants +5 aim and +10 crit (from +5 aim and +5 crit) - Slight buff
- Targeting Module grants +10 crit (from +0) but only grants +1 damage on crits (from +2) - It was skewing early game crits too effectively at +2, still strong for an item with no weight
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where all gameplay tips weren't being shown - Thanks to Young Eldritch, the Old God for his work on this
- Collateral damage now has a targeting confirmation popup
- Fixed some incorrect equipment descriptions
Version 1.28.07
LW Rebalance v1.28.07
Strategic:
- Advanced Flight requires 8 instead of 16 cyberdisc corpses to research - It was a little too hard to research
- Wolverine Blood reduces both Injury AND Fatigue times by 50% (from just injury) - Gives players an option to avoid fatigue spirals if they wish
- Monthly panic increases are increased to +1/2/3/4 based on difficulty (from +0/1/2/3) but have a [100 - current panic]% chance to increase (from always 100%) - Increases panic increases in low panic countries and signficiantly decreases panic increases in high panic countries
- Pulse Lasers requires Cyberdisc Autopsy (from Berserker Interrogation) - Prevents as much of a bottle neck around berserker interrogation (as the interrogation was responsible for 2 important branching techs)
Tactical:
- The following maps removed as options for the First Mission: Slaughter House, Industrial Office, Police Station, Portent, Research Outpost - Makes the first mission more consistent and easier as far as map selection goes
- First mission gains 2 sectoids on all difficulties - Makes it a little more challenging given the easier maps
- Added a new dgc.ini option thanks to szmind's amazing wizardry and programming:
BASE_DAYS_INJURED=0; Set to 1 to display the environmental health of all objects around each player as they move (will look very cluttered, not recommended for normal play)
Perks:
- Damage Control grants +20% damage resistance for the remainder of the turn for each hit (from +15%) - Buff to the strength
- Onslaught now grants a free action to both the KSM and the flamethrower (from just the KSM) - Increases Marauder versatility
Bug Fixes:
- Possibly finally fixed the "double turn" during alien reveal that sometimes happens which would allow just revealed alien pods to take full turns
- Fixed a bug where the alien level on a UFO would be cut off when the UFO was unidentified
- Fixed a bug where fragmentation wasn't working with the grenade launcher
- Fixed the sighting reports algorithm as it was grating too many sightings and made the chance of 10 sightings and 0 sightings less common and something in between more common
- Misc typos
- Fixed some ambiguous descriptions of foundry projects, items, and perks, so they are more clear to the player what they exactly do
- Fixed a bug where a "IMG:" would appear as a picture for Adrenaline Surge in some situations
Version 1.28.06
LW Rebalance v1.28.06
Strategic:
- The council will no longer request Exalt items - They were too valuable such that the requests were often a waste of a request
Tactical:
- Alien pods that are revealed on the 1st/2nd/3rd turn will now have a 100%/66%/33% chance to be taken "Off Guard" which means they will receive no scamper movement - Helps make those missions where you activate the entire map on the first turn a lot easier
- AltF7 and AltF8 decrease and increase the speed by 50% and 100%, respectively (from 25% and 33%) - More efficient speed changing -- Note: altF9 still resets the speed to what was definied in the dgc.ini (default = 1.33)
Perks:
- Ranger now also grants +15% DR when protected by cover - Makes it a more competitive choice for tank builds
- HEAT Warheads to 2 penetration (from 3) - Toned back for balance on the trees
- Shadowstep no longer grants +1.2 mobilty but instead grants +30% crit after repositioning (moving) - Reduces mobility on high mobility classes while improving predictability of crits
- Vital Point Targeting grants +30% damage (from +40%) but +50% damage if the target is at point blank (<1.5 tiles) - Boosted for close range damage, nerfed for distance damage. Note that the point blank works even if the target is covered.
- Hit and Run grants +1 damage against uncovered targets (from +2) - The damage boost isn't need for HnR due to the SS and VPT changes
- Sharpshooter +1 penetration only works against biologic targets - Mimics the original intent of being effective against units in cover without the requirement that the units actually take cover to get the bonus
- Mayhem grants strike rifles +75% extra base damage (from +100%) - Nerf to strength of mayhem strike rifle snipers as they were over shadowing other strike rifle sniper builds
Equipment:
- Reapear Ammo crit to +25 (from +40) - Was too competitive at 40 vs other options making it too obvious of a choice
- Laser Sight crit to +15 (from +20) - Was a little too strong for crit builds
- MINE Launcher damage to 16 (from 12) - Was too weak due to delayed activation
- Strike Rifle crit to 20 (from 30) - Slight tone back on the strike rifle
Aliens:
- Grit on Chryssalid leaders moved to level 6 leaders (from level 3 leaders) - Early game leader lids with grit were too resilient for the type of firepower that XCOM could engage them with
- Sectoid Commanders gain Ranger but their aim is decreased to 55 (from 80) - Makes their shots at a distance not so restricted, aim stays the same
- Sectoids aim to 35 (from 40) - With ranger that puts them at 60 aim on par with the other early game aliens
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where not having a unit selected as they finished their dash would prevent Lock N' Load from triggering
- Fixed a bug where certain melee attacks in certain circumstances would bypass all Damage Resistance - Thanks to inukealot for the reproducible save file
- Fixed a bug where Reactive Targeting sensors would trigger against units with abilities that were supposed to prevent reaction fire from triggering (psi inspire, enrage, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where Iago would appear on missions outside of the Exalt HQ Assault so players could kill him multiple times
- Fixed a bug where hardened was granting different crit resistances depending on the unit type - It should only be a crit resistance of 60
Version 1.28.05
LW Rebalance v1.28.05
Strategic:
- There will be Intel on UFOs before beginning the mission, even without the hyperwave relay - Provides 'some' information to help you choose an appropriate squad. Intends to replicate sporatic reports of sightings of enemy types that might have occured at the location of the UFO. Sometimes it will be useless, sometimes quite helpful.
- Special Air Service bonus aim to 6 (from 7) - Toned back slightly for balance
- MECs base fatigue is increased to 3 days (from 1 day) - Slightly decreases frequency of use of MECs
- Consistent Fatigue 2nd wave option sets fatigue to 10/12 days for soldiers/MECs (from 10 days) - Accommodation for fatigue modification
Tactical:
- Rocketeers can now steady even if their active weapon is out of ammo - It's reasonable that rocketeers without ammo would still be able to steady
Perks:
- Fotified reduced to +1 DR (from +2) - Was a little too strong on tanky MECs
- Mechanic only grants 2 repair charges (from 3) and Master Mechanic only grants 2 repair charges (from 3) - Tone down on the overall strength/utility of the engineer
- Field Medic no longer reduces the injury time on units (this ability is now restricted to only First Aid) - Tone down on the overall strength/utility of the medic
Equipment:
- SMGs have 40 crit (from 50) - Slight tone back on their predictability
XCOM:
- Awareness and Lock N' Load swapped on the Marauder - Tones down the offensiveness of the overwatch build a little more
Version 1.28.04
LW Rebalance v1.28.04
Perks:
- Combat Drugs heals for 35% of damage received (from 50%) - It was too strong for direct tanking situations (almost double life in the smoke), toned back
- Dense Smoke no longer reduces the damage from explosives - It wasn't that strong and was border-line ridiculous, slight overall nerf, also, it prevents some abusive situations
Equipment:
- Strike Rifle Damage to 125% (from 100%) and crit to 30 (from 20) - Boost to strike rifle sniper, makes it a lot more viable
- Marksman's Scope no longer grants any aim (from +10 aim) - Accommodation for damage increase on strike rifle scouts, also makes the item feel a lot less mandatory
Aliens:
- Sectopod Cluster Bombs now release a shockwave that causes units within 60 tiles of the blast to have a damage_taken of 1-3 (penetrates all DR, requies LoS) - Prevents Secotpods from being ineffectual due to being trapped and just spamming clusterbombs at empty targets. Note this effects all units, including aliens.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Sectopod's Cluster Bomb was targeting a 1.5 tile radius area (instead of the 5 tile radius area as intended)
Version 1.28.03
LW Rebalance v1.28.03
Tactical:
- The negative 20 defense on aliens on normal difficulty is removed as there are lots of other things that make normal difficulty a lot easier and this one changed the game a little too fundamentally (a remnant from LWR past where my ability to change things was minimal)
Perks:
- Squadsight penalties kick in after 22 tiles (from 18.7 tiles) - Gives more leniency on the squadsight penalty (6-9 more aim on squadsight shots)
Aliens:
- Sectopods can now break down walls as they move - Frees up their ability to move (preventing trapping them as easily), feels more epic
- All Seeker leaders gain penetrator - Makes them a little less trivial to tank
- Beserkers start at 20 will (from 30), gain only 4 will per level (from 8), and each Leader type gains 10 will (from 30) - Makes them a lot more suceptible to psionic attacks, providing a more reasonable counter
- Exalt Elite Operative/Heavy/Sniper/Medics gain 3/2/1/1 hp per level (from 6/4/2/3) and Exalt Operative/Heavy/Sniper/Medics gain 1.5/1/0.5/0.5 hp per level(from 3/3/1/2) - Significant reduction in hp gain on exalt with alien levels as they were too tanky
Bug Fixes:
- Clarified that Lock N' Load and Packmaster only grant +1 ammo to primary weapons
- Fixed a bug where the AP pips would sometimes not update immediately after revealing a new pod
Version 1.28.02
LW Rebalance v1.28.02
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where a debug ability was creating a popup after acting
Version 1.28.01
LW Rebalance v1.28.01
Tactical:
- Grapple is now a free action, avoids all reaction fire (including getting out of suppression), but has only 1 charge - Makes it more useful but not abusive
- Combat Readiness now reduces scatter by 10% (20% with awareness) - Makes it useful for rocketeers too
Perks:
- Hit and Run now grants +2 damage against uncovered targets (from +1) - Buff to accommodate for VPT nerf to keep Shogun and HnR Scout competitive
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that was causing grapple to fire players across the map and be wildly inaccurate - Yay!
- Fixed a bug where steady weapon would remove itself after use - Whoopsies =P
Version 1.28.00
LW Rebalance v1.28.00
QoL:
- Psi ranks renamed to: Awakened -> Adept -> Empath -> Psion -> Master (and then volunteer is now called Enlightened) - More intuitive
- When Growth activates on outsiders it now has an animation when it occurs - Thanks to Lafiir's code
- Updated controller use of selling items on the grey market so that Left-Stick 10x, D-Pad 1x - Thansk to Lafiir for the code
- Added an audible grunt/roar to enrage - Thanks to Lafiir for the code
- Units that are scampering will have all their abilities hidden to make it more obvious - QoL
- At the beginning of each month, every council country gains 0/1/2/3 panic on normal/classic/brutal/impossible - Increases panic throughout the campaign
- Home Country Satellite coverage now grants 200 credits - Slight boost to overall income and encourages holding the home base, especially on higher difficulties
- Fission Generator power production to 6 (from 12), cost to 40 (from 120), build time to 5 (from 10), and maintenance to 10 (from 120) - Makes them more distinct and easier to maintain but means they also occupy more space to acquire the same amount of power
- XCOM base only starts with 1 steam vent
- Tweaked multiple starting bonuses
- Excavation time increased to 8 days (from 5)
Tactical:
- SHIVs no longer have any fatigue - They had so little it made little sense to give it to them
- Number of aliens on the XCOM Base Defense mission reduced by 33% - Makes the mission significantly less difficult
- Rocket scatter increased by 10-15% - Slight tone back on rocket predictability
Perks:
- Death from afar changed to a new perk called Impact: Grants +1 damage and all hits against enemy units clear their overwatch - Provides another counter to enemy overwatch. Note: on aliens it will replace death from afar on thinmen, exalt snipers, and elite exalt snipers.
- Depth Perception changed to a new gene mod called Predictive Tracking: Reaction shots deal +1 damage - Buffed for a way to boost classes that use reactive fire
- HEAT Warheads grants +3 penetration (from +4) - Slight tone back
- Jetboot Module grants +5 mobility (from +2.5) but has a 2 turn cooldown (from 1 turn) - Significant buff for competitiveness on the trees, makes it more like a quasi run and gun for MECs
- Killer Instinct upgrades critical hits to deal 200% damage (from just always a +25% crit damage increase) - Buff to non-laser non-pulse weapons
- Grit grants 2 HP (from 1) - Buffed
- Fortified grants +2 DR (from +1) - Makes it a more competitive perk on the trees, helps accommodate for OFA nerf on tanky MECs
- Executioner grants +2 damage against targets at or below half health (from +1 damage) - Buffed
- Critical System Targeting and Vital Point Targeting damage boost to 40% (from 50%) - Reversion of a reversion. Both were still a little too high on the damage and thus too competitive of a pick, pushing out other options.
- Disabler has a 20% chance to jam a weapon (from 40%) - Nerf due to late game being a little too effective, especially on ITZ snipers and snapshot scouts who could disable entire pods sometimes - Disabling shot is still a significant strength of the perk
- Squadsight no longer reduces crit at range - Simplification, consitency with deflection shield, accuracy cap prevents abuse
- Lock N' Load re-grants +1 ammo again and will also automatically reload the weapon during a dash - Encourages mobility instead of just stationary activity, allows easier repositioning when out of ammo, significant buff to the perk to stay competitive
- Double Tap grants +20 aim if the unit has 2 AP (from +15 aim) - Buffed
- Danger Zone increases the radius of all explosives by 20% (from 30% and from just non-hand grenade explosives) - Allows it to work for biologic grenadier builds, toned back for balance on the trees
- Dense smoke no longer grants an additional +25% AoE - Helps prevent full squad coverage from being as easy, as the perk is fairly strong on it's own
- One For All grants 30% DR (from 40%) - Toned back so they aren't so immune to damage
Equipment:
- Carbines grant +15 aim (from +10) - Buffed for competitivess
- The Cognitive Enchancer now grants double xp to the soldier (from +20%) - Significant boost to xp gains for the item to make it more impactful
- The Neuroregulator now grants double psi xp to the soldier (from +50%) - Boost to psi xp gains for the item to make it more impactful
- Sniper Rifles only reduce the squadsight down to -2 aim per tile (previously it reduced it down to -1 aim per tile, Note: regular squadsight is -3 aim per tile) - Nerf to the effectiveness of long range sniping, relative boost to strike rifle snipers
- Assault Rifle crit to 10 (from 20) - Slight nerf to make the other options more competitive
- SAW to -10 aim (from 0) and LMG to -20 aim (from 0), but SAW ammo to 5 (from 4) and LMG ammo to 7 (from 5) - Nerf to both as their high damage, access to flush, and increased ammo was making the gunner a little too OP. This nerf also pushes them more into the "fire lots of bullets but less accurately" niche.
- Shotguns have -10 aim (from 0) - Makes them harder to hit with without their range bonus, opens up options for other weapons
- Grenade Launcher radius to 2 (from 3) - Tone down in strength and radius to the same as all other grenades -- was displacing bio-grenadiers too readily with such a large AoE and is quite effective due to use with OfA (note: MINE launcher still has 3 radius)
- Breaching ammo aim malus to -10 (from -20) - Buffed
- Assault tree loses Shadowstep + Snapshot + Bring 'Em On and picks up Grenadier + Fragmentation + Tandem Warheads - The Shadowstep + Snapshot was too effective at ignoring enemy reaction fire and was too similar to the RnG build (which was more unique). It's not that the SS+SS build was that bad, it's just that it limited diversity of builds having 2 builds so similar. Plus, grenades were underutilized as possible builds and this makes a unique close-range grenadier build. Fragmentation was used specifically because it isn't as powerful and makes alternatives competitive. Also the additional perks on the Assault are quite strong making it a competitive grenadier.
- Assault tree Aggression moved to MSGT, Killer Instinct moved to CPL, Sprinter moved to GSGT - Makes the choice at SGT more competitive
- Rocketeer Holo Rounds replaced with Grenadier - Makes a competitive choice vs RfA and Mayhem, allowing the Rocketeer to be a semi-grenadier (i.e. one without mayhem and only one of packmaster vs HEAT warheads vs Tandem)
- Rocketeer Bullseye replaced with Lock N' Load - The shooter rocketeer is short on ammo with RfA and DT so this perk seems stronger than bullseye
- All Infantry SGT and CPL perks swapped - Provides more strength earlier
- Infantry Aggression replaced with Sharpshooter and Sharpshooter replaced with Impact - Provides good synergy with a snapshot infantry
- Gunners gain +10 aim base stats (from +5 aim) - Helps offset the loss from the SAW/LMG aim nerf
- Engineer Tandem Warheads replaced with Danger Zone and Fragmentation with Tandem Warheads - Brings on the grenadier classes strength a little later
- Marauder Ready For Anything replaced with Bullseye - OW build was too strong on the Marauder
- Shogun base stats to +15A, +4HP, +0.6M (from +20A, +2HP, +0.6M) - Tone down on the shooting capability, provide a little more resilience
- Shogun Fragmentation replaced with Impact - Provides better synergy with the SS+SS build
- Shogun Penetrator replaced with Fortified - Boosts the tanking capability of the Shogun
Aliens:
- All Outsider Leaders gain critical system targeting - The previous change of all outsiders losing CST opened up more room for mechanical units, but it was a little too much. This re-adds a little bit of pressure.
- All Muton Elites start with penetrator - Boost to their offensive capability, boost to their overall strength
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where awareness was increasing cover defense by 15 - It was old native code causing mischief! MISCHIEF I TELL YOU!
- Fixed a bug where scopes and other small items were incorrectly modifying the base aim in the F1 display
- Fixed a bug where double tap, snapshot, and enrage could still activate after being commanded (command disables all multi-action perks)
- Revamped UFO research gains and aggression gains to fix the bug where gains would be inaccurate on variations of campaign lengths (campaign lengths now affect the chance of research and aggression gains instead of the actual gains)
- Abduction soldier reward ranks are capped at the lower of the # of months that have passed or your highest ranked soldier - Stops campaign starts with high rank soldiers from receiving high rank soldiers too early
- Fixed the year being cut off in the monthly report panel
- Fixed a bug where psi users with will below 0 would actually heal their targets with neural feedback and mind fray
- Fixed a bug where the total number of civilians could be calculated with 2 more due to the sightlines mod
- Fixed a bug where some objectives would appear on the wrong mission type
- Added a note on SHIV descriptions that SHIVs can not block exalt from hacking in their descriptions
- Fixed a bug where executioner and holo rounds were granting extra damage to explosives
- Removed the double Hardened description from MECs
- Fixed a bug where the total number of aliens was inaccurate on crashed UFO missions with the hyperwave relay active
- Fixed a bug where covert op missions would never grant the bonus experience for not losing any soldiers
- Fixed multiple misc typos
- Fixed a bug where XCOM units could one for all when scampering
- Fixed a bug where steady weapon would persist through certain actions (e.g. throwing a grenade)
- Fixed a bug where aggression would show up multiple times in the crit list (display bug only)
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle was getting ammo from sources that should not affect electric weapons
- Fixed a bug where "Rail Pistols" would just be shown as "Pistol" in the F1 menu making it hard to understand it was a foundry project bonus
- Fixed a bug where double tap, while not able to fire twice with sidearms, would still grant it's aim bonus to side arms
- Tidied up a lot of code
- Removed a misleading line about putting the stun rifle in the pistol slot
- Fixed a bug where commanding a soldier with double tap would still allow platform stability to activate
Version 1.27.21
LW Rebalance v1.27.21
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where flush's cooldown would sometimes appear as 2-turn instead of 1-turn
- Fixed a bug where outsider's health from growth would not always update correctly
- Maimed units can no longer go on overwatch or trigger deflection shield
- Out of Ammo popups on aliens no longer require an autopsy - Again, the information was available, but it was really frustrating to count and watch and record
- Any unit that is out of ammo with multiple overwatch shot capabilities will now drop their overwatch status (as opposed to remaining on overwatch with no ability to fire)
- Reaper rounds can now correctly be used by MECs and SHIVs
- Infantry now properly gain 20 aim with class promotions
- Fixed a bug where the Exalt base assault would cause a black screen to appear
- Fixed a bug where sharpshooter would sometimes show as a bonus in F1
Version 1.27.20
LW Rebalance v1.27.20
Bug Fixes:
- You can no longer reload weapons when ITZ is active by clicking on the weapon with a mouse - Allowed reloading during an ITZ chain
- You can no longer swap weapons once ITZ is active - Allowed players to swap to the pistol, unloading all the pistol ammo, then swapping back to the main weapon, and unloading the main weapon
- Aliens that regenerate health will no longer have regeneration popups and "hover to"s if you can't see them on the map (so they don't reveal where they are)
- Collateral Damage no longer requires flak ammo for the ability to free-aim - It was supposed to be this way in a previous patch but I left the code off a test version and forgot for a long time
- There are now the proper number of outsiders on the first mission - Whoopsies
- Fragmentation now correctly affects MINEs - It was left off the 'explosives' list inadvertently
Version 1.27.19
LW Rebalance v1.27.19
QoL:
- A new keyboard shortcut "L" for activating Steady Weapon - QoL
Tactical:
- The first mission has 1 more sectoid on brutal and 2 more on impossible - Accommodates for outsiders losing CST, keeps the difficulty of the first mission as a good indicator of some of the really difficult missions throughout a campaign
XCOM:
- Infantry Class gains +20 aim (from +15) and +0.6M base attributes, Shogun Class gains +0.6M base attributes - Buff to both classes for balance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where PSI_GIFT_CHANCE wasn't correctly dictating the chance a reveal cinematic would play
Version 1.27.18
LW Rebalance v1.27.18
QoL:
- When performing a salvage operation, your current resources are now displayed - Helps you make the decision, QoL
Aliens:
- Outsiders no longer have Critical System Targeting - makes SHIVs and MECs more effective tanks against them and thus, more effective tanks in general
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where outsiders were only growing if they were injured (instead of only growing when at full hp)
- Fixed a bug where the second wave option strict screening would not give average stats sometimes (e.g. too much will)
- Fixed a bug where panic decreases from raiding a UFO were not being accommodated for by campaign length
Version 1.27.17
LW Rebalance v1.27.17
Strategic:
- Meld healing cost is now 10 meld + 1 meld for every day injured/fatigued - Makes it so it's not JUST useful for really long injury times and balances it out more on different campaign lengths
Perks:
- Growth only occurs when outsiders are at full hp and has a popup when they do grow - Makes it so once you start fighting and damaging them they don't keep growing
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed LW 1.0 Bug: The Turret Green Cannon on Sectopods now correctly deals -50% weapon damage - It has been dealing the same damage as the main chest cannon since LW 1.0 and I finally fixed it =D
- Fixed a bug where CCS would sometimes not trigger
- Fixed a bug where some medium crashed UFO missions didn't gain the appropriate increase in alien level
- Fixed a bug where many of the bug fixes from last version that Lafiir fixed didn't get properly added (but are now)
- Fixed a bug where sectopods would not get the benefit of critical system targeting
- Fixed a bug where alien attribute bonuses were being increased/decreased more than intended based on difficulty
- Fixed a bug where some end of turn and beginning of turn abilities were triggering twice
Version 1.27.16
LW Rebalance v1.27.16
Strategy:
- Green Fog 2nd wave option replaced with Predictable Damage: Damage is not randomized - No one really used green fog and some players like less randomization
Tactical:
- Aliens will now display a short reveal cinematic when you spot them (defaultgamecore.ini configurable: PSI_GIFT_CHANCE=100 Percent chance, upon revealing a pod, that a reveal cinematic will play) - One of my favourite aspects of EW finally brought back! Tested a lot (100+ times) and fixed some obvious bugs (probably the reason they were disabled in LW). Should be working smooth now.
- New control on kill cinematics in the defaultgamecore.ini: PSI_TRAINING_HOURS=100 Percent chance, when triggering a kill cinematic, that it will actually play (note: kill cinematics will often not trigger, so even at 100% you will find much less than 50% of your kills leading to cinematics) - A little more control for players
- The F1 information on aliens (stats, leader name, perks) now always displays (from only displaying after the autopsy) - The information is available on-line and hiding it in game never really felt 'cool' as much as it felt 'annoying'
Perks:
- Flush has a 1 turn cooldown - Slight tone back, as it's really good
Aliens:
- Zombie mobility lowered to 7.5 (from 12.5) - It's ok if they aren't competitively dangerous, their fast movement was just not consistent with anything about them so I think the better solution is that they are easier, but feel right. I think they actually more appropriately SHOULD feel like one of the few enemies that are easy.
Lafiir Bug Fixes (all thanks to Lafiir's hard work):
- Fixed missing special effects of HEAT Warheads and Recoilless Rifle
- Fixed missing animation of alien perks when a mission was started (e.g. Adaptive Bone Marrow on Outsiders)
- Fixed missing animation of Repair Servos on SHIVS
- Fixed missing animation of Repair Servos and Stimmed Regeneration on soldiers
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a typo on Tactical Brilliance that suggested it was base will, it is not, it is current active will
- Fixed a typo on "Argentinian"
Version 1.27.15
LW Rebalance v1.27.15
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where phoenix cannons were inadvertently doing 100x damage
Version 1.27.14
LW Rebalance v1.27.14
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where equipment armor could be equipped as actual armor
Version 1.27.13
LW Rebalance v1.27.13
QoL:
- Added a description to MEC secondaries that multiple secondary devices increase the ammo further - Clarification
- Included information on weapon jamming (and it's immunity) in the F1 panel - QoL
- When you get a new foundry project completed the unlocked equipment will now be displayed - QoL - thanks to Lafiir for this great code
- Psi Grenades now appear and are labelled as Psi Grenades (instead of concussion grenades that you had to remember were actually psi grenades) - Old LW code had them duplicated and didn't distinguish between them in the tactical game, they now have different titles
Strategy:
- New start bonus for Nigeria. Advanced Conversion: Converting soldiers to MECs costs no meld - Nice for those looking to attempt a MEC rush
Perks:
- Tenacious defense crit resistance again requires cover and no longer provides DR vs explosives (reverted to previous version) - This makes cover more important and explosives more important which takes priority over the benefit of providing explosive resilience and flanking resilience to XCOM (one of the 1.27 changes that didn't pan out)
- Tactical Brilliance now triggers at a will% chance but is capped at 60% (from will/2% chance with no cap) - Makes will more important and effective on officers, prevents doing things like will stacking on officers with abilities before using command to get 75%+ chances which felt gamey
- Deflection shield now lowers aim by 3 per tile away (from 5) and has no effect on crit - Significant nerf to make it not feel so punishing, allows closer range units to achieve higher crits
- Mayhem grants +20% weapon damage to rockets and +50% weapon damage to grenades (from +2 damage to both) - Nerf to mayhem on rockets, buff to mayhem on grenades. Should balance out choices on perk trees more reasonably. Encourages grenade use by the bullet wizard, mayhem sniper, and mayhem rocketeer.
Equipment:
- The Elerium Emitter now grants 2 DR (from 1.5) and has 3 charges (from 1) but only will be able to target 1 unit at a time for stealth - Buffed, prevents pixel hunting
- Renamed Heater to Laser Heater for consistency with the naming convention and to help clarify what weapon tier the heater belongs to - consistency and clarification
- New Item: Plasma Grenade: Damage:10, EnviroDamage:100, Pen:4, Range:10, Radius:2, Weight:0.6. Cannot be equipped with alien grenades as the plasma is quite unstable and will sometimes detonate in close proximity to regular alien grenades. Unlocks with Condensed Plasma. - Provides a late game option for grenade-based classes and a significant buff to their late game strength
XCOM:
- Holo Rounds replaces Mayhem on the Golaith - With it's new buff, was too strong for the grenade launcher focused Goliath
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where engineers would show "stun rifle" indicators on enemy soldiers - Thanks to Lafiir for the fix
- Fixed a bug where the Electropulse was costing too much elerium
- Fixed a bug where the engineer would be unable to use the arc rifle or battle rifle if you loaded a tactical game and switched weapons - Thanks, again, to Lafiir for the fix
- Fixed a bug where an executioner popup would sometime occur on the engineer's repair ability
Version 1.27.12
LW Rebalance v1.27.12
Strategic:
- Second Wave: Funding of 'Results Driven' is 150% to 50% depending on panic (will be ~100% on start impossible)
- Second Wave: Funding of 'War Weariness' is 130% to 40% over 18 months - Thanks to Lafiir for the code for these changes
Tactical:
- The engineer's repair ability now has some voice and a reasonable graphic - Thanks to Lafiir for all the hard work on this one - QoL
- Soldiers are 30% more likely to panic when witnessing the death of a squadmate 3 ranks or higher then themselves - Makes sense it should be more significant
- Exalt will now only appear on non-exalt missions AFTER the exalt base raid - Helps with narrative and makes more sense
- If you have the hyperwave relay active and are on a crashed or landed UFO mission, the F1 panel will show you total aliens counts - QoL
- The SHIV no longer counts as Dead for enrage mechanics
- Enrage will now only trigger after multiple squadmates have died (from just a single death or more) - Restricts it to more dire situations
- Fallen Comrades debuff renamed to Shaken and now lowers will by 15 (from 5) - Was too insignificant at 5, and fallen comrades was not descriptive of the debuff itself
Perks:
- Overpower reduced to will test at unit_will/5 (from unit_will/4) - Makes overpower less likely to trigger when XCOM units can see ethreals
- Officer perk International Warriors grants +4 aim per continent bonus (from +2) - Large boost for balance
- Officer perk Stay Frosty decreases fatigue by 7% (from 10%) - Toned down
- Steadfast no longer grants immunity to overpower but instead lowers it's success rate by 20% - Makes the alien trophy a lot less mandatory in the late game and prevents completely ignoring overpower by stacking up steadfast
- Steadfast reduces the chance that any psionic attack will land by 20% - Makes the alien trophy and biotanks more effective in the early game as well and provides some resistance to psi spam
- Deflection shield will now activate 25/50/75/100% of the time when a unit with the perk ends its turn on a move or with actions to spare, depending upon difficulty - Makes it a lot less common on lower difficulties
Equipment:
- MINE launcher range increased to 10 (from 7.5) - same as that of the greande launcher, needed the boost after the detonation timer was increased
- Incinerator Module increases damage by 5 (from 3) for the flamethrower - Buffed for balance vs other options
- All MEC secondary weapons have had their credit, elerium, meld, and alloy costs cut in half - Makes them more readily available so that players feel more comfortable building multiple variants and experimenting with them
Aliens:
- Squadsight on aliens moved to higher levels: - Makes it much less common of an occurrence as it's frequency was making less of a unique situation and more of an annoyance
- - Sectoid Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 6)
- - Sectoid Commander 5 gets Squadsight (from 1)
- - Floater Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 6)
- - Heavy Floater Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 5)
- - Muton Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 6)
- - Muton Elite Leader 8 gets Squadsight (from 5)
- - Mechtoid Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 5)
- - Seeker Leader 9 gets Squadsight (from 3)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where enemies would 'disappear' on crashed UFOs after the first turn
- Updated the description on Psi Inspire to correctly describe that it also removes the Shaken debuff
- Fixed the misspelling of the word 'Camaraderie' for the Field Commander perk - TIL
- Fixed a bug where some low damage weapons that crit were not hitting as hard as they should - Thanks to Lafiir for pointing it out
- Fixed a bug where overpower would trigger on units that had already ended their turn
- Fixed multiple bugs where psionic and panic hit rates were being displayed incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where salvage opportunities would still arise when you abandoned a UFO site
Version 1.27.11
LW Rebalance v1.27.11
Strategic:
- Alien level is now reduced by difficulty. Specifically, New Alien level = Old Alien Level * Difficulty[0.625/0.75/0.875/1.0] - This makes it so that later game, on the easier difficulties, the aliens are at a significantly lower level. Makes easier difficulties much easier into the later game. Note this change will work immediately on any ongoing campaign.
- Abductions/Terror Missions/Landed UFOs/Crashed UFOs now show more information on the difficulty of the mission (Alien Level, and whether there are additional and more/stronger aliens due to Alien Resources (+) or Alien Aggression (+)) - Helps make the player aware and affected by alien progress
- Fixed the old hyperwave extension code (original by amaciel81) so that it 1) has an accurate list of species and 2) correctly identifies the number of species - QoL
Tactical:
- Alien Level increases by 1/2/3 on medium/large/xlarge UFOs (from 2/4/6) - They were hard enough without the extra stress from even more alien levels
- Alien Leader Level increases by 1/2/3 on medium/large/xlarge UFOs (from 2/4/6) - Same reason as above
- Bonuses to aliens from alien level and alien leader level are now rounded (instead of truncated) - This is important, as many upgrades were a value of 1 which were all getting reduced to 0.
- Maim will now also deactive all reactive fire and has a description on the F1 panel on Maimed enemies - QoL, makes it easier to stun maimed outsiders and other units with reactive fire
- Covert Op Extraction missions will have reinforcements come in much more gradually - Makes it easier to make it through these missions, especially if you have to engage and kill some exalt
- Pressing F1 on an autopsied enemy will now display it's damage as well - QoL
- The F1 popup for Panicked units regaining control will now show "Panicked (Regaining Control)" instead - QoL, if you miss the popup you can still check on their status with F1
Perks:
- Squadsight penalty per tile away to -3 (from -4) - Makes the strike rifle and MEC weapons slight less penalized when taking squadsight shots
- Awareness also doubles the attibute bonus from ITZ (grants +20 aim/crit instead of +10 aim/crit on subsequent shots) - Buff to the perk on the Jaeger and ITZ snipers with a chameleon vest
- Fragmentation trigger rate to 20% (from 25%) - Slight nerf for balance on the rocketeer
- Ready For Anything grants +1 ammo - Slight boost to RfA based OW builds
- Flush grants +40 aim (from +20) - Provides a high aim option for gunners / drum mags, boost to flush
- Mayhem grants +50% weapon damage to flush and no longer grants +2 damage to SAW/LMGs - Instead of boosting overall damage, it focuses on making flush a stronger alternative, especially useful on a low aim gunner
- Lock N' Load no longer grants an additional ammo - Balance on the trees, simplification of the perk
Equipment:
- Drum Mags mobilty to -1.2 (from -0.6) - Nerf to accommodate flush boost
- Smartshell Pod aim to +10 (from +15) - Nerf to accommodate flush boost
- Leather Jacket mobility to -1.2 (from -2.5) - Helps the covert op hit relays on exalt missions
Bug Fixes:
- Vortex armor on the Volunteer can no longer be unequipped with 'restore loadout' and 'make items avialable' - Prevents accidentally altering volunteer armor
- Fixed a bug with loadout manager where MECs from different originally classes (e.g. a Marauder from an infantry vs a Marauder from an assault) would have different loadout profiles
- Fixed a bug where medikit boosting perks were providing inaccurate #'s of medikits sometimes
- Clarified that SHIV mobility is 6.8 + the chassis on the soldier loadout
- Fixed MEC descriptions to include the fact that they are hardened
- Fixed an incorrect description on adaptive bone marrow
- Fixed a bug where some weapon damage modification abilities were not truncating appropriately
- Fixed some minor issues on the tech tree image
- Command now correctly visually gives soldiers an extra AP
- Fixed a bug where Meld canisters were providing slightly inaccurate amounts of meld - Thanks to Lafiir for the fix! =D
- Fixed a bug where Sawed-off Shotgun was only gaining 2 damage from quenchguns (should have been and now is, 3)
- Fixed a bug where you could gain infinite meld if you were low in meld and rushed a project that you couldn't afford the rush cost for and then could return the cost to gain back additional meld - No idea how you guys even find these bugs, but it's fixed =P
Version 1.27.10
LW Rebalance v1.27.10
QoL:
- The abilities Fatigued, Exhausted, Enraged, and Combat Readiness now all appear in the F1 information panel on affected soldiers - Nice QoL
Tactical:
- Changed "Expected" to "Average" on the tactical hit display to more clearly describe that the damage is the average you can expect and not a set amount - QoL
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some incorrect formating on ability descriptions
- Battle Rifles correctly lose their 1 penetration
- Fixed a bug where alien base assaults were not awarding a fusion core upon completion
- Fixed the ITZ not triggering sometimes bug - Thanks to darkmiz and TooMoo for providing a save and information where the bug was replicable
Version 1.27.09
LW Rebalance v1.27.09
QoL:
- Fixed an issue where "10.0" mobility overlapped the will icon in the barracks list
Strategy:
- Second wave option "Miracle Workers: Repairing items costs no resources, only time" replaced with "Defective Outsiders: Outsiders no longer gain stats from the 'Growth' perk" - Makes it easy for players who feel growth too punishing to disable it.
Equipment:
- Javelin rocket scatter reduction to 60% (from 70%) - Accommodates for the fixed damage perhiphery bug
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where explosives that were hitting units outside of their radius (due to positioning issues) were doing less than 50% damage at the edge of their periphery
- Arc Rifle now correctly has 125 tile reaction distance
- Fixed various incorrect tile descriptions for squadsight
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle was inadvertently gaining 10 aim
- Fixed a bug where abduction panic decreases were not reducing panic correctly on NSLW, VLW, and VVLW
Version 1.27.08
LW Rebalance v1.27.08
Bug Fix:
- Apparently 1.27.07 was a bad version (maybe a wrong file got uploaded), so .08 should fix that
Version 1.27.07
LW Rebalance v1.27.07
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where accessing the grey market would cause a CTD - Fixed a bug where the scout perk tree was not correct - Fixed a bug where losing steady on a soldier who could not see any enemies would still end the turn unintentionally
Version 1.27.06
LW Rebalance v1.27.06
QoL:
- Using the up/down keys to scroll past the top/bottom of the grey market list of items now sends you to the bottom/top of the list - Makes it easier to navigate with the keyboard/gamepad - Thanks to Lafiir for this awesome piece of code!
- You can now sell in sets of 10 again by using the keyboard left and right keys, and for controllers: D-pad it sells 10-stacks, using the analogue left-stick it sells single items - Allows selling in sets of 10 while still allowing those who use a game controller to sell single items - Thanks to Lafiir, again, for all the amazing code
- In the tactical game, when using a controller, because the Target List is in the top-left, activating the Radar causes an UI glitch. This Patch simply moves the list further to the right (Image Explanation: https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/151/images/746/746-1586623344-1271191379.png) - Thanks to, again and again, Lafiir for the awesome code =D
Strategic:
- Elerium batteries now increases the ammo of the arc rifle by 1 - Boost to mid-game arc rifle strength and thus anti-mechanical strength
- Soldiers are immune to "fatigued" and "exhausted" if they are under the effects of a combat stim or psi inspiration - Makes sense, small buff, more for the purposes of feeling reasonable during gameplay
XCOM Starting Stats:
- Engineer will to 10 (from 20) - Significant tone back their psionic potential as they are a really strong class
- Rocketeer will to 15 (from 10) and HP to 2 (from 3) - Buff to psionic potential, nerf to HP as it wasn't needed as much and helps accommodate for the will buff (which is stronger)
- Gunner HP to 3 (from 2) - Buff to general tankiness, reduces wounds
- Assault loses 0.6 mobility - The assault was a little too strong overall, especially with the new shotguns
- Scout mobility to 1.2 (from 0.6) - Makes the scout significantly the most mobile class and gives them a nice buff
- Infantry HP to 3 (from 2) - Overall slight buff with more focus on tank and grenadier builds
XCOM Perk Tree:
- First Aid and Packmaster swapped on Scout - Buff to early support scout
Perks:
- Extra Conditioning to 20% fatigue (from 40%) but to 2 armor health (from 1) - Was a little too strong with the extra focus on fatigue, needed to be toned back a little bit
- Master Mechanic grants shots +2 penetration (from +1 penetration) against mechanicals - Helps make engineers stronger vs mechanic units in the mid-late game (especially the double tap engineer)
- Snapshot grants a 60% chance for shots to cost 0 AP when wielding the strike rifle (from 50%) - Buff to snapshot scout, keep it competitive with the hit and run scout and support scout
- Tenacious defense to 40% crit resistance (from 20%) - With pinpoint accuracy crits are a lot higher and xcom biotanks needed more resiliency
- Packmaster grants +1 ammo (from +2) - It just felt too extreme at +2, especially on the classes that were often picking it up
- Sharpshooter is 1 pen at all times (from 1 pen against targets in cover) but only grants 10 aim against targets in cover (from 15) - It didn't make sense when OW avoided DR from cover that sharpshooter provided more pen against targets that just were in cover...
- ITZ aim/crit boost to 10 (from 20) - Slight tone back
Equipment:
- MINEs explode at the end of XCOM's next turn, instead of at the end of the alien's next turn - Nerfed, as the cover destruction and inability of the aliens to react was too strong, especially with the higher damage and penetration still ignoring muton tenacious defense
- Battle Rifles no longer have +1 pen, but weight to -0.6 (from -1.2) - Nerfed to accommodate the AR nerf, also, their pen was a little out of alignment vs the sniper/strike rifles
- Both the stun rifle and arc rifle are now in their own class of weapons: "Electric" - This just prevents the confusion of things like if beam strengthening affects them or other weapon class boosts
Bug Fixes:
- Losing steady aim from not seeing anyone at the beginning of your turn no longer ends your turn
- Hopefully fixed a bug that would cause ITZ not to trigger at the beginning of the turn sometimes
Version 1.27.05
LW Rebalance v1.27.05
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where EMP was doing 100x the damage intended - Left it in during testing purposes... Whoops! =P
Version 1.27.04
LW Rebalance v1.27.04
QoL:
- When an XCOM unit has a scamper move not only will their abilities be greyed out, but their AP pips will now also turn white - Helps players identify when their units only are doing a scamper move. It signifies a white flag: "Dont' shoot, I'm just doing a scamper move" =P
- Removed the ability to use the keyboard to sell multiples of 10 on the grey market - Since it was the only way gamepads could sell it kinda really sucked for them
- Special Air Service grants 7 bonus aim (from 5) - Slight buff
- Ring of Fire now starts with all elevators already built - Buffed
Perks:
- Suppression now has a 1 turn cooldown - Prevents it from being used every turn to lock units down, forces more diversity of action
- Flush grants +20 aim again but no longer works with double tap - To make it more useful and bring it back from the edge of obscurity
- Mayhem grants +2 damage to SAWs/LMGs - Accommodates for suppression nerf on the bullet wizard
Equipment:
- Assault Rifle ammo to 3 (from 4) - Makes more room for carbines, SMGs, and battle rifles
- SAWs and LMGs now grant flush as well - Accommodates for suppression nerf on gunners, provides more diversity of actions
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where changes to UFO artifacts (power sources, comptuers, etc.) were being ignored by the tactical game preventing things like getting double UFO power sources from missions - Note that the double UFO power sources is random, so you will get 1-3 from a UFO where there is 1 intact power source (and damaging the power source during the tactical mission will obviously give you 1-3 damaged power sources)
- Fixed a bug where the campaign length wasn't being set properly when loading from a save (unless it was loaded twice after the game started) - Thanks to Lafiir for pointing this out
- Fixed a bug where alien metallurgy was giving less alloys than intended on destroyed UFOs
- Fixed a bug where a float to integer conversion was preventing UFO bounties from awarding any credits
- Fixed some misleading descriptions
- Fixed a bug where the AP pip colors weren't correct when a unit was fatigued
- Fixed a bug where you could press "J" to activate combat readiness when the soldier was acting or moving
Version 1.27.03
LW Rebalance v1.27.03
Strategic:
- Elerium cost for UFO analyses research decreased by 80% - They weren't supposed to be a hit on elerium stores
- Improved the code for grading at the end of the month to consider more things (like how youa re doing with captures, research, foundry, resources, equipment, soldiers, etc.) - QoL
- Alien Level, Resources, and Aggression made more obvious in the Situation room top right - QoL so you don't have to wait for the ticker to scroll, or if the ticker is busy (like with a crashed UFO) you can still get the info
- Combat Patrols now start with an effect of 2 (from 3), gain 2 effect for being a firestorm (from 3) and 3 effect for using a fusion lance (from 4), but gain an extra effect for each rank of the pilot - Takes pilot rank into consideration now
- Injuries toned back to a modifier of 60 days (from 90) - They were pretty punishing as is, especially because they included all fatigue, and didn't need the increase to accommodate for difficulty reductions
- Previous fatigue is no longer increased by 50% when you bring in a fatigued soldier to a mission - If you are bringing in fatigued soldiers, you're probably already not in the best of situations, no need to compound it
- 'Exhausted' will not occur unless the soldier has 10 or more days of fatigue (modified by campaign length) - It felt unfair when a soldier with 1 hour of fatigue triggered 'exhausted'
- Abduction rewards decreased significantly but now also increased by 10% per month - They were providing more than the ideal # of extra scientists/engineers/soldiers early game and were not increasing enough into the late game
Tactical:
- First mission has 1 more sectoid on all difficulties - With the decreased sectoid will the first mission needed to be bumped up a little again
- Fixed an issue where the Seraph armor didn't graphically perform correctly - Thanks to Lafiir for this fix
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where public heroes was not increasing scientist and engineer rewards from abductions
- Fixed a bug where SHIVs were getting too much fatigue when the 2nd wave option "consistent fatigue" was enabled
- Fixed a bug where you could make a combat readiness popup occur on units that had already finished their turn
- Fixed a bug where the number of UFO power sources gained from each UFO were half as many as intended (Note: this did not affect elerium gains)
- Fixed some grammatically incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where the end of month display of alien resources would sometimes be incorrect
- SHIVs will no longer trigger enrage - They weren't intended to
- Fixed a bug where with some pistols Maim was not working
- Fixed a bug where alien aggression was not increasing alien leader levels correctly when at or above 75%
- Fixed a bug where alien aggression was not being increased to 100% after an alien base assault
- Fixed a bug where extraction of a covert operative (and perhaps rescuing an NPC as well) would turn on Enrage as the game would think they had died
Version 1.27.02
LW Rebalance v1.27.02
Tactical:
- Steady Weapon now converts into Combat Readiness if the unit is steadied and can't see any enemies at the beginning or end of a turn - Nice consolation if the steady happens to be wasted, also makes intuitive sense and gives a nice popup about combat readiness indicating the steady has been lost making this mechanic more obvious
- Experience pop ups like "+5xp" when you kill someone will not appear anymore - Removed to declutter the UI in the tactical game, the information was pretty inconsequential (most players know they get xp when they kill a unit)
- Fatigue increases are doubled [increased to 1 day + 0.5 days/turn (from 0.25 days/turn) and 10 days flat on consistent fatigue second wave (from 5 days flat)] - The new fatigue system makes it much easier to field units so fatigue has been increased to compensate
- Base Injury time increased to 90 days (from 60 days) - accommodates for 30% reduction in injury & fatigue times per difficulty, overall a 15% or so increase in injury times
Bug Fixes:
- Szmind (the programming wizard) fixed a long time LW and LWR bug where if you were in multiple covers (e.g. low and high cover) you would only ever get the DR of the low cover -- now you get the DR of the cover that is protecting you from the shot (as you would expect) - many thanks to szmind for this great code fix! =D
- Fixed a bug where the number of abductions was not being reduced by 50% after the multi-abudctions were introduced
- Fixed a bug where any unit that ended a mission with their sidearm equipped permanently received rapid fire (Note: if this affected your campaign, you can use the console and type `giveperk -36 in the barracks to remove rapid fire)
- Fixed a bug where soldiers could sometimes get enough xp to level up but not be promotable
- Fixed a bug where early abduction reward soldiers would sometimes be multiple ranks higher than intended (someone got a TSGT in March) (!)
- Updated and clarified some misleading text
- Fixed an incorrect voice reminder to build a genetics lab when sometimes you couldn't
Version 1.27.01
LW Rebalance v1.27.01
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where some alien species would appear before their intended alien level (most notably finding seekers at alien level 1)
- Fixed a bug where multiples values from the dgc.ini were being read from the documents folder instead of the actual dgc.ini (creating things like foundry projects showing up when they shouldn't, mobility of equipment to be off, and lots of other really odd quirks) - Thanks so much to szmind as he masterminded a really quick and simple fix for this =D
- Fixed pistols not having increased ammo
- Misc description tweaks
Version 1.27.00
LW Rebalance v1.27.00
Note:
- Version 1.27 is not compatible with previous versions and may cause serious issues with ongoing campaigns. It is recommended to continue on your old campaigns with versions of 1.26 and earlier. If you want to use 1.27 it is best to start a new campaign.
- All references to "Dynamic War" are being replaced with "Game Length" - Much more intuitive, especially for newer players and especially because Dynamic War is default in LWR now (e.g. Injury times are modified by Game Length)
New Second Wave Options:
- Not So Long War (#8): Overall game length halved - These effectively replace Dynamic War and the SW_Marathon value. Part of the problem with the old DW and SW_Marathon system was odd numbers. For example, multiplying 2 UFO missions by a SW_Marathon value of 0.45 would = 0.9 which would get reduced to 0. There were many examples of this. The new system is designed so that all gameplay modes work well and are balanced.
- Very Long War (#9): Overall game length doubled. Enabling this and 'Not So Long War (#8)' triples the game length instead (Very Very Long War). - See above
- Predictable Potential (#3): Soldier promotion stat gains for each rank and class are set values instead of a range - The reverse of Hidden Potential which is now default
Strategic:
- All alien missions (UFO missions) are now generated each hour on the fly and are constantly affected by alien aggression, alien level, and alien resources (i.e. all LWR games are DW games) - This is changed from non-DW games in LW 1.0 where these stats would sometimes only matter and missions would only be generated right at the beginning of each month. This also made LW 1.0 DW games always quite different than non-DW games and very difficult to balance between them.
- Ranks required for OTS projects changed to 10/20/30/50/70/90/120 (from 10/20/40/60/90/120/150) - Accommodates for decreased end game mission density, bring Cpt and Mjr on earlier
- When a country gives you a donation to help your fight against aliens it no longer says "medikit" and "request" and instead clearly states it's a "donation"
- Alien Aggression (Threat) reworked: [ see the wiki: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Aggression_(LWR) ]
- Scouts, Abductions, and Terror missions are reduced in amount by 10% per month (from 20% per month) - They were becoming too few in the late game
- Resources acquired from missions increases by 10% per month (from 20% per month) - Accommodates for increased late game missions
- Injury and Fatigue scales again with difficulty: 100/110/120/130% on normal/classic/brutal/impossible - Limits A-Team and smaller roster use on the higher difficulties
- Soldier deaths are more of a factor in the grade you get at the end of each month - More accurate
- Meld Injection now has a popup description claryfing what it does - More clarity on use
Air Game:
- UFOs increase in strength with each Alien Level (instead of each month) - Makes late game UFOs easier to deal with and also makes the current status of enemy UFO easy to figure out (as "each month" was never really accurate anyway, it was often way off -- at least in the late game)
- Combat Patrols now cost 550 (from 350) and also increase alien aggression (by 25%) and decrease alien resources (by 3-12%) - Nerfed as they were quite effective, especially with powerful aircraft, extended in effect to be more encompassing
- You can now see a list of all aircraft weapons you own when you go to change the loadout of an aircraft so that there is easy comparisons, even if you don't have any spare of that aircraft weapon - Makes it a lot easier to compare weapons when changing aircraft loadouts
- Added a button to dismiss aircraft: this will work anytime except for when the aircraft is being transfered or engaging. WARNING: There is NO popup dialogue warning - Gives players the ability to get rid of aircraft they don't want
Tactical:
- If an XCOM soldier/MEC has been killed, at the beginning of each turn, each squad member has a 3% * number of dead soldiers/MECs * aliens in sight to Enrage [Deal +50% weapon damage, all actions have a 50% chance to cost 0 AP, and prevent non-suppression reaction fire triggering until end of turn] - This is a nice mechanic as it makes it so when things are at their worst XCOM gets a nice strength boost. Also, it feels like sweet vindication.
- Pistols now all have the "Maim" ability: Fire 2 shots at -20 aim that deal 1 damage each. Any hits against a target with 1 HP will Maim the target instead of dealing damage, preventing the target from acting on it's next turn.
- Fatigue and Injury System reworked: [ see the wiki: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Soldiers_(LWR)#Fatigue and https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Soldiers_(LWR)#Injury ]
- Half of the hit chance over 100 now spills into bonus crit chances, called "Pinpoint Accuracy" - Makes sense that really accurate shots would have bonus crit chances, creates interesting situations with high aim low crit weapons (e.g. shotguns)
- Lowered enviromental damage from alien explosives and weapons by about 80% - This means that your cover is a LOT less likely to blow up when the aliens use explosives or when they fire their weapons; it still could happen, but much much more rarely. The main reason for this is to 1) encourage using cover and cover-based tactics, especially into the late game and 2) while it may seem cool and fun, having your cover blown by alien explosives rarely is.
- Crit chances are now capped by the max amount of aim, called "Accuracy Cap" - realistic that you don't have 100% chance to crit on a 1% chance to hit, creates interesting situations with high crit weapons (e.g. SMGs)
- Alien bases no longer have 'Itchy Trigger Tentacle' enabled automatically - This was originally enabled in LW to make them more difficult, but was a pretty unfair way to do so. As we're trying to make these missions less difficult it definitely makes sense to remove it.
- Changed the way damage randomization works. Instead of requiring a chart based on the ((2 * damage) + 1 + Rand)/4 formula, randomization range is simply +/- 1 for 1-9dmg, +/- 2 for 10-19dmg, +/- 3 for 20-29dmg, etc. Each integer has an equal chance to be selected. (e.g. a 1/3rd chance of - 1, 0, or +1 for 1-9 damage) - Makes it easy to calculate in game (+/- 1 for less than 10, +/- 2 for less than 20, etc.) and tightens the spread at higher damage levels making damage more predictable
- Critical hits will always be equal or greater to the highest damage roll of a normal hit - This applies to 1, 2, and 3 damage hits, which previously would crit (1.5 dmg modifier) for 1, 3, and 4 dmg. They now crit for 3, 4, and 5 damage to ensure even if you low roll on the crit it's always at least as much as the max roll on a normal hit
- Combat Readiness now also grants +5 defense (+10 defense with awareness) and also now has a pop-up that displays the effect as well - Buff to effectiveness and clarity of game mechanics
- Rocket Scatter increased by 10% - Accommodates for damage boost
Perks:
- Opportunist now makes reaction shots bypass damage resistance from cover (30% from partial cover, 50% from full cover) - Overwatch builds needed a boost, specifically against high DR units in cover (e.g. mutons, outsiders)
- Ranger grants +25 aim to sidearms (from +10) - Makes using a pistol much more reasonable on units with ranger
- Snapshot grants a 30/50% chance for regular/strike rifle shots to cost 0 AP (from 20/55) - Buffed to non-strike rifle shots, slight nerf to strike rifles
- Inspired Tenacity (officer perk) changed to +20% DR when protected by cover (from +15% DR at all times) - Encourage use of cover, making cover more effective
- Tenacious defense grants 50% DR against explosives and no longer requires the target to be in cover to get the -20% crit resistance - Makes XCOM biotanks and Mutons more resistant to explosives
- Close Combat Specialist loses it's +40 aim against units within 4 tiles - It was plenty strong without it
- Aggression grants +1 crit damage and +20 crit at all times and affects side arms as well as primary weapons (from +10-30 crit based on the number of enemies you can see and only primary weapons) - Makes it more consistent, slight buff
Equipment:
- All pistol ammo to 2 (from 1) - Boost to the strength of pistols
- Machine pistol crit to 40 (from 20) - Boost to the strength of machine pistols
- Crit on Shotguns lowered to 0 (from 30) - Makes maxing out with crit less common, increases the relative strength of crit boosting perks and items, accommodates for Pinpoint Accuracy bonus from aim overspill
- Crit on Sniper Rifles lowered to 30 (from 40) - Makes maxing out with crit less common, increases the relative strength of crit boosting perks and items, accommodates for Pinpoint Accuracy bonus from aim overspill
- Shotguns and SMGs no longer have proximity damage but shotguns do 150% base damage and SMGs gain Killer Instinct and have 10% more crit - The proximity damage effects were bugging out too often. Slight boost to shotguns used at further than point blank, tweak on SMGs.
- Extrasensory Vest (Old Chameleon Suit) defense to 0 (from 5) - Prevents defense stacking from getting too high, accommodates for new combat readiness
- Blaster Launcher range to 15 tiles (from 18.7) - Nerfed, needed some pull back due to how powerful and accurate it is
- Targeting Module grants +2 damage on critical hits and 0 crit (from +1 damage on critical hits and 10 crit) - Stronger boost, but does not grant extra crit, makes crit-based builds more reasonable again
- Thumper grants the KSM +10 penetration (from +10 damage) - Makes it much more effective against threats with high DR and less OP against units with no DR
- Rockets deal 125% of weapon tier damage (from 100%) - Boost to their damage output as it was too low
- Javelin Rockets have 70% reduced scatter (from 80%) - Accommodates for the damage boost
- Chameleon Suit renamed to Extrasensory Vest - Makes more sense for what it now does
Aliens:
- Floater mobility reduced to 12 (from 14), Drone mobility reduced to 10 (from 12), Seeker mobility reduced to 12 (from 16) - Flying units are very difficult to deal with due to them being able to move anywhere without being exposed, this prevents them moving so close so fast making it easier to deal with them
- Seekers and Sectoids lose 10 aim - Accommodates for ranger buff
- Sectoids start with 15 less will, and gain 10 less will on each Alien Level Up - Gives them less will in the late game
- Floater, Thinmen, and Muton aim to 60 (from 65), drone aim to 60 (from 70) - Makes them slightly less likely to hit
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug (again) where Exalt panicking would make the HUD disappear
- Fixed a description bug where the respirator implant was said to grant 10 defense (it only grants 5)
- Fixed a bug where engineers brought in later to a base defense mission would not have any repair charges
- Exalt panic sabotage is no longer modified by Game Length - Since the # of exalt missions are similar on NSL, L, VL, or VVL game lengths the amount of panic generated should not be modified
- Fixed a bug where if there was no research to research, you'd still get a ! on the research lab a request to visit it
- Fixed a bug where the minimum amount in each meld canister wasn't being affected by old DW games
- Fixed a bug where the chance for alien leader levels were being halved on old DW 0.5 games (this was making old DW 0.5 games a lot easier) - It was just a simple bug that wasn't removed
- Fixed a bug where the cash bounty for destroyed UFOs was not being modified by old DW games and the alloy bounty for destroyed UFOs was only being upgraded by 25% (instead of 50%) with alien metallurgy
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where you could send refueling aircraft on Combat Patrols
- Fixed some Salvage options that could be too low
- Fixed some descriptions that were too long to fit in the description windows
- Fixed a bug where alien resource display at the end of the month and on the ticker wasn't accurate and was overestimating alien resources
- Fixed a bug where extra large UFOs were receiving more aliens than intended
- Fixed a bug where salvage opportunities for UFOs were not popping up
- Fixed a bug where the AP pip colors were not updating after a shot if there was a cinematic that delayed a shot
- Fixed a bug where floater 'launch' was not correctly triggering OW
- Fixed lots of bugs relating to Alien Aggression from LW 1.0
- Fixed a bug where alterations of cover (e.g. a SHIV moving from a unit) would trigger Overpower on those units
Version 1.26.13
LW Rebalance v1.26.13
Strategic:
- DLC missions now have 8 soldiers allowed - Finally figured out how to distinguish just the DLC missions. This makes them a lot easier (which is OK as they are nice missions to pass).
Perks:
- Overpower now will tests at user's will / 4 (from user's will / 2) - Really only affects ethereals and all it means is that high will units are more likely to resist or be immune
Bug Fixes:
- Psi Lance deals 5 + will_difference/20 (from 5 + will_difference/10) - Similar change that rift had, that was supposed to be applied to psi lance too but wasn't being. Makes it less likely to do really high damage. Example: against a soldier with 30 will, a 160 will ethereal would have done 5 + 13 damage for 18 damage but now would do 5 + 6 damage for 11 damage.
- Fixed a bug where exalt units were doing more damage than intended with alien research upgrades
- Fixed a bug where salvage teams were being offered on missions other than crashed/landed UFOs
- Fixed some incorrect ability descriptions
Version 1.26.12
LW Rebalance v1.26.12
Strategic:
- Aliens gain their +2 research per alien base at the end of each month (instead of the beginning of each month) - Makes it so the increase is captured in the end of month report (otherwise the reports were misleading)
- Successful UFO research missions award less alien research (2/3/4/5 instead of 2/4/6/8) - Was leading to maxing out alien research too quickly in the later game as each month the gains are increased by 10% and the additional range for each month is just +3-15 research (33-45)
- UFO Bombing (Air Raid) missions now will fail if the UFO is decreased below half health (and will cause proprotionally less panic above 50% health) - Now all UFO missions that are airborne (scouts, hunts, bombing) fail at 50% or less health and will decrease the chance of success proportionally to their health
Tactical:
- Chance to test for panic on Exalt increased to 30% (from 20%) - Reasonable considering their numbers
- Tactical Sense renamed to Tactical Mobility - Makes it seem more about your ability to move than your ability to think which makes it more believable on certain aliens and on armors
Perks:
- Onslaught does not grant point blank shots a free action, only the KSM - It was too strong with both. Shots were added to the perk because I thought it was necessary to have the perk work at all times, but realistically you only need floater autopsy and MEC warfare systems so getting a KSM online early should not be a problem
Equipment:
- Proximity Mine Launcher is back as "MINE Launcher" and now counts as a destructive grenade for the purposes of perks: Damage:12, EnviroDamage:240, Penetration:100, Range:7.5, Radius:3, Ammo:2, Weight:0.6. Can deploy a MINE (MInerature Nuclear Explosive) at range, that will detonate at the end of the enemy's turn, penetrating all damage resistance and dealing double environmental damage.
- KSM damage to 20 (from 25) - I was incorrect about it needing a buff, at 20 damage (30 with thumper) it is quite competitive
Aliens:
- Awareness and Penetrator removed of all Heavy Floaters and moved on to leader Heavy Floaters only - Makes most heavy floaters a little easier to hit and little easier to tank in general
Version 1.26.11
LW Rebalance v1.26.11
Tactical:
- The first mission has 1 less sectoid on all difficulties - accommodates for sectoid buff
Aliens:
- Drone and Seeker base damage to 3 (from 2) - Both were too weak and too inconsequential when being used, makes March a little more challenging
- Sectoid starting will to 50 (from 25) - Boost to early game enemies, makes March more challenging
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where salvage options after UFOs were too pricey off the bat
- Fixed a bug where stepping out at someone you had at "Point Blank" (i.e. avoiding their cover DR) would sometimes still grant cover DR b/c the stepout moved you away from the target and outside of "Point Blank" range
- Fixed a bug where First Aid and Field Medic was reducing the injuries on SHIVs
- Fixed a bug where units could press "J" while moving to activate combat readiness even though all of their moves had already been used
Version 1.26.10
LW Rebalance v1.26.10
Strategic:
- Your grade at the end of the month is now a measure of well your campaign is progressing - This change is awesome as it provides some much needed feedbacks for players. An average score is C, and that's where most campaigns will get at the end of their first month. If you can eventually achieve an A you are doing very well and you will likely pass the campaign if you keep it up. If you get an F, especially after many months, it will likely be very challenging to pass the campaign.
- Injury/Fatigue modificaiton is no longer reduced on lower difficulties - Makes injury/fatigue less of a non-issue on the easier difficulties as it was allowing for too many alterations in mission density, creating worse gameplay
- Alien bases offer significantly less resources and set the aliens back in research by 10 (from 15) - Makes them less farmable
- Researching the technology 'Elerium' now requires access to a hyperwave beacon (which is gained from a successful assault of an alien base) - In other words you can't research elerium until you have successfully assaulted an alien base. Encourages earlier alien base assaults.
- Minimum resources per month for aliens dropped to 9* month (from 12 * month) - Not needed anymore due to meld changes, and gives the aliens more diversity
- Failed abductions now give +5 research to the aliens - Makes sense, gives aliens another source (albeit rare and fairly insignificant) of research
- Alien Research no longer is equal to #_of_days + bonus research (where bonus research starts at -90 and slowly increases) but is instead just a set value that is always between 1.1 and 1.5 per day of the campaign (depending upon how successful the aliens are doing) - This is designed so that it will work with current campaigns. The end result is pretty similar to before except that the player will have more effect over alien tech levels starting at the beginning of the campaign. Note that tech levels are 1:0-49, 2:50-99, 3:100-149, 4:150-199, etc. up to level 15:700+
- Abductions now hit 2-3 targets but occur less often and have more variable rewards - Makes them harder on your roster, makes the choice of doing which ones under constrained rosters more interesting
- Abductions now remove 2 panic from the country and 1 from the continent (from just 1 from the country) - makes them more effective at reducing panic
- Abductions, terror missions, and council missions grant 12 hours to get there (from 8) - Accommodates for the extra mission density of abductions
Air Game:
- New aircraft option: "COMBAT PATROL": This aircraft will be sent over the continent hunting and harassing alien entities. It will cost 350 credits and likely result in aircraft damage, but will raise civilian morale (lower continent panic by 3-12 depending upon RNG, aircraft, and weapon) and hamper alien progress (lower alien research by 3-12 depending upon RNG, aircraft, and weapon) - Gives the player more agency for controlling panic and alien research
- Bombing mission panic generation lowered by 25% - Panic generation was a little too high, this is a tweak to put it at a more reasonable level and take some focus off the air game
- Satellite destruction panic generation lowered by 20% - Same as above
- Fighter and Destroyer health reduced by 20/25% - Makes them easier to deal with while still not generating more missions
Tactical:
- Alien Base Assault has ~33% less enemies and the pod sizes are smaller and easier (e.g. The pod of 6 Muton Elites is now a pod of 4 and might just be a pod of 1 mecthoid with 3 drones) - Makes the mission significantly easier as it was a mission that you could not retreat from and was optional. This meant that players delayed a long time and thus delayed plot progression through the game which sometimes led to the player feeling lost: "what am I supposed to be doing again?"
- Overseer mission has significantly smaller alien pod sizes - makes the mission more doable while still containing deadly pods, gives the impression of an elite UFO mission while not making it as dangerous to do. This lets players attempt and complete the mission earlier.
- Alien panicking only occurs on Exalt - Felt immersion breaking to have the more hardcore war-bred aliens panic
- Alien bases get a full additional pod each time you attempt them - Makes farming them difficult
- Toned down the strength of aliens on extra large landed UFOs - Makes them a little more reasonable to pass
- Modified alien appearance parameter to be based on set alien tech levels (see #'s below) instead of arbitrary #'s of 28 - All this means is that you can know exactly which aliens you'll be facing based on the alien tech level
- Late game aliens will appear later in tech levels (see #'s below, each # represents overall weighting) - makes the late game difficulty spike a less of spike
- Disabler has a 40% chance to jam an opponents weapons (from 35%) - slight buff
Equipment:
- Skeleton key is much cheaper - Prevents a resource bottle neck from granting access to the alien base assault
Aliens:
- Ethereal health lowered by ~20% - They were a little too tanky given their offensive potential
- Seekers gain 2 DR when strangling (from 0), cyberdiscs gain 6 DR when closed (from 8) - Seekers are moved to a later game enemy (due to the importance of a counter) and thus needed some more threat and cyberdiscs didn't need as high DR due to the red fog change
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where research granted to the aliens from successful research missions was not being modified in DW games (making DW 0.5 games a lot easier)
- Clarified some ability text
- Added in more code to prevent the HUD from disappearing during alien panicking
- Fixed a bug where the council could ask for a proximity mine launcher and considering you can't produce them it could be... difficult to fulfill. =D
Version 1.26.09
LW Rebalance v1.26.09
QoL:
- Added a lot more strategic/tactical tips during loading screens - Thanks to Young Eldritch for the work on this
- Added alien strategic info to the end of month report - Increases transparency of game mechanics and adds easier access to game mechanics
Strategic:
- UFO Scouting missions will only generate a hunt if they are between 50-100% health [The chance is proportional to their health: 2x(UFOHP% - 50)% chance to generate a hunt] - Makes going all out on a scout that you don't finish off not such a loss
Bug Fixes:
- Again, fixed the bug where aliens panicking would lead to the HUD disappearing
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where air domination was doubling the speed of UFO fire rates as well
Version 1.26.08
LW Rebalance v1.26.08
Strategic:
- Friendly skies and Elite XCOM aim bonuses to 25 (from 20) - makes the 2nd wave option a little more impactful
- New 2nd wave option "Air Domination" (replaces Diminishing Returns): Doubles the fire rate of all your aircraft - Gives another method to make the air game stronger for players that wish this. Also, dimishing returns didn't really work well with Long War Rebalanced
- Bradford will no longer admonish the player for letting a UFO go - Doesn't feel so bad when you do it considering most players will be doing it a lot and it will be a good move (you know nothing Bradford!)
Tactical:
- Exalt missions are now easier if your difficulty is lower (they start 1/2/3 missions behind in terms of initial squad composition on brutal/classic/normal) - Makes them easier to handle on easier difficulties
- Exalt Covert Op Extraction missions now have reinforcements enter 1/2/3 turns later on brutal/classic/normal - Makes it easier to handle on easier difficulties
- Red Fog only degrades flat damage reduction by 1-50% (from 1-100%) - Reduces the effect of red fog on flat damage reduction making flat damage reduction more important/effective
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where reducing interceptor repair time looked like it did something, but actually did nothing - Whoopsies =P
- Fixed a bug where the HUD would disappear if mulitple aliens panicked at the same time - Thanks to szmind for the code
Version 1.26.07
LW Rebalance v1.26.07
Perks:
- Collateral damage now deals +50% weapon damage (instead of -50% weapon damage) - Significant Buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where everyone was getting awareness and +30 def
Version 1.26.06
LW Rebalance v1.26.06
QoL:
- The term "base damage" has been replaced with "weapon damage" in all descriptions - Makes it more clear what it refers to, especially for newer players
Tactical:
- Panic now lasts 4 turns (from 1), but each turn panicked units have an 80% chance to "Regain Control" - Makes panic more important to remove and avoid (alien trophies, psi inspire, etc.) but also removes the will component from panic turns so that high will units can't reliably panic for multiple turns (which was too powerful)
Perks:
- Fragmentation to 25% chance for double damage (from 20% chance) - Buffed
- Awareness grants +10 defense at all times which upgrades to +30 defense when steadying or overwatching - Buffed to provide more defense when not steadying/overwatching
- Absorption Fields grants +20% DR (from +30%) - Nerfed, alleviates some of the pressure to make a Goliath pure tank
- Penetrator back to +2 pen (from +3) - Was too strong at +3 and not as balanced on the trees
- Snapshot with a strike rifle has a 55% chance to proc a free action (from +50%) - Slight buff, perk tree balance
- VPT and CST back to +150% damage (from +140%) - Due to truncation, 40% is too much of a nerf, 50% seems like the sweet spot - balance on the trees
- Mayhem grants +2 damage to explosives (from +35% weapon damage) - Buff to lower damage explosives used with mayhem (AP grenade, basic rocket launcher)
Equipment:
- Kinetic Strike Module damage to 25 (from 20) - Slight buff, especially to the marauder
XCOM:
- Reworked MEC perk trees - balance
- Platform Stability replaced with Bring 'Em On for the GSGT Gunner - It felt bad having a perk that could be replaced by an item and this gives a nice offensive boost to the gunner at GSGT
- SHIV armor to 10 (from 12) and alloy SHIV armor to 18 (from 16) - Nerf to original SHIV, buff to alloy SHIV
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs no longer have Critical System Targeting - Makes it a little easier to field mechanical units (it's mostly floaters, outsiders, and sectopods)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where xcom units would sometimes be able to overwatch units that were dropping in without rapid reaction
- Fixed a bug where the orange AP pips would not update correctly at the beginning of the turn
- Fixed a bug where the geoscape could be locked on the US and the player couldn't navigate the geoscape due to an old bug in tracktwo's campaign summary code (This one was all szmind, he really is incredible at fixing these sorts of bugs)
- Fixed several description errors - Thanks to Young Eldritch for this
Version 1.26.05
LW Rebalance v1.26.05
Strategic:
- Air raid panic increase to 12 (from 8) - Even with increased scouts, the hunts are creating significantly less panic than expected, this is intended to help rectify it
Tactical:
- Non-Robotic aliens units have a 20% chance to roll for panic when they are hit for more than 30% of their remaining health (20 will test), when a squad mate in vision dies (20 will test), and when their squad leaders in vision die (40 will test) - Makes the game feel more engaging, feels more fair, and most important, feels fun to see the aliens cower before you.
- First mission has 4/3/2 less sectoids on impossible/brutal/classic but XCOM only starts with 6 soldiers (from 8) - Slight increase in difficulty, makes it less likely to be a full map activation, consistency with what an abduction should be
Perks:
- Mind control no longer has a negative to hit of 50 but instead a bonus to hit of 1 - Makes the AI more likely to consider it's use (for sectoid commanders and ethereals)
- Mind control cooldown to 4 turns (from 1 turn) - Makes it much less spammable
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs and Mechtoids deal 2 less damage - They were hitting a little too hard
- Toned down some of the damage bonuses high level leaders got with upgrades
- Lowered the will of sectiod commanders, ethereals, and uber ethereals by 40 - Helps accommodate for mind control buff, makes overpower not so... overpowering =P
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some incorrect text descriptions
- Fixed a bug where outsiders could start with 5-9 extra DR on brutal, classic, and normal difficulties
- Fixed a bug where the bounties for killing high level aliens were being reduced by 90%
- Increased the radius of danger zone suppression so it should work on all targets diagonally
Version 1.26.04
LW Rebalance v1.26.04
Strategic:
- Increased the amount of elerium/alloys you can acquire through extra salvage from UFOs - Increases the ability to convert credits into alloys/elerium
- Interceptors take 20 days to produce - Slows down air expansion, makes planning more important
- You can now hire an additional repair crew for a damaged aircraft at the cost of 150 credits which cuts repair times in half (cannot go below 1 day) - Helps keep the airfoce afloat
- Landed UFOs decrease by 10% per month (from 20% per month) - Increase in the ability to acquire resources without using your airforce, helps accommodate for poor resource acquisition from UFOs
- Reduce resource accumulation of elerium/alloys from UFOs by ~20% - Accommodates for increase from aliens and increased opportunity from landed UFOs
Tactical:
- All aliens will now have 50/33/17% reduced stat gains from research and leader levels on normal/classic/brutal - Makes the mid-late game and larger UFOs much more reasonable on the lower difficulties, significant decrease overall in alien strength on lower difficulties
- High level aliens yield significant bounties when killed (even if killed by explosives) - Makes late game missions still feel valuable and gives players alternative ways to acquire resources during challenging missions, helps accommodate for poor resource acquisition from UFOs
- Most aliens reward 1 of a single resource specific to their type, even if killed by explosives (e.g. drones give 1 alloy) - Gives more consistent resource accumulation, helps accommodate for poor resource acquisition from UFOs
- Toned back the time at which high level aliens can first appear by 1 month - Makes it feel less oppressive
- Hunkering down now reduces the hit chance of psionic attacks by 50%, regardless of whether the unit is in cover or not - Gives an option to help protect soldier against psionic attacks
- Corrossion reduces rocket range by 50% (instead of increasing scatter by 100%) - consistency with the rest of the ability
- Corrossion prevents all passive healing (e.g. regeneration effects) - Makes it quite useful against units that heal (outsiders, mecthoids, ethereals, etc.)
Perks:
- Mind Fray lasts 1 turn (from 2) - nerf to how punishing it feels, and makes it consistent with other effects (either 1 turn or indefinite)
- Fragmentation grants a 20% chance for double damage - Tone back through increase on the RNG element, distinction from mayhem
- Penetrator grants 3 penetration (from 2) - Buff to the perk, balance
Aliens:
- Sectoid Commander damage toned down by 2 - They were hitting a little harder than ideal
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a long time LW 1.0 bug where when you ordered/cancelled a new aircraft or soldiers the amount of credits you have didn't display the change until you left the screen
- Fixed a bug where the pulse sniper rifle had a mobility penalty and should not have one
- Shadowstep now correctly grants +1.2 mobility - was bugged at 0.6 mobility
- Fixed a bug where critical hit display wouldn't always inform the player it was a critical hit
- Fixed a bug where the AP pips would not be colored orange at the beginning of the turn (but would be colored after an action or move)
- Fixed a bug where gene modification wouldn't allow you to select gene mods despite having the available resources
- Fixed a bug where In The Zone would sometimes not trigger if used as the first action of the turn
Version 1.26.03
LW Rebalance v1.26.03
Strategic:
- Bombing run panic generation to 8 (from 7) - Slight increase in panic
- Renamed multiple weapons to not be so hard to identify (e.g. Blaster Rifle --> Pulse Strike Rifle) - Makes it easier for players to understand the many various weapons more clearly
- XCom gains 20% more resources (meld, elerium, artifacts, etc.) per month from missions (from 10% per month) - Accommodates for reduced late game missions
- Winning an Exalt Base raid grants 400 meld (from 150) - Buff to encourage doing the base instead of farm it
- Armored fighters grants +15% HP (from a flat +500 hp) - Nerf to interceptors, buff to firestorms
- Successful scouting missions no longer have a 50% chance to randomly fail to generate a hunt - Means a hunt is more likely following scouts (it was bugged previously reducing hunts more than intended and I can't really control it so I scrapped the code)
- Destroyer health to 2000 (from 3000) - Makes them much easier to down and/or prevent on their missions
- Air weapon credit costs increased significantly - Makes the credit cost for adequately covering more continents more challenging
- Alloy, elerium, meld, and weapon fragment council requests grant more reward for fulfilling - Slight boost due to the importance of these items
- UFO Plasma I air weapon aim to 40 (from 35) - Slight decrease in effectiveness of LEAD stance and a little less mission generation
- Jellied Elerium increased rocket and grenade damage by 1 (from just rockets) - Boost to mid-game grenades
- Enhanced Plasma renamed to Condensed Plasma and grants rockets and grenades +2 damage (from 0) - Boost to late-game rockets and grenades
- MEC2 technology requires mobile power armor - Pushes MEC2 production slightly later
Tactical:
- Soldiers on the first mission will always equip assault rifles and tac armors - More consistency in loadouts
- AP pips will now color orange when an enemy has reaction fire on you that you can't see (e.g. they are out of sight and have squadsight or are concealed) - Your units 'sense' it, while it's unrealistic, the alternative (eating overwatch shots out of nowhere and losing soldiers) was worse
- Covert Op missions start with 2 pods at half the size (from 1 pod that was double the size) - Makes it a little more likely you will run into someone (e.g. instead of 1 pod of 3 exalt, you'll fight a pod of 2 exalt and a pod of 1 exalt)
Perks:
- Mechanic and Master Mechanic grant +1 penetration against mechanical units instead of +1 damage and the Repair ability they grant repairs for 4 HP (from 3 HP) - Buffed
- Extra Conditioning reduces fatigue times by 40% (from both fatigue and injury times by 20%) - Buffed and more focused
- Fragmentation has a 40% chance to deal +40% damage (from 50% chance for +50% damage) - Toned back
- First Aid grants 1 medikit and 1 extra of each equipped medikit (reversion) - Increases overall XCOM healing, buff to support scout/rocketeeer, decreases reliance on medics
- Run and Gun cooldown back to 2 turns (from 1) but grants immunity to reaction fire - buffed, makes it easier to get run and gun off
- Shadowstep back to +1.2 mobility - Balance
- In The Zone back to +20 aim/crit on subsequent shots (from +10 aim/crit) - Buffed, balance
- Combat Drugs grants +10 will (from +15) - Toned back a little more
- Commanding Officer gains 1 command at the first rank and 1 command at ranks 3 and 5 (from 1 command at each rank) - Tone back on # of commands available
- Damage Control toned back to 15% DR per shot (from 20% DR per shot) - Toned back a little
- One For All DR to 40% (from 50%) - Toned back a little
- Snapshot has a 50% chance to trigger a 0 AP action (from 60%) - Tone back
- Hit and Run now prevents weapons or equipment use in subsequent actions (from non-shooting and non-overwatching actions) - Nerf to multiaction capability of Hit and Run builds, especially on the Shogun (distinguishes it from the Maruader)
- Greater Mind merge grants 100 crit (from 25 crit) - Makes it's use (and thus sectoid commanders) a lot more effective
Equipment:
- Neuroregulator will bonus to +10 (from +20) - Toned back
- AP Grenade range increased to 12.5 (from 10) - Buffed, grants more reach
- Regenerator Vest hp to 2 and DR to 0 - Nerfed
- Vortex armor reduces fatigue by 50% (from eliminating it) and will to +10 (from +20) - It was overkill and LWR doesn't have the problem of trying to get the volunteer up to level like LW 1.0 did
- Aurora armor HP to 6 (from 8) and will to +5 (from +10) - Nerfed, was replacing too many armors
- Ammo module is again equippable by both SHIVs and MECs (from just SHIVs) - Buff to Jaeger ITZ and overall MEC ammo capacities
XCOM:
- Multiple perk tree alterations - See perk tree image
- Cost of SHIVs increased across the board - Makes them less 'expendable'
Aliens:
- Introduced some more code to encourage the aliens to not always target the lowest hp or lowest def unit all the time - Makes them a little less predictable
- Sectoid Commanders reworked (they got their pistol back! -- AND it hits like a Plasma Cannon!) - Their AI was too hard to stop from being foolish so often and I couldn't fix it so I worked on them a lot. In the end they are now smarter, deadlier, and they gained some reasonable AI. After a lot of testing, I think should be much more scary enemies worthy of their title.
- Chryssalid DR to 1 (from 0.5) - Slight buff
- Muton health to 12 (from 14) but DR to 1 (from 0) [research gains affected as well] - Some HP swapped to DR, increases effetiveness of corrossion/penetration
- Muton Berserker health to 16 (from 20) but DR to 1 (from 0) [research gains affected as well] - Some HP swapped to DR, increases effetiveness of corrossion/penetration
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where neural feedback was doing more damage than described/intended
- Fixed a bug where packmaster sometimes wasn't granting an additional medikit charge for equipped medikits
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots at someone who was taking an action would sometimes cause that person to 'stall-out' and not execute the action - Thanks so much to all the time szmind put into fixing this (This might even help the LW 1.0 suppression stall out bug)
- Fixed a bug where the Medic wasn't getting sprinter at MSGT
- Fixed some incorrect text descriptions
- Fixed a bug where picking combat drugs would freeze the game
- Fixed a bug where drop-ins and reinforcements would go on OW but wouldn't have it trigger against xcom's units
- Fixed a bug where overpower wasn't working at squadsight
- Fixed a bug where deflection shield would remain active on dead units which would clutter the field
Version 1.26.02
LW Rebalance v1.26.02
Strategic:
- Advanced Servomotors requires Mechtoid Cores (from Sectopod Wrecks) - Makes more sense and grants the tech earlier
- Confounding Light/Gangplank start even another month later now - Really pushes it into the late game to make it easier
- Panic increases by 10% per month (from 5% per month) - Slight increase in world panic spread
- Bombing runs increase panic by 7 (from 6) - Slight increase in world panic spread
- Plasma I UFO weapons to 35 aim (from 30) - Slight nerf to strength of air game, reduced shot down UFOs and air game control, makes it so it's not as mandatory to go lead to guarantee downing a UFO
Tactical:
- All thrown objects and rockets now give a confirmation dialogue before firing - Makes it so you never have to worry about misclicking on them now, thanks to forefal for the suggestion because it's awesome and really makes pixel hunting a lot more bearable
- The first mission has 2 more sectoids on all difficulties - The outsiders were surprisingly not as difficult as expected
Perks:
- Close Combat Specialist only triggers on your opponent's turn - There was a bug that makes it flakey on your turn and the pingpong with beserkers was borderline gamey and borderline abusive.
- One For All DR back to 50% (from 30%) - With the plethora of CST and high damage weapons, this re-increase is reasonable granting MECs a significant (and much needed) tanking capability increase
- Combat Drugs grants +15 will (from +20 will) - Slight tone back
- Squadsight reduces aim/crit by 4 per tile (from 3 per tile) - Slight nerf, the unlimited squadsight can be quite useful
- Sapper grants 5x environmental damage (from 3x) - Makes it a lot more likely to destroy whatever is in it's path
Equipment:
- Psi Accelerator renamed to Psi Frayer, and Psi Screen renamed to Psi Retaliator - More obvious and intuitive what abilities they grant
- Psi Retaliator/Psi Frayer grants +0.5/0.5 DR, +10/15, and weight to 0/0.6 - Makes them more universal in who would want to equip them
- Elerium Emitter back to 1.5 DR (from 1) - Slight boost to psi tanking
- LMG ammo to 5 (from 7) - It's excellent at suppression, and the decreased ammo consumption has made ammo concerns too minimal of a problem. As well, the -10 aim negative isn't so significant on a class that only wants to suppress as the suppression shot isn't as damaging
- Combat stims lasts 4 turns (from 2) - Buffed, this means it heals 8 hp instead of 4
- Chameleon vest to +5 def (from 0), weight to 0 (from 0.6), and grants Awareness, but no longer ignores reaction fire - alteration to bring awareness to soldier classes and remove the easy capability of bypassing enemy OW on any soldier
- Sniper Rifle mobility to -1 (from 0) - Accommodate for it's increased stats, more reasonable weight
XCom:
- Lock N' Load on Rocketeer replaced with Holo Rounds - Grants the support and shooter rocketeers more options
- Sapper on Infantry replaced with Packmaster - Give the grenadier build a stronger final option
- Shadowstep on Medic replaced with Sprinter - Gives more of a stat bonus to make it more competitive vs tenacious defense
Aliens:
- Rapid Reaction swapped to Sentinel + Opportunist on all aliens except for floater leaders and heavy floaters - It was too punishing to XCOM
- Ready For Anything removed from all aliens except for a few high level leaders - It was REALLY powerful, too powerful to have on so many aliens
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots at squadsight ranges were still occuring at old caps and were not unlimited
- Reconnaissance popups will stay on the scout so you can read the clues - prevents not seeing the audio clue
- Removed some code that was teleporting units, and turned off some background logs (e.g. "...zzz")
- Fixed a bug where packmaster was still granting a smoke grenade - You might have to reset perks to make it go away
- Fixed a bug where squadsight could grant bonus aim/crit chances
- Fixed a bug where abilities that relied on the number of enemies in sight were sometimes acting inappropriately (e.g. ITZ not triggering)
- Fixed a bug where multiple reaction shots could reset the targets that were overwatchable for both XCOM and Aliens
- Fixed some issues with orange pips not updating correctly from dead aliens
- Fixed a bug where the interaction with One For All and smoke was not working correctly
Version 1.26.01
LW Rebalance v1.26.01
Strategy:
- Gangplank and Confounding light occur 1 month later - Makes them a little easier
Equipment:
- Proximity Mine Launcher can no longer be built - Was too much of a trap for newer players and veterans knew better anyway
- Combat stims now grant Stimmed [+2 regeneration, +1.2 mobility, +10 aim, +15 will, immunity to critical hits, and 20% DR] for 2 turns - Buffed, generalization: useful for more units. There is no -40 will protection against psi panic, the crit immunity does not require cover, and it gains 2 regen over 2 turns (so +4 HP total)
- Psi Screen grants +10 def (from +5) - Buffed, makes it obviously not suitable for units that want to taunt (i.e. tanks)
- Elerium Emitter DR to 1 (from 1.5) - Slight nerf
- Psi Accelerator DR to 0.5 (from 0) but will to +10 (from +20) - Tone back on will, makes it good for tanks
- Leather Jacket mobility to -2.5 (from -1.2) - That hacking equipment is HEAVY! =P Slows down the operative more on exalt missions, makes protecting him more important
Perks:
- Damage Control reworked: Now it grants 20% DR per shot received (from 30% after 1 shot) - Like everything, this stack multiplicatively. So 1st shot = 100%, 2nd shot = 80%, 3rd shot = 64%, 4th shot = 51%, 5th shot = 41%, etc. Helps minimize the effect of gamey things like trying to get a drone to hit you first and makes it so any unit with damage control that takes a lot of punishment gets a LOT tankier.
- Smoke and Mirrors no longer grants +1 smoke (note: you'll have to reset your perks to get rid of the extra smoke) - Makes smoke a little less common and the item more reasonable to equip
- Dense smoke no longer increases the aim malus of smoke (so now dense smoke is 50 def and -15 aim, affects psionic hit chances too, and no damage from explosions) - Buffed
- Snapshot now works on standard/precision/disabling shots (from just standard shots) - Buffed
- Transform (Cyberdisc's Closed Ability) grants 8 DR (from 4) - It was quite weak at 4 because it was often hit while open, lowering it's life by half, thus lowering the closed DR from 4 to 2; now it will go from 8 to 4 and still have a reasonable amount of DR even after injured, when closed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some inaccurate/misleading item/ability/tooltip descriptions
- Fixed a bug where stingrays were doing incorrect damage (they now properly deal 900 damage over 10s)
- Fixed some issues where deflection shield appeared as covering fire in the F1 panel
- Fixed a bug where overwatch was not always working correctly (not triggering after loading a save game)
- Fixed a bug where the orange AP color was not going away immediately when an enemy on OW died
- Fixed a bug where packmaster would, in certain situations, still grant a free smoke grenade
Version 1.26.00
LW Rebalance v1.26.00
Strategic:
- Workshops now also reduce build times by 20% each (stack multiplicatively) - Makes late game item building much faster, less waiting around
- Number of UFO missions (abduction, terror, scout, research) is reduced by 20% per month (from 15% per month) - Reduction of # of late game missions
- Chance to destroy (instead of shoot down) a UFO increased be ~2x - Reduces mission generation and makes high yield weapons less desirable, re-adding the dynamic back to the air game
- Alien resources and research gained for successful UFO missions increased to 20% (from 15%) - Accommodates reduced missions
- XCOM resources from all missions increased by 20% per month (from 10%) - Accommodates reduced missions and reduced shot down UFOs
- Abduction reward bounties increased by 20% per month - Makes abductions more beneficial in the late game
- Increased alloy gains by ~10% on all difficulties - Increased to help reduce early game alloy shortages
- Unchecked scouts have a 50% chance of triggering a hunt mission (from 35%) - Makes dealing with the scouts more important
- Advanced repair reduces repair times by 25% (from 33%) - Toned back
- Laser Cannon aim to 45 (from 40) - Slight boost, it was a little too weak at 40
- Fusion weapon research time reduced by over half - It was really long for something in the late game that meant you sometimes didn't get it in time to actually use it
Tactical:
- Alien appearances do not occur just on a set month, they now have a gradual introduction and increase in frequency: this means you can fight harder alien types earlier but they will be much less frequent - Gives earlier access to some corpses, prevents avoiding preparation based on the month, makes the composition of missions a lot more unknown (as an example, there is a rare chance to fight cyberdiscs in May and Mechtoids in June)
- Explosives deal 50% damage at their periphery (from 35%) - It still felt bad doing 1/3rd damage when you actually hit someone, this makes it so that if you at least hit someone the explosive will feel good
- Alien soldier research/technology upgrades (at ~1.5 months, 3 months, 6 months, etc.) are more significant - Makes later game aliens more challenging
- Officers grant 10%xp/rank (from 15%) - Tone back on how fast soldiers level up
- Jellied Elerium grants +1 damage to rockets (from +2) - Tone down on late game rocketeer
- The "Close Range" proximity bonus that negates cover is renamed to "Point Blank" - Makes more sense, distinguishes itself from close range weapon bonuses
Perks:
- Squadsight now grants infinite range to sniper rifles, strike rifles, and MEC weapons, but caries a penalty of -3 aim/crit per tile further than normal range (18.75 tiles) - Allows squadsight at any range but has a penalty the further away you are
- Distortion (on sectoid commanders and ethereals) no longer grants additional defense per tile away but instead reduces aim to 0 on squadsight shots - Makes them a lot easier to deal with under 18.75 tiles and helps prevent late game squadsight units from being as dominating
- Deflection shield defense per tile away increased to 5/tile (from 3/tile) and reduces both aim and crit - It was too ineffective at 3 with granting large crits, this still lets OW be an effective strategy against it
- Neural Feedback deals 5% of the user's will in damage (from 10% of the user's will in damage) - Too much damage otherwise. It's technically a free aciton and with the higher will of enemies, mind fray is already less competitive
- Brawler loses it's +1 damage against targets within 4 tiles - Balance, it was too strong, especially with CCS on both trees
- Concealment restricted to high cover only - The gameplay becomes more interesting this way and helps prevent too many 'setup' situations
- Mayhem grants both sniper and strike rifles +100% base damage (from 100% on sniper and 70% on strike) - Buffed on strike rifles
- Depth Perception to +20 crit (from +20 aim/crit) - Was too strong on flying units
- Combat Drugs grants +20 will (from 10 aim, 20 crit and 30 will) and no longer heals 1 hp at the start of unit's turns, but instead heals half the damage received by units under its effects (purely mechanical units immune) - Role changed
- Master mechanic additional repair charges to 3 (from 5) - Toned back
- Psi Mastery now increases mind fray damage by 50% as well and lets all psi abilities only cost 1 AP (from a select few) - Buffed
- Danger Zone grants +30% increased explosive radius (from 33%) - More simple calculations, very slight tone back
- Bullseye to +20 aim (from 25) - Balance
- Death from afar to +10 aim (from 15) - Balance
- Executioner to +1 damage (from 2) - Balance
- Disabler grants a 35% chance to jam enemy weapons (from 30%) - Balance
- Vital Point Targeting and Critical System Targeting to 1.4x damage (from 1.5) - They were a little too heavy at 1.5
- Packmaster no longer grants a free smoke grenade and medikit but instead grants +2 ammo - Fills the 'ammo mule' role. Nerfed on support capability, boosted as an alternative pick for other builds. It originally granted those extra items because support abilities weren't as strong. However, with smoke and concussion grenades being stronger, this buff pushed it to be too strong of a perk. It was also (ironically) making the smoke grenade and medikit small items less competitive for a slot. This might see more play on non-grenadier/support classes due to the ammo now.
- Growth (Outsider Perk) has been toned down significantly for all difficulties below impossible - So players don't feel like they need to rush as much
- Shadowstep grants +0.6 mobility - Balance, encourage more choice on the trees where it occurs
- Double Tap now grants +15 aim if you haven't moved to all weapons (from +10 for normal weapons and +20 for sniper rifles) - Consistency of perk
- In The Zone grants +10 aim and crit on subsequent shots (from +20) - Nerfed, balance
- Precision shot no longer allows a shot at infinite range (as they can all fire at infinite range now) but instead removes the squadsight penalties - Accommodation for new squadsight rules
Equipment:
- Sniper Rifle damage to 150% (from 125%), has 2 pen (from 1), and reduces the squadsight range penalty to -1 aim and crit per tile instead of -3 aim and crit per tile - Buffed to accommodate nerfed sniper perks and nerfed squadsight
- Javelin rockets have 80% reduced scatter (from 50%) and a 20% radius (from 33%) - They are a smaller aoe but are much more likely to hit
- MEC1 gains another hp and another mobility - It is a bit of an awkward hybrid, so this makes it more competitive and more reasonable to rush/build (due to cheap cost as well)
- All HMECs gain a 2ndary weapon slot - Buff to HMECs, constistency amoung MEC tiers
- UHMEC3 gains 2HP, ULMEC3 gains 0.6 mobility - Buff to the Ultra MEC3s
- Leather jacket hp to 2 (from 1), defense to 5 (from 10), mobilty to -1.2 (from 0) - it now contains heavy hacking equipment essential for interfacing with exalt databases, the def and hp change was just for consistency with other light armors, the mobility reduction was to make it even harder to chain relays
- Combat stims grant +2.5 mobility (from 1.8) and 25% DR (from 20%) - Slight buffs
- Breaching Ammo, Shredder Ammo, Armor Piercing Ammo, Flak Ammo, and Reaper Ammo weight to 0 (from 0.6) - Buffed, balance, consistency with other items like scopes and alloy-jacketed rounds
- Extra rocket and Javelin rocket grant 2 of each rocket - More ammo for rocketeers, prevents them from running out as fast and feeling ineffective aftewards
- Shock and Awe also grants +1 charges to any extra rockets equipped - More ammo for rocketeers
- Rocket Launcher / Recoilless Rifle / Blaster Launcher damage to 4/6/8 (from 5/8/12) - Pull back on single turn damage of rocketeers, consistency at 100% of base damage for the tier
- All rocket radius' increased by 0.5 tiles - Slight increase to rockets, distinction from grenades
- All destructive grenade radius' decreased by 0.5 tiles - Tone back on grenades
XCom:
- Vital Point Targeting on the Shogun replaced with Penetrator - VPT was too strong, pushes the Shogun into more of the anti-mechanical role if it wants to deal damage
- Shogun loses it's base +0.6 mobility - Balance
Aliens:
- Uber Ethereal health to 60 (from 40) - The end boss should be more resilient
- Multiple alien leaders pick up Ready For Anything - Got it working on aliens
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where late game enemies were getting reduced likelihoods to show up in late game missions causing some campaigns to be filled with early to mid game enemies in the late game
- Fixed a bug where on DW games the # of some missions in the late game were being increased instead of decreased - Made some campaigns get too many resources/xp in the end game
- Fixed a bug where some aliens could wander into weird locations (like outside of the map boundaries) - Thanks to szmind for this
- Fixed a bug where the repositioning of stepped out units could sometimes occur twice, pulling the unit away from their original spot or occur when grappling - Again, thanks entirely to szmind for this
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Clarified some descriptions on abilities
- Fixed a bug where drop-ins were not triggering proper overwatch - This had to do with my optimization code not correctly setting the Overwatch lists of aliens on drop-in
- Fixed a bug where it looked like chryssalids had overpower - They don't
- Fixed a bug where psychokinetic strike was showing up as costing 2 AP (even when it only costed 1 with psi mastery)
- Fixed a longtime bug where platform stability wouldn't show up in the crit summary F1 panel sometimes (Just tried a workaround that tests if the bug occurs and then attempts to fix and it worked) =D
Version 1.25.23
LW Rebalance v1.25.23
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where using a shotgun at certain ranges would yeild -20328945723905728957 damage
- Fixed a bug where units would be teleported back to their previous spot after using a free action
- Fixed a bug where the gamespeed was not always being kept up to the previous settings
Version 1.25.22
LW Rebalance v1.25.22
QoL:
- Cleaned up a LOT more code, significantly reducing system resource load - Again, most players probably won't notice this except you should have slightly less bugs
Strategic:
- Psi training time reduced to 15 days (from 30) but target will for the first 4 psi levels increases by 5 will (back to where it used to be a few versions ago) - Makes fewer capable of becoming psionic, but those who can become psionic will train much faster
- Psi Panic bonus hit chance to 0 (from +20) - It's really strong for an extra psionic perk, and the hit chance was too high at +20
- Flush now clears OW on any target that it fires at - Boost to the perk and gives the ammo drum a little buff; also makes a lot more sense if the target does move
Equipment:
- Stun rifle and Repair ranges increased from 3.3 tiles to 4 tiles - This is so that when multiple range indicators overlap (e.g. a "Close Encounters" assault with a "Stun Rifle" attacking a outsider with "Close Combat Specialist") they all line up at 4 tiles so you can still know exactly where things will work
- Used native code (with szmind's help) to bring out accurate stun chances on the stun rifle, so instead of getting approximate numbers (from the LW wiki) you'll get the actual stun chances - QoL, always nice to be accurate
- Carbines gain 10 crit - Balance
- Leather Jacket (covert op armor) mobility to 0 (from 3.1), hp to 1 (from 0), and defense to 10 (from 5) - Makes it a little harder to chain activate relays but provides a little extra resiliency on the covert op
- Plasma Carbine defense bonus to +10 (from +20)
Bug Fixes:
- STEP OUT BUG IS FIXED - SZMIND IS GENIUS!!! :) Now stepping out for suppression and shooting will always have the unit go back to their cover - This is a bug that has plagued XCOM players since the early beta stages of LW and szmind was finally able to fix it :) Special mention to Therebrae for providing a reproducible save of the bug without which we wouldn't have been able to get this fixed.
- Improved code on proximity damage so that it is more reliable and less likely to bug out and not give proximity damage bonuses
- Fixed a long-time bug on proximity damage that miscalculated the damage by 1 tile further than it should (it is now correctly 5% bonus per tile starting at 10 tiles)
- Fixed some incorrect text descriptions
- Fixed a bug where some AP discounting perks (e.g. Close Encounters) did not save correctly and could be used again after saving and reloading a game
- Fixed a bug where reconnaissance and overpower and some other abilities could activate just from clicking on a unit, and sometimes multiple times in a turn (this required a lot of work, redoing all of the base code triggering such abilities and was part of the code clean up that should reduce system load)
- Fixed a bug with the stun rifle range indicator not showing up (as well as some other range indicator inconsistencies)
- Fixed a bug where stun chances on the stun rifle were not appearing sometimes
Version 1.25.21
LW Rebalance v1.25.21
Air Game:
- Laser Cannon cost reduced to 30 alloys (from 60) but aim reduced to 40 (from 60) - Makes it feel less mandatory
- EMP Cannon aim reduced to 40 (from 50) - Tone back on both EMP and Laser
Bug Fixes:
- The first missions contains: 8 aliens/drones on normal, 12 on classic, 14 + 1 outsider on brutal, 16 + 2 outsiders on impossible - was off in last patch on both in-game and patch notes
Version 1.25.20
LW Rebalance v1.25.20
Strategy Game:
- Will over test_will of psionic abilities only reduces training time by 1 day (from 2) - The reduction in test_will plus 2 day reduction was allowing too many psionics
- Tweaks to more country starting bonuses - Balance
Tactical Game:
- Experience gain per officer rank reduced to +15% xp/rank (from +20%) - Reduced mid-late game xp gains
- The first mission composition modified: 8 aliens/drones on normal, 12 on classic, 12 + 1 outsider on brutal, 12 + 2 outsiders on impossible - Makes it harder to cheese, and forces the player to be creative (and thus capable of a good understanding of the game and it's mechanics)
Perks:
- Bullseye aim to 25 (from 30) - Was a little too strong and mandatory at 30
- Death from afar aim to 15 (from 10) - Buffed
- In The Zone's +20 aim/crit on subsequent shots is no longer restricted to just sniper/strike rifles - Not needed with the ammo nerf (see below), more concise perk
- Disabler now also grants a 30% chance to jam enemy weapons on any shot and no longer grants 100% chance to jam enemy weapons on steadied non-sniper weapons - Realistically only sniper-style weapons were using this and it needed a buff
- Battle Field Aptitude will bonus to 0 (from 5) - Balance
- Psi Inspiration renamed to Psi Inspire, now removes the effects of red fog, allows the soldier to ignore all reaction fire, but no longer grants a mobility boost, and lasts 1 turn (from 2.5) - So it will last through to the end of the enemy's turn. Makes pulling out of bad situations potentially a lot more viable, and can help at engaging. Buffed.
- Psi Panic has a +20 chance to hit, 4-turn cooldown (from 1-turn) - Much less able to be spammed, easier to hit with
- Show 'em the Ropes experience boost to +100% (from +150%) - Reduced mid-late game xp gains
- Tricks of the Trade experience boost to +35% (from +50%) - Reduced mid-late game xp gains
Equipment:
- The blaster launcher can no longer be fired after taking a costly action - Remove it's move and fire potential
- Targeting module damage back to +1 (from +2) - Was too strong at +2, although it was bugged and only gave +1 anyway so no actual change =P
- Large-Cal High-Caps renamed to Ammo Module and restricted to SHIVs - Reduces ammo on MECs and their overall effectiveness with their shots alone, name change cause the other one was too much of a mouthful
- SMGs are not affected by ammo conservation - They are pretty effective and needed to be slightly toned back. Also for consistency with all the other carbine/battle rifle/assault rifle equipment (smg was just the odd man out).
- HMEC2 gains 2 health, HMEC3 gains 4 health, UHMEC3 gains 6 health - Balance, increase in tanking capabilities of HMECs
- All LMEC2, LMEC3, and HMEC3 lose 0.6 mobility, ULMEC3 loses 1.2 mobility - Toned back, balance
- Laser Cannons cost 60 alloys (from 20) - Reduce the ease of getting them online
- Seraph/Archangel fuel to 12/16 (from 6/8) - Significant buffs to their ability to fly
Aliens:
- Sectoids lose 10 will - Makes them less effective at psi-spam
- Multiple non-psionic aliens have additional will - Help them resist stronger psi panic chances
- Exalt Medics and Exalt Elite Medics gain tactical sense and low profile (and also officially gain deflection shield with upgrades -- even though they already had it) - makes them tankier, can't remove deflection shield so I'm going to roll with it (BUG BECOMES FEATURE) =D
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where panning from a camera would happen when activating a pod on crashed UFOs - Thanks so much to szmind for figuring out what was causing this bug and doing the fix, truely great work! =D (note, it only works on NEW mission, old saved mission might still have the bug)
- Fixed a bug where the distance indicator would sometimes popup "0 tiles" which is a little redundant
- Fixed another bug with the orange AP pips not being accurate in some rare cases
- Fixed a bug where the number of equipment slots on various units (e.g. MECs) would sometimes be inaccurate
- Fixed a bug where commanding or reviving a soldier or a soldier with catching breath activated the maluses from their action discounting perks (e.g. commanding a HnR soldier prevented any shooting as when HnR activates the soldier cannot shoot afterwards)
Version 1.25.19
LW Rebalance v1.25.19
Bug Fixes:
- Overwatch now works again =P
Version 1.25.18
LW Rebalance v1.25.18
QoL:
- Optimized a LOT of code - Helps with crashes, overloading systems, etc. etc. To be honest though, most players won't notice a difference
Strategic Game:
- Number of missions (terror, scout, abduction, etc.) generated by the aliens decreases by 15% per month (from 10%) - Reduces late game mission density even further
Air Game:
- Firestorm battle speed decreased from 45 to 35 - Prevents cesation of firing against slow targets and nerfs it's offensive power vs interceptors
Tactical Game:
- All missions that previously didn't modify alien #'s based on difficulty have had their numbers reduced by 2, 4, and 6 for brutal, classic, and normal, respectively - Makes easier difficulties easier
- Zombies and Chrysallids will occur less often and in smaller pods on terror missions - makes grenades less effective against them and makes grenades feel less required for terror missions all-together
- Rocket scatter reduced by 25% - Accommodates for platform stability nerf and increases consistency of rocket all game
- Damage Control grants 30% DR (from 40%) - Was too strong at 40%, making consecutive tanking too powerful and some enemies too strong
- Combat Drugs grants 10 aim and 30 will (from 20 of each) - Reversion to how it was before to accommodate for the decreased aim from smoke so that combat drugs isn't acting as an overall aim buff
- First Aid doesn't increase the # of equipped medikits anymore - It was a little too strong, and not needed. The injury reduction and free medikit is enough
- In The Zone's +20 aim and +20 crit on subsequent shots only occurs with sniper and strike rifles - So that the Jaeger doesn't receive an inadvertent buff
- Ready for anything is no longer restricted to 1 reaction shot - Makes it MUCH more synergsitic with OW perks. Previously, when OW penetrated DR it was too strong. Now this is a nice boost as the perk wasn't great on an OW build previously.
Equipment:
- Banshee and Aegis armor both lose 1 HP - Balance
- Targeting module grants +2 damage on crits - Buff to crit-based classes
- Shotguns have 30% crit (from 20%) - Buff to shotgun crit chances
- Armor Piercing (AP) Grenade radius to 1.5 (from 2) - Decrease in the ability to 'tick' multiple units to shred multiple units
- Grenade Launcher radius to 3.5 (from 2.5) - Buff to the area of effect of MEC grenades
XCOM:
- Disabler on Engineer replaced with Deadeye - Helps the DT engineer
- Rocketeer will to 10 (from 5) - Balance
- Scout base will to 15 (from 10) - Balance
- Medic base will to 10 (from 15) - Balance
- Infantry base aim to 20 (from 15) - Balance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed the color on Tactical Brilliance being incorrect for both effects
- Fixed an issue where shooting a unit on OW reverted the orange on AP colors suggesting they were not on OW anymore
- Adjusted some descriptions that weren't fitting in the text boxes
- Units that suppress will no longer activate deflection shield
- Fixed a bug where you could 'sense' cloak units on OW from your AP pips turning orange
- Fixed a bug where UFOs could be shot down in the first month
Version 1.25.17
LW Rebalance v1.25.17
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where firing a rocket would cause a CTD
Version 1.25.16
LW Rebalance v1.25.16
Strategic:
- Soldiers are no longer capped at how much xp they can earn (previously were capped at max 1 promotion per battle) - So now, if you gained enough xp in battle, you could theoretically level from spec to msgt in one battle
Tactical:
- Number of enemies on terror missions reduced from 18 to 15 but increase by 1 every 4 months - They were supposed to be hard, but they were probably a bit beyond that and didnt' scale well. This makes them less scary, but worse in the later game when lids and zombies aren't as devestating.
- Number of enemies on mid-late game exalt data recovery missions increased significantly - They were too easy, especially once MECs come online
- Base HP now alters rocket scatter by 4% (just like it does grenade throw range) - Makes health on rocketeers more relevant
Equipment:
- SAWs do the same amount of damage with mayhem suppression as LMGs/SHIV weapons - The restriction was no longer necessary and it's nice to keep things consistent, gives the possibility for the SAW on a mayhem build (especially with penetrator)
- Platform Stability reduces rocket scatter by 30% (from 50%) - Toned back, makes it less mandatory on all rocketeers
- Aegis armor to 10 hp (from 11) - Damage Control is really good, and the armor was too
- MEC1 gains 1 hp and 0.6 mobility - Slight buffs
- Smoke grenades now have no cap on hit chances (from 90%, 80% with dense smoke) - Was too insignificant of an effect for the added complication and it was the 3rd time I got a bug report on the aim not adding up
- Smoke grenades now reduce the aim of units by half the defense value (-15 aim for normal smoke, -25 aim for dense smoke) (from -30/-50 aim) - Makes smoke a lot more useful, and combat drugs actually provide an overall aim buff of +5, realistically it was never that effective at preventing enemies units from firing but using it on them. This also applies for psionic hit chances of dense smoke.
- Disorient (from concussion grenades) now reduces mobility by 70% (from 40%) - Buff to the concussion grenades, makes them quite effective against melee units and at preventing units from repositioning
- Acid grenade range back to 12.5 (from 15) - It could activate some enemies out of line of sight and could lead to poor gameplay
Perks:
- ITZ now grants +20 aim and crit when triggered (from +10 aim) - Gives the consecutive shots more strength and I've reluctantly (probably too reluctantly, curse my pride!) come to see the difficulty in ITZ and agree that it needed more love
- Neural Feedback deals 10% of the psionic user's will in damage (from 5%) - Makes it more significant as even with multiple versions you can only fire once and there are only 3 enemy types it's even effective against. Also, the ethereal and sectoid commander health has increased and distortion's effectiveness has decreased since it was 5% so the reversion seems reasonable.
Aliens:
- Zombie Health to 12 (from 18) - Makes them a lot less dangerous when spawned on terror missions
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where large maps would sometimes cause a CTD due to overload of resources - Szmind pretty much fixed this, I was just an innocent obeserver watching a master programmer in action
- Actually fixed a bug where meld-reseting soldier perks still cost 80 meld (its 50 now, I swear)
- Fixed a bug where a suppressed aliens or aliens without vision but who had CCS would still turn the AP pips orange suggesting they could take a reaction shot against your unit
- Fixed a bug where the Hover SHIV could still sometimes make terrible engine noises
- Fixed some inaccurate equipment descriptions
- Fixed a problem where engineers were getting a "?" perk - Note: if you still have an engineer with this perk you can meld-reset him and either give yourself back the meld or set the meld cost to 0 in defaultminimods.ini
Version 1.25.15
LW Rebalance v1.25.15
QoL:
- All descriptions of mobility truncated to the nearest 10th - Consitency with the in-game displays
- Replaced the dam map with the slaughter house map for the map pool of the first mission - Makes the first mission a little less map dependent
- Being suppressed or being within 4 tiles of someone with CCS now turns the AP pips orange - Orange means using the action will trigger a reaction shot, QoL
- Enemies with Close Combat Specialist will now display a range indicator so you can figure out when you'd trigger it or not - QoL
- Hover SHIVs no longer have such a loud engine noise that you can't hear anything else and would rather not even field then - I think this change took me more time than all the other changes combined. Szmind was instrumental in helping to finally figuring it out. Thanks so much to him!
Strategic:
- Europe bonus "Wealth of Nations" raised to 20% from 12% - Some solid calculations revealed it was worse than the other continent bonuses and should be stronger due to the 4 country requirement
- First four psi levels training target will lowered by 5, for each will above the target will a soldier psi training time is reduced by 2 days (from 1), but the base training time for each psi level increased to 30 days (from 20 days) - Makes psionics more accessible to more of the roster
Tactical:
- Explosives lose their innate +1 penetration - This was put in to help accommodate later game explosive builds. However, with the mayhem damage buff, the more consistent damage, the lack of 0 damage edge cases, and the tandem damage buff, this was now a little too much. More importantly, it was making HEAT warheads less competitive (which was the original intent, but not necessary now with the tandem buff).
Perks:
- The base damage on suppression shots is reduced by 50% - The ability is now consistent with flush (2 ammo, -50% base damage) and prevents suppression from being stronger than just normal shots (e.g. if someone is sitting there flanked, it actually used to be often better to suppress to get the holo/shred application then the shot when they move). With the -AP reduction, -30 aim, and ability to affect everyone, suppression needed to be toned back a little.
- Executioner no longer grants +2 pen - It is still plenty strong without it and overpowered with
XCOM:
- Hover SHIV base aim bonus to +30 (from +25) - Slight buff
Equipment:
- Fuel cell fuel amount to +14 (from +8) and now grants +2.5 mobility (from +0 mobility) - Significant buff to the item, and indirectly the flight armors and hover SHIV. Note: stacks with elerium turbos on hover SHIVs for +5 mobility (!) when not flying
- Javelin Rocket deals double damage (from 250% damage) - Tone back
- Battle Scanner 4-pack renamed to Battle Scanner 2-pack and only provides 2 uses but weight to 0 - Discourages spamming them for the +5 aim bonus
Bug Fixes:
- Maybe (?) fixed a bug where when an alien pod activates the screen moves to a blank portion of the map
- Fixed a bug where on normal difficulty units were getting 24% of intended injury/fatigue and none of the other difficulties were getting any reduction (it is now correct at 50% for normal, 60% for classic, 80% for brutal, 100% for impossible)
- Fixed a bug where the Hover SHIV was not getting it's innate aim
- Fixed a bug where the info panel on the SHIVs was describing a destroyed SHIV and not the SHIV itself
- Fixed a bug where the alien AI wasn't reacting properly to being suppressed when in the open
- Fixed a bug with stepouts at squadsight distances not granting flank bonuses when they actually are flanks
- Fixed a bug where non-breathing aliens were getting the aim and crit bonus from combat drugs (they don't anymore)
- Fixed a display bug where trying to genetically modify a soldier would say 'insufficient resources' when the player did have the sufficient resources
- Fixed a bug where Iago Van Doorn wouldn't appear on the exalt base raid
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle was gaining +20 aim with double tap
- Fixed a bug where meld-reseting soldier perks still cost 80 meld (its 50 now)
Version 1.25.14
LW Rebalance v1.25.14
Strategic:
- Assembly Line China start grants only +6 engineers (from +10) - Whoopsies, I forgot how important they were for satellites as well =P Good luck Kindowg! =D
- Made it more likely to get partial UFO components from crashed UFOs - increases the chance you'll get at least some UFO artifacts like computers, power supplies, etc.
- Meld cost to reset perks on soldiers reduced to 50 (from 80) - Despite wanting it to be quite restrictive, it was too expensive to be of much use at 80
Tactical:
- Corrossion reduces aim by 20 (from 15) and mobility by 20% (from 15%) - Slight increase in effectiveness
- Supercapacitors foundry project upgrades the bonus damage against mechanicals on the arc rifle to +9 (from +6) - Makes it competitive at pulse
- Quenchguns foundry project upgrades the base damage on the sawed-off shotgun to 6 (from 4) - Makes it competitive at gauss
- Reduced the # of aliens on council missions by 2 - lower their difficulty slightly
Equipment:
- Regenerator Vest DR to 1 (from 1.5) - Slight nerf
- Chitin plating DR to 1 (from 1.5) - Slight nerf
- Acid grenade range increased to 15 (from 12.5) - Buffed
- In The Zone grants +10 aim once triggered - So it's on all shots after the steadied shot, slight buff to keep it competitive vs Mayhem/DT
- Lead by example renamed to Commanding Officer and no longer shares any will. However, it also grants Tactical Brilliance: will/2% chance for command to cost 0AP, will/2% chance for command to refund it's charge - After a lot of testing, I realized that officer will sharing removed all the intricacies out of units with low will. It wasn't great for gameplay as it basically just said, "Forget about will as everyone has a reasonable amount". It was also bugged before so I had to rework everything to bypass the native code. However, the tactical briliance still encourages high will officers as chaining multiple commands in a single turn can win you some unwinnable missions.
- Overpower will not longer be active on dormant pods - makes sense, intuitive
- Combat drugs grants 20 will (from 10) and 20 aim (from 30) - Nerfed, makes it so there is still an aim malus on combat drugs so there is still some drawback similar to regular smoke
XCom:
- Regular SHIV gains 2 health and 2 armor health, Alloy SHIV gains 4 armor health, Hover SHIV gains 2 armor health - A little extra survivability
- Hover SHIV flight fuel to 16 (from 10) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that would sometime cause Engineers to gain a ? Perk - If you have this, you'll have to meld-reset perks on your engineer. I'd recommend you either use the console command to reimburse yourself the meld, or set the meld cost to 0 in defaultminimods.ini.
- Damage Control only lasts 1 turn - Sometimes it could be active into the next turn if activated through reaction fire
- Fixed various abilities that used will calculations that were sometimes leaving off multiple will abilities (e.g. officer will sharing, overpower, etc.)
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Fixed an issue with the targeting reticule for acid grenades not lining up with who they hit (it should be more acccurate now)
- Fixed a bug where after an alien went on overwatch the AP indicators would still be orange sometimes
- Fixed a bug where the bonus experience from officers (the +20%xp/rank) was not always working
- Fixed an issue where the info panel on multiple weapons was overestimating their damage by 1
- Fixed a bug where Reflex pistols was granting the sawed-off shotgun +1 damage
Version 1.25.13
LW Rebalance v1.25.13
Equipment:
- Aegis armor loses 1 hp - Balance
Perks:
- Mechanic grants an additional repair charge (3 instead of 2), no longer grants CST or additional throw range, but grants +1 damage to shots against mechanical units - Makes the damage come online earlier, makes the perk more useful for lower damage weapons, nerf to throw range on engineer (note: CST will be automatically removed if you enter battle with an engineer with CST)
- Master Mechanic grants an additional repair charge(5 instead of 4), grants +1 damage to shots against mechanical units, but does not increase throw range - Doubles up on Mechanic
- Throw Range on Ranger, Smoke and Mirrors, and Grenadier increased to 20% (from 15%) - Increase to throw range from alternative sources
- Absorption Fields to 30% DR (from 20%) - Buff to tanking for goliaths and later game SHIVs
- Damage Control to 40% DR (from 30%) - Buff to tanking for HMECs and later game SHIVs
- Fixed a bug with the AP Pips not updating colors correctly
- Fixed a bug with some aliens getting incorrect perks
- Fixed some incorrect text descriptions
Version 1.25.12
LW Rebalance v1.25.12
QoL:
- Unit's AP indicator will now turn back to normal (from orange) as soon as the overwatch threat is neutralized - QoL
Strategy:
- Exalt initial #'s turned down even further in the late game during covert op exalt missions - Prevents them from being as much of a coin toss
Equipment:
- LMG ammo to 7 (from 6) - Slight buff
Aliens:
- Cyberdisc DR when closed to +4 (from +3) - Slight buff
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where suppression was still pinning melee units
Version 1.25.11
LW Rebalance v1.25.11
Perks:
- Melee units (lids/zerkers) are immune to being pinned from suppression - You could abuse them by moving 1 tile away and suppressing and they could never do anything
Equipment:
- Concussion grenades only last for 1 alien turn (they do not extend into xcom's next turn as well) - Means that alien overwatch is an effective counter and stops xcom from utilizing their debuffs for 2 turns
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where tandem warheads wasn't granting the damage it was supposed to
- Fixed a bug where explosive damage was being decreased by ~0.5 more damage than it was supposed to
Version 1.25.10
LW Rebalance v1.25.10
QoL:
- Using the keyboard arrow keys to sell grey market items increases the # of items being sold by multiples of 10 - QoL, makes it quicker to sell large #'s of items
- The moves remaining indicator on each soldier will now turn to yellow if there is only 1 move remaining and orange if the unit is under overwatch - QoL
Strategy:
- Multiple Foundry projects had their weapon fragment requirements increased - Accommodates the increased amount XCOM is acquiring
- High-Capacity Pistols no longer requires muton corpses - It's supposed to be late-game tech so the weapon fragment requirement was increased significantly
Tactical:
- Number of initial exalt lowered on all exalt missions - Makes them a little easier to push through as they could pin you down a little too much
- First Aid now also grants equipped medikits an extra use - Slight buff, kind of a (reluctant) compromise between the previous versions
- Concealment now works in both low and high cover and on dashes - It's not abusive due to the lockdown once you see enemies, makes it more versatile and easier to use for things like getting off that +30% crit, or dashing to an exalt relay to trigger next turn
- Holo rounds now works with sidearms as well as primaries - A visual bug that I couldnt' fixed forced my hand to do this
XCOM:
- VPT swapped with ranger and replaced with Bullseye on the rocketeer - VPT wasn't a great fit and early ranger gives more interesting choices
Aliens:
- Updated exalt research upgrades so that into the very late game (2nd and 3rd year) they upgrade like normal aliens - Just consistency with the rest of the aliens
- Early sectoid, floater, and outsider leaders are a little stronger - Gives them more of a presence
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed the odd situation where concussion grenade targeting and actual hit would not line up - I finally found a solution and redirected the entire code with a tag and tested over 50 times, so this definitely "should" be working now :)
- Fixed the code that removed some ghost silhouttes on crashed missions (from aliens that died on the crash) - yay for szmind and his superior coding knowledge! :) Note this time it also doesn't trigger all aliens now
- Fixed some outdated item descriptions
- Fixed some issues where hopefully we've completely done away with invisible sectoids/lids and their noises - Thanks to szmind for this updated code of tracktwo's sightline script - HOPEFULLY it's perfect
Version 1.25.09
LW Rebalance v1.25.09
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the new code for removing aliens on crashed UFOs that also doesn't leave any sillhoutes of alien pawns behind has the negative of leaving corpses and triggering a lot of pods really early - Reverted this code
Version 1.25.08
LW Rebalance v1.25.08
QoL:
- Made the strike rifle model slightly larger - QoL
- Added cooldown descriptions and amounts to abilities with cooldown on their tactical HUD descriptions - QoL
Strategic:
- Crashed UFOs have ~25% of the enemies dead (from 20%) and ~33% of the enemies injured (from 30%) - Makes a larger distinction between crashed and landed. Makes crashed UFOs slightly more managable.
Tactical:
- Explosives no longer deal +/- 1 damage on top of their normal damage rolls - makes them more predictable
- All explosives deal 35% damage at the edge of their periphery (from 33%) - More of a QoL change, the 33% would truncate leading to 0 damage on 3 damage explosions, this prevents that
Perks:
- Deflection shield should no longer trigger on inactived pods - Stops them from being revealed from out of sight
- Deflection shield defense bonus reduced to 3 defense per tile away (from 5 defense per tile away) - Overall just makes it less obtrusive (Note: you can overwatch to bypass this anyway)
- First Aid only grants 1 medikit (from 2) - Slight tone back as the 1 hp injury reduction is quite powerful
- Suppression now only uses 1 ammo to suppress, but it still requires 2 ammo and still uses a 2nd ammo if the reaction shot fires - Prevents the kind of 'bug' that felt unfair when it used 3 ammo previously and/or didn't if you only had 2 ammo - This seems to fit more intuitively
- Shadowstep no longer gives any crit bonus when moving (from +20% crit) - With the +1.3 mobility it was easily strong enough, and the bonus crit was pushing crit items and crit perks out of competiveness. Simplification of the perk as well.
- Tandem Warheads deal full damage at the periphery of the explosion (from 66%) - Buff to the strength of tandem as the truncated damage on the edge was a fairly minor upgrade
- Mayhem grants explosives +35% damage (from +30% damage) - Helps make the perk more useful on some explosives
- Reconnaissance again grants 2 free battle scanners - Gameplay > balance/design, the battle scanners were fun on the scout and removing them lead to less use (i.e. less fun) and the balance/design implications were not huge and can be dealt with elsewhere
- Hit and Run grants +1 damage on uncovered targets (from +50% crit damage) - The crit damage wasn't that great on strike rifle builds and the shotgun HnR builds gain access to VPT now as a large buff
- Run and Gun cooldown to 1-turn (from 2-turns) - Makes the Run and Gun assault able to use its ability more frequently, slight buff
- Sharpshooter bonus aim against targets protected by cover to +15 (from +10) - Slight buff to temper the recent nerf of -1 pen
Equipment:
- Battle Scanner 3-Pack increased to 4-pack and now grants +5 aim against any unit in the battle scanner's radius - Makes it like a quarter holo-item increasing the usefulness of battle scanners
- Concussion grenades now also lower defense and will by 20 - Makes them much more effective for hitting disoriented targets with weapons, hitting disoriented targets with psionic abilities, reducing disoriented unit psionic effectiveness
XCOM:
- Reworked Jaeger tree so the TSGT perk didn't feel like it forced you into a crit build
- Reworked Scout tree - Made it so the HnR scout has access to VPT, holo is later, and packmaster is later -- overall balancing of scout builds
Aliens:
- Seeker strangulation does 1 more damage but seeker leaders deal 1 less damage - Overall strangulation is a little more damaging except for on leaders
- Seeker strangulation no longer provides additional DR (from +3 DR) - Makes them easier to deal with. The original goal of the additional DR was to make strangulation less ideal than fighting them in the open. With strangulation not being able to be overwatched against, it is now guaranteed damage and is thus already less ideal, the extra DR was overkill and often led to frustrating situations.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where certain combinations of perks and items would yield inaccurate number of medikits
- Fixed a visual bug where packmaster and S&M still increased the # of battle scanners
- Fixed a bug where taking too long in a mission so that you received injury time from fatigue was giving too much injury time
- Fixed a bug where squadsight overwatches were not triggering in most situations
- Touched up some misc text descriptions
- Fixed a bug where the loadout manager would have separate profiles for similar MECs depending upon which base class they were promoted from
- Fixed some remaining descriptions that erroneously used the old system of mobility
- Clarified some ability descriptions
- Fixed some incorrect text descriptions
- Fixed a bug where some aliens would leave leftover silhouttes (pawns) of themselves after dying from the crash on crashed UFOs
- Fixed a bug where the arc rifle was doing 1 more damage against mechanical units than intended
Version 1.25.07
LW Rebalance v1.25.07
QoL:
- All soldier mobility now includes decimal points - QoL
- Toned down model size of rocket launchers - Had multiple reasonable complaints about them looking too cartoony
Perks:
- Shadowstep grants +20% crit after movement (from +30%) - Slight tone back
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a typo where VPT and CST said they only granted 40% more damage (they grant +50%)
- Fixed a bug where grey market sell prices could be similar in similar campaigns
- Misc description fixes
Version 1.25.06
LW Rebalance v1.25.06
QoL:
- All mobility/weight is now displayed in tiles (instead of metres) - So instead of having a soldier with 16 "metres" of mobility, it will display a soldier with 10 "tiles" of mobility. When you look at a chryssalid it will say it can move 11 tiles and you don't have to try to calculate it out.
- Soldiers will always switch back to their primary weapon at the beginning of their turn, unless you have a stun rifle in which case they'll always switch back to their secondary weapon - QoL, makes it so you don't forget and accidentaly reload or shoot with your secondary
Strategy:
- Many changes to starting country bonuses - Balance
- Gene mod cash and meld costs and time lowered by 10-20% - Makes it easier to apply to soldiers, note it is still supposed to be something that is not common
- The first mission will now select maps from a pool of 10, all of which have reasonable LoS blocking areas - There was too much variation based on maps for such a difficult mission, this should make it more bearable
- Cost to recruit new soldiers lowered to 110 (from 150) - While it was good to be restrictive, it was a little too restrictive at 150
- Increased overall gain of weapon fragments - It was too restrictive on all difficulties
Perks:
- Inspired Tenacity grants 15% DR (from 5%) - Was too weak before
- Executioner aim/crit to +20 (from +50) but grants +2 damage/penetration (from +0), all still against targets at or below 50% health - The aim/crit was often being capped out at 100 and was often next to useless on steadied shots, even at 50 aim/crit it was slightly weak
- Bullseye to 30 aim but 0 crit (from 25 aim/crit) - Slight nerf, it was most important for the aim to help in actually hitting flying units, so this helps with that
- Death from afar no longer removes the squadsight crit penalty - Nerf
- Sharpshooter grants 1 penetration against units in cover (from 2) - Nerf
- Sprinter gives +1.3 mobility (from +0.6 [to +2 from +1 in the old system) and increases dashing movement to 40% (from 50%) - Overall, similar dash distance with significant more usefulness when not dashing
- Awareness defense bonus to +20 (from +30) - Was a little too strong at +30
- Lone Wolf back to 7 tile distance - It was actually quite easy to maintain at 4 tiles making it one of the strongest perks and pretty imbalanced
- Vital Point Targeting to 1.5x damage (from 1.3x) - Boost for perk tree balance
- Critical System Targeting to 1.5x damage (from 1.4x) - Boost for perk tree balance
Equipment:
- Flamethrower damage to 7 (from 4) - needed a significant buff
- Significant rework of the Jaeger perk tree - See perk tree image
- Infantry aim to +15 (from +20), Engineer aim to +10 (from +5) - Slight nerf to overwatch infantry, slight buff to double tap engineer
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where EMP cannons were not providing additional elerium on shot down UFOs
- Fixed a bug where concussion grenades were still sometimes not hitting units they should be
- Fixed a CTD when soldiers with too many aim/crit bonuses/maluses tried to fire
- Fixed a display issue where the rocket scatter when mind merged or steadied was not displaying the actual reduction in scatter
- Fixed an incorrect description on Sharpshooter
- Fixed a bug where Carlock, Van Doorn, and Friendly had buggy armor decos - Thanks Lafiir
- Misc typos
Version 1.25.05
LW Rebalance v1.25.05
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where squadsight units could ignore all Line of sight blockings
- Fixed a bug where multiple aliens had savior instead of critical system targeting
- Fixed a bug where advanced pulse lasers was being available for research far too soon
- Fixed an issue where the first officer perk description did not fit onto the screen during promotion
- Fixed some minor misc issues
Version 1.25.04
LW Rebalance v1.25.04
Strategic:
- Injury and Fatigue times are now reduced depending upon your difficulty: impossible 100%, brutal 80%, classic 60%, normal 50% - Makes injury/fatigue spirals easier to accommodate on lower difficulties
- Injury times for taking fatigued soldiers is now increased - Makes it less ideal and encourages use of other soldiers
- Having a satellite destroyed now increases panic by 10/5 in the country/continent (from 15/5) - Makes hunt missions less spikey in terms of panic increase
- Overall panic increase per month reduced to 5% per month (from 10% extra per month) - Makes late game losses/mistakes less punishing (at 12 months in, panic increases will be at 160% instead of 220%)
- When countries are at risk of leaving the council at the end of the month (i.e. they have 80 or greater panic), the % chance they leave is now equal to how much of that last panic bar is filled and at least 1% (e.g. 80 panic = 1%, 81 panic = 5%, 90 panic = 50%, 98 panic = 90%, 100 panic = 100%) - Makes it a lot less certain to lose countries when they are in the red. Do note, the chance is still then reduced by 50% for a satellite in the country or 20% for a satellite in the continent.
- The displayed rating when completing an exalt mission will no longer always be Terrible - should feel a little nicer (note: it's not perfect, but a lot better)
- Gene mods credit cost increased, meld cost decreases - Encourages doing multiple at once to save time (as the time and credit cost is static)
- Improved the cost display when gene modding so it makes more intuitive sense - QoL
- Inserted an image for Adrenaline Surge when gene modding - QoL
- All autopsies either require ONLY xenobiology (for biologic aliens) or alien computers (for robotic aliens) - Large simplification, prevents getting stuck without capability to autopsy and wondering why
- EMP Weapons now requires Advanced Gauss technology (instead of pulse) - Due to the strength of laser cannons in the air game, gauss was left behind, especially when EMP game through pulse, this makes both laser and gauss more reasonable to progress towards
Tactical:
- Research boost on medium/large/elarge to 100/200/400 (from 200/400/800) - Makes the regular troops a little easier
- Explosives all gain 1 penetration - Increase in their overall effectiveness and a little balance on the rocketeer
- Steadying a weapon now reduces rocket scatter by 50% - With the new steady mechanics, it's not as abusive to set up, so this should work fine again for scatter reduction
- The engineer's Repair ability now shows the # of charges on the ability bar - QoL
- Repair (the ability from engineer's mechanic perk) no longer works with sidearms but it does work with the stun rifle - It was bugged granting infinite ammo, and free actions, and I couldn't fix it so I had to disable it on sidearms
Equipment:
- Smoke grenade radius increased to 3.5 (from 3) - Makes it more useful at covering more units
- Smoke grenades now last through 2 enemy turns (instead of just 1 enemy turn) - Significant increase to the usefulness as now it won't end after your turn but after the enemy's 2nd turn - gives you twice as long protection
- Flashbangs renamed to Concussion Grenades - Makes more sense with how they now work
- Autosentry turrent weight to 0 (from 1) but no longer grants opportunist - Opportunist was bugged and was not working, couldn't fix
Perks:
- Packmaster now also grants a free smoke grenade and free medikit - Needed a buff and this fits the theme of being a pack mule
- FitH renamed to Fragmentation and grants all explosives a 50% chance to deal 1.5x damage - Was too powerful being able to move and fire so accurately, also scatter reduction was frustrating (as it did nothing) when you picked up a blaster launcher
- Sapper no longer grants +1 damage - Balance, it's extremely powerful cover destruction was enough without the additional damage
- Mind Merge now reduces rocket scatter by 50% (from 25%) - It was never really used for scatter reduction at only 25%
- Hyper-Reactive Pupils grants +20 aim after a miss (from +10 aim) - Finally figured out how to modify these, significant buff
- Depth Perception grants +20 aim and crit against targets you have height advantage against (from +5 aim and crit) - significant buff, very powerful for flying armors
- Advanced Bone Marrow reduces injury times by 30% (from 25%) - Slight buff
- Secondary Heart grants 5 more turns to the bleed-out timer (from 2 more) - Buffed to help soldiers not die
- Dense smoke now further protects units in the smoke: psionic hit chances are reduced by 50% and explosives deal no damage - Makes it quite effective at pulling through situations where you are likely to eat a bad grenade or take some bad psionic attacks (e.g. mind control). Also makes it more effective at shutting down psionic units, using it as a sort of concussion grenade effective against psionics.
- Dense smoke radius boost to +30% (from +40%) - Similar size due to increase base smoke radius, slight tone down due to extra functionality and too large can be a problem for use
- Smoke and Mirrors increases throw range by 15% - Important to make the new concussion grenades easier to land behind enemy cover and to stretch out smoke when it's used for units far away or for aliens at the edge of vision
- Smoke and Mirrors grants 1 smoke grenade (from 2) - Having it grant 2, with their decreased use, was pushing the smoke grenade item out of competitiveness, especially because soldiers also pick up an extra smoke grenade with combat drugs, dense smoke, and packmaster
- Ranger, Mechanic, Master Mechanic all increase throw range by 15% (from 20/10/20/20%) - Standardization and slight pull back as the ranges were getting too far
- Grenadier increases destructive grenade range by 15% (from 10%) - Slight buff, standardization
- First Aid and Field Medic now also reduces squad wide injuries sustained during battle by 1 HP (multiple instances do stack) - Buff to the perk, makes it useful for the squad. As an example: If you had 3 individuals with first aid, and someone took 3 health damage of injury, after the battle they would not be wounded.
XCOM:
- Platform Stability replaced on rocketeer with Mayhem - Platform stability was a late pick which sometimes meant you were close to the blaster launcher which made it a feel-bad choice a lot of the time, plus both LnL and RfA are very competitive
- Bullseye replaced with Fragmentation on the Shogun - Bullseye was too strong and the grenadier build needed a little more love
- Mayhem replaced with Fragmentation on the Engineer - Help make the engineer and infantry grenadiers a little more distinct
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some situations in which a concussion grenade wouldn't disorient someone that it should (on the edges and directly on the target behind cover)
- Fixed an issue where a description erroneously said the rocketeer gains 10 will during rank ups
- Fixed an issue where you could target floating invisible units
- Fixed a bug where will to survive was still granting more DR when the unit got low in life
Version 1.25.03
LW Rebalance v1.25.03
Tactical:
- Reaction fire no longer has a -20% aim malus - Simplification of game mechanics and gives a boost to overwatch builds and overwatch in general
- Aliens have -20 aim on normal difficulty (from -10 aim) and -10 aim on classic difficulty (from 0 aim) - Makes the lowest difficulty a little easier
Perks:
- Deadeye renamed to Bullseye and has a new perk icon that is quite fitting - QoL so the perk icons for deadeye and mechanic don't overlap
- Suppression no longer automatically triggers on uncovered units at the end of the turn - A lot of testing has convinced me this was a failed mechanic and this should help gameplay by making suppression more effective
- Snapshot no longer grants AP discounting actions for aliens - It was too frustrating and unpredictable
- Will to Survive reduces injury time by 30% but no longer grants extra DR when you lose life - Buff to the usefulness of biotanks, prevents the perk from making enemies difficult to kill when they get low in life
Aliens:
- Grit only appears on leaders - The stacking DR was frustrating when you got aliens low in hp and felt like too much DR for regular soldiers
- Drones can now overwatch - Makes them a little more effective
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where ranger and death from afar were on the wrong ranks for sniper
Version 1.25.02
LW Rebalance v1.25.02
Notice:
- IF YOU UPGRADE TO THIS PATCH and were using PI or more than PI, YOU MUST DISABLE THEM. Use the console command and type "SetMedalPowerA 28" and "SetMedalPowerA 32" to turn those 2nd wave options off before you upgrade
QoL:
- Council Requests will now always display a popup (even if you can't fulfill them)
- New 2nd wave option, Wolverine Blood: reduces injury times by 50%
- Perfection Information and More Than Perfeciton Information 2nd wave options are now ON by default and can be turned off by the new second wave option: Hidden Chances
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that was triggering snapshot on thinmen too often
- Fixed a bug where some alien leaders were getting more damage than intended
- Fixed a bug where DR was getting truncanted incorrectly
- Fixed a bug where selection the UI option: "Hide enemy health bars" wasn't working
- Fixed a bug where some UFOs would still have too few aliens
- Fixed a balance issue where ITZ was not supposed to get an extra ammo on the lastest major release, that was accidently left in, removed it so ITZ has no affect on ammo
- Fixed a CTD that occured when steadying a weapon and aliens were on OW
- Fixed a CTD that occured during council mission drop-ins if xcom soldiers were on OW before the drop-in
- Correctly an issue where Ready For Anything wasn't properly removing the reaction fire aim malus in many situations -- couldn't really fix it, so just removed it
- Fixed a bug where explosions sometimes wouldn't destroy corpses
Version 1.25.01
LW Rebalance v1.25.01
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where DR from cover was not properly being applied to explosives
- Fixed a bug that indicated Psi Inspiration had no AP cost
- Clarified some wordings so that the use of perks is more obvious
- Fixed a bug where reseting a soldier's perks would sometime temporarily reset the number of item slots they had
Version 1.25.00
LW Rebalance v1.25.00
Strategic:
- You gain twice as many destroyed and intact UFO Power Sources from UFOs - Be sure not to destroy them during your mission!
- Lowered the frequency of basic resource council requests (especially for weapon fragments) - Feels a little less focused on the fragments
- When no research is occuring there is now an indicator next to the research tab to inform the player - Makes forgetting a lot harder, QoL improvement
- Fatigue is no longer not applied during exalt missions or base assaults - Was a remnant from green fog that's unnecessarily confusing
- You gain exalt clues 20% faster - Makes the final exalt mission occur earlier
Tactical:
- Steady no longer grants combat readiness at the same time - Slight nerf to ITZ builds, less complexity to the ability
- Steady cancels if the unit can not see any enemies at the beginning or end of the turn - Prevents doing gamey behavior like moving a unit in, seeing enemies, steadying your troops, then moving them out to break LoS so the AI derps and walks into you and then you can active ITZ on them
Perks:
- Vital Point Targeting grants 30% more damage (from 40%) - Balance
- Extra Conditioning health to +1 (from +2) - Balance
- Grit health to +1 (from +3) - Balance
- Sharpshooter's penetration back to +2 but only applies to targets in cover - It was too broad previously, keeps the perk specific against targets in cover
- Mayhem grants 70% damage to strike rifles (from 60%) - Buff to mayhem strike rifle sniper
- Hit and Run damage boost to +50% base damage (from +1) but only occurs during critical hits - Buff to the shotgun scout
- Revamped Disabler: When wielding a sniper/strike/arc rifle: gain Disabling Shot [Fire a 1 damage shot that disables the target's main weapon, <XGAbility:DisablingShotCooldown/>-turn cooldown]. When wielding any other weapon: Steadied shots jam enemies weapons, forcing a reload before they can fire again (each enemy weapon can only be jammed once).
- New Perk (full circle to LW 1.0) Killer Instinct: This unit deals +25% more critical damage - Replaces the old weapon targeting
- Double Tap now provides +10 aim if the unit has not expended any action points (+20 with sniper rifles) - Balance for the sniper rifle vs strike rifle, tone done on other classes
- In The Zone now grants +1 ammo - Gives the ITZ streaks more firing power
Equipment:
- Sniper rifle penetration to 1 (from 2) but gains 1 mobility and 10 crit - Slight tone down
- Strike rifle crit to 20 (from 30) - Slight nerf
- Psi Grenade range increased to 15 (from 12.5) - Helps accommodate the larger radius
- Sniper Plasma Rifle damage vs squadsight targets to +2 (from +3) - Balance
- Heavy Plasma Rifle deals +5 damage against targets in cover (from +4 damage against airborne targets) - Buffed, balance
- SMG mobility to 1 (from 2) but gain shotgun-like proximity damage if the target is within 10 tiles (+5% of base damage per tile up to +50% at point blank) - Makes it less about gaining movement and more about the weapon and provides a 2nd option for in-close weapons
XCom:
- Gene modification times reduced by 33% - Makes them a more reasonable use for your valuable resources
- Starting stat modification to multiple classes - Balance
- Perk tree modification - see Perk Tree image
Aliens:
- Improved alien AI to suppress less often against targets that are uncovered
- Multiple alien leaders lost the snapshot perk - Was too ubiquitous
- Beserker leaders significant toned down in strength - Were too resilient
- All Mutons gain deflection shield (from just leaders) - They derp so much they really need it, and deflection shield only works if they didn't take an action (i.e. XCOM wasn't attacked)
- Seekers gain +3 DR when strangling instead of 50% DR - Makes it more likely that you can damage it with high damage weapons
- Cyberdiscs lose awareness but gain +3 DR when closed - Their open and close forms were really cool but didn't seem to add enough to how you deployed against them - this makes them a lot more vulnerable when open. Also the awareness on their OW with their flying made them a little too difficult to deal with
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a super tricky native code bug about savior not granting revive
- Finally fixed a bug where aliens would make lid or sectoid noises even if there were no lids or sectoids - been hunting this one for a long time
- Berserkers that are panicking will no longer still cause enemies around them to be overpowered
- Fixed a bug where overpower would sometime trigger by cycling through your units
- Fixed a bug where some AP discounting perks prevented triggering of overpower
- Fixed some typos
- Fixed a bug where sniper/strike gauss rifles were still bypassing hardened
- Fixed a bug where small and medium UFOs would sometimes fill with significantly less (~25%) aliens than intended
- Fixed a bug with flashbang abilities overlapping AP grenades
- Fixed a bug where you'd sometimes have 0 lids on your first terror mission
- Fixed a bug where some units would revive (kind of) on UFO missions
Version 1.24.17
LW Rebalance v1.24.17
Tactical:
- Flashbangs work on both XCOM and alien units and do not pass through cover - Makes more sense, prevents some silly uses like using through stone cliff, Just a note: this took szmind and I together combined over 8 hours of work and we finally got it to work - was very tricky
Perks:
- SHIVs are no longer effected by overpower - Just felt too unintuitive
Equipment:
- Flashbang/Psi Greande radius increased to 4/6 (from 3.5/5) - Buff to accommodate more difficult use to help minimize effect on class/item balance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the ITZ icon was colored purple even if the unit was not steadied
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness would sometimes not grant the aim bonus when units were steadied at the beginning of their turn
- Fixed a bug where squadsight flanks were not acting as actual flanks in multiple scenarios
- Fixed a bug where some thin men drop-in didn't have snapshot
- Fixed a bug where the sharpshooter bonus was being displayed as Lieutenant
- Fixed a bug where the proximity sensor did not gain 5 def
- Fixed an issue where multiple aliens did not have initial research levels
Version 1.24.16
LW Rebalance v1.24.16
Aliens:
- Muton aim reduced to 65 (from 70) - Slight nerf
- Muton will reduced to 10 (from 30) - Slight nerf
- Thin Man aim to 65 (from 75), health to 6 (from 7) - Accommodates snapshot pickup
- Thin Men all pick up snapshot - Reduces the strength of OW against them (and somewhat in general) and gives them a little more spikey hitting power
Perks:
- Snapshot no longer grants additional aim against targets in cover - It was bypassing XCOM taunt capabilities and punishing unit with certain perks (like Ready For Anything -- which was very gamey to try to 'shut off'), the additional shot chance is more powerful than previously predicted (for example: 60% chance of an extra shot is actually, on average 230% (!) more damage (1 + 0.6 + 0.6^2 + 0.6^3 + 0.6^4 = 2.3)
- Hit and Run +2 damage reverted to +1 - Balance, keep the scout in-line with the snapshot nerf - It was also a little too powerful on covert ops (with ranger, pistols were doing 6 dmg)
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD that occured whenever selecting a grenade
Version 1.24.15
LW Rebalance v1.24.15
Tactical:
- Aliens gain 10 aim on impossible difficulty (from +5 aim) - Slight increase of difficulty on impossible
- Small UFOs will have 2 outsiders after the 2nd month - increases their difficulty as you enter the mid game
- Reaction fire and snapshot no longer ignore cover DR (just cover Def) - It trivialized too much cover-based content which is kind of the opposite of the intention of this mod. Some of you may have noticed the early game being far too easy due to the strength of reaction fire and snapshot.
Perks:
- Danger Zone area of effect increased back to cover a full circle around the primary target (from 1.2 tiles to 1.6 tiles) - It was a little too restricted for the benefit
- Mayhem no longer grants +dmg to SAW/LMGs - Was overkill with the buffed double tap and the increased DZ radius
- Double tap aim bonus to +15 (from +20) - Slight tone back
- Ranger, Mechanic, and Master Mechanic throw range increase applies to all devices (instead of just grenades) - Consistency
- Hit and Run damage boost to +2 (from +1) - Was a little weak vs the other options
Equipment:
- Proximity Sensor no longer grants awareness but instead grants 5 defense - Awareness was too powerful due to more frequent use of combat readiness
XCOM:
- Shogun: Shadowstep replaced with Snapshot - Upgrade to increase offensive power to compete with grenadier and collateral damage
- Shogun: Sprinter replaced with Shadowstep - Sprinter was a dead perk
- Infantry: Packmaster replaced with Mayhem - Gives the infantry grenadier some more damage to make it more distinct from the engineer but also the extra grenades on a shooter grenadier seemed a little overkill. Plus, it has some light synergy with suppression.
- Scout: Full LCPL and CPL ranks swapped - Allows the defining perks of the scout to come on earlier (like other classes)
- Rocketeer: Danger Zone and EC swapped - Tandem+DZ used to be really powerful on the rocketeer so it was made difficult to synergize. However, with tandem not being as strong the synergy is fairly welcomed
- Marauder: Aim growth decreased by 5 - Balance
- Medic: Will growth increased by 5 - Balance
- Rocketeer: Aim growth decreased by 5 - Balance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where sometimes explosives could jam weapons
- Fixed some grammar problems with the reports from the scout's reconnaissance ability
- Fixed a bug where ITZ and Weapon targeting were triggering even if the unit was not steadied
- Fixed a bug where ITZ would still not have the correct HUD color sometimes
- Fixed a bug where alien weapons could not be sold on the grey market
Version 1.24.14
LW Rebalance v1.24.14
Perks:
- Sharpshooter penetration to 1 (from 2) but grants it in all situations (from just against targets in cover) - Pen against targets in cover isn't that great with OW and snapshot avoiding cover DR
- Snapshot chance to fire again reduced to 20% (from 30%) on non-strike rifle weapons - Was too strong considering the other benefits as well, eclipsing other perks on the infantry/assault
- Ranger grants a 20% range increase to all grenades (from 10%) - Boosts it on non-shooting classes (support/grenadiers)
XCOM:
- Infantry have Tandem Warheads replaced with Sapper
- Infantry have Lock N' Load and Ranger swapped - Ranger is more useful for all builds, and this grants the OW build good ammo early as an option, and means the grenadier build doesn't have to get LnL (which, for a grenadier isn't that great)
- Medic swaps Shadowstep for Ranger - Shadowstep wasn't that competitive, and early ranger is good for the support build
Aliens:
- Modified some alien leader level timings - Probably not noticable by most players, but was affecting my OCD =P
Bug Fixes:
- LMG type weapon ammo now correctly set to 6 (from 3)
- Fixed some bugs with multiple SHIVs on the same mission being inactivated too often
Version 1.24.13
LW Rebalance v1.24.13
QoL:
- Start year for the game changed to 2030 - Just don't want it to be in the past anymore =P
- The F1 crit summary now shows the weapon name and how much crit it grants - It used to just say "weapon", provides a little more info
- Included Lafiir's new "Meld-Countdown for Longwar" mod - This displays how long a canister has above it, gives an arrow to the location of any discovered meld canister, and display an overall map info panel regarding the status of recoverable meld in the top right. Many thanks to her for this great work! :)
Tactical:
- All crit damage is applied before determine weapon range - A minor fix, basically this just means that if you do 8 damage and crit, it's increased to 12, and then the damage range is calculated (10-14). It used to be that the non-laser non-pulse weapons would calculate a damage range and then apply crit bonuses to each number in that range.
Perks:
- Will to Survive grants %DR equal to half of the %HP lost - Similar to Grit it helps tanks keep tanking when things get dire and buffs the perk since it lost it's extra DR when cover DR went up
- Will to Survive's 30% DR when protected by cover is no longer cover-based: this means that it is not skipped during reaction fire or with units with snapshot - Makes Will to Survive a little stronger and simplifies the perk to be consistent with other perks: if you're in cover, the perk is working
- Reconnaissance (scout's primary perk) no longer grants free battle scanner charges - Nerf to the scout. Also makes more room for both the proximity sensor and battle scanner small items.
- Disabling Shot renamed to Disabler: Non-reaction shots against humans and autopsied aliens have a 25% chance to jam the enemy weapon, forcing a reload before they can fire again (each enemy weapon can only be jammed once). When wielding a sniper, strike, or arc rifle, gain Disabling Shot [Fire a 1 damage shot that disables the target's main weapon]. - Makes it useful without strike/sniper/arc rifles and when not using disabling shot.
- Weapon Targeting changed to: Non-reaction shots against humans and autopsied aliens have a 25% chance to jam their weapon (100% chance if steadied), forcing a reload before they can fire again (each enemy weapon can only be jammed once).
Equipment:
- Motion tracker charges to 1 (from 2) - Makes them a little less effective as a replacement scout
- Proximity sensor no longer requires any technology to produce (from requiring seeker autopsy) - Makes it more readily available
- Drum mags weight to 1 (from 2) - Makes it much more reasonable to equip
- 4-pack battle scanner changed to a 3-pack - Balance vs proximity sensor, make the scout feel less mandatory as anti-seeker tech
XCOM:
- Weapon Targeting and Holo Rounds swapped on engineer - Pushes holo later making it more valuable on the early scout and SHIV. Pushes support into a disabling effect.
- Goliath loses 10 aim on level ups - It's shooter build with RfA and LeU was (IS) really strong
Aliens:
- Seeker DR reduced to 50% (from 65%) when strangling - With harder detection this seemed reasonable
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LONG-TIME bug with EU/EW/LW1.0 code (YAY) that solved many cases of when flanking was occuring or not occuring erroneously - Szmind and I worked for many hours on this =D
- Fixed a BIG BUG where explosives sometimes got or did not get DR on flanked units erroneously - This is a nice fix as it has been a problem for a while
- Fixed another coding bug that should have no effect on player's experience of the game but whatever, it's fixed =P
- Maybe fixed a bug about reviving drones
- Fixed a bug where the HUD UI was suggesting ITZ would be a free shot even when the unit wasn't steadied
Version 1.24.12
LW Rebalance v1.24.12
Strategy:
- Lowered the number of outsiders possible on large landeds by around 25% - Makes them easier to tackle
Tactical:
- Steadying your weapon now also activates combat readiness - Buff to steadying, so that even if you get hit or lose it you still have some advantage
Perks:
- In The Zone only allows shooting after triggering (from shooting, reloading, OWing, hunkering, OfA), steadying the weapon grants 100% chance (from 30% per enemy), and the normal chance is 0% per enemy (from 10% per enemy) - This is a much more consistent version. You have to steady to activate it again, but when you do, you have 100% chance of activating it. It grants 4 shots (assuming full ammo).
- Shadowstep no longer grants +10 defense in cover and instead just grants +2 mobility (from +1 mobility) - The cover defense was bugging out and was making a complex perk needlessly more complicated, slight buff
- Extra Conditioning fatigue and injury reduction to 20% (from 10%) - buffed
- Hit and Run no longer allows OW after acting - The entire purpose of hit and run was to not do double shots. When OW was weak, it was fine to allow a weak OW. OW now is quite strong and is kind of turning HnR back into a double shot perk. The will prevent that and encourage other actions.
- Steadfast now grants immunity to being overpowered - Makes the perk more valuable
- Double Tap can now trigger after moving, has no aim bonus on the 2nd shot. However, the perk grants +20 aim on any shot fired at 2 (max) APs - Gives much improved flexibility to the perk while still rewarding stationary shooting
Equipment:
- LMG ammo to 6 (from 5) - Slight boost
- Drum mags can no longer be equipped by rookies - Prevents a bug during promotion
XCOM:
- Precision shot and Vital Point Targeting swapped on the sniper - Less forcing the sniper into shooting uncovered biologics and precision shot is more of a unique TSGT perk as well
- Shock and Awe and Danger Zone swapped on the rocketeer - Sometimes the large AoE rocket might be undesirable, this is more of a universal boost for a TSGT perk
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where will to survive was sometimes not granting the -10 defense
- Updated tech tree to reflect position of psi mastery
- Updated in-game tech tree to remove mind control and replace with psi mastery
- The Superheavy Laser (SHIV weapon) now requires basic lasers to unlock (was accidentally in the advanced laser pool)
- Fixed the sightline mutators so that multiple log errors don't appear and the chance of finding invisible units and/or the aliens firing on said units should be removed - Thanks to szmind for all his hard work on this one :)
- Fixed some bugs in the code that handles multiple SHIVs
- Fixed a bug where tracker would sometimes activate an inactive version radar in the top left of the HUD
- Cleaned up some log reports from triggering by improving some base code
- Fixed a bug with combat readiness not turning the armor color lighter in some circumstances
- Fixed a bug on some popups being incorrectly colored
Version 1.24.11
LW Rebalance v1.24.11
Soldier Esthetics:
- Added weapon-aware shoulderpads (and ammo-pouches) to Phalanx, Aegis, Archangel, TacVest, Banshee - Thanks to Lafiir again for all the work
- Restored the vanilla assault and sniper looks when used with shotguns/strike&sniper-rifle - Thanks to Lafiir again for all the work
Strategic:
- Lowered the cost of improved avionics, armored fighters, and UFO counter measures - They were a little too cost prohitibitve
- The time before the map displays when entering the skyranger loadout screen decreased significantly - A little faster, less likely to popup while you are already loading out a soldier
- Lowered the rate of panic increase for failing an exalt mission from 20 panic (40 on DW 0.5) to 10 - Make unsuccessful exalt missions feel less punishing
Tactical QoL:
- The HUD icons for aliens will now reveal who is overwatching you by placing a little target icon on their alien head - This is awesome, as sometimes you forget if your soldier was in sight of the target or not, so now you know that if you see an alien head with a target icon on it that someone has you in their overwatch. Now, if you dont' see an alien head with a target sign on it, you know you are safe from those aliens you can see.
- The HUD icons for aliens will now turn into a special alien leader symbol if the alien is a leader - This is awesome too as it helps you figure out and make it very obvious you are fighting a leader (yes, I know, the symbol looks like the old exalt symbol, but that's actually the alien leader symbol that exalt was just using b/c they idolize the alien leaders) ;)
- The game will no longer zoom in on each soldier that is corroded at the beginning of each turn - Felt like a waste of time and was frustrating if you had a lot of corroded guys
Equipment:
- Proximity sensors weight to 0 (from 1) - Buff
Aliens:
- Lowered the 'growth' rate increase of damage resistance on Outsiders by half - Makes them easier to damage even when you take a long time to get to them
- Muton leaders gain 3 health and 10 aim - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where injury/fatigue times that were increased due to reduced squadsizes was not working - You should notice more injury/fatigue on your soldiers
- Fixed a bug where UFO missions were being generated too much in 'clusters' on DW games - They should be more spread out now
- Fixed a bug where if a unit on OW was hit, afterwards they would sometimes appear to ignore cover ignoring abilities (like snapshot)
- Fixed a HUGE bug on exalt data recovery where they were getting the exalt troops of a covert op extraction - Whoopsies. No wonder everyone was saying they were so easy. WARNING: DATA RECOVERIES ARE NOW APPROPRIATELY MUCH MORE DIFFICULT
- Fixed "Comradery" description from being too long and not being shown in-game
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots at "close range" (1 tile adjacent) to non-flanked units in cover would get a significant aim bonus on top of ignoring cover - Not that it really matters as 99% of the time the shot had 100% accuracy
- Updated "hunker" description to be more accurate
- Fixed an incorrect description on in-game sprinter
- Fixed a bug where the HMEC3 had 1 secondary weapon slot and the HMEC2 has 2 (it's supposed to be the opposite)
- Fixed some mistakes in the in-game tech tree
- Fixed some .log bugs
- Fixed a bug where danger zone was increasing the radius of explosives by SQRT(1.33) instead of 33%
Version 1.24.10
LW Rebalance v1.24.10
QoL:
- Lowered the game speed changing interval again to +33% and -25% - Gives players a little more control over speed adjustments
- Set initial game speed to 1.33 (from 1.5) - 1.5 was a little fast for some players (you can still edit this yourself in the dgc.ini with the REACTION_PENALTY variable)
- Tatical game info popups are now include not just the perk, but the ability the perk is granting - Makes the underlying mechanics of the game more obvious
Perks:
- Snapshot now lets units ignore cover def and DR if their target is overwatching or suppressing - Simulates taking a shot quick enough that the target can't get back in cover yet (similar to normal reaction shots)
- Snapshot chance for a 0 AP action to 30% (60% with a strike rifle) (from 40%/70%) - Accommodates bonus against overwatching/suppressing units
- Smoke and Mirrors reaction fire avoidance is specific to support grenade actions (instead of all non-shot actions) - Some actions were unintended to be avoiding reaction fire with this perk
Equipment:
- Javelin rockets only have 1 rocket (from 2) - Nerfed, they are really powerful with the reduced scatter and increased damage, makes the extra spare rocket a more competitive option
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an incorrect dgc.ini description
- Fixed a bug where master mechanic was granting 50% increased throw range (instead of 15%)
- Fixed a bug where wearing certain armor would cause a soldier not to show up in the game - thanks to Lafiir for the code
- Fixed some armor types so they look more appropriate - again thanks to Lafiir for the code
- Fixed some inaccuracies on the tech tree
- Fixed a bug where an exalt reminder was causing a CTD
- Fixed a bug where the engineer couldn't repair when using the sawed-off shotgun
Version 1.24.09
LW Rebalance v1.24.09
QoL:
- All items are now sorted when loading out your soldiers - THANK GOD - now it's much easier to find equipment (this took me forever)
- An enemy having an elevated shot against you not longer triggers a little red down arrow to appear on your soldiers - That down red arrow should be reserved for actually debuffs, an elevated enemy was not ideal to trigger the down arrow
- Gamespeed now adjusts by 50% up (Alt-F8) and 33% down (Alt-F7) (from double up and 50% down) and starts at 1.5x speed (from 1.0x speed) - Note: this is still dgc.ini adjustable with the REACTION_PENALTY variable
Strategic:
- The volunteer now gains every psi ability - Feel really cool to get all of the abilities on one soldier, also prevents bugging out by trying to train a psionic ability on the last mission when time can't advance and locking your volunteer in the psi lab
- Autopsy times reduced by 50%, Interrogation times increased by 30% - Makes opening up the options for other technologies quicker and makes both VPT and CST come online quicker
- Increased the # of aliens on the first terror mission - It was too easy
Tactical:
- Dashing now grants +20% movement (from +10%) - Significant increase, as your total movement will be 2.4 (instead of 2.0) which you'll see as 1.0 for the blue move and then the yellow move will be 40% further at 1.4. It was a little too insignificant at +10%.
Equipment:
- Plasma Pistol and Plasma Mauler do not require UFO Power Sources to produce - It was too much for side arms
- Gauss Autopistol and Blaster renamed to Gauss Pistol and Pulse Pistol and stats adjusted accordingly - Now each weapon tier has a basic pistol, and the upgraded heavier pistol only occurs for ballistic, laser, and pulse
- The way gauss and pulse weapons round up/down half damages (e.g. 125% base damage gauss sniper rifle = 7.5 damage, rounded down to 7 damage with +5 aim added) was always to round down and then add 5 aim -- this has been changed to rounding down but adding +crit (depending on weapon) which should yield the loss in damage (e.g. 125% base damage gauss sniper rifle would be 7 damage but would gain +20 crit [~0.7 more damage] instead of +5 aim which would more accurately reflect similar damage outputs) - The reason for this was to keep aim and damage similar: crit can more reasonably add back the damage lost. Note: The crit values added lead to slightly higher than the +0.5 damage lost in order to accommodate for the fact that crit is 1) inconsistent 2) could be absorbed by crit resistance and 3) could not apply due to 100% crit being already reached
- Laser and pulse sidearms aim to +10 (from +5) - Makes up for not getting the +1 mobility
- Arc rifle damage to 4 (from 1), but damage against mechanicals to +6 (from +7), mobility to -1 (from 0), aim to 0 (from 5), crit to 0 (from 10), and penetration to 0 (from 3) - Makes it much more effective against non-mechanical units (same damage as laser rifle) so that when equipping this weapon your unit isn't so useless against them
- SAW/LMG ammo to 4/5 (from 5/7) - Tone back on the gunner
Perks:
- Brawler DR toned down to 30% within 4 tiles (from 40%) - Slight nerf, tone down on abusing the AI at melee range
- ITZ no longer has a -5 aim/crit malus per shot fired - Buff to ITZ due to difficulty in triggering, simplification of the perk
- Snapshot and Smoke and Mirrors no longer require cover to avoid triggering reaction shots - Needless complication for the ability and makes snapshot more reasonable on the assault and S&M more reasonable to act without cover (which is dangerous enough)
- Sprinter increases dash distance from +30% to +50% - Significant buff to the perk
- Mechanic and Master mechanic grenade throw range increase to +15% (from +10%) - Buff to the support and grenadier engineers
- Mayhem grants +30% base damage to SAW/LMGs - Boost to the double tap gunner and the reaction fire on the bullet wizard
- Grit hp bonus to +3 (from +2) - Another boost to the gunner tank
- Fire in the Hole reduced rocket scatter by 50% (from 30%) - Buff to the pure rocketeer spec
Aliens:
- Seeker Damage Resistance when strangling increased to 65% (from 50%) - They lost 1 DR in the recent patches, so this is to up their strength when strangling again and encourage more use of motion tracker, proximity sensor, and or battlescanner 4-pack
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Kestrel armor would sometimes make soldiers not load into the tactical game - Thanks to Lafiir, she fixed everything
- Fixed a bug where exalt could still look like they had the snapshot perk
- Having a gene modification will not longer stop armors from having their preset decos display (thanks to lafiir for helping solve that one)
- Fixed a bug where adrenaline surge wasn't registering as a gene mod and bioelectric skin still was (again, thanks to lafiir for help)
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Fixed the radius indicator on the elerium emitter so that anyone that actually is targeted by the indicator will become stealthed
- Fixed a bug where snapshot could show up as a penalty on XCOM soldiers and Aliens and reduce their aim by 10
Version 1.24.08
LW Rebalance v1.24.08
Equipment:
- LGM damage to +175% (from +150%) - Buff to accommodate nerf of danger zone
- SAW mayhem damage decreased to 1/1/2/2/3 (from 1/2/3/4/5) - Nerf to the SAWs effectiveness as a mayhem suppression weapon to make more room for the LMG
Perks:
- Shadowstep +10 def now only works when in cover - Fix to a display issue and makes cover more important
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where hit chances were getting really messed up across the board because I'm a bad programmer
- Fixed grit description
Version 1.24.07
LW Rebalance v1.24.07 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- You can now choose if you'd like the barracks sorted by class or by rank: in defaultgamecore.ini: SPECIES_POINT_LIMIT=1 [Set to 1 (LWR default) to have the barracks sorted by class, Set to 0 (LW 1.0 default) to have the barracks sorted by rank ]
- Stun Rifle odds are now included in the in-battle skill description and when fabricating or equipping the stun rifle: Normal -> (1HP:88%, 2HP:79%, 3HP:69%, 4HP:48%, 5+HP:<7%) Elerium Batteries -> (1-3HP:93%, 4HP:88%, 5HP:79%, 6HP:69%, 7HP:48%, 8+HP:<7%)
- Armors now have automatic deco settings so they look more appropriate in the loadout - Thanks entirely to Lafiir for all her hard work on creating this, it makes all the armors distinctive, even in the tactical game -- making the already awesome soldiers look even cooler
- Improved the ticker descriptions of aliens resources, etc to make them a little more obvious what they mean - QoL
- Soldier with <24 hours of recovery now have a "soon" next to them indicate the soldier will be ready soon <2 days - helps distinguish 33 hours from 33 days
Strategic:
- You start the campaign with 5 soldiers from your home country again - Accommodates for increased mission sizes
Tactical:
- Rocketeer Scatter lowered by ~20% - Buffed
- Abduction, Terror, DLC, Council, and Exalt Data Recovery missions now allow for 6 soldiers (from 5) - I've been convinced that 6 is more of the sweet spot between overcrowding and still getting the most diversity of soldiers
- The above mission alien counts increased slightly to accommodate the increase in soldiers - for obvious reasons
Perks:
- Precision shot back to +50% damage (from +30%) - It was too weak at 30%, reverted back to 50%
- Executioner to +50 aim/crit (from +40) - It's just that getting a bonus only to hit people under 50% health is a weak premise from the beginning, buffed
- Disabling shot aim bonus to 20 (from 30) - Slight nerf to make it feel not as mandatory
- Danger Zone suppression toned back to only affect targets directly adjacent to the primary target - Minor nerf on bullet wizard (they lose the diangle target in a square), but more control over who gets suppressed so it's not triggered by uncovered units as often
- Grit to +2 hp (from +1) - Buff to gunner tank
- Ready For Anything to +0 hp (from +2) and removes the -20% aim malus that reaction shots against covered/moving targets - One of the problems with RfA on the gunner and medic OW builds was that it did nothing if you were actually going on OW, which felt bad. Now RfA will work synergistically with OW whether you use OW or have RfA trigger by buffing it's aim.
- Snapshot trigger bonus for regular shots increased to 40% (from 30%) - Makes it more competitive on the infantry and engineer
Equipment:
- Stun Rifle accuracy improved to 100% (from 60-90%) - Note: this is not it's chance to actually stun, just the chance to hit the target - Increase in chance to capture, avoiding some unobvious frustrations
- Proximity Sensor range increased to 8 tiles (from 6) - Buffed for stronger use when you don't have a scout (or even when you do)
XCOM:
- Snapshot on the Engineer replaced with Disabling Shot - Disabling shot was a better fit on the engineer. Note: disabling shot will only work with the arc rifle on the engineer
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where units flanked at squadsight ranges would become unflanked while firing thus granting cover-based damage resistance
- Fixed the turn time on save files so they reflect the actual turn instead of 1 turn less than the actual
Version 1.24.06
LW Rebalance v1.24.06 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Sleeves have been added to all sleeveless armors (as per darkmiz's recommendation) - Makes XCom look a lot less stupid - never did it because I never realized you could do it without tex mod, it was actually pretty simple edits =P
- Note: if you don't like the sleeves eclipse666 made this nice program to revert them very easily: https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/539?tab=files
Strategy Game:
- Increase cost of recruiting a soldier to 150 (from 100) - Makes each soldier more valuable and harder to replace
Aliens:
- Sectoids start with 10 more will - Makes them a little more dangerous off the bat
Bug Fixes:
- Set the default dgc.ini value of REACTION_PENALTY (for game speed) to 1.0f - It was accidentally set at 1.9f (though you can still change it to 1.9f if you prefer)
- Fixed a bug where some aliens were getting a combat readiness bonus (it should only be for xcom) - Note this should make the game overall a step easier
- Fixed an incorrect 80 meld description for reducing would times (it's 50 meld)
Version 1.24.05
LW Rebalance v1.24.05 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the first mission had floater pods on brutal difficulty still (Double Whoops!)
- Changed the DGC.ini for game speed to REACTION_PENALTY so that it's a float and will accommodate decimals
Version 1.24.04
LW Rebalance v1.24.04 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Implemented new game speed functions (Many thanks to kdm2k6 for creating a game speed mod and motivating me to expand on it and incorporate it into LWR):
- Base game speed can now be set in the defaultgamecore.ini with the variable SPECIES_POINT_LIMIT
- Every battle will now start at the game speed defined in the dgc.ini (default 1.0)
- Alt-F7 now halves the game speed (can be used repeatedly, min speed 0.25)
- Alt-F8 now doubles the game speed (can be used repeatedly, max speed 8.0)
- Alt-F9 resets the game speed to the default value set in the dgc.ini
- Action sequences (glam sequences) will not reset the game speed anymore (it will stay at whatever it is set to)
- Please note that at high speeds (>3.0) you may encounter more bugs (especially if your computer is slower or you're running a lot of other programs)
Strategy:
- Moved the DLC missions to occur ~1-2 months later - Accommodation of smaller squad sizes and fatigue problems
- Removed the "squadsize limited on this mission" and "blank" non-usable slots on the skyrange loadout screen - It was cleaner not to have it show and makes for easier scrolling
Equipment:
- Respirator Implant defense bonus to +5 (from +10) - Slight nerf, prevents defense stacking from getting too high
- Cognitivie Enhancer defense bonus to +5 (from +10) - Slight nerf, prevents defense stacking from getting too high
- Psi Screen defense bonus to +5 (from +10) - Slight nerf, prevents defense stacking from getting too high
Bug Fixes:
- Removed some entries that shouldn't have been in some descriptions (e.g. SHIV repair)
- Fixed a bug where the first mission had floater pods (Whoops!)
- Fixed a bug where inner fire was granting you more aim without psi mastery
- Fixed a bug where shadowstep's 10 defense wasn't displaying properly in the F1 panels
- Updated some incomplete descriptions in F1
- Fixed a bug where seraph and archangel armor were not granting tactical sense
Version 1.24.03
LW Rebalance v1.24.03 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- First mission has +1/2 additional aliens (on brutal/impossible) - It was a little too easy
- Chance of generating a hunt mission after a successful scout mission decreased to 35% (from 50%) - Accommodates a little more when you get poor RNG and a bunch of scouts show up
Tactical:
- Slowed down the rate of new alien appearances by ~7% - Slight decrease in the rate that new aliens appear, it was just a little too fast
- Steadying a weapon grants +50 aim/crit (from +40) - Boost, as technically it should be powerful enough to replace 2 shots or 1 overwatch and 1 shot -- was a little too ineffective at +40 aim/crit
- Color of armor changed back from teal to green (and when combat readiness is active, green to light green) - sychronizes with the pink to light pink when the turn is ended, makes more intuitive sense
- Abduction alien numbers changed to 6-8/8-10/10-12/12-14 - More challenging on the harder abductions, a little more spread based on difficulty
- Reduced the chance of a pod containing a 2nd ethereal by 80% (I think! The code is tricky... but it tested fine the few times I got it) - They should mostly work alone
XCOM:
- CST replaces snapshot and swaps with shadowstep - Shadowstep is quite strong on a defensive MEC due to the 10 extra defense and snapshot does very little on a MEC due to the requirement for cover
Aliens:
- Forced removed snapshot from exalt - It was too strong on them and the native hardcode was too difficult to work around
- Increased ethereal hp to 30 (from 20) - They are a lot less dangerous when they don't come in pairs, accommodation for the less frequent appearances
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that was assigning twice as many alien artifacts as intended
- Fixed a bug where the aliens would sometimes go on overwatch when the only thing they could see was a battle scanner
- Fixed a bug where the 'Y' shortcut for overwatch wasn't working if the unit could only see enemies in squadsight
- Fixed a bug where damaged alien artifacts would sometimes sell for more than the equivalent undamaged alien artifact and cause a correction code to activate that was malfunctioning and could further increaese the price
Version 1.24.02
LW Rebalance v1.24.02 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
- Second wave option "Cinematic Mode" renamed to "Elite XCOM" so that it's not so innately insulting
Equipment:
- Illuminator Gunsight crit to 0 (from -15) but grants the executioner perk (like LW 1.0) - The perk is fun but doesn't exist on XCOM outside of jaegers and snipers. This makes it more likely players will use it and makes the gunsight more unique than just another scope.
- Archangel and Seraph armor defense increased to 10/15 (from 0/5) - Makes them even more defensive when flying or in cover. Buffed.
Aliens:
- Only floater leaders (instead of all floaters) have Critial System Targeting - Makes a pack of floaters a LOT less dangerous against SHIVs/MECs
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some spelling and grammatical errors in some descriptions
- Fixed a bug with heavy floater leaders upgrading erratically at leader levels 4, 6, and 8
- Fixed some commenting errors in the dgc.ini
- Fixed a CTD when snapshot was used against units with reactive targeting sensors
- Changed the name of "Close Range Flank" to just "Close Range" to avoid confusion thinking that the target should be flanked (and a flanked indicator should appear) when really it just acts as if they have no bonuses from cover if you are directly adjacent to them (because technically, they are NOT flanked)
Version 1.24.01
LW Rebalance v1.24.01 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Included another linux install script (from maeriden2) that might work if players are having trouble with the first script
Bug Fixes:
- Updated psi tree on perk tree image
- Scout now correctly has Snapshot on the perk tree (accidentally had sentinel) - Whoopsies
- Fixed a bug where reseting a unit's perk accidentally gave them deflection shield and/or growth
- Incorrect description of Assault Rifle ammo in the research view
- Added a slight hp coloration to the pink 'end turn' hp color to indicate if a unit has combat readiness active
Version 1.24.00
LW Rebalance v1.24.00 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Country bonuses tweaked - balance based on current and recent changes
- Number of soldiers gained per month lowered slightly - accommodates for fewer soldiers needed due to less missions and more restricted mission sizes
- Cost for a new soldier increased to 100 (from 50) - Same reason as above
Air Game:
- Number of Scout UFOs x7 but occur everywhere instead of just in countries where XCOM has satellites (1 scout always appears where a satellite exists) - Grants more chances for XCOM to down UFOs. This gives XCOM more room to still down UFOs even if they miss some or can't send their planes up yet. This is a huge change strategically. In LW 1.0 and all previous LWR versions, the aliens tend to overwhelm 6 interceptors and commanders are somewhat forced to expand to another continent in order to deal with the UFOs over 2 continents, thereby granting them 12 interceptors. Thus, expanding has little to no effect on the # of UFOs you encounter but allows you to field more interceptors against said UFOs. Now, the entire world has lots of UFOs, and not expanding means you won't get as many UFOs and you won't get overwhelmed. If you do expand, you can expect more UFOs. This gives the player some agency to try to protect more of the world and thus fight more UFOs. It makes more intuitive sense in how the strategic game should operate.
- The chance to trigger a satelite hunt after scouting halved - Makes up for increased # of scouts
- Number of Scout, Research, Abductions, and Terror Missions decreases by 10% (multiplicatively) each month - Significantly reduces late game mission density
- Number of Research UFOs increased to 4x (from 2x) but occur over the entire world instead of just where XCOM has satellites (1 always appears where a satellite exists) - While having double landeds meant more resources and less RNG, it also felt 'forced' to do all of the landed UFOs and let to more burn out - now with the landed occuring all over you'll get less vs the previous 200%
- Number of Bombing UFOs tripled - Accommodates for less panic on bombing runs
- Number of Overseer UFOs reduced to 1 per month (from 3-5) - Reduction in mission density and overseer spam
- The Aliens' chance to gain bonus research for untouched UFOs removed - It was not really possible to control with all the new UFOs, it was found to be more reasonable just to remove it
- Panic increase for any UFO mission when it is not damaged reduced to 1 (from 2) Note: if UFO is attacked and takes any damage it is 0 - Makes the increased UFOs not raise panic so much
- Panic increase for bombing runs reduced by 75% (at it is still reduced proportionally to the amount of damage the bomber has) - Accommodates for more possible bombing runs
- Successful UFO Research missions award ~1/3 the research but 10% more alien reasearch per month - Accommodates for the higher number off the bat and the decreased number in the late game
- Aircraft boosters cost 25-50% less corpses - Makes them more reasonable to acquire and deploy
- The chance of an interceptor detecting a UFO in a country without a satelitte increased to 7% (from 4%) - Makes it more reasonable to field interceptors where you can't field satellites to detect UFOs
- Countries will start to send firestorms in the later game when helping you down UFOs - Helps prevent their additional ships from actually slowing down your sortie
Resources:
- Meld containers grant 10% more meld per month - Significant increase in meld container amounts in the end game
- All missions reward 10% more elerium, alloy, weapon fragments, and alien artifacts per month - accommodates for decreased mission density during the late game
- Abductions reward 10% more cash per month - Accommodates for decreased abduction rates as game progresses
- Terror missions reward 10% more cash per civilian saved - Accommodates for decreased terror mission rates as game progresses
- Alloys and Elerium from UFOs decreased by 10% - slight reduction in accumulation for balance
- Grey market equipment selling prices increased by approximately 50% - Makes it more worthwhile
Tactical:
- Units in cover are now considered "Close Range Flanked" and act as if flanked when the distance between them and their attacker is less than 1 tile (directly adjacent) - Makes sense, allows for easier flanks, and prevents SHIVs from granting cover to close range aliens
- Smoke no longer just affects the target's defense, it now also affects the shooters aim - Makes sense (verisimilitude and intuitive gameplay), but more importantly pushes smoke away from always just a buff and more towards strategical use (as it's defensive in nature only now) and depending upon the situation (e.g. it can be used to lower the aim of enemies)
- Number of soldiers on abductions, terror missions, exalt data recovery, council missions reduced to 5/5/5/5 (from 6/8/6/8) - Despite map restrictions, both the RNG and slog were problems with these missions. Overall it should increase the overall pace of these missions as well as significantly reduce the number of full map activations and thus poor tactical RNG. Also, it clears up a little more room for more mobile strategies like flanking, moving to elevation, etc.. Last, it helps prevent CTDs due to too many enemies activated at once.
- Landed UFOs no longer increase the availability of future aliens (previously +1-4 months depending upon difficulty) but instead, the aliens on the larger the UFOs have higher stats and leader levels - It didn't really make sense that if you didn't shoot down a UFO the aliens were different because it landed, this also helps make the larger UFOs a harder
- Number of aliens on medium, large, and very large UFOs decreased considerably - makes them less of a slog to fight through and accommodates their increased difficulty, prevents crashes
- Reaction Fire ignores DR from cover (as well as defense) - Makes high DR units in cover much more suceptible to reaction fire (e.g. Mutons), also makes sense if the unit in cover doesn't have the cover defense, they shouldn't have the cover DR either
- Red Fog now also affects melee damage (up to 70% reduction) - Makes sense and helps deal with melee units that get up close
- XCOM Scamper will only occur once per turn - Prevents players from using XCOM scamper to gain multiple extra moves and trivialize some content
- Quenchgun foundry project grants ballistic and gauss weapons +1 penetration against mechanical units (from +1 penetration against all units) - nerfed to put it more in line with beam strengthening and to tone back gauss weapons
- DR from cover increased to 30/50% (for partial/full cover) (from 15/25%) - Significant buff to the strength of cover at preventing high damage. Makes non-tank units much less likely to get 1 shot in cover. Makes biotanks stronger. Makes enemies utilizing cover more important.
- XCOM Base defense mission only requires you to deploy 8 soldiers - Yes, this does mean that you can choose your exact soldiers. However, some will be slightly delayed. The reason is that not having some key components to a good squad can significantly hamper you and that sort of RNG is just not fun.
- Only ~25% of enemies will die from the crash on a crashed UFO (from ~33%) - increases the difficulty slightly, especialy due to fewer aliens on UFOs
Equipment:
- Javelin rockets now also provide a 50% reduction in scatter - Significant boost due to their small AoE making them much more effective
- SAW and LMG aim +10 each - Buff to the gunner weapon's shooting role (balance vs bullet wizard)
- DR of all HMEC suits reduced by 1 - Nerf to tanking ability of MECs
- UHMEC3 hp reduced by 3, HMEC3 hp reduced by 4 and gains a secondary weapon slot, LMEC3 hp reduced by 3, ULMEC3 loses a secondary weapon slot, HMEC2 hp reduced by 1 - nerf to tanking abilities, overall balance
- Gauss and Pulse pricing and research put more on par with each other - Gauss more expensive, Pulse a little cheaper, makes the option between the two a little more balanced
- Reaper Ammo weight to 0 (from 1) and crit bonus to 40 (from 30) - Buffed
- Laser sight to 20 crit (from 15) - slight buff
- All item build times decreased by 20% - Less of a backlog of items to produce
- All items cost ~10% more alloys and elerium - Reduce surplus resources, force slightly more restrictive purchasing
- Blaster Launcher damage increased to 12 (from 10) - Late in the game it needs a boost due to tanky aliens
- Plasma Stellerator damage boost against units with distortion to +50% (from +100%) but damage boost to +2 (from +1) - Balanced, accommodation for decreased strength of distortion
- AP Ammo penetration to +1 (from +2) - It was too 'auto-include' with the amount of DR out there and was one of the main reasons for Gauss weapons being too strong
- Assault Rifle (and the variants) start with 4 ammo (from 3) - Buff for balance
- Archangel armor is significantly cheaper to produce - Considering it consumes a titan armor it need to be a little cheaper
Perks:
- One for All grants 30% DR (from 50%) - Nerf to tanking ability of MECs
- Will to Survive grants 30% DR (from 40%) - Nerf due to increased DR from cover
- Grit grants +1 HP (from 0) and no longer resists disorientation - Buffed, removed the disorientation resistance to give more effective methods for dealing with muton elites
- Disabling shot aim to +30 (from +20) - Buffed
- Inner fire back to 2 mobility (from 1) - Balances the perk for mobility and aim classes better, the restriction on mobility didn't need to apply to the few soldiers that get Inner Fire
- Holo now prevents affected units from entering concealment or stealth - Effective against seekers
- Danger Zone suppression nerfed to 1.6 tile radius (from 3) - Now it should only work on units in a circle around the primary target. Allows for better control of who gets suppressed. Significant nerf to the bullet wizard to put it inline with other gunner builds.
- Lock N' Load now makes reloading a 1 AP action when reloading a sidearm - So it works on both pistols and primary weapons
- Growth (for outsiders) lowered in growth rates and caps by 25-50% on most stats - Makes them a little less punishing
- Low Profile grants the defense AND DR bonus of full cover when in partial cover (from just the defense bonus) - Boost to the scout and units with banshee armor when using partial cover
- Mechanic (engineer starting perk) grants Critical System Targeting instead of Penetrator - Focuses engineers on the anti-mechanical role
- Lead By Example (Officer perk) now grants +20% xp per rank to all soldiers in the battle [for +150% xp at Field Commander (1.2^5 = 2.49)] - Makes gaining xp much higher into the late game to help accommodate for fewer missions. Also makes officers quite important to maximize xp gains.
- First Aid grants +2 restorative mist charges (from +1) - Buffed
- Combat drugs grants +30 aim (from +10) - Buffed due to change in how smoke works
- Revive is now just added into savior and is not a separate perk - Opens up a perk slot for CST
- New perk brought back: Critical System Targeting: Shots against mechanical units that have been autopsied deal 40% more damage - Anti-mechanical perk for XCOM and aliens
- New perk Overpower: Grants an Overpowering Aura: Enemies within LoS of this unit perform a will test vs 50% of this unit's will after each action/move and if they fail they end their turn - New perk for beserkers and ethereals (that replaces ethereal panic aura) - much more Nerfed vs the old panic aura, buff to berserkers
- New perk Psi Mastery: Mastery of multiple psionic abilities. Mind Fray, Psi Panic, Psi Inspiration, Telekinetic Field, and Psychokinetic Strike cost only 1 AP. Neural Feedback deals +50% damage. Inner Fire grants +50% aim and mobility. - Replaces mind control on the psi tree. Mind control was very easy to abuse and could trivialize the majority of encounters, offering little tactical play. Psi mastery feels like a valid and fun upgrade to a psionic user's power to replace mind control.
- Distortion only reduces damage by 65% (from 75% reduction), but also reduces aim by 2 for each tile away - Slightly nerfed, makes it more likely to do more than 1 damage, but also encourages players to close in on the targets to hit them
- Snapshot reworked: Prevents non-suppression reaction shots from triggering when this unit is shooting, if in cover and unflanked. Grants a 30% chance (75% with strike rifles) for standard shots to cost 0 AP. - Acts like a chameleon vest for shooting, and a multi-action perk for scouts with strike rifles
- Shadowstep grants +30% crit after moving (from +20%) and +10 defense (from +0) - Buffed
- Smoke and Mirrors also prevents reaction shots from triggering on non-shot actions - Makes using support items easier in the face of overwatch
XCOM:
- Multiple class perk tree and base stat adjustments - See new perk tree image
- Cost to chop (convert a soldier into a MEC) changed to 30/90 cash/meld (from 60/60) - More focus on meld, restrict MEC deployment slightly more
- Regular and Hover SHIVs can now provide cover as well - Didn't make sense that you could only hide behind the alloy one, makes the others grants more strategic value. Also helps poor landing zones granting more opportunity for immediate cover.
- Regular SHIV defense to 0 (from 10) and mobility to 11 (from 12) - Slight nerfs due to the increased usefulness of granting cover
Aliens:
- General aim growth of all aliens decreased by 50% and all aim reduced by 5 - Makes chance to get hit lower overall, especially towards the end game. It should be more reasonable to enter a fire-fight against them.
- Damage growth toned down on multiple aliens - Makes them less likely to one-shot your non-tanks as the game progresses
- Mechanical aliens now have a starting DR of 1 (from 2) - Makes them easier to drop (esp with conventional weapons)
- Ethereal hp to 20 (from 16) - Buffed to accommodate for worse distortion, no DR on deflection shield, and no panic aura
- Ethereal aim boosted significantly - Prevents them from taking 1% psi lance shots as often
- Ethereals and Sectoid Commander gain psi mastery and regain the ability to use mind fray and psi panic - Now with psi mastery using those abilities isn't such a waste
- Seeker health and DR gain reduced - Makes them easier to kill
- Thinmen upgrades at 400 research now only occur in leaders - Makes the rest of the squad easier to deal with
Bug Fixes:
- Removed some ridiculous council requests
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes double move when revealed - YAY! However, I only know of my fix working on one reproducible save. There could be other situations it doesn't account for so please report if you have any others, but I think my fix should cover all situations.
- Fixed an issue where smoke grenade predicted hit areas were larger than the actual areas that smoke grenade would work
- Fixed a bug where resetting your perks would sometimes give a unit deflection shield
- Fixed a bug where overpower was working on units that didn't have overpower
- Fixed a bug where the damage preview would not always predict the accurate damage when using a unit with VPT
- Fixed a bug with weird fonts incorrectly displaying in the strategic layer
- Fixed some bugs where enemies got perks that were either not used anymore, not working, or unintenional (e.g. Lids that still had a non-working implant ability, Exalt Medics getting deflection shield, etc.)
- Fixed an issue with kill shot camera's on ethereals generating really weird angles where you couldn't really tell what was going on
- Fixed a bug where OfA sometimes appeared as a 1 AP action (even though it is always a 2 AP action)
- Hunkering aliens now correctly sets the alien hp color to dark grey (instead of black)
- Fixed a bug on various incorrect descriptions
- The deflection shield indicator (yellow dashed rotating ring) will now disappear after the unit dies (instead of staying on around the corpse indefinitely)
Version 1.23.20
LW Rebalance v1.23.20 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- All units that can still move or perform an action (even scamper) will have green base health color - Helps identify who still has actions available, especially on XCOM scampers
- All HUD icons will be greyed out on units that are scampering - Helps identify that those abilities cannot be used
- Upgraded overwatch perks (sentinel or RR) will turn the HUD icon yellow - Helps identify that it isn't normal OW
- Geoscape council requests will now display what the request is for and how many and the icon will be a "?" - Makes it easier to figure out what requests are for what without having to click into the 'pending requests' menu
- Pending requests menu will display what the request is for as well - QoL
- A message "Ammo Spent" will appear when autopsied aliens have used their last shot in a clip and will have to reload - You technically could keep track but it'd be really annoying. Since the information is available it seems fair to keep track. This makes it a lot easier to keep track. To be fair it's only autopsied aliens.
- Included Lafiir's Campaign Summary modification: You can now navigate (play/pause, seek backward, seek forward) with a controller (DPad-/LStick-Left, DPad-/LStick-Right, A-Button) and the keyboard (Space/Enter, A/Left, D/Right) - Thanks Lafiir! :)
Perks:
- Deflection Shield DR to +0% (from +50%) and defense to +5 per tile away (from always +50%) - Makes it much more reasonable to damage units with deflection shield, especially up close. Still mostly accomplishes the goal of making such moves not so devestating to the AI and preventing abusing great distances against the AI.
- Seeker strangle DR reduced to +50% (from +65%) - Makes them easier to dislodge when they do strangle you
- Paramedic removed and its functionality was just added to field medic - Wasn't necessary to have separate perk for it
- New perk "Growth" added to outsiders to label and explain their growth - gives an in-game description of what is occuring and allows players to remove the perk via the dgc.ini if they don't like it's affect. Note: previous saves where characters had paramedic will have growth, but it's inactive except for on outsiders - you can remove it if you want with a console command: `giveperk -162
Aliens:
- Seeker health gains significantly reduced - makes them less dangerous as the game progress and easier to remove
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where soldiers sometimes lost their turn after being strangled
- Fixed a bug where OW was still missing some targets (most commonly from aliens during special circumstances like drop-ins, launches, spawns, etc.)
- Included Lafiir's bugfix (THANKS LAFIIR!) :) - When using a controller (or only the keyboard) in the soldier's ability UI, you could not view perks of yet to be unlocked ranks, because they couldn't be selected. Additionally, it was possible to promote your soldier without selecting a perk, if the tree had empty entries (eg. like LW Rebalance).
- Fixed some incorrect and inconsistent descriptions
- Fixed some HUD abilities that were incorrectly colored in rare situations
- Fixed a bug where gene mod times were still off - Pretty sure it's squashed now
- Fixed a bug where UFO Fusion damage was too low
- Fixed a bug where the engineer couldn't use repair with some pulse weapons
- Fixed some incorrect coloring of items in research descriptions
- Fixed a bug where commanding a soldier sometimes let them use a multi-action ability
Version 1.23.19
LW Rebalance v1.23.19 - Patch Notes
Tactical:
- HUD Icons are green if they cost 1 action point and won't end the turn, cyan if they end the turn, and purple if they cost no action points - Helps identify when abilities are on cooldown and when actions have already been taken
Bug Fixes:
- The free reward council request is more obviously not a bug and just a donation from countries
- Onslaught description clarified that it's for landed enemies only
- Fixed a bug where onslaught was granting movement after use
- Fixed a bug where outsiders would sometimes get +9 DR
- Fixed a bug where saving/loading a game would have multiple unintended effects (cause outsider growth, take away action points on OfA and suppression, and others)
- Fixed some misc description inconsistencies
- Fixed some small errors on the tech tree and perk tree
- Smoke and Dense Smoke now correctly cap hit chances at 90% and 80%
- Fixed a bug where you could not choose which SHIV to use each turn, now other SHIVs will only deactivate after you've performed an action with a SHIV
- Fixed a bug where the engineer couldn't use repair when wielding a pistol (which prevented repair when equipping a stun rifle)
- Fixed a bug where the first terror mission of the campaign could include a cyberdisc
- Reduced the # of zombies and lids on terror missions to reduce the chance the HUD goes over 16 aliens (and thus causing a CTD)
- Fixed a bug where some aliens were being colored and renamed despite not being leaders
- Updated the version # ;)
- Fixed a bug where the display time for gene mods was incorrect
- Fixed a bug where enemy units dropping or launching in on OW were not correctly adding units in LoS to their OW list (I hope!)
Version 1.23.18
LW Rebalance v1.23.18 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where DR was too high on XCOM SHIVs and MECs
Version 1.23.17
LW Rebalance v1.23.17 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a CTD in the strategy layer
Version 1.23.16
LW Rebalance v1.23.16 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug with the game not starting
Version 1.23.15
LW Rebalance v1.23.15 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Pressing "J" will now end the active unit's turn - QoL
- Various color modifications to the in-game UI
Bug Fixes:
- Combat Readiness now correctly only affects XCOM
- Fixed a bug where defense modifying small items were not affecting soldiers
- Fixed a bug where damage was being rounded instead of truncated after DR leading to DR not being as affective as intended
- Fixed a bug where outsiders had +8 or so DR for no reason - Hopefully it's fixed, again, it looked like it was native code that I can't see or anything but I think my work around will work
- Fixed an issue where suppression would sometimes not remove the cover based defense
- Fixed a bug where too many aliens were dying/damaged off the bat on crashed UFOs (now there will always be ~33% dead) - Made for some too easy crashed UFOs
- Fixed a bug where council missions were not granting the appropriate amount of cash and or sci/eng, instead just standardized all council missions to give a reasonable amount - Couldn't really fix the code, so I rewrote it
- Fixed a bug where MECs and SHIVs would sometimes gain the 'repair' ability
- Fixed a bug where combat readiness was being granted to units that were panicking
- Fixed a bug where the aliens on crashed UFOs were not dead/injured until the 2nd turn - Thanks to szmind for helping a LOT with the fix
- Fixed a bug where the displayed panic increases were only 5% additional per month for "continent increases" - Just a form of panic increase that wasn't updated correctly for display only (no functional change)
- Fixed a bug where suppression reaction shots against targets that were acting were occuring at the same time as the first overwatch shots (they will occur sequentially now, as intended)
- Fixed a bug where aliens would sometimes go on overwatch if they couldn't see any XCOM units but their allies could or if they could see a battle scanner
Balance:
- Light armors gain +5 def, heavy armors no longer have -10 def and lose 0.5DR, aliens gain +5 aim - Turns the difference on armors into a bonus rather than a negative, makes it feels better, overall less significant for actual hit chances, still keeps the nerf on heavier armors
- Ready For Anything grants +2 armor health (from +1 DR) - Makes it a little less tank orientated and more generally useful, balance on the goliath tree, more fitting of someone who is 'ready for anything'
- Outsider health to 6 (from 4) - They were a little too easy early on
Version 1.23.14
LW Rebalance v1.23.14 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- If you fail the exalt HQ raid, an exalt cell will perform a panic increase operation against a random country - Makes there some sort of negative of failing if you fail in a area where panic is already maxed
Tactical:
- You can no longer overwatch unless you can see an enemy or you have rapid reaction - Prevents players from wasting overwatch
- The combat readiness coloring of the armor health is more obvious now - QoL
Perks:
- After strangle is released, the unit will sometimes not get an extra turn - bugs turn into features when Ucross can't fix them! :)
- Inner Fire grants +1 mobility (from +2) - Nerfed
- Shadowstep mobility to +1 (from +2) and grants +20% crit if the unit moved this turn - Makes it more beneficial for damaging classes
- Will to survive defense malus to -10 (from -15) - Makes the ability a little less penalizing, accommodating for heavy armor defense nerf
- Sprinter grants +1 mobility - Buffed
- Combat Drugs will heal biologic units in the smoke 1 HP at the start of their turn - Slight buff and more diverse use
Equipment:
- Heavy armor has -10 defense (from 0) and +0.5 DR - Allows players to taunt with off-tanks, increasing control over alien AI with loadouts
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 issue where combat stims was granting crit immunity when not in cover
- Fixed an issue where rarely certain weapons would get -10 aim due to triggering the old LW 1.0 battle rifle aim malus code
- Fixed a bug where flush was still granting 30 aim
- Fixed a bug where flanked reaction shots were gaining an aim bonus equivalent to the cover bonus of the unit
- Fixed a bug where hit chances against innate defenses were sometimes yielding double the value
- Fixed a bug where sharpshooter was granting +10 aim for pistols
- Fixed a bug where aliens would go on overwatch even if they could see no one and didn't have rapid reaction
Version 1.23.13
LW Rebalance v1.23.13 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- We are legion no longer grants XTP I and II - Allows players to augment Exalt missions without affecting the rest of the campaign
- Updated the training roulette list with 'some' of Leenday's recommendations
Tactical:
- Suppression no longer grants +30 aim to its triggered reaction shots but instead removes an action point from the suppressed units at the beginning of their turn - Makes suppression more effective at pinning targets down, overall buff
- Suppression's opportunist reaction shot will trigger at the end of turn whenever it is against an enemy that is uncovered - It never made sense that you could suppress a unit sitting in the open... what were you suppressing? Why weren't you just hitting it? Are you seriously just firing around the enemy purposely not hitting it? I know we accepted it but it was REALLY stupid. Now you only continue to suppress covered units and exposed enemies you fire at rapidly to distract them (suppress a reaction shot) only for a brief while (your turn) which will end in a shot at the end of your turn.
- Overwatch now only triggers against the units you can see when you go on Overwatch (instead of at the beginning and end of the turn) - Updated code, because I've upgraded my programming skills (mostly thanks to szmind), and it makes a lot more sense that you OW the units you can see when you OW (and not at the beginning or end of the turn)
- Hacking an array with a covert op now disables all exalt (from 50%) - Makes it more predictable during a mission, especially since hacking is a lot more challenging. Also, reduces RNG during those missions.
- Updated some model sizes of weapons based on Leenday's recommendations - QoL
- Enemy HP will vary between shades of pink and red every 10 health - easier counting of large health pools (QoL)
- Hunkering will make a unit's base HP color turn black and no longer has a sight ring - Avoids using the circled sight ring too often to avoid confusion
- Armor HP color will now tint slightly yellow when a unit has combat readiness - at least there is now some obvious visual indicator (QoL)
Equipment:
- Arc rifle damage vs mechanicals to +7 (from +6) and penetration to 3 (from 2) - needed a buff to act as a universal way to keep robotic threats in check
- Recoilless Rifle damage to 8 (from 7) and Blaster Launcher damage to 10 (from 9) - Buffs
Perks:
- Lead By Example (officer perk) now shares will at infinite rage (from 19 tiles), but the amount of will shared is reduced by 1 for each tile away - Makes staying closer to the officer more important, and not a complete drop off at 19 tiles (which was a little unfair/unrealistic)
- Ranger now grants +10% range to all grenades (destructive and support) - Buff to the perk on grenadier and support classes. Also, how can a perk called "ranger" not increase range? ;)
- Both Mechanic and Master Mechanic grant +10% range to all grenades (destructive and support) - Boost to non-shooter engineer
- Flush no longer grants an aim bonus - Too often it was being used just as an accurate shot with perks to deal reasonable damage and not to flush. As well, it was overpowerd on a 2 weight item that already gave 2 ammo. This way, the perk is more about flushing the target and the ammo drum gets a reasonable nerf.
- Mayhem grants +60% damage to strike rifles (from +50%) and +100% damage to sniper rifles (from +80%) - Buff to mayhem sniper
- In The Zone aim/crit malus to -5% (from -10%) - Buff to ITZ activations since they are less predictable to activate. Also makes the last shots feel a lot less like throw away shots which didn't feel great.
- Grit grants +1 DR - Boost to tank gunner and overall survivability of late game gunners
- Ready For Anything grants +1 DR - Makes the choice a lot more interesting on the gunner, medic, and goliath
XCOM:
- Sniper stat growth increased to 20A and 5W (from 15A), infantry stat growth increased to 20A, 20W, 2HP (from 15A, 20W, 2HP), medic stat growth decreased to 10A, 5W (from 10A, 10W), Engineer stat growth decreased to 5A, 10W, 1HP (from 5A, 10W, 2HP) - Balance
- Deadeye and Aggression swapped on the Infantry - Gives the infantry earlier access to anti-air, which is important as a forced shooter class
Aliens:
- Seeker health reduced to 4 (from 6), base damage to 2 (from 3), but DR when strangling increased to 65% (from 50%) - Makes them easier to deal with when not strangling
- Aliens never go on overwatch on launch/drop-in/reveal on normal and classic difficulties and only 50% as often on brutal - Makes launch/drop-in/reveals a little more forgiving on easier difficulties
- Outsider aim reduced to 55 (from 65), health reduced to 4 (from 7), will reduced to 40 (from 60), mobility reduced to 9 (from 10), initial DR reduced to 0 (from 0.5) - Nerfs to give a little more incentive for early activation
- Outsider growth increased on lower difficulties so that (compared to previously) they gain 2x as much on normal, 1.33x as much on classic and 1.11x more on brutal - Makes their growth not so insignificant on easier difficulties
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where a unit that was being suppressed that stopped being suppressed was still considered suppressed and thus could not perform reaction abilities and had other maluses - This one I had been searching for for a LONG time so it's nice it's gone; had to recode quite a few functions to get it to work
- Fixed a bug where loading a game would reset unit overwatches so that none of them occured (as if the units saw noone when they went on OW)
- Added code to reverse the effects of innate code granting certain aliens +10 DR during the late game - That was tricky to find. Kept thinking it was a bug in my programming till I realized the game sneakily snuck in some stats without using any of the normal code.
- Fixed a bug where Dense Smoke and Combat Drugs sometimes would not yield an extra smoke grenade
- Fixed a bug where council requests for alloys or elerium could give double the intended reward
- Fixed a bug where units could sometimes trigger an overwatch against drop-ins when they didn't have rapid reaction
- Fixed a bug where the aiming reticule, information panel aim, and F1 aim information sometimes did not line up
- Misc incorrect descriptions
- Misc typos
Version 1.23.12
LW Rebalance v1.23.12 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Reaction fire correctly fires at a 0.8 modifier (instead of 0.6667)
- Fixed a bug where hunker could prevent unconcealing when in sight of an enemy
Version 1.23.11
LW Rebalance v1.23.11 - Patch Notes
Strategic Game:
- Soldiers gain a chance for bonus stats for the final mission based on how many countries are still supporting XCOM and extra skyranger slots (at 6, 11, and 16 countries supporting) - Makes keeping countries around important, feels great having the countries support you and feels awesome having your soldiers reach their peak potential for the final mission
- Temple Assault mission limited to 7 soldiers (from 8) - Accommodates for the bonus soldiers gained through having supporting countries
Tactical Game:
- Base regeneration rates of outsiders and ethereals reduced by 1 - Makes them slightly less able to 'outlast' XCOM, especially when XCOM is on it's last leg
- Reaction shots have 20% less aim against covered or moving targets (from 33%) - Buff to the strength of OW, makes it more accurate vs normal shots against targets in cover
Perks:
- Grenadier increases range of grenades by 10% - Buff to grenadier builds
- HEAT Ammo renamed to Penetrator and grants 2 penetration (from 4) but works with shotguns and the arc rifle - Was too powerful (on almost every tree) and overshadowing other penetration options, this puts it more in-line. Also, "ammo" is now retricted to items (instead of perks). It also now works on shotguns and the arc rifle.
- Combined arms penetration to 1 (from 2) - nerfed
- Master Mechanic grants 4 additional uses of repair (from 3) - Buff to give triple the amount of repair at double the rate
- Concealment no longer grants tracker - Slight nerf and opening up of the proximity sensor (it was a little unneeded anyway with battle scanners)
- Shredder Ammo perk renamed to Shredder - "Ammo" is a term restricted to items now
- Deadeye aim/crit to 25 (from 30) - Slight nerf due to increased usefulness
- Awareness no longer activates combat readiness if the unit ends it's turn on a move - It was too strong, now it only activates when the unit ends it's turn with actions leftover
- Executioner to +30 aim/crit (from 20 aim and 30 crit) - Buffed, the condition of requiring less than 50% health is surprisingly restrictive so this needed a buff
Equipment:
- Proximity sensor restricted to biologic soldiers only but now also grants awareness - Significant buff to the item
- Arc Rifle grants +5 aim, +10 crit, and +25 crit damage, but damage against mechanical units to +6 (from 7) - Standardization of the weapon as a laser weapon
XCOM:
- Rapid Fire on the Gunner replaced with Double Tap - The problem was RF -> Command -> RF was too much of a power spike that was hard to balance around, especially with gunner weapons. Not only was it too effective in some encounters, it was too weak in others (due to low aim). DT also helps make the gunner more rounded (bonus aim at range, less spike damage point blank).
- Bring 'Em On on the Infantry replaced with Sharpshooter - Focuses the infantry on more biological (cover-based) targets and helps boost their OW which will often be used against targets in cover
- Vital Point Targeting on the Medic replaced with Deadeye - VPT wasn't that great for the medic due to lower damage output and Deadeye works really well with Rapid Reaction in letting the medic hit flying units that might fly in from out of vision
Aliens:
- Outsiders now get stronger every turn but start a lot weaker (start with -2 damage, -20 aim, -20 will, -2 mobility, -5 health, -1 DR) - Makes rushing the command pod a lot more ideal and leaving them alone until the end of the mission a dangerous proposition
- Outsider stat growth increases based on difficulty (Normal=1x the rate, Classic=2x, Brutal=3x, Impossible=4x) - Makes outsiders still fit within difficulties
- Drone beam damage reduced to 2 (from 3) - Was a little too strong
- Floater damage increased by 1 at 100 research - Increase in offensive power
- Floaters and heavy floaters regain the ability to suppress - now that it's actually effective again, regaining the ability makes sense
- Seekers increased significantly in health and leaders gain +1 damage - makes them significantly more threatening
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an AI bug where aliens would not go on overwatch in many situations where they should (drop ins, launch, pod reveal, etc)
- Fixed a bug where 'regeneration' was being added to 'damage resistance' on aliens and their DR was really high
- Fixed a bug where players could cycle through the gollop chamber gaining an infinite amount of bonus stats for the temple mission
- Fixed a bug where damage resistance was being rounded/truncated incorrectly leading to abnormally high or low DR values
- Fixed a bug where dense smoke was not providing an extra smoke grenade in certain circumstances
- Fixed a bug where exalt reinforcements were coming a turn earlier than intended on covert op missions
- Fixed some incorrect txt descriptions
- Fixed a bug where many weapons were gaining 1 penetration for no apparent reason
- Fixed a bug where reconnaissance would report location of drop-in reinforcements even when they haven't arrived yet
- Fixed a bug where XCOM could fire overwatch shots at drop-in or walk-in reinforcements without rapid reaction
Version 1.23.10
LW Rebalance v1.23.10 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where reaction shots were always 1%
- Fixed a bug where xcom scamper wasn't working
Version 1.23.09
LW Rebalance v1.23.09 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
- Council requests now are more likely to reward engineers/scientists depending the fewer you have of each - Makes RNG of low eng/sci not really possible
- Significant improvements to the time and reward granted for hard to achieve council requests - Just improved code through testing
- Number of items requested in council request in the early game toned down - Makes them easier to fullfill
- Losing a country does not cost alien resources - Prevents late game, when the aliens take over more bases, from being a situation where the aliens have really low resources (even if their resources will get really high in the upcoming months)
- # of aliens on crashed UFOs are now 20-30% less than landed UFO missions (instead of 0-33%) - Makes it so crashed UFOs are always easier than landeds (reduces some RNG)
- Plasma Cannon and UFO Plasma II air weapons increased in damage to 1500 (from 1250) and decreased in cooldown to 200 (from 250) - Increase in damage potential of plasma II weapons and boost to benefit of getting plasma
- Fusion (Cannon and UFO) air weapons increased in damage to 5000 (from 3000) - Makes it easier to down large UFOs if you acquire it, also makes it a more dangerous weapon on UFOs (instead of sometimes less dangerous than the Plasma II)
- Overseer increased significantly in health but armor decreased to 125% (from 150%) - Makes it more challenging to down but without requiring as many high pen weapons
- Firestorms and their associated technology are significantly cheaper - Makes it easier to acquire and outfit your fleet with
- The Newfoundland mission cannot occur on the first month - It was too difficult at that stage
- The initial pod on Covert Op Extraction missions have 2 fewer enemies and timed reinforcements occur a little later - Makes it easier to engage/stall/eliminate them
- Added details to the research credit descriptions - QoL
- Architects of the future bonus to 50% discount (from 70%) - With the increased utility and maintenance of labs/workshops this bonus was slowly power creeping over the last few version, this puts it more in line with the other bonuses
Tactical:
- Dashing now allows a unit to move 10% further than they could with 2 blue moves - Means you actually move further when dashing -- a simple change that really plays out well
- Acid removes 100% of flat DR (from 50% of all DR, after penetration) - Makes a little more sense as now it doesn't affect things like Absorption Fields, cover, will to survive, hunkering, damage control, etc. but will completely remove all flat DR -- mechanically nice too as now there is no %-based penetration (all penetration is flat). Last, this is important as a counter to units with high flat DR.
- On the temple ship, the uber ethereal will not take any damage until his compadre ethreals AND compadre muton elites are dead - Makes ignoring the muton elites a bad strategic decision, helps prevent alpha striking the uber ethereal
- Reaction fire no longer has -66% dashing aim malus - It was being used to make tanky units too effective at bypassing enemy reaction fire
Perks:
- Onslaught now includes shots against adjacent enemies as well as KSM strikes - Makes it so the perk works even when the player might not have access to a KSM
- Shadowstep only prevents non-suppression reaction shots during movement (from movement and actions) and grants +2 mobility (from 0) - It was too effective for countering overwatch. Now if you want to protect against actions you'll have to rely on the chameleon suit
- Sprinter no longer grants a mobility bonus but instead increases the dash mobility bonus to +30% movement (from +10% movement) - Buffed for scouting, picking up meld, RnG, covert ops, and target you might command. Nerfed otherwise. On a 13 mobility soldier this will translate into moving 21 tiles instead of 16 on a dash.
- Tenacious defense grants 3 health (from 2) but crit resistance reduced to 20% (from 60%) - Makes some aliens abilities still able to penetrate and possibly crit, but most normal shots should never crit
- Danger Zone increases the area of suppression to 2.5 tiles (from 2 tiles) - Slight buff to DZ suppression, especially with new AI encouraging the aliens to not break the suppression as often
- Ready For Anything restricts OW shots to only 1 shot per OW - Nerfed
- Tracker range to 6 (from 8) - Was too effective at finding exact locations at 8 tiles leading too often to crippling alpha strikes
- Revive now also removes corrosion - Slight buff, Makes sense
Equipment:
- AP Grenade range increased to 10 (from 7.5) but radius decreased to 2 tiles (from 2.5 tiles) - The grenadier classes needed more range to stay relevant in the early-mid game, significant buff
- Cognitive Enhancer weight to 0 (from 1) - Buffed for balance
- Elerium Emitter DR to 1.5 (from 1) - Buffed for balance
- Chameleon Suit no longer grants crit immunity on reaction fire, +5 defense, and +2 HP, and weight to 1 (from 0), but is no longer restricted with other small item armors - Nerf for balance
- Weapon Supercooler weight to 1 (from 2) - Buffed for some more offensive strength on later game SHIVs
XCOM:
- Shadowstep and Jetboot Module swapped on Shogun - Felt bad to force players into shadowstep and they were of similar strength
Aliens:
- Lowered regeneration on uber ethereal - was too hard
- Various changes to high level aliens - Makes higher tech boss aliens challenging
- Improved some AI again - Yes, it's still bad AI and will still derp, but slight improvements
- Floaters and Heavy Floaters gain tactical sense right away (instead of at 400 research) - Buffed
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some code that MAY have been causing a CTD on Linux/Macs
- Fixed a huge bug (Finally found it - from LW 1.0 code) that removed the tenth column from DR (so 13 DR was set to 3 DR) - This is one of the reasons end game mecthoids and sectopods had such low DR, be careful with those units now
- Fixed a bug where Mechtoids still had rapid reaction and not Sentinel
- Fixed an issue in the Linux installer where "XCom" was spelt "Xcom" and lead the directory not being found
- The vortex armor is now able to be equipped on the last mission if you accidentally unequip it
- Fixed a bug where using a rocket still granted mobility
- Misc text edits
Version 1.23.08
LW Rebalance v1.23.08 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
- Council requests will no longer ask for damaged UFO components - It was just always going to feel bad if you had actual components and you didn't have damaged ones and why couldn't you just damage the good ones?
- Late game UFO scout missions will deploy Harvesters instead of Destroyers - Makes it possible to still generate a crash mission
- Gene mods done in multiples will only take as long as the longest gene modification and only cost as many credits as the highest credit cost gene modification - Makes it worthwhile doing them in tandem (note: meld costs still accumulate)
- Gene mods now have a moderate credit cost associated (20-40 credits) - To make credits a significant (yet quite minor) aspect and accommodate for the benefit of doing multiples
- Increased the # of scientists and engineers gained from council requests by ~35% - They were on the low side
- Exalt Covert Op Extraction and Exalt Data Recovery missions reward 30 and 40 meld - Make them feel more worthwhile
- Exalt Sweep cost increased to 200 (from 100) - Accommodates for increased rewards
- Field Repairs removed as a foundry project - Not needed with the mechanic perks and felt a little weird and out of place, especially with doubling up captures with machine repair... Now the stun rifle is simply for capturing.
- Council missions # of enemies reduced slightly - Should make those missions a little easier (read: bomb disposal missions a little easier)
- Large UFOs (crashed and landed) are more difficult - There were slightly too easy
Tactical:
- New feature: Combat Readiness: Ending a soldier's turn with actions to spare will grant them +10 aim until the end of their next turn - Acts like a quasi-steady weapon without having to do anything (faster play)
- Damage Resistance is no longer rounded, but instead, it's truncated after application - This is just a consistency change so that everything in the game is truncated. 0.5DR on it's own still yields 1DR because now the damage is truncated (i.e. 7 damage - 0.5 DR = 6.5 damage truncated to 6 damage).
- Run and Gun should now be hidden as an ability when it's use will not do anything (except during xcom scamper because I can't figure out that masterful code that tracktwo made) - Since it doesn't work with multiperk abilities best to hide the ability instead of letting players accidently click it when it will have no effect
- Hacking an exalt array now requires a full turn (blue move) and the covert operative will hunker as he hacks the array - Makes it less of a "dash in and out" and more of a "sit there and hack the array"
- Damage resistance from partial and full cover changed to 15% and 25% (half of their respective defense values) - Slight tweak. Nice consistency and makes full cover not so defensive and partial cover and little more defensive
Perks:
- New Perk: Deflection Shield: When this unit ends its turn with actions to spare or by moving, a deflection shield activates for 1 turn, granting +50 defense and +50% damage resistance - Please note: if you have been playing from version 1.22 you may have this perk on your soldiers b/c it uses the same code as the old covering fire perk. You might want to reset perks on any soldiers with this perk. Or then again, maybe not. ;)
- Adrenal Neurosympathy now works on any action (from just shots) - It was bugged this way and it works so I left it in as a feature
- Adrenaline Surge now provides 30 defense (from 20) and +6 mobility (from +5) - Buffed
- Blood Call now doubles mobility (from +6) - Not as significant a buff as you'd think, helps with poor muton AI
- One For All no longer triggers enemy overwatch - makes sense
- Tracker now will uncloak seekers within its range, but range reduced to 8 tiles (from 10 tiles) - Allows it to work with the new item, makes it more useful as antiseeker tech
- Mayhem no longer affects ITZ - As it was removed from the Jaeger tree
- Suppression grants +30 aim but no longer bypasses the reaction fire aim malus - Consistency. Now all reaction shots are subject to the reaction fire aim maluses without exception. This change hardly affects suppression though.
- Suppression shots automatically have opportunist - There was too much hard coded programming that made this occur that I couldn't revert so I decided just to go with it as it also helps boost suppression which acts as a good boost now that the AI responds better to it.
- Tenacious defense health bonus to 2 (from 3) - Slight nerf, was a little too strong
- Shadowstep becomes inactive after performing an action or being commanded - Pretty edge usage - won't apply to most situations. Stops multi-action perks from abusing reaction fire aliens and their poor AI (e.g. Move in, fire, command, move out and things like that).
- Reconnaissance will only display an audible clue if the squad has no enemies in sight - Didn't make sense that the scout could hear stuff in the middle of a battle
- Reactive Targeting Sensors (RTS) grants opportunist now - Buffed
- Awareness now also doubles the Combat Readiness aim bonus (to 20 from 10) and allows the combat readiness buff to activate if the unit ends its turn by moving - Buffed
- One For All now grants 50% DR (from 30% DR) but ends the turn when activated and disables reactive abilities - Makes the perk more about being immobile cover and prevents disruption from reactive abilities
Equipment:
- New item: Proximity Sensor: Grants Tracker [This soldier can detect and uncloak aliens within 8 tiles through and around obstacles and is immune to strangulation] (available after seeker autopsy, can be equipped by all units) - Gives xcom another tool against seekers
- AM Rifles lose HEAT and regain the 1 penetration and 1 ammo (i.e. they are no longer special rifles) - The difference wasn't that great and the distinction led to odd situations: made ITZ snipers not great at gauss, made snipers good against mechanicals ONLy if they were at gauss tech
- All Sniper Rifles have 2 penetration (from 1) - Makes them more compeling vs their mobile counterparts
- Mists have only 1 use (from 2) - Nerf to healing on MECs (they were too versatile, and with the recent bio nerfs they were much too strong at healing comparatively)
- Laser weapons gain +10 crit, and crit damage to 75% - buffed, consistency with pulse (Now both Pulse and Laser give: +1 mobility, +5 aim, +10 crit, and have 75% crit damage)
- Pulse weapons gain +5 aim - Buffed, consistency with laser (Now both Pulse and Laser give: +1 mobility, +5 aim, +10 crit, and have 75% crit damage)
- Combat stims last 6 turns (from 10) - Was a little too effective, creates more interesting choices of when to use
- Banshee/Aegis armor gains 1/2 health - Slight buffs to make the -1 item armors stronger
- Corsair and Serpah armor gain 2 health - Slight buffs to makes the later tech light armors stronger
- Seraph armor gains 1 fuel - slight buff
- Plasma Novagun no longer can be steadied and no longer grants +8 damage when steadied but instead grants +2 penetration at all times - More versatile of a bonus for the different roles the novagun has (overwatch, rapid fire, mayhem suppression) and can still stack with HEAT effectively
- Targeting motor grants +10 aim but no longer grants Opportunist - Slight alteration
- Autosentry Turret weights 1 but also grants opportunist - Slight buff and consistency with the perk
- MECs have all had their health reduced - Balance, and also accommodates for the stronger One For All
XCOM:
- Multiple perk tree modifications (Mostly MECs) - See perk tree
- SHIV defense to 10/0/20 (from 20/20/20) - Nerf to tanking/avoidance abilities of SHIVs
Aliens:
- Seekers all gain 'shadowstep' (though they kinda already had it) - Problem with them is overwatch and reaction abilities won't trigger on some of their actions (bugged) so this is kind of turning a bug into a feature
- Muton Leaders, Heavy Floater Leaders, Muton Elites, and Ethereals gain Deflection Shield - Helps accommodate for poor AI and acts as a buff on these units (especially when they derp)
- Ethereals have 1/3rd less health - Helps accommodate for poor rounding on distortion and for the pick up of deflection shield
- Uber Ethreal defense to 50 (from 70) - Makes more weapons reasonable
- Mecthoids lose Rapid Reaction but gain Sentinel + Opportunist - Makes moving in from out of sight effective against them, but makes their OW shots more dangerous
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where the grey market would sometimes show an inordinately high amount of $0 sale prices for items
- Fixed a bug where many melee attacks showed 85% hit chances (they are all 100% hit chance)
- Correct some incorrect/unupdated descriptions
- Rockets have full range after performing a costly action (a bug was causing their range to be reduced by 50%)
- Fixed a rare issue with units teleporting
- Fixed some incorrect names on council request items
- Fixed a bug where vital point targeting was working with all types of damage (explosives, electropulse, etc)
Version 1.23.07
LW Rebalance v1.23.07 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- For Linux installations: Included a new .bash file and readme.txt in the zip - Thanks so much to leycec for making it all possible
Strategic:
- Damaged alien components will never sell for more than the undamaged components on the grey market - Makes sense, a reasonable exception
- Chopping a soldier into a MEC will set the MEC's will to 80% of his/her current will (from just always setting it to 30) - Makes using higher will soldiers to chop more appealing and also makes sense as their brain isn't really touched
- Stingray missle damage to 900 (from 1000) - Slight nerf to make more room for phoenix
- Council request will more commonly be for basic resources (meld, elerium, alloys, weapon fragments) - Puts some of the requests back on to resources and not so much about production
Tactical:
- Distortion's damage reduction is now accounted for in the damage preview before firing
- Fixed an issue from LW 1.0 where aliens that had really low aim (like 1% after being flashbanged/disorientated) thought it was a great idea to shoot - Improved AI! =D
Perks:
- Flush aim to +30 (from 50) - Balance due to new usage
- Reconnaissance now provides information on the distance, type (if autopsied), and number of enemies (from just the distance) - Buff to scouts ability to scout
- VPT grants +30% total damage against uncovered humans and autospied biologic aliens (from +100% damage 30% of the time against all humans and autopsied biologic aliens) - Consistency of the perk, gives it a more unique role
- Weapon Targeting now works 100% of the time but requires a steadied weapon and can only be applied once to each enemy - Consistency of the perk, encourages steady weapon on more classes
- Combat Drugs no longer affects SHIVs - makes sense
Equipment:
- Drum Mags weight to 2 (from 1) but grants Flush - Increased usefulness, opens flush up to more classes
- Smartshell Pods aim to +15 (from +10) - Buffed
- The motion tracker will now also include seekers (even when stealthed) - Increased ability to detect seekers
- Thumper damage to +10 (from +5) - Makes it worth the slot
- Pulse weapons increase crit damage to +75% (from +100% -- base crit is +50%) - They were a little too strong on crit focused builds, pull back on those builds (note they still give +10% crit and +1 mobility)
- Precision shot to +30% base damage (from +50%) - Was a little too strong, pulled back
XCOM:
- WT on infantry swapped to Deadeye - WT wasn't that useful with steady on a tank or an OW class and needed to be swapped
Aliens:
- Seeker strangle damage reverted to LW 1.0 levels - The increased damage resistance when strangling was enough to make letting them get into strangle range significant and dangerous enough
- Ethreal mobility increased to 16 (from 12) - Not that much of an affect, but it stops their AI from derping around as much
Bug Fixes:
- Interceptors can no longer be sent up when damaged - Fixed a bug allowing interceptors to be sent up under specific circumstances when they had below 50% health
- Fixed a problem with council requests that would be automatically fullfilled if you put a satellite up in a requested country or you transfered a ship to the requested country
- Quick and Dirty will now correctly modify alien #'s outside of the normal restrictive sizes
- Fixed a bug where meld costs of items were accidentally inflated by 20%
- Fixed a bug where adrenaline surge was giving bonus stats after any amount of lost health (isntead of <50% health)
- Reaction shots can no longer crit - Nerf to the strength of reaction fire (it was too strong with the predictable OW mechanics, despite not having LoS disabling it). ALso makes it less punishing with bad RNG when taking OW fire from the aliens.
- Aliens on Classic difficulty no longer have -10 defense and -5 aim - Make Classic difficulty a little more challenging
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs and drones never land - THey never really did, it was just a targeting thing that didn't make sense, so this is ALMOST just a bug fix
- Seekers will do 60% of a unit's max health in damage (from 5 damage that incremented each turn) - makes them never one shot a unit when strangling (a lot less deadly against low health units), but always kill a unit in 2 turns (more dangerous against units with high health)
- Suppressed Aliens in cover will be much less likely to perform an action that will trigger the suppression - Improved AI!
- Aliens will find OWing XCOM soldiers more threatening and will be less likely to trigger their OW - Improved AI!
- Aliens will no longer wait on overwatch out of sight as a stall tactic - Improved AI, they are great at attacking now as overwatch camping isn't really effective!
- Aliens will no longer cease acting when corrodded with 1 hp left (old AI code that was unnecessary)
Perks:
- Repair no longer removes corrossion - it was bugged sometimes and I couldn't fix it. This nerfs it slightly while fixing the bug and making it more distinct from medikits.
- Mechanic Repair range increased from 1 tiles to 3.3 tiles - Makes it a little easier to use and acts as a small usability buff
- Opportunist allows reaction fire to crit (from +20 aim on reaction shots) - Both are similar in strength but the crit is more unique and was the original effect so it fits better going back to it now that reaction fire can again not crit by default.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that caused a CTD sometimes when using Bring 'Em On
- Smoke grenades correctly give bonuses to unit on their periphery
- Aiming angles no longer grants a bonus during reaction fire (as there is no cover bonus)
- Fixed some text descriptions that were misleading or inconsistent
- Flak Ammo cannot be equipped with rocket launchers anymore (as it did nothing)
- Drum mags can now appropriately be equipped on Snipers and Gunners if they have an Assault Rifle, Carbine, or Battle Rifle equipped
Version 1.23.05
LW Rebalance v1.23.05 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Further increased the rate of council requests, time to fullfill, and eng/scientist numbers for rewards - It was still too low
Aliens:
- Seeker health reduced to 4 (from 5) - Makes them slightly easier to kill without reducing their offensive effectiveness
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where seekers did not provide any weapon fragments (thanks szmind and Snackhound)
- Suppression now correctly is not triggered by hunker, reload, steady weapon, overwatch, civiliancover - I tested pretty thoroughly, so better be working this time
- Fixed a bug where suppression was accidently receiving +20 aim on units that did not have the opportunist perk
- Fixed a bug where units were able to avoid triggering OW against units with RR when they were out of LoS at the beginning of the turn (RR should prevent this and it does now)
Version 1.23.04
LW Rebalance v1.23.04 - Patch Notes
Balance:
- VPT chance to proc chance increased to 30% (from 20%) - Balance vs other options
- Weapon Targeting proc chance to 40% (from 30%) - Balance vs other options
- Council requests occur more frequently - gives players more options for fullfilling them and helps avoid bad RNG
Version 1.23.03
LW Rebalance v1.23.03 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where sometimes the panic chance popup was still not correct
- Accidently included the engine.upk in the LWRebalance 1.23.02 which opened the developer console, this has since been removed (it's still available to anyone on the LW 1.0 website)
- Suppression should now correctly not be triggered by abilities that don't trigger reaction fire: Overwatch, Hunker, HeadDown (Civilian Hunker), Steady Weapon, and Reload
Version 1.23.02
LW Rebalance v1.23.02 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where panic chances were being displayed off by 1% (e.g. 43% when it should be 42%) which sometimes led to it saying resisted when it wasn't
- Fixed an issue where crashed UFOs were applying 'crash damage' to the aliens multiple times until they were all at 1 health
- Fixed a bug where everyone was getting the CCS +40 aim bonus if within 4 tiles
- Reduced the number of exalt on the exalt HQ raid to 25 (from 33) but increased the strength of high level exalt leaders - Should help with overload of some systems causing CTD situations while not making the mission too much easier
- Fixed an incorrect description on Weapon Targeting saying it was only 20% trigger chance when it is actually 30%
- Fixed an incorrect description on the aim malus of breaching ammo (it incorrectly said -10 on one of the descriptions but is actually -20)
- Drone capture should not be accessible to produce in the foundry anymore (was bugged)
- Fixed an issue where seeker leaders had +3 damage that was affecting their initial strangle (this has been reduced to +1)
Version 1.23.01
LW Rebalance v1.23.01 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Mechanic would be removed as a perk after each battle allowing engineers to level up infinitely
Version 1.23.00
LW Rebalance v1.23.00 - Patch Notes
Overall:
- Damage Reduction renamed to Damage Resistance - to clarify some edge cases and make the term more intuitive
Strategic:
- Council request redesigned from the base up. They'll be more likely to be fair with fewer ridiculous requests (though that's subjective, some players may still find some requests ridiculous) - QoL, much more variation, and can encourage players to try reserach/production paths they normally wouldn't
- Workshops no longer provide rebates and instead directly affect the alloy and elerium cost of items - Makes it easier to tell the effect
- Workshops also lower the credit/alloy/elerium cost of foundry projects - Makes them more beneficial
- Added numerical values for the panic and defense shields of countries similar to XMarksTheSpot(Zyxpsilon)'s mod - small QoL improvement
- Items take longer to build the later in technology they are - Makes engineers and later game workshops important
- Rushing the production of something costs 40% more resources (from 30%) - With some of the increased times rushing became more valuable, this prevents rushing from being too common
- Lowered the maintenance on labs and workshops to 120 (from 160) - makes them a little easier to maintain
- Alien tech, resource, and threat levels have been added to the ticker - I was convinced this was a good idea. Realistically, XCOM would have a general idea how the aliens are doing and the only players really going to care about these values are the ones that would like it in.
- First level psionic training (neural feedback and mind fray) target will increased to 50 (from 40) - Significantly reduce the end game number of psionic units on rosters while not affecting the climb through the psionic ranks
- Increased the chance to get a more even distribution of soldier classes - Less likely to have a campaign where you get 0 scouts and easier to replinish classes that are getting killed off
- Minimum Alien Resources (a measure of alien mission potential) per month increased to Month*12 (from Month*9) - Prevents campaigns where a player is doing "too well" from getting too easy and the aliens getting too far behind
- Aliens launch double the number of harvest/research missions but cut their benefit in half (rounded up) - Means players will experience more landed UFOs and more opportunities to interfere in the basic methods of alien growth (harvest/research missions)
- UFO Scout missions grant 2 alien research (from 1, this is now half of original rounded up as per the above point) but occur in normal numbers again (from x3) - It was bugged and not working half the time, and when it did work it was leading to campaigns with an overload of resources and too much of a hamper on alien resource growth
- Fighter repair time increased by ~25% - Makes risking all of your fighters being damaged to take down a tougher UFO or one that you are not prepared for a little less easy to recover from
- Plasma tech research no longer requires alien plasma weapons - Missing out on this could be a frustrating bottle neck and it is a fairly pointless requirement (as you'd already have the requirement, just you might have accidentally sold what you needed)
- Sentinel Drone Foundry project renamed to SHIV Advancements II and both SHIV Advancements I and II are significantly easier to acquire - The name didn't really make sense with the perks and such, and this helps buff the SHIVs by giving them an easier to acquire method of healing (with repair servos) and making them stronger faster
- SHIV Advancements and SHIV Advancements II swap damage control for repair servos - Gives the SHIVs earlier access to a form of self-healing
- Drone Capture foundry project removed - It was hard to prevent it from being abusive on the last mission, and was more gamey than anything enjoyable
- Reduced the range on grey market selling costs to make it less extreme in both directions and made it refresh only once per month - Means you are less likely to have incredible prices and less likely to have horrible prices, also makes it easier to know when to check for new prices
- Panic from UFO bombing runs decreased slightly - They were a little extreme and helps accommodate for extra panic generation from more UFOs
Missions:
- Crashed and Landed UFO missions all start with the same number of aliens but aliens on crashed UFOs will: 1) lose 0-33% of their soldiers during the crash and 2) start the mission with injuries - A cool feeling that makes sense for a crashed UFO and is a little more realistic (Note: Landed UFO missions still have 1-4 extra months, depending on difficulty, of alien research for the purposes of alien types)
- Zombie apocalpyse missions are no longer - They weren't enjoyable gameplay despite my many attempts to make them so. RIP Zombie Apocalpyse.
- Zombies and Lids on terror missions will occur in smaller pods - Making explosives less effective and making them a little less dangerous.
- Increased the number of aliens on council missions - They could be too easy
- Abduction missions can field 6 soldiers (from 5), increased the number of aliens by 2 - With the new map selection process the squad size on abduction missions can be increased
- Exalt Data Recovery missions can field 6 soldiers (from 5), increased the number of aliens - Consistency with abductions, provide more resilience to randomness during the missions
- Slingshot and Progeny DLC missions and Newfoundland occur at more random start times - Less predictable campaign to campaign (please be careful on an early newfoundland, lid pods are still large)
- Smaller maps will be rerolled during the abuction map selection process if the difficulty is high and the map is too small - Helps make those missions more reasonable. Thanks to szmind for this awesome code.
- A picture of the mission map is displayed during loadout to help better choose your squad - Makes sense, you'd know which map you'd be approaching before you got there and it helps with loadouts and squad comps. Thanks to szmind for more awesome code :)
- Missions generators for Raiders will now use maps from the Destroyer pool (adds more variety to mission maps) - QoL, especially good since destroyers can't be shot down anymore (only destroyed)
Tactical:
- All reaction shots always trigger, except OW shots only trigger against units that you could see at the start or end of your turn - Now overwatch is for waiting for units you can see to make a move and only works against the units you can see when you go into overwatch. Prevents overwatch camping. Prevents overwatch from locking aliens off from approaching (due to too stupid AI). Prevents overwatch from locking XCOM off from approaching (due to too much risk to XCOM). Allows overwatch to be very effective/predictable against units you can see.
- Rocket scatter base increased from 1.6 to 2.0 - It was too low making even moving and firing too reliable. This makes decreasing scatter perks/items a little more important and overall scatter a little more of a consideration
- Steady Weapon is only available if the unit can see an enemy (from if the squad could see an enemy) - Makes more sense
- Changed the description on the reconaissance procs to clarify that they are approximations and not exact (intentionally) - More accurate descriptions
- Aliens will attack civilians far less often on terror missions and try to focus on XCOM more - Finally got this code working :)
- Covert Op extraction missions will now stop spawning Exalt after turn 16 - Makes it possible to kill them all to pass the mission (note: this is still ridiculous and unadvised but hey, if you want an alamo at least you have the option)
- Reaction fire can be conducted at squadsight range for all weapons with squadsight (Sniper Rifles, Arc Rifles, Strike Rifles, and MEC weapons) - Opens up opportunities for more reasonable overwatch on weapons that are rarely used for overwatch
- Steady weapon increases aim by 40 (from 30) and crit by 40 (from 0) - Even at 30 it was very rarely used. Now it should be an effectigve method of aiming in on hard-to-hit targets and a lot more competitive of a choice vs overwatch or shooting or other actions.
- Exact ammo counts of weapons are now displayed in the lower right corner - QoL. Thanks to szmind for this awesome code! :)
- Tiles from target is now displayed when you target enemies - QoL. More thanks to szmind for this awesome code =D
- Suppression now triggers on actions as well as movement - Significant buff to suppression as it really pins a target down and much more likely will have a reaction shot trigger
- Added some colors to some of the different classes of popups - QoL
- Being Shredded increases damage received by 1 (from 2) - Despiting increasing the desire to use the debuff, it was a little too powerful, so reverted back to 1 where it will probably stay
- HPs effect on throw range is increased to 4% (from 2%, down from originally 5%) - 5% was too high, but 2% was too low. However, removing fatigue recovery from health was more of a nerf than expected so it need a little umph and the grenade throw range boost at 2% was a little too insignificant. This change should fix both issues.
- Jellied Elerium foundry perk grants +2 damage to rockets (from +1) - Increase in mid to late game rocketeer usefulness
- Units will no longer hunker down when they panic - It was often the opposite affect of what was intended: either making panicking the enemies less effective or the enemies panicking you less effective.
- Elerium batteries only grants +1 charge to the stun rifle - no need for extra now since it starts with 2 and engineers can already repair mechanical units innately
Perks:
- New perk 'Mechanic': Grants 2 uses of Repair [Repair adjacent mechanical units for 3 HP and remove corrosion] and HEAT Ammo [The primary weapon gains +4 penetration (does not affect shotguns or arc rifles)] - Helpful perk to define the engineer and give some early healing to SHIVs
- New perk 'Master Mechanic': Grants 3 additional uses of Repair [Repair adjacent mechanical units for 3 HP and remove corrosion] and the first repair each turn is a free action - Perk to boost the Mechanic perk
- New perk 'Weapon Targeting': Non-reaction shots against humans and autopsied aliens have a 30% chance to jam their weapon, forcing a reload before they can fire again - Helps classes pick up some disabling abilities
- Close Combat Specialist grants +40 aim against targets within 4 tiles - Helps with CCS reaction shots and just firing at enemies in close range. Also, it just makes sense: you're a close combat specialist!
- Close Combat Specialist will trigger a reaction shot regardless of if the unit started out of LoS - It was too frustrating if this wasn't the case
- Opportunist grants all reaction shots +20 aim (from +35% base damage) - the base damage was always truncated which made weapon choice a little convoluted. Also, the extra damage was too much on both xcom and aliens.
- Reactive Targeting Sensors grants +50 aim on only the RST shot (from +30 aim on all reaction shots) - It was too strong at +30 for the purpose of boosting other reaction shots, now that aim boost will be focused just on the RTS shot.
- Ready For Anything grants +0 aim on reaction shots (from +10 aim) and +0 ammo, but always activates overwatch at the end of the turn - Been trying for many versions to get this code to work and finally got it. Significant buff (despite losing the aim and ammo) as now you can fully use your turn and still enter overwatch. You can even do things like move, reload, and then you'll still enter OW. Or even 6 actions on a medic with: 1) paramedic heal, 2) reload with LnL, 3) Shoot or move, 4) 1st RR OW shot, 5) 2nd RR OW shot, 6) 3rd RR OW shot. It can even act like CCS by sprinting up beside someone with a full move and going on OW. It's extremely flexible. Also, simplificaiton of the ability.
- Holo Rounds grants the primary weapon +1 damage against mechanical units (from +0) - The aim at 30 was too much for overall xcom aim, but reducing it to 20 left the perk a little weaker than desired on the perk trees. This should give the perk back some strength to help balance it as a pick on the trees.
- Rapid Reaction allows OW to trigger against units that started outside of LoS - Makes sense as the unit can rapidly react to a new unit in his/her LoS
- Sentinel no longer bypasses the reaction shot aim malus - Too strong with the new predictable OW mechanics, but it still gains opportunist
- Lightning Reflexes renamed to Shadowstep - more descriptive of what it actually does (and is already named so in LW2 so it should make things more intuitive for players)
- Combat Drugs grants +10 will (from +30) - Was too strong, especially with the officer bug fixed
- Mayhem no longer increases the chance of ITZ to proc but instead removes the ITZ aim and crit maluses - The increased proc chance was creating situations that were too swingy leading to the situations being too easy or too frustrating. This still significantly boosts ITZ without creating worse gameplay.
- ITZ is no longer guaranteed by Steady Weapon but instead triples the chance that ITZ will trigger, also the penalty for ITZ shots is reduced to -10 aim/crit per shot (from -15) - ITZ was still too strong vs Mayhem and DT. This makes it the perk that is stronger with lots of enemies and weaker against 1. Also with the boost to steady ITZ felt even stronger and needed to be toned down even more.
- Field Medic and First Aid grant 2 free medikits (from 3) - Slight reduction in xcom healing and overall squad resilience
- Savior grants medikits +3 heal per use (from +4) - Slight nerf
- VPT no longer grants +35% base damage but instead grants a 20% chance to deal double of all damage and works on all shots (from just the primary weapon) - Prevents bad truncating errors on weapons, allows it to work with crits and damage bonuses, and the gameplay feels really fun
- Neural Feedback nerfed to 5% of users will in damage (from 10%) - With it bypassing distortion it's kind of doing x4 damage and in tests, high will psionics were dropping sectoid commanders and ethereals too quickly
- Grit grants a 50% chance to resist disorientation - Buff for muton elites to make them a little harder to subdue
- Mindfray cooldown to 4 turns (from 3) - Slight nerf, balance and prevents too much from multiple aliens in longer fire fights
- Telekinetic Field grants +50 defense (from +40) - Now that it actually works testing showed it could use a little boost to deal with enemy extra aim boosts like mind merge and holo
- Flush aim boost to 50 (from 40) - Makes it a little more competitive
- Adrenal Neurosympathy has a 10% chance per enemy it can see to trigger after each shot (from triggering always on kill shots) - Remove some of the gaming of setting up kills to predictably get the buff. Also it makes sense the ability would not be able to be used on command (it would have some randomness) and that it would be more likely to trigger with more threat (enemies)
- Bring 'Em On grants 0.5 damage per enemy in sight (from +1 damage per enemy in sight during critical hits) - Now can be used on non-crit builds and was quite overpowered before, feels better now.
Alien Only Perks:
- Blood call no longer grants 30% DR and 30% crit resistance - was not ideal to make mutons even tankier, this should make them a little easier and more predictable to kill (esp. when being flanked)
- Distortion panic test to 20% of the distortion unit's will (from 40 will), does not panic at the beginning of the turn, and only works on ethereals. Also distortion no longer dodges aim-based shots, but instead non-psionic attacks against the unit only deal 25% damage - A lot less swingy with lower damage but more survivability
Equipment:
- AP Grenades renamed Armor Piercing, range to 7.5 (from 12.5), and now apply shred to any target they damage - They were the least used grenades and grenadier classes often felt a little stuck in one role. This should give players earlier access to shred, make the ap grenade more competitive, give a boost to grenadier classes, and finally get to make it so that AP always stands for Armor Piercing in LWR. :)
- Flashbang/Psi Grenade radius to 3.5/5 (from 4/5.5) - Tone down their effectiveness slightly
- Marksman's Scope aim to +10 (from +15) - Balance
- Chameleon Suit no longer grants tactical sense but instead: prevents non-suppression reaction shots from triggering when performing an action while in cover and unflanked - Makes it useful for avoiding reaction shots on units that need to act (e.g. suppression on a gunner, or throwing a smoke on a supportive unit)
- Plasma Stellerator grants doubles base damage against units with distortion but no longer grants +1 ammo - Alteration in effect due to the new effect of distortion, the ammo was more than needed
- Battle Scanner small item is no longer affected by S&M or Packmaster but grants a 4-pack of battle scanners (from just 1 charge) - Makes it much more reasonable to equip on a scout to extend battle scanner usage
- SAW aim to -10 (from 0) - Compared to other weapons and especially the LMG it was too strong. Now the comparison of it vs LMG is it has 10 more aim, 1 more mobility, but loses danger zone and 2 ammo. With the increased importance of the gunner on shooting (esp with suppression triggering on any action) the aim of the SAW over the LMG made the SAW too strong comparatively. This should be more balanced.
- Kinetic Strike Module damage to 20 (from 25) - Overall a nerf to help keep it in line (overall 35 max damage to 25 max damage)
- Thumper grants +5 damage (from +10) - Nerf in-line with the KSM (overall 35 max damage to 25 max damage)
- The extra rocket only grants +1 rocket (from +2) - Nerf to ammo supply on rocketeers, balance vs javelin rocket
- Limited squadsight on MECs/Strike rifles reduced to 25 tiles (from 37.5/28.8) - was too much fredom for squadsight when you could move and fire and was definitely overshadowing the sniper rifle's role. Especially on Jaeger's with ITZ triggering; as with full squadsight and movement they could see ~10 enemies much too predictably
- Motion Tracker range reduced to 25 tiles (from 30 tiles) - Was a little too effective at discovering the battle field
- Stun rifles only repair MEC/SHIVs by 8 (from 15) - It was too strong and was not intended to be used so commonly in the end game as a healing source
- Flamethrower damage to 4 (from 6), but ammo to 2 (from 1) - Makes it a little more usable because at 1 ammo it felt to limiting
- Incinerator module damage to +2 (from +6) - Nerf for balance
- Arc rifle aim to +5 (from 0) - Slight boost and consistency with laser weapons
- Smoke grenade radius to 3 (from 3.5) - They are quite effective and also a little hard to see through, this should help tone down both issues
XCOM:
- Starting stats and perks of multiple classes tweaked (see perk tree)
- All SHIVs have 3 less mobility - Balance, they were much too strong and felt a little too overpowered early when they could close the distances on enemy units so quickly and scout so efficiently.
- SHIVs can no longer be healed by medikits (reverted to LW 1.0) - They were displacing MEC and biotanks too much. This give them a role of tanking that is different due to less sustainability. The off case of the SHIV getting acided which is unable to be removed is similar to a unit getting shredded and seems to be rare and within reason when it does occur.
- Hover SHIV gains +25 aim - Balance. It was too weak for the end game. This should help keep it competitive.
- RfA and LnL swapped on Medic - Gives the RR medic earlier access to more ammo for RR, partly a nerf too as the rapid reaction medic with RfA was really strong
- When chopping a MEC, there is an individual 50% chance for each stat to increase per rank (instead of a 50% chance to receive a possible bonus to all stats per rank) - No buff/nerf, but makes the stat gains for chopping MECs less "you either got stats or didn't" and more "you'll get a spread of stats most of the time"
Aliens:
- Berserker health reduced some - Makes them a little less of a DPS check
- Alien leaders are now a little larger visually and more powerful (aim/health/damage/etc) - Makes leaders a more significant aspect of the game
- Drones start with Master Mechanic - Makes them more efficient with their repairs
- Improved Drone AI so that they derp less - They still derp, they have small little brains, I can only help them so much
- Mechtoids and Cyberdiscs lose sentinel and opportunist but pick up rapid reaction - Makes advancing against them more dangerous but their shots less accurate. It was important to make shadowstep more useful (given that everyone technically has shadowstep if they are out of LoS) and retain some more threat to their overwatch.
- Heavy Floaters pick up rapid reaction - Makes their overwatches effective out of LoS
- Seekers gain +50% damage resistance when strangling their victims and each tick of strangle damage is increased by 3 - Makes their strangle harder to remove and them more of a threat when they start to strangle. Means that it will now be very rare that you are thankful a unit gets strangled to protect them from other threats. Also means that waiting to get strangled is not nearly as reasonable of a strategy as it used to be.
- Floater leaders of lvl 4 gain rapid reaction - Makes the leaders more dangerous
- Ethereal and Ethereal Uber regeneration and health reduced by over 50% and defense to 50/70 (from 60/80) - Big nerf to accommodate for the new distortion
- Sectoid Commanders gain distortion but lose all defense (from 40) and health and health gains are reduced significantly - Nerf to accommodate for gaining distortion
- Ethereal and Sectoid Commander base will reduced - Makes them a little less dangerous
- Chryssalids defense to 50 (from 60) and lose all regeneration but gain 4 mobility - Makes them easier to kill with conventional weapons and overwatch but makes them a little harder to prevent closing. The regeneration did not feel good and made reaction fire feel wasted too often. This is not a nerf or a buff -- more of a tweak. They ARE slightly easier due to smaller pod sizes but the intention is to keep lids as deadly foes.
- Zombies lose all regeneration but gain 4 mobility - The regeneration led to less enjoyable gameplay and the new mobility will help them close
- Drones, Seekers, and mutons gain +1 damage - Makes them pack a little more punch in the early game
Bug Fixes:
- Combat Drug boosted officers now share their will appropriately
- Not a fix, but it was decided to leave in the bug as a feature because I can't fix it and because it's not unreasonable: Countries that leave the council do not provide rewards for civilians saved on terror missions
- Ethereal panic aura will affect units with squadsight
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where Bring 'Em On was basing their abilities off of the number of units their squad could see and not the number of units the individual unit could see (this was also occuring on ITZ and might be why some people have noticed it triggering a little too often)
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where Telekinetic Field looked like it was working but never actually reduced the chance to hit of incoming fire
- Aliens will less often target hidden invisible sectoids - Probably still more of these situations but this should help at least and maybe it's all of them
- RTS will not fire through abilities that should prevent reaction shots (Shadowstep and Chameleon Vest)
- Shadowstep/Chameleon Vest popups will not occur when there is no reaction shot (especially occurred when firing with a unit that had that perk/equipment)
- Ethereal panic aura will not reactivate after loading a game
- Mind fray correctly lasts through 2 opposition turns (instead of 3)
- Fixed a bug where combat drugs and dense smoke were not granting an extra smoke to units with Smoke and Mirrors
- Fixed a really strange LW 1.0 bug where combat drugs would not grant the +20 crit bonus at squadsight range
Version 1.22.07
LW Rebalance v1.22.07 - Patch Notes
Air Game:
- Refueling back to 12 hours (from 5) - You could realistically send the same plane against the same UFO multiple times and it was frustratingly poor controls for doing so, the eliminates that
Strategic:
- Rushing a facility, foundry project, or item requires 10/10/5 meld (from 5/5/2) and 30% more resources (from 20%) - Increase in cost to rush to make it more costly
- You can only be fabricating 2 items at a time (the others are queued and production is not started until there is room) - Limit to productivity, encourage stacking items and more consideration of when to produce what, boost to the importance of engineers
- Each workshop increases the item fabrication capacity by 1 - Increase to the effectiveness of workshops, also makes sense, more room to create more item fabrication assembly lines
Tactical:
- Covert Op extraction mission reinforcements are now on a timer and there are more of them - Discourages spending too long trying to kill exalt
- Covert Op extraction missions only start with a single pod and approaching an array causes reinforcements to come 1 turn later - Makes it much easier to move around while remaining undetected, or when approaching the arrays or evacuating
- Explosives now do 33% damage at their periphery (from 25%) - Makes it more likely to do some damage if you just 'tick' someone
Perks:
- Lightning reflexes Popup now only occurs when LR prevents a reaction shot from triggering - Nice to see when it's being useful and stops from revealing hidden enemies and being spammy
- Rapid reaction no longer bypasses LR and no longer grants +10 aim but instead halves the effect distance has on reaction shot trigger chances - This means at 18 tiles instead of having a 10% chance to trigger overwatch (100-18*5) it will be a 55% chance to trigger (100-18*2.5). Also, voiding things that void things (e.g. RR OW -> LR -> OW) is usually not a good design. Overall buff.
- Sentinel allows reaction shots to be made with no reaction shot aim malus - Buff to sentinel, allows the shots to be high damage (opportunist) and accurate when they trigger
- Opportunist back to +35% base damage increase on reaction shots (from 50%) - 50% was too strong and sentinel didn't need the extra damage with the new aim malus bypass
- Tandem warheads increases the damage done at the periphery of explosives to 66% (from 100%) - Nerfed as it was too strong vs the other options and it removed too much of the strategy of trying to land the explosive on the target
- Neural Feedback does 10% of the psionic defender's will in damage (from 5%) - Boost to the damage component
Equipment:
- Breaching ammo aim malus to -20 (from -30) - Slight buff
XCOM:
- SHIVs have 10 less aim - Reduces their offensive potential as they are OP (does not affect already created SHIVs)
Bug Fixes:
- Misc typos
Version 1.22.06
LW Rebalance v1.22.06 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a visual bug where a Lightning Reflexes popup would occur quite often when it shouldn't
Version 1.22.05
LW Rebalance v1.22.05 - Patch Notes
Tactical:
- OW now has 5% less chance to trigger for each tile away the target is (from 10% chance after 10 tiles) - OW is now significantly less consistent making it easier to dodge. At point blank it will be 95% trigger, at 10 tiles it will be 50% trigger, and at 18 tiles it will be 10% trigger. OW is similar when there are lots of enemies (lots of chances to trigger), but half as effective if there is only 1 action from a target. This also adds some inconsistency to all reaction shots so you can't just walk up and OW someone point blank and guarantee the OW shot.
- Toned down the number of Exalt and smoothed out their upgrades to elite status a little more on exalt missions - They were a little too challenging
- Covert Op Extraction missions now have only 2 soldiers (from 3) - With the new OW mechanics and LR it's a lot more doable to just rescue the covert op. These missions were not intended for XCOM to kill all of the exalt -- despite this that's still what was most effective. Now with only 2 it should be most prudent to try to just evacuate the Covert Op.
Perks:
- LR no longer causes reaction shots to graze but instead prevents reaction shots from triggering altogether - Means that units with LR are free to move and act around the battlefield but that they can't 'clear' enemy OW for their allies. This opens up options like high damage assaults to take out units on OW by moving in with LR, or support scouts using flashbangs or smoke with LR, or a Shogun running in with LR to EMP and disable a sectopod, etc.
- Opportunist grants +50% base damage on reaction shots (from 35%) - Buff to brawler and sentinel units given the nerf to triggering of reaction shots
- Rapid Reaction still nullifies lightning reflexes but also grants +10 aim on reaction shots - Update to the programming based on the LR change and buff to the perk due to more difficulty in triggering
- Grit no longer reduces injury times but instead grants %DR equal to half of the %HP loss - The injury time was problematic that when stacked with other injury reducing abilities you could "wound" fatigued units to speed up their recovery. This embodies the perk more as something that makes the unit resilient when getting hurt.
- Dense smoke no longer increases DR by 30% but instead increases the radius of the smoke grenade by 40% - Buffed. The DR was a bit awkward to use (as the enemies wouldn't hit you if you were in smoke due to high defense) and the increased radius will be very useful.
- Distortion (from etherals) panic lowered to a 40 will test (from 50 will test) and dodge chance on aim-based attacks reduced to 40% chance (from 50%) - Nerfed. They were a little too dominating.
Equipment:
- Removed reaction fire increased range on strike rifles - It had too little of an effect anymore to justify the inconsistency
- Chameleon suit is now equippable by any class - Opens up it's use (as it's not the most effective on units with LR anymore)
- MEC2/3 suits no longer provide bonus will - makes MECs more suceptible to psionics and panic
Bug Fixes:
- MEC1s now correctly have 2 equipment slots
- Fixed a bug where 'immune' would pop-up on Muton Elites and Outsiders when it shouldn't
Version 1.22.04
LW Rebalance v1.22.04 - Patch Notes
Overwatch Rework:
Summary:
- Triggering Reaction Shots:
- Reaction shots trigger on enemy actions and movement >1 tile
- There is a 10% less chance to trigger for each tile further than 10 the target is
- Reaction Shot Aim:
- There is a 33% aim malus against targets popping out of cover or moving (66% if dashing)
- Reaction shots ignore defense from cover
Details (Just explanations and specific changes):
- All overwatch and close combat specialist reaction fire triggers on movement and actions (i.e. all reaction fire innately has covering fire) - Makes logical sense (you wouldn't just shoot at moving targets, you'd also shoot at targets that pop up out of cover), and acts as a buff to overwatch on non-overwatch specialized classes
- Covering Fire no longer exists (no perks grant it anymore and it's automatic on all reaction fire) - Not only did it never really make sense (that's not what covering fire is) it was also always strange that reaction shots only triggered on movement and not actions. This is a much more reasonable situation as the soldiers will fire at an enemy they are 'overwatching' when he pops out of cover to perform an action or move. Note: if you want to remove it from your soldiers use the console and type in "`giveperk -47".
- All reactions shots ignore defense granted from cover - Simplification and makes sense (a target popping up out of cover trying to perform an action would be easier to hit) and acts as a buff to overwatch against stationary targets. Note, there is no covering fire, so the 33% aim malus will apply to reaction shots that trigger on normal movement or actions. It plays a lot better as if you don't have a good shot (enemy is behind heavy cover) it's now very reasonable to wait till he pops out to get a better shot, especially if they are in heavy cover (though the target could decide to move or your OWing unit might be distracted by another unit). The last reason for this, is taking overwatch shots at the exact time you were running past cover was very difficult (frustrating) to predict correctly.
- There is a 10% less chance to trigger for each tile further than 10 the target is - Stops the need for a dashing aim malus to trigger on movement >2 tiles and prevents soldiers from wasting their shots on terrible odds while still preventing overwatch camping. The other large benefit is it allows you to safely approach enemies that might be on overwatch without as much fear of being shot.
- The dashing aim malus (66%) will only occur when a unit is actually dashing (no more triggering just because a unit moved >2 tiles) - makes CCS shots mostly just have the normal 33% aim malus
- Reaction fire will not have an aim malus against stationary units that are uncovered - Makes sense, units that are standing in the open and acting should not have any reaction fire aim malus. Helps to limit the effectiveness of mechanical tanks that don't need cover drawing too much overwatch fire.
- Moving targets further than 10 tiles away have their chance to trigger a reaction shot spread out over 4 tiles and checked every segment as the target moves - This is just the nitty gritty details (and the math gets complicated) - the purpose is so that it's still reasonable to avoid a reaction shot while moving multiple tiles
QoL:
- The turn count is now displayed on the end of battle mission summary and in the name of the save files - Nice to know (thanks to szmind for the code)
- Neural Dampening will show an 'immune' popup when it prevented panic
Strategic:
- Soldier XP levels required for ranks changed to 100/500/1200/2200/3500/5100/7000 - A little more consistency in the xp change per rank
- XTP 1 grants 20 xp per day (from 10) and XTP 2 grants 50 xp per day (from 25) - Speeds up the promotions so there is less delay at the lower ranks which can be somewhat ineffective
- Chance to recover an intact computer on crashed UFOs increased from 25% to 50% - It was too much of a gate resource for the lower percentage
Tactical:
- Green Fog (the 10% chance to lose 1 health per turn after 20 turns) removed as a default mechanic - With the recent changes to overwatch camping and the effectiveness of extra turns turning into increased fatigue and injury times, there was little need to keep this wonderful wonderful mechanic in place. Thus, it has been removed. RIP Green Fog, you will be missed. However, for those that loved it as much as I did, you can still enable it with a 2nd wave option.
- Rate of aim modification per tile closer/further on assault and sniper weapons decreased back to 8 (from 10) - The goal was to nudge them up a little to help with CCS dealing with the new reaction aim maluses but it was not nearly enough. New solutions are in place so this no longer should be so high.
- Reduced the number of aliens on crashed and landed scouts - Makes them a little easier to tackle
- Base health increases/decreases throw range by 2% (from 5%) - Nerf to the effectiveness of HP
- Aliens will now only receive upgrades at 50, 100, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 research - Consistency and a little easier understanding of alien research and alien upgrades
- Shred now grants +2 damage (from +1) - Increase to it's use against non-hardened targets, still has minimal effect on high damage (>20) shots
- Holo grants +20 aim (from +30) - Was too strong both for and against XCOM, helps make late game defense still viable
Perks:
- Lead by Example (Officer perk) no longer grants any bonus stats but instead reduces fatigue by 20% - Alteration to make officers not feel as slotted into being a tank but still make them feel like stronger units worthy of being officers
- Grit DR to 0% (from 15%) and reduces injury times by 30% (from both injury and fatigue times by 15%) - Slight nerf, focuses more on injury time
- Psi Inspire no longer gives an extra action to units that were panicked - Slight nerf, and was a little lame how you could actually get extra turns out of it
- VPT and CST grant +35% base damage (instead of +3/2/1 damage for MEC/primary/secondary) but only works on the primary weapon - Simplification of the perk and balancing out of strength from early to late game
- Comradery now grants bonus stats 50% (from 25%) of the time (DW modified) - Boost for competitiveness vs combined arms
- Suppression and Disabling Shot both trigger reaction shots again - With the ability to minimize the chance of being shot at there was no need for the extra layer of complication, plus it didn't make sense why these shots would not trigger but other shots would
- Greater Mind Merge cooldown to 2 (from 1) - Slows down spammage
Equipment:
- MEC1 DR to 2 (from 1) - Helps early game tanking with MECs
- The illuminator gunsight is equippable on MECs - logic
- Marksman's Scope cannot be used with other scope items - logic
- Holo-targeter weight to 1 (from 2) - Balance with the decreased strength of holo rounds
- Breaching ammo carries a -30 aim malus - Balance, was too strong without more of a draw back
Aliens:
- Uber Ethreal defense +20 - At that point in the game we have very high to hit chances (holo, combat drugs, mind merge, flying armor, etc.) and his survivability was too low
- Ethereals and Sectoid Commanders lose the ability to mind fray - There is a bug that makes the mind fray do 0 damage and I can't fix it :O, plus, it was still an inferior move compared to their other abilities
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where close range aim bonuses were not be calculated properly - At 10 tiles there will be no bonus. At point blank you will have +50 aim with a normal weapon, +80 aim with a shotgun, -80 aim with a sniper/strike rifle (note: the formula is still really whacky and will often be off by some, but overall it's much more accurate and often 100% accurate at point blank now)
- Fixed a bug where lightning reflexes didn't have a popup when it should
- Fixed a bug where ethereal panic was not triggering at all
- Fixed a bug where distortion dodge chances were applying twice (Whoops!)
- Fixed a bug where combat stims triggered a hit chance popup
Version 1.22.03
LW Rebalance v1.22.03 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Added the ability to set the female gender ratio to the defaultgamecore.ini under the variable: NUM_STARTING_SOLDIERS - Let's players customize their game a little more. Default value is 4 (which means 1/4 of all new soldiers will be female)
Strategic:
- All continents will now receive similar chances of an event occuring (despite the number of countries within) - Previous to this change smaller continents would have less events. This makes starting in continents with 3 or 2 countries just as likely to have landed UFOs, council events, etc. as continents with 4 countries
- Xenologic Remedies starting bonus for China lowered to 400% extra cash (from 500%) - With the variable grey market this was now too strong and needed to be toned down
- Quai d'Orsay starting bonus for France increased to 30% (from 25%) - Over time this has gotten a little bit weaker than ideal, slight buff
- NeoPanzers starting bonus for Germany lowered to 35% off (from 50%) - With the large shift of lower meld costs and higher alloy/elerium costs this starting bonus gained significant strength - this is to keep it inline
- Ghost in the Machine starting bonus for Japan increased to 25 aim (from 15 aim) - With only 1 SHIV per mission limit and the less ammo on SHIVs this start took a large hit. This makes it still unique and relevant.
- Sandhurst UK starting bonus increased to 20% off OTS ranks required (from 15) - Slight boost
- We have ways starting bonus for US decreased to 90% discount (from 95%) - Slight nerf, minimal overall effect
Tactical:
- Reaction aim maluses to 33% and 66% while dashing (from 30/60%) - Slight increase, more so on the dashing, makes the mental math easier at 1/3 and 2/3.
- Exalt covert op missions have 1 less pod and the remaining 3 pods (1 large, 2 small) will have less exalt (5-8 for large, 1-2 for small) - Makes the missions significantly easier as they were too challenging previously
- Corrosion (from acid) to -15 aim (from -20) and -15% mobility (from -20%) - More focus on the DR penetration aspect, and overall nerf to make it a little less penalizing for something that could stick indefinitely
XCOM:
- Golaith SAA replaced with First Aid - Gives the goliath a healing option on the non-grenadier route, slight diversification
- MSGT stat gains increased based on max natural stat so that the max gain with MSGT bonuses is now 19 mobility (from 18), 18 health (from 16), 97 aim (from 85), and 95 will (from 70) - will and aim were too restricted going by averages, this should create a more balanced (albeit still overpowered) soldier
Aliens:
- Multiple late game leaders had their health increased
- Blood Call now also grants 30% crit resistance - Helps mutons that like to wander out into the open be not so exposed and makes the ability stronger
- Distortion causes 50 will test panic rolls (from 30), and distortion dodge back to 50% (from 30%) - 80 Will officers were too effective at completely negating the panic effect. As for the increased distortion dodge, ethereals were still dropping too easy (they are supposed to create pyrrhic victories at best) and pulse was still too strong compared to plasma - This helps with both issues
Equipment:
- Increase in resource costs of multiple research and foundry projects - Increased value of corpse collection and late game elerium and alloys
- Reaper Ammo crit to 30 (from 40) and weight to 1 (from 0) - Reversal of previous change, it's pretty powerful, didn't need the buff, helps tone down pulse
- MEC equipment meld and cash cost decreased while alloy/elerium cost increased significantly - A little more restriction on the items and another use for later game alloys/elerium
- Flamethrower ammo to 1 (from 2) - Increased dependency on the incinerator module and overall nerf as it was a little too effective
- Stun Rifle base charges to 2 (from 1) (upgrade still yields 4) - Increase to effectiveness of stun rifle pre-upgrade
- Alloy SHIV requires Mechtoid Autopsy to produce (instead of advanced body armor) - Spreads the SHIVs to off-the-bat/mid/late game (instead of off-the-bat/early/late game). The alloy SHIV was too strong for it's early role.
- SHIV Chassis sell for a lot less - Prevents creating/selling them to make a profit
- Regular SHIV DR to 3 (from 2.5) - Slight increase in tankiness, makes it able to last longer into the mid game
- Alloy SHIV defense to 20 (from 15), mobility to 16 (from 15), and DR to 4 (from 3.5) - Consistency on defense, multiple slight buffs, makes it able to last longer into the late game
- Hover SHIV flight fuel to 10 (from 8), mobility to 17 (from 18) - Allows for more flight time, slight reduction on it's speed when not in the air
- All HMECs gain 1 equipment slot, L-MEC3 and UL-MEC3 gain 1 secondary weapon slot - Buff to MECs carrying capacity. The previous alteration was for balance but the use of MEC equipment is important. The 2ndary weapons are where the support vs non-support role comes in so the LMECs retain that dominance.
- HMECs DR to 3/4/5 (from 2/3/4) and MEC1 DR to 1 (from 0) - Buff to their tanking
- Core Armoring DR to 2 (from 1) and health to 3 (from 1) but requires advanced power armor to create - Pushes it later in the game and makes it stronger as an upgrade to the alloy-carbide plating and late game mechanical unit tanking
- H-MEC3 mobility to 3 (from 2) - Balance
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where Perfect Information was not showing up on reaction shots
- Fixed some bugs that were causing unintended and unapplied damage shields (suggesting damage reduction that didn't occur) to pop up
- Fixed a bug where Reaper Ammo was not granting any actual crit bonus
Version 1.22.02
LW Rebalance v1.22.02 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Soldiers will still recover from fatigue while on the skyranger if selected for a mission
Strategic:
- Grey Market sell values fluctuate each month and after major events making selling items sometimes less valuable and sometimes more valuable - More realistic for a grey market and adds some interest when selling
- Starting cash for South America increased - Balance
- Aircraft "Modules" renamed to "Boosters", Foundry project name left at "booster" - They are temporary devices with multiple uses and did not really fit the description of a module. This also helps distinguish them from the SHIV modules.
- Defense Booster cost reduced to 4 cyberdisc corpses (from 6) - Easier to acquire
- Laboratories only provide +30% research (from +40%) and adjacenecy lab bonus is +10% (from +20%) - Tone down in strength of labs to make them less mandatory for a successful campaign
- Panic increases by 10% per month (from 5% per month) and only affects increases in panic - It was not rising fast enough to close off games
- Overall research speed increased by ~11% - Accommodates for decreased lab efficacy
- Increased the sale cost of some components recovered from UFOs - Makes them more worthwhile
- Confounding light occurs 2 weeks after vanilla timing (from 4 weeks after vanilla timing) and Gangplank occurs 2 weeks after (from 2 days after) - Gives the player a little more breathing room for the DLC missions and the fatigue they generate
- Bioelectric Skin gene mod replaced with Adrenaline Surge gene mod - Bioelectric Skin was repuroposed as the new perk 'Tracker' and Adrenaline Surge was revamped - This makes it part of most player's games while opening up a new fun perk with the new Adrenaline Surge
Tactical:
- DR cannot push damage below 1 - This is mostly a QoL change. It stops things like a grenade from doing 0 damage and 2 DR, or a carbine doing 0 damage to a seeker, etc. It allows you to push an enemies health downward even if they have high DR (e.g. late game sectopods). Last, it stops XCOM high DR units from being as OP (e.g. MEC Goliath tanking 16 shots from seekers taking 0 damage). I previously thought it was cool and realistic that a big sectopod would take 0 damage from puny weapons -- however, I've been told me own lessons that gameplay > realism and in this case the frustrating gameplay is very obvious and has occured many times to probably any experienced LWR player. It's kind of consistent in that the minimum hit chance is always 1% too. =P
- Jellied Elerium increases the damage of rockets by 1 (instead of increasing the range by 2 tiles) - Minimizes usefulness on inactivated pods
- Number of aliens on abductions reduced to: Light 7-9, Medium is 8-10, Heavy is 9-11, Swarming is 10-12 - Makes the # of aliens more unpredictable and decreases the difficulty
- Just a note about Exalt Missions (this is unchanged but informative): Both Exalt missions are a single large pod of 6-8 exalt, with 3 small pods of 1-3 exalt, and then reinforcements. On the first exalt mission expect 1 pod of 6 exalt with 3 pods of 1 exalt.
- Salvage options are now capped at a certain amount - So you don't get silly options like 5000 credits for a ton of extra elerium and alloys
- Salvage returns are now displayed before you make the decision on whether it's worth it or not - Makes it more transparent
- Salvage Teams are more reasonably priced - You can even make $$ if you get a good salvage and then also find a good time on the grey market to sell the materials
- Dashing aim malus increased to -60% (from -50%) - Helps minimize overwatch against units out of vision
Perks:
- Adrenaline surge now only triggers below half life (instead of after any amount of damage) and grants +20 defense and +5 mobility (from +10 aim and crit) - Buff to its significance, makes it a useful survival ability, prevents 'gaming it'
- New Perk 'Tracker': This soldier can detect (but not activate) aliens within 10 tiles through and around obstacles. The heightened senses renders this soldier immune to strangulation.
- Concealment now grants the 'Tracker' perk - If you are mid-way through a game you can reset perks on a scout and you should pick up the new perk - Gives the scout more ability to scout, especially on covert op maps
- Concealment does not trigger when dashing, breaks at the beginning of your turn if you can see enemies, and no longer provides a defense bonus - Reduction in it's effective range of scouting as a nerf and your ability to set up alpha strikes. Reduces the ability to squadsight pick off unsuspecting pods. The defense bonus was not necessary as concealment is extremely powerful and could be abusive with defense stacking. Also made the thin mints a little to hard to hit. Last, this nerf accommodates for the increased scouting that the new Tracker perk provides the scout which is much less abusable.
- Platform stability reduces rocket scatter by 50% (from 40%) - Buffed to make mid and late game rockets more accurate (in consideration of damage nerf)
- Damage Control grants 30% DR when active (from 20%) - Was too weak at 20% for an ability that only activates after you're already received damage
- Rapid Reaction prevents Lightning Reflexes but no longer grants +1 ammo - Makes units with RR a good counter to units with LR
- Grit grants 15% DR at all times (instead of 20% against damage through cover) and also reduces fatigue and injury times by 10% - Tweak to the gunner to make grit more appealing to all builds
- Greater Mind Merge grants +100 aim (from +50) and cooldown to 1 turn (from 2 turns) - Compare to +25 aim for normal mind merge. Basically when the sectoid commander uses this you're going to be getting hit. Makes the sectoid commander act more like a general on the battlefield.
- Neural Feedback does 5% of the psi defender's will in damage (from 5-9 damage) but always triggers - Nerfed and buffed, makes will more important on psionic users. Against Sectoids it's weaker, but against commanders and ethereals it's stronger as it will trigger a lot more despite doing less damage.
- Mind Fray does 5% of the psi attacker's will in damage (from 2 damage) - Damage component buffed, makes will more important on psionic users
- Psi Panic cooldown to 1 turn (from 3 turns) - Boost to it's usability on XCOM and on Sectoids
- Lightning Reflexes reworked: It now has no effect on hit chance, but reaction shots that connect only 'graze' the target dealing 30% of the original damage - More predictable use and outcomes, less RNG
- ITZ malus after each shot to 15 aim/crit (from 10) - Slight nerf to keep it inline
Equipment:
- Motion Tracker range to 30 tiles (from 35) and charges reverted back to 2 (from 3) - The SHIV no longer needs an overpowered item to make it useful due to it's recent buffs. The previous buffs to the motion tracker was to encourage SHIV use but the negative was that it was was supplanting the scout's role. This way the tracker is still effective and less mandatory opening up more equipment competition and opening up more room for scouting by the scout.
- Recoilless Rifle and Blaster launcher damage reduced by 1 but mobility to -1 (from -2) - Consistency with the rocket launcher, damage nerfed to make mid and late game rockets less damaging (in consideration of scatter reduction on platform stability) and to allow rocketeers more movement flexibility
- All HMECs, SHIVs, Reinforced Armor, Regenerator Vest, and Ceramic/Alloy/Chitin Platings all gain 0.5 DR - Buff to static DR
- HMECs lose 1 secondary weapon slot and 1 equipment slot - Nerf to accommodate for higher static DR, the DC buff, and to balance them vs light MECs. Pushes LMECs more into the utility role.
- MEC3-L loses 1 mobility - Balance
- MEC suits no longer require a previous iteration suit in order to build - Makes it so the player will have a deeper roster of MEC suits when they have one under repair or lose one
- Stun Rifle with SHIV Repair upgrade repairs 15 health (from 10), but grants 4 charges with elerium batteries (from 5) - Buff to keep it competitive with medikits considering it's drawbacks
- Javelin Rockets deal +150% base damage (from +100% base damage) - Buffed as their small AoE was challenging to deal with
- Reaper Ammo provides +40% crit (from +30%) - Buffed
XCOM:
- Assault picks up Grit instead of First Aid at MSGT - Makes more sense for the type of character and first aid was late at that time
- SHIVs gain +2 mobility across the board - Helps accommodate for motion tracker nerf, opens it up to more flanking maneuvers and an assaulting role while still making it great at grabbing meld. Also, makes the expensive investments into SHIVs feel more worthwhile.
Aliens:
- Psionic units will be more aggressive and reworked a LOT of the ethereal and sectoid commander AI (usually touching AI was impossible for me, but I've leveled up in my programming skills): This means sectoids, sectoid commanders, and ethereals are less afraid of being on the front lines - Probably the best change of the version IMO. Experience suggests this is a nerf to sectoid commanders (as they like to sit closer) and a big buff to ethereals (as they like to sit closer).
- Mutons (and some other units) will be less prone to run out in the open - Improved AI
- Exalt Operatives and Exalt Elite Operatives lose Covering Fire and Close Combat Specialist but gain +2/3 health and Shock-Absorbant Armor - The CCS was there to prevent XCOM CCS and close range assaults from trivializing them. However, with LR XCOM CCS isn't as dangerous and instead of Exalt CCS, more health and SAA can accomplish the same goal. This makes running up to and dodging around Exalt a lot less painful.
- Outsider damage and regeneration gains with research halved through the majority of the game - Makes them less painful when you fight them in groups
- Sectoid Commander base health and health gain with research reduced by 25% - While they are quite deadly, they should be easier to drop. This gives more counterplay making it more reasonable to take those long distant sniper shots or send that assault out on a limb to take down the commanders.
- Thinmen have slightly less aim and health with research - Reduce their mid to late game strength slightly
- Ethereals lose the squadsight ability - Felt unfair when it was used
- Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals regain access to mind fray - Due to the fact that it's damage is based on will it can be a reasonable option on them again, actually acts as a bit of a nerf (which is important with their new AI)
- Mechtoids have Sentinel instead of Rapid Reaction - Makes them less deadly against units with LR and when receiving greater mind merge
Bug Fixes:
- Council missions now have the number of aliens on them ramped up to the late game levels (like all the other missions did) - They were accidently left off and were too easy early to mid game
- Fixed the erroneous description on Flak Ammo that suggested it still increased the damage of rockets against airborne targets
- Fixed a bug where medikits could sometimes not heal fully healed SHIVs that were acided to remove the acid
- Fixed a bug where a steadied Jaeger or Sniper with ITZ could move and fire and have a faulty activation of ITZ
- Fixed some incorrect subtitle tips based on changes in LWR
- Breaching ammo correctly removes hardened's crit reduction and correctly does not apply to pistols anymore
- No units are immune to corrosion anymore (some were left in that the mobility did not affect)
- Fixed various typos and some errors with the tech tree
- Weapon Fragments now sell for the correct price in DW games
- Council artifact requests are now balanced in both DW and non-DW games
- Fixed an LW 1.0 issue where rarely a left click would move a soldier (maybe?)
- Fixed a bug where reaper ammo gave 0% crit
Version 1.22.01
LW Rebalance v1.22.01 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
- Some missions had their squad sizes reduced below 8 that should not have been, this is now fixed
Version 1.22.00
LW Rebalance v1.22.00 - Patch Notes
Major Features:
Squad Size:
- All missions now allow for 8 soldiers (except for abuctions and covert op data recoveries at 5, and covert op extractions at 3) and can no longer be upgraded with the OTS - Significant increase in the number of soldiers. Sets the squad size off the bat to maximize the number of soldiers that can participate in most battles while still preserving some diversity in squad types. Abductions are set to 5 due to the smaller maps not adequately accommodating more soldiers. All other missions are set to 8 to maximize the number of soldiers you can bring on each mission, increasing tactical options and reducing RNG.
- OTS changes: Lt/Cpt/Mjr requires 10/40/60 missions, Assault/Response Teams replaced by the XTP (XCOM training programme I and II) which requires 20/90 missions - Spread out of the remaining functions to accommodate for loss of squad size upgrades, XTP II being later lets "Show 'Em the Ropes" have more effect
- Alien numbers were increased proportional to the increase in XCOM squad sizes (especially in the earlier game) - Accommodation for earlier larger xcom squads
Reaction Fire:
- The dashing reaction fire aim malus now includes targets that have moved more than 2 tiles - Now moving in on a unit that is on overwatch is less deadly if you don't know where they are. Also, overwatch camping is a lot less effetive (giving the aliens a form of 'dashing'). Notably: does not affect covering fire or first fire overwatch shots against units that are in LoS of the overwatcher.
- Removed the restriction on reaction shots not being able to crit - Really didn't make sense as you think someone running or trying to fire at your friend would have their vulnerable aspects more exposed than someone hiding behind cover, replaces the damage buff on reaction shots. Also, simplifies the entire process (as there is one less exception on reaction shots).
- Opportunist grants +35% base damage on reaction shots (instead of allowing criticals on overwatch) - Since you can now automatically crit on overwatch
- Reaction shots no longer increase base weapon damage - Tone down of bonus damage on reaction shots due to allowing crits and opportunist doing more damage
- Targeting Motor grants opportunist (instead of granting bonus damage to reaction shots) - Simplification, basically the same functionality (nerf is inline with reaction shot damage reduction)
- Lightning Reflexes reduces hit chance of reaction shots by 50% on the first shot and 30% on subsequent shots (from 70% and 50%) - Nerfed; makes LR less dominant for clearing overwatches and makes more room for other options such as suppression, grit, smoke, etc.
SHIVs:
- SHIVs are now controlled by the Skyranger pilot. Unfortunately this means he can only control 1 SHIV per turn. If you bring multiple SHIVs into a battle, the pilot (and thus you) will only be able to control 1 each turn - Prevents SHIV spam from trivializing many missions while not requiring SHIVs to receive a nerf. Note, you still CAN bring multiple SHIVs on a mission, just it's a lot less effective.
Science:
- Each scientists now adds 2% to the total research strength of XCOM (from 10%) - Significant reduction in the effect of scientists to help prevent such linear research paths (forcing you into earlier research paths over later ones)
- All research times have been adjusted proportionally - Accommodates new scientist effect
-----------------------------------
Strategic:
- Friends in Low Places starts at the normal time (instead of 1 month later) - This is because you now have 8 soldiers instead of 6 on that mission
- Deluge and Furies starts at the normal time (instead of 1 month later) - Same reason as above
- Salvage costs are much cheaper and the cost is various (sometimes a good deal, sometimes a bad) and you will have to decide when it's worth it
- Saving civilians on terror missions should be 'slightly' more rewarding, but the specific formula is removed - The reason the formula is removed is I've had probably over 10 reports about it being bugged when it's just that the LoS code sometimes messes with the calculations and makes them inaccurate, so instead, just think if you save everyone panic goes down a little, save most it stays even, save less than that panic increases.
- Panic increase for failing an abduction reduced by 40% - Was too much, and failing should be a lot more optional than it is
- Council cash rewards have been increased
Tactical:
- Suppression now avoids triggering covering fire - Allows more options to deal with units that go on overwatch. Abilities that do not trigger covering fire: Disabling shot, Suppression, Steady Weapon -- all are listed in-game on their respective ability descriptions.
- Grapple distance increased to 15 tiles (from 10) - Makes it more effective to use as not just getting to heights but increased mobility as well (as 15 tiles requires 24 mobility)
- Shotguns gain 25% more aim with each tile closer to the enemies they are (from +8 per tile to +10 per tile) - Makes it easier to hit targets with shotguns when at close range
- QoL: Shredder Ammo small item added to the F1 display so you can tell when soldiers have it equipped
- QoL: A few more boss names added - As per Lafiir's suggestions
- QoL: Alt-F7, Alt-F8, Alt-F9 speed up the game to 1.0, 2.0, 4.0x speeds (from 1, 1.5, 2x) - Allows you to go even faster! =D
XCOM:
- Basic SHIV base health increased by 2, mobility increased by 1, and cost increased - Buffed to make them more inline with the other SHIVs and less disposable
- Alloy/Hover SHIV mobility decreased by 1 and cost decreased - Slight tone down in strength and more affordable
- Deadeye and Precision shot reswapped on Scout - I was convinced (bullied) into realizing I was stupid and the previous swap was actually more of a nerf than a buff
Aliens:
- Muton Elites pick up 1 more DR at 500 and 700 research - Helps them stay threatening into the late game (late game pulse and plasma were dropping them too quickly)
- Sectoids/SectoidCommanders/Ethereals gain 15/20/20 will - They were a little too low and were overnerfed slightly in their will decreases. It was actually possible to negate the majority of their attacks with a high will squad.
- Mid to late level alien leaders will sometimes pick up holo rounds
Perks:
- Neural Feedback damage to 5-9 (from 7-9) - A little less consistent, slight nerf
- Distortion (Ethereals) now cause your units to panic after any action where they can see the ethereal (instead of just the beginning of your turn), but the will test has been lowered from 80 to 30 - Makes more sense, more frequent but easier to work around (80+ will units are immune)
- Grit no longer provides 100% DR against covering fire (no only provides 20% DR while in cover) - It was a little gimmicky and with suppression not triggering overwatch it was a lot less necessary. Simplification of the perk.
- Brawler DR within 4 tiles to 40% (from 30%) - Buff to the close range resilience
- ITZ now has an innate 10% chance to trigger on normal shots (non-steadied) for each enemy you can see (squadsight counts), but the -10aim/crit per shot is reinstituted - Makes it a little less spikey in terms of it's damage (less highs, and less lows), makes mobile snipers (strike rifle) more reasonable to go ITZ (so you can move into vision)
- Mayhem increases the chance for ITZ to trigger to 20% per enemy (from 15% per enemey) - Buff due to -10aim/crit being reinstituted
Equipment:
- Breaching Ammo Mobility to -1 (from -2) - It was slightly over adjusted
- Chitin plating melee DR to 40% (from 60%) but health to 2 (from 1) - Buffed. It was a little overkill against melee, this makes the item a little less specialized.
- Aurora Armor gains +2 health - Slight buff
- Psi Screen grants 10 less will but now also grants Neural Feedback - Buff, and gives psionic users the potential for both lvl 1 perks
- Psi Accelerator grants 10 less will but now also grants Mind Fray - Same as above
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where panic when seeing an ethereal was never occuring - Warning: this makes them a lot harder if you were playing in a previous version where this was not working
- Fixed some misc incorrect or poorly worded descriptions
- You can now properly run from one smoke to another smoke without triggering overwatch - No more 'double smoke' bug - Thanks szmind! :)
- Officer perks should now be visible in the strategic user interfaces and the F1 list (but are still hidden in the bottom left) - Thanks to szmind for the idea
- Fixed a bug where acid would not apply on different elevations within the detonation sphere
- Fixed a bug where old descriptions of MEC 2ndary weapons would sometimes appear in the F1 list
- Fixed a bug where smoke and mirrors was not applying to mimic beacons (which count as support grenades)
- Fixed a bug where flash bangs still weren't working on psionic units - they now do work on psionic units
- Failing a terror mission should now correctly be less punishing (half panic)
- You can no longer skip around the 2 person limit for gene modifcation by using the barracks
Version 1.21.18
LW Rebalance v1.21.18 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Suppression Module renamed to Targeting Motor - Didn't really make sense for the suppression module to improve reaction shots
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the # of medikits was sometimes 1 more and sometimes 1 less than it was supposed to be
- Reaction shots now properly have the increased damage
- Terror missions now correctly have 6 soldiers
Version 1.21.17
LW Rebalance v1.21.17 - Patch Notes
Air Game:
- Interception time increased by 15% - Makes it slightly easier to down UFOs
- Aircraft repair time reduced by 10% - Makes getting planes back up in the air slightly faster
- The option to begin UFO Research and the identification of each UFO class occurs when you destroy or shot down a UFO - Makes all UFO research open sooner and UFOs easier to identify and allows indentification of fighters and destroyers
QoL:
- EXALT renamed to Exalt - There was no acronym, my OCD couldn't take it any longer. =O Infact, if you look at early game code it was referred to as "Exalt" multiple times. I blame Firaxis quality control.
- Removed the descriptions and icons of many items and abilities from the tactical game in the bottom left corner when highlighting a soldier and on the F1 menu - There were so many abilities it got a little confusing. Items such as "Reinforced Armor: Provides +1.5 DR and +3 HP" or "High-Cap Mags: The primary weapon has +1 ammo" have been removed as they were redundant (you can see how much ammo, hp, dr, aim, etc. that you have). Note: if there are any that you feel are still important to have that are removed or that were never there, please let me know.
- Cleaned up in-game damage display for shots that didn't actually have damage and penetration (e.g. stunning an alien)
Strategic:
- Terror missions have half the impact on panic - helps accommodate for poor outcomes and failures
- Assault and Response Team OTS upgrades no longer have variable missions required to unlock: they are set at 40/90 for Assault/Response - The option to select one before the other was gimmicky and picking assault last was weird as the Col upgrade came shortly after and was similar
- OTS upgrades Col and FCMD requirements increased from 100/120 to 120/150 - Spread out the final upgrades closer to the end of a campaign
- Abduction rewards compressed to 150/180/225/285 cash (from 80/120/176/272) for light/medium/heavy/swarming - Less RNG for cash flow
- Assault Team OTS upgrade now grants +1 squad size to covert op missions as well (extraction and data recovery) - Boosts exalt mission #s in the mid game
Tactical:
- All reaction shots (not just suppression reaction shots) deal +50% base damage - Boost to overwatch and CCS while still keeping both somewhat unpredictable with the aim maluses (Note: it's base damage so weapon tier and type is very important -- e.g. shotguns have 4 base damage)
- Reverted Terror missions to 6 man missions (from 4 man missions) and reverted the # of enemies too - 1) The maps were large enough to not need the smaller squad sizes 2) abductions are already smaller so there is overlap in experience for the player 3) many players seem to prefer the larger squad sizes
- Zombie Apocalypse missions have less overall enemies with a slightly higher proportion of lids - Helps prevent lag during those missions
- Abduction mission numbers compressed: Light/Medium/Heavy/Swarming to 8-9/9-10/10-11/11-12 (from 6-7/8-9/11-12/14-15) and goes up by 1 every 3 months (instead of down by 1 in the first month, and then slowly up over the remaining months) - makes light a little harder, swarming a little easier
- First mission of the game toned down in difficulty on brutal and impossible - Because apparently I'm too much of a sadist and didn't realize it. Also, it was pretty RNG vulnerable.
- Ammo Conservation no longer applies to sniper and strike rifles - Tones down DT and ITZ in the later game
Equipment:
- Shredder Ammo small item "engineers required" reduced to 25 (from 45) - Was never changed when it was moved earlier, took too long to produce
- Banshee and Aegis armor pick up Low Profile and Damage Control, respectively - Buffed, helps make use of partial cover in situations where there is less cover and helps the aegis tank before Titan
- Seraphim and Archangel armor pick up Tactical Sense - Buffed, make them a lot more reasonable to be airborne in LoS and not take too much damage
- Medikits can now repair and remove corrosion from SHIVs - Significantly improves the ability of SHIVs to act as a tank and helps deal with corrosion being permanent
- Walker Servos no longer grants jetboot module (it was bugging out) but instead sets a soldiers mobility to 13 - Useful for soldiers with low mobility carrying a lot of equipment (e.g. a biotank with 7 mobility would get +6 mobility out of the item)
- Updated description on acid grenades to clarify that they do not affect airborne units and also updated the visual to make it more obvious - For some reason, no matter what I try, the XCOM engine refuses to let acid affect airborne units. So now, instead of a LW 1.0 bug, it's officially a feature. =D
- Breaching Ammo weight to 2 (from 0) but has the additional effect of removing the 60% crit resistance that hardened targets receive - significant buff
- Chitin Plating and Regenerator Vest DR to 1 (from 0.5) - Slight buffs
Perks:
- Psi Inspiration will bonus removed - Balance vs Psi Panic
- Mayhem grants a 15% chance per enemy in sight for ITZ to trigger (from 20%) - Slight nerf to Mayhem Jaeger as Mayhem ITZ was too consistent
- Disabling Shot grants +30 aim (from +20) - Easier to land
- Precision Shot grants +50% base damage on any shot (from +100% base damage on crit) - Makes the ability less overpowering on critical attacks and useful against units with high critical resistance
- Fire in the Hole reduces scatter by 30% (from 20%) - buffed
XCOM:
- Precision shot and Deadeye swapped on the scout tree - Buff to strike rifle scout
- Suppression replaced with First Aid on the Rocketeer tree - Gives more options to the support Rocketeer, suppression was... lacking in effectiveness, esp with all reaction fire getting the damage boost
Aliens:
- Exalt Heavy and Elite Exalt Heavy lose the ability to fire rockets but have their health improved - Rockets were just... too hard to balance and never really felt fun. I think we tried everything and still they were a massive case of RNG. Exalt gunners are now more akin to gunner tanks instead of gunner/rocketeer hybrids. They should still be a threat, but not nearly as mission ending if left alone for a turn.
- Beserker health increases with alien research are reduced significantly and base health reduced to 24 (from 28) - they gained a little too much making them too much of a 'no-option' fight too often - the still act as a DPS check but a lot less so
- Berserkers are suceptible to acid (corrosion) again - Gives another option to try to control and kite them
- Zombies are sucseptible to acid (corrosion) - Why were they ever not?
- Exalt gain no will with increases in alien research and their base will is halved - makes them much more suceptible to psionic abilities
- Exalt Medic and Elite Exalt Medic health and health gains lowered - They were a little too tanky
- Overall will bonus on Brutal/Impossible difficulties toned down to +10/+20 (from +15/+30) - Yea, I know I just boosted it, but I make mistakes all the time. Alien offensive psionics needed a boost so that was the reason for the previous boost. However, stupidly their defenses were too high. This hopefully is the ideal spot as their AI has been improved and this should tone down their psionic resistance.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed some misleading research description text
- Fixed a bug with xp and psi xp gain for covert operatives
- Fixed some incorrect ammo descriptions
- Multiple alien name fixes (based on their perks) based on Lafiir's suggestions
- Fixed a bug with perfection information displaying incorrect stun chances when using the stun gun
Version 1.21.16
LW Rebalance v1.21.16 - Patch Notes
Bug Fix:
- Fixed an incorrectly uploaded file (.15 had an incorrect file in the .zip, sorry)
Version 1.21.15
LW Rebalance v1.21.15 - Patch Notes
QoL:
- Reduced log file accumulation by switching the XComMutator.U over to szmind's which has a reduced log foot print - Thanks to szmind for the code and Lafiir for the reminder to do this :)
- Condensed a lot of alien upgrades in the code and removed useless ones
- Updated mission names to not be so silly and be a little more epic (thanks to Ulfius for the names)
- Swapped the location of the hangar and situation room buttons so that the situation room button didn't overlay the financial information on the right (only applies to new games -- sorry!)
- Show Country Names mod by eclipse666 has been added (https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/536) - Show the soldier's country name next to the soldiers name when viewing an individual soldier in the barracks. Because not everyone knows every country's flag
Strategic:
- Increased the cost of researching beam lasers slightly - Makes it a little less obvious of a decision
Tactical:
- Added a new landed terror and landed transport map as per LiQuiD911's mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/643)
- There should be a few more chryssalids on each terror mission - slight increase of difficulty
- SHIVs now share their mission experience with soldiers - YAY - Took me forever to get this working - Basically it's just the 1st SHIV alive at the end of any battle will spread any mission xp it would have accumulated to the other soldiers in the squad
Air Game:
- Air weaponry and the Firestorm has had their meld costs removed but their elerium and alloy cost increased slightly - Puts less of a constraint on meld for the strategic game influence
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle penetration to 2 (from 4) - Slight nerf to open up the anti-DR space of HEAT more
- Flashbangs and Psi Grenades now work against Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals - They don't do THAT much, but it really was an odd exception considering they both use psionic attacks. This can help slow down a retreating sectoid commander or minimize the chance of being hit with psi lance.
- Chem Grenades renamed to Acid Grenades and the malus is called "Corroded" (instead of acided) - Logic, they use acid and cause corrosion.
- Acid no longer deals damage when using an action, aim malus to -20 (from -30), mobility malus to -20% (from -25%), but it lasts indefinitely (like shredder) and there is no partial immunity to it (from Mechanical units, medikits, etc.) - It was slightly frustrating for the player, but even more so, the AI could not be made to be reasonable with it. Also, it felt a little underwhelming at times. This makes it more relevant on aliens and a lot more relevant on xcom. Also encourages use of medikits.
Perks:
- Smoke and Mirrors and Packmaster now only increase the # of charges for equipped items (they do not stack off of other perks) - Consistency, encourages using the equipment if you want to stack something
- Savior grants 0 more medikits (from +1) but increases healing by +4 (from +3) - simplification of the perk and makes medikit items more competitive
XCOM:
- MECs no longer have 50% additional fatigue - They seem to be restricted enough by resources that the additional fatigue is overly complicated and not really waranted
Aliens:
- SectoidCmndr/Ethereal/UberEthereal will lowered to 80/100/150 (from 120/120/200) and have had their will growths significantly lowered - Makes psionic users high will actually somewhat protective against these units and tones down their effectiness from 100% all the time
- Muton health toned down by 2 - slight nerf
- Sectoid will starts at 0 (from 5) - slight nerf of early psionic powers
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed "Fear No Evil" so that it now provides funding from countries that left the council (this was a really tricky one)
- Alien grenades now have the same radius when XCOM and the aliens use them
- Muton Elites gain 20 health at 1200 research (from 40)
- Fixed range on will sharing from the officer to 19 tiles (from 18 tiles)
- Fixed incorrect description on "Lead by example"
- Fixed incorrect description on Overwatch
- Removed steady weapon description from rocket launchers (as they do not benefit from steady)
- Fixed misc typos
- Fixed a bug with the displayed proposed healing from medikits being off by 1 hp sometimes
- Fixed some misleading research completion txts
- Fixed a problem with double will sharing showing up on soldiers from "Lead by Example"
- Anti-Materiel rifles accidentally had 1 extra penetration
- Large-Cal High-Cap mags now correctly requires alien materials to produce
- Fixed a bug (hopefully, one test worked at least) where mind controlled soldiers were sometimes immune to the disorient effects from flash bangs and psi grenades
Version 1.21.14
LW Rebalance v1.21.14 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Modification of OTS Projects: Makes each level feel more impactful (as each does 2 things now) and spreads the squadsize upgrades further over a campaign (preventing the drop in difficulty in the mid game with both SS upgrades), note there are no EXALT squad size upgrades anymore
- Response Teams OTS project grants 1 extra squad size for Abduction and Terror missions
- Assault Teams OTS project grants 1 extra squad size for UFO, Council, and Assault missions (note: council missions include DLC missions)
- Colonel OTS project grants 1 extra squad size for UFO, Council, and Assault missions
- Field Commander OTS project grants 1 extra squad size for Assault missions
- XCOM Training programmes moved to Lt, Cpt, and Mjr (from Lt, Mjr, FCmd) but decreased in strength by ~50% - Adds earlier training of the higher ranks to get a more resilient roster earlier in your campaign
- Reduced some corpse requirements of foundry projects
- Lowered the liklihood of swarming and light abductions and prevented later game from pushing abductions too high in difficulty - Moderate and Heavy will be more common
Tactical:
- Panic only ever lasts 1 turn - Can be too punishing when it lasted longer, especially against ethereals with full team panics. Also, panic lasting more than a turn was always a little too strong when it happened to XCOM and even when it happend to aliens (psi panic).
- Flying armors no longer increases your mobility (as mobility is hardcoded to 13 when flying and is not based off of the users mobility) - Shocking I never knew that... :O
- Terror Missions now have 33% less enemies and you can only bring in 4 soldiers - They are similar to abductions now. Helps with lag and these missions taking a little too long sometimes and being a little boring because of it.
- Exalt missions now have 25% less enemies - Accommodates for lack of squad size upgrades, makes the missions quicker - Alien Base Assaults have 20% less enemies - They were slightly too difficult
XCOM:
- Increased the aim progression of MECs by +10 - Gives MECs higher aim making them more effective at shooting vs other abilities
Perks:
- Mayhem to +30% damage on explosives - Due to grenade damage buff
- Psi Panic has a 3-turn cooldown (from 2) - Consistency with other psi-perks, prevents sectoid spamming
- Comradery has no maximum bonus for aim and will, but only increases the stats 25% of the time - Early nerf due to too fast accumulation making it too strong, and allows end game players to have no cap buffing it really late
- Alien mind control has a 2-turn cooldown (from a 5-turn cooldown) - Increased effectiveness of Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals (it was rather lame when you'd fight one and they'd just psi panic your 1 soldier and the next turn mind fray another...)
- Greater Mind Merge grants +50 aim (from +25) and has a 2-turn cooldown (from 4-turn) - Makes the perk a lot more dangerous, but still not spammable (every 3rd turn)
Aliens:
- Aliens gain +5 will on impossible difficulty (to 30 from 25) - Slightly higher resistence to psionic abilities
- Ethereals can no longer use Psi Drain or Mind Fray - It was often a strategically poor move, they have regen anyway, and it was buggy as hell, improved AI
- Sectoid Commanders will no longer use mind fray or psi panic - Makes them more dangerous by using mind control more, improved AI
- Floaters now always enter overwatch after launching - Prevents their launches from being a tactically poor choice as often, improved AI
- Muton base health increased by 4 - They were a little underwhelming
Equipment:
- Arc Rifle bonus damage against mechanical units to +7 (from +9) - Slight tone down
Bug Fixes:
- LW 1.0 bug fix: finally found and fixed the fact that covert operatives did not gain psionic experience or dead soldier bonus experience
- LW 1.0 bug fix: Comradery (previously 'So Others May Live' now correctly is modified by Dynamic War)
- Disabling Shot now correctly grants +20 aim (instead of -30 due to bug)
- Fixed a bug where Fear No Evil only reduced country panic increases and not continent panic increases
- Fixed a bug where you stopped getting soldiers after the 6th month
- Attempted to fix the 'flanking explosives still being reduced by cover DR' problem again (Note: It appears the main problem is a lack of memory on the users machine and is why I can't replicate it, Coding can help with this, but only so much due to the way Firaxis originally programmed XCOM)
- Fixed a txt description that said SHIVs innately get damage control (they get it with the SHIV Advancements project, not innately)
- Fixed combat stim in-battle description
- Fixed a bug where "Fear No Evil" was not providing income from countries that left the XCOM project
- Fixed description on alloy bipod to mention scatter reduction
- Fixed a bug where combat drugs and dense smoke was providing 2 (instead of 1) extra smoke charges
- Fixed a bug where the crit bonus from depth perception was not showing on the F1 screen (even though it was actually working and being calculated)
- Fixed a bug with plasma stellerator not granting ammo
- Large Caliber High Cap Mags should have a tactical icon now
- Fixed some txt on incorrect descriptions
Version 1.21.13
LW Rebalance v1.21.13 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Friendly Skies and Cinematic mode aim bonuses lowered to 20 (from 35) - Allows them to be a more moderate influence on the difficulty instead of shifting an entire difficulty down. This gives players a little more control over their difficulty level.
- Lowered # of power sources required in some research and foundry projects
- Power to the People (South America Continent Bonus) replaced with 'Fear No Evil': Countries are 25% more resistant to panic increases and countries that have left the XCOM project still provide funding - Gives players an option to try to prolong the panic game or recover if it's going badly
- Panic increase for bombing raids to 20 (from 15) - Make countering them more important and late game panic a larger issue
- Roscosmos offers 60% off satellites but does not start with an uplink - The uplink was often not ideal
- Class coloration tied to class color (as per Asesinamen's descriptions) - Classes are now tied to their txt color (original LW 1.0 colors are commented in dgc.ini if you want to revert this change)
- Increased the psionic rank of Furies and Annette by 1 - Makes them more relevant at the time you acquire them
- Put the research tree into the game so that each research shows which other items, techs, etc. it unlocks - QoL improvement
- Laboratories and Workshops are visible for production always - So they dont' seem hidden at the beginning of the game and their requirements are move obvious
Tactical:
- Alien Grenade Foundry project grants AP and HE grenades +50% damage (from +100%) - accommodates for increased early game grenade damage
- Shredder grants +1 damage (from +20%) - Toning back of the biologic aspect to make it feel less mandatory and universally effective, more effective on lower damage weapons
Equipment:
- AP/HE Grenade damage to 4/6 (from 3/4) - boost to early game grenades
Perks:
- Mayhem grants strike/sniper rifles 50/80% damage (from 35/60% damage) - Boost given back to the mayhem sniper
- ITZ no longer decreases aim/crit after each shot (from 10%) - Boost to ITZ (due to more difficulty in triggering)
- DT grants 20 aim on the 2nd shot - The 10 aim was borderline not significant enough, this helps distinguish the perk from LnL and grants some unique tactical decisions
- Adrenal Neurosympathy only triggers on shots - Necessary to fix grenade bug, makes a little realistic sense with how the perk is supposed to operate
XCOM:
- Swapped LnL and First Aid on the Gunner - Improved choices at the last 2 levels
- Base will above and below average (average = 30) reduces the amount of fatigue experiencd by 1% - Increases the strength of will, minimizes punishment of low health soldiers/classes
- Base health no longer has any effect on fatigue, just injuries and is reduced to 4% fatigue reduction per health on injuries (from 5% per health above or below average -- average = 6/10 for soldier/MEC) - Reduces the strength of health
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed the bug with melee damage not being displayed correctly (All szmind, this one was REALLY tricky to find and he found it like the programming god he is)
- Hopefully fixed a bug where cover-based DR was occuring when grenades were thrown and not hitting the unit through cover (thanks to szmind for the code)
- Fixed a bug where flight fuel always revealed itself every turn even if you did not have a flight suit
- Greater Mind Merge now correctly has a 4 turn cool-down (instead of it being spammed every turn)
- Fixed a bug where you could put more than 2 soldiers in the gene lab by clicking from the barracks
- Disabling shot correctly grants +20 aim now (was bugged not granting any aim bonus before)
- Catching breath now correctly disables all multiperk abilities (just like command)
- Gene modification now stops the geoscape just like other such modifications (thanks szmind)
- Fixed the bug with adrenal neurosympathy triggering on grenades
- Fixed a bug where reseting a soldier's perks would not always grant them the additional perks that the starting perks should grant
Version 1.21.12
LW Rebalance v1.21.12 - Patch Notes
Tactical:
- Flight fuel no longer damages you when you run out but instead just forces you to land (you can get stuck, be careful!!) - Thanks to szmind for the updated code
- Flight fuel will show you fuel amounts more often - QoL improvement since there is no way to actually check
- Flight armors increase mobility by 30% when flying - Buff to flying for XCOM
- Rocket scatter reduced by a further ~10% - makes Javelin rockets and moving and firing a rocket both slightly more reasonable
Equipment:
- AP/HE/Alien grenade damage to 3/4/7 (from 4/6/8) - Nerf to tone down grenades, (wow were they OP)
- AP/HE/Alien/Proximity Mine/Grenade Launcher radius to 2.5 (from 3) - Slight nerf to tone down all non-rocket explosives and distinguish rockets vs other explosives
- Recoilless Rifle and Blaster launcher damage to 8/10 (from 7/9) - Slight buff to mid-end game rocketeers
- Alloy Bipods can be equipped by gunners and rocketeers as well - Opens up small item options to those classes
- Laser weapon aim bonus to +5 (from +10) - slight nerf to laser and makes the upgrade to gauss more reasonable
- Breaching Ammo mobility to 0 (from -1) - slight buff
- Combat stims grants +3 mobility (from +6) and +20% DR (from +30% DR), but last 10 turns (from 3) - Buff to make them last throughout the majority of any engagement but not be as potent
Perks:
- Mayhem grants explosives +35% base damage (from +30%) - So it still works on AP grenades
- Mayhem grants strike/sniper rifles +35/60% bonus damage (from +50/80%) - Nerf for balance on the sniper tree (note: in the previous version sniper rifles were bugged and granting +100% damage)
- Grenadier no longer grants +1 damage to grenades - Slight nerf to tone down grenades
- HEAT Warheads grants +4 penetration (from +8) - In many situations, the +8 didn't provide much benefit over +4 and the perk was too competitive at +8
- Death from Afar prevents the squadsight critical penalty - Buff
Bug Fixes:
- Maybe fixed DR problem with HEAT not working?
- Fixed a bug where Shredder Ammo still required Experimental Warfare to produce
- Fixed a bug where both alloy bipod and breaching ammo did not require alien materials (thought they are supposed to)
- Vortex Armor cost reduction is intentional
- You will no longer lose a country if their panic is at 80% (it has to be higher than 80%, denoted by a red panic bar)
- Fixed a typo on Savior: It grants 1 additional medikit (not 2)
Version 1.21.11
LW Rebalance v1.21.11 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Large Squad Size OTS project increases squad size by +2 for Normal missions (from +1) and +4 for Assault Missions (from +3) - Overall this means late game Terror/council/UFO = 8 soldiers, Assault missions = 10 soldiers. Also, the assault missions were usually 1 off's so slogging wasn't as big of a deal, and terror/UFOs/council missions should not be the pinacle of difficulty and it's OK if they are a little easier as they can have huge difficulty spikes due to RNG anyway. Last, makes the choice between small and large squad size upgrades more competitive.
- Added a moderate cost to the AJR and EBO foundry projects - Makes them more of a contemplative choice instead of a no-brainer
- Cost for the Alien Base key increased by ~50% - Prevents farming from being effective as workshop credits could significant reduce the cost
- Adjusted starting cash for various countries for balance - SA gaining the most
- Resetting a soldier's perks cost increased to 80 meld (from 50) - Was too cheap with the amount of meld we get
- Reducing injury time by 50% on soldiers cost increased to 50 meld (from 30) - Was too cheap with the amount of meld we get
Air Game:
- Raiders and Destroyers gain 10% more health per month (now at 20% from 10%) - At 10% they would eventually be weaker than scouts, this keeps them up to par into the end game and puts more importance on lasers and supercapacitors
Tactical:
- Psixp was wonky and is now reworked: You now gain 100 psixp per mission. Soldiers require the following psixp to promote to each new rank: 200-Awakened, 600-Sensitive, 1200-Talent, 2000-Adept, 3000-Psion, 4200-Master. Dynamic war modifies psixp (double psixp for DW 0.5) and the neuroregulator increases base psixp per mission to 150. - Makes it easier to understand how soldiers gain psi xp and overall this is slightly faster than before to accommodate fewer troops on missions.
- Flight consumes 1 fuel per turn (as well as when toggling on and moving) and if the pilot is still hovering at 0 fuel, the engine will compensate but will being to overheat causing pilot damage (does not decrease pilot health below 1 health) - Means you can't hover indefinitely anymore
Perks:
- Smoke and Mirrors grants 2 free smoke grenades (from 1) - Boost to the amount of smoke available
- Rapid Reaction has no aim penalty (from -15 aim) and grants +1 ammo (from +0 ammo), but no longer grants opportunist - The aim malus was sometimes too ineffective (units flying or in cover) or too effective (units in the open or close), the perk should be more consistent at hitting with less damage when it connect -- This also makes the two overwatching perks more distinct (Note: aliens with rapid reaction also lost opportunist)
- Combat Drugs and Dense Smoke grant +1 free smoke grenade (without even equipping a smoke grenade) (from 0) - Boost to the amount of smoke available and opens it up as an option without S&M
- Deadeye grants +30 aim and crit against flying units (from just +30 aim) - Boost to it's strength against flying units
- Bring 'Em On grants the primary weapon 1 damage per enemy in sight during critical hits (from 1 + 0.5 per enemy in sight) - Significant boost to the perk as the requirement to crit is difficult with tenacious defense and hardened perks throughout the enemy ranks
- Precision shot grants double base damage during critical hits (from +3 damage during critical hits) - Significant boost and helps the perk scale to the late game as it was lacking
- Disabling shot grants +20 aim (from +0 aim) - makes the perk easier to hit with consistently (more of a boost to lower aim scouts than snipers)
- Mayhem grants double base damage to sniper rifles (from +80%) - Slight buff to the mayhem sniper rifle sniper as DT was still surpassing it in the end-game due to the ability to target multiple units and not waste overkill (especially with high crits, beo, PS, etc.)
- Tenacious Defense DR to 0% (from 10%) but grants 3 armor health (from 2) - Was too insignificant at 10%, simplification of the ability, increased armor health on bio units
- Grit DR to 20% (from 10%) - Was too insignificant at 10%, buff to tank gunners
- Extra Conditioning grants +2 armor health (from +1) - Buffed, increased armor health on bio units
- Brawler does not grant an extra ammo (from +1 ammo) - Nerfed for balance on the trees (against VPT - for example - it was 1 damage against pretty much everyone vs VPT which was 2 damage against bio units but bralwer had 30% dr, opportunist, and +1 ammo on top)
- First Aid now grants +1 restorative mist charge (replaces packmaster on the shogun) - More appropriate perk is all
Equipment:
- Shredder ammo weight to 1 (from 2) and you can produce it as soon as you research alien materials - Opens up the option to shred much earlier and much easier (prevents early monopoly through gunner and rocketeer), also makes the upgrade to early laser not so obvious
- AM Rifles reworked: they now grant HEAT Ammo, but have 0 normal pen, 0 crit, and 1 less ammo - The aim was too punishing and the hardened was overlapped with shredder too often. This also makes the rifles useful against all targets with DR (instead of just hardened targets) and still makes them unique.
- MEC2s have 2 secondary weapon slots (from 1) but 2 equipment slots (from 3) - Change to allow more MEC secondaries earlier
- Incinerator Module increases flamethrower ammo by 1 - Buff to the item
- Restorative mists start with 2 charges (from 1) but heals for 5 (from 6) - Buff and makes the item less unreasonable nonShogun MECs
- Swapped icons on the Neuroregulator and Neural Gunlink - Just makes more sense (thanks Asesinamen for the idea!)
- Fuel cell grants 8 fuel (from 9), archangel armor has 8 fuel (from 6), seraph armor has 5 fuel (from 3) - Increase to fuel capacity due to new higher fuel consumption while flying
XCOM:
- Minor perk and starting stat changes (see perk tree image)
Aliens:
- Exalt Elite Sniper Leaders no longer gain double tap - They were too strong for a unit that had both penetration and squad sight and the counterplay was too limited
- Chryssalid leaders have significantly less health - Makes them less able to resist the explosives vs the rest of their squad
- Zombies never turn into Chryssalids, they stay as zombies - Having dead soldiers and civilians rise up as zombies to attack you is punishment enough; not killing them by the 2nd turn (and even keeping track of thoes turns) and getting an extra chryssalid to fight who gets an automatic move was too punishing. Now we'll fight zombies, but not have to worry about the zombies turning into lids and counting turns and keeping track of those zombies. Also, the zombie from the corpse was fitting for the fantasy level of XCOM; the zombie puking and turning into a super fast and strong lid was pushing the fantasy level a little too much from XCOM into the super hero realm IMO =D.
- Zombie damage further reduced to a base of 3 (from 4) - Note this does get upgraded - further attempt to make it not so likely to squad wipe when zombies get within attack range
- Chryssalid damage reduced to a base of 6 (from 8) - With high crit chances and upgrades this still usually hits for over 9 which is plenty. This reduction is to make it more likely that a non-tank will survive a first single hit.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where the MEC class font colors did not match the previous class colors (you're welcome Asesinamen) =D, thanks to szmind for helping me find the fix
- Fixed a bug where the proximity mine launcher was being affected by MEC base health
- Fixed a bug where critically wounded soldiers would sometimes teleport around the map
- Fixed the double smoke bug (which is apparently a LW 1.0 bug where whenever a smoke expires it removes any other smoke effects that would have still been active on the same tiles [without changing any graphical effects]) - This includes being in a double smoke or running inbetween smokes. Thanks to szmind for fixing this complex issue.
- Fixed a bug where distortion would not trigger even if you didn't have the plasma stellerator - Thanks bigjet
- Fixed a bug where XCOM units would be grounded when they tried to fly
- Misc incorrect descriptions
- Fixed a bug where disabling shot dmg could be boosted by weapon class dmg boosting items
Version 1.21.10
LW Rebalance v1.21.10 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
- You now receive 20 credits for each civilian saved on a terror mission (modifiable by DW) - Makes them more worthwhile, encourages saving civilians, and feels better (as a reward) when you do well, injection of cash to XCOM
Equipment:
- The Suppression Module (for SHIVs) now increases bonus base damage on the suppression shot to +100% (from +50%) - Buff to the item, makes it worth the 2 ammo if you'll get the shot off
Aliens:
- Zombie mobility to 14 (from 16), base damage to 4 (from 5), and damage through upgrades reduced by 25% - The idea is that they can swarm you but you can take a hit if you have to, these changes make them a little softer along with the previous changes in .09
Bug Fixes:
- Old Tac Sense mechanics (+5% def per enemy in sight) is no longer accidentally still active - Took a while to squash that bug! =P
Not Fixed Bug:
- Szmind and I still working on fixing the smoke bug (which is apparently a LW 1.0 bug where whenever a smoke expires it removes any other smoke effects that would have still been active on the same tiles [without changing any graphical effects])
Version 1.21.09
LW Rebalance v1.21.09 - Patch Notes
Notes:
- I'm going on a summer vacation, so besides some small balance tweaks and bug fixes do not expect many changes over the next few months. This will be one of the (if not the) last versions of 1.21.
XCOM:
- SHIV Suppression Foundry Project renamed to SHIV Advancements and grants damage control (as well as already granting suppression and danger zone) - Buff to their ability to resist damage as they were most effected from the Red Fog DR change as they rely most heavily on flat DR
Aliens:
- Zombie regeneration toned down by 4 off the bat - Makes them less frustrating in the early to mid game
- Base cyberdisc damage to 8 (from 9) - Slight reduction in offensive potential
- Mechtoid will to 20 (from 40) - Makes them more suceptible to psionic attacks
Equipment:
- Damage Control Pod renamed to Shielding Pod and grants Absorption Fields instead of Damage Control - Switch to accommodate innate DC on SHIVs
- All SHIVs and HMECs gain 2 armor health and 0.5DR - Help accommodate for red fog DR
- LMG to 150% damage (from 200%) - The suppression damage boost gave it more of an advantage that intended; this should put the choice between SAW and LMG about DZ suppression and 2 ammo vs 1 mobility and 20 aim
- Reaper Ammo weight to 0 (from 1) - Makes it slightly stronger as you get it when you're moving into plasma, it was still useful for high damage pulse crit builds, but this should put it more into the lime light
Perks:
- Mind merge cooldown to 4 turns (from 3) and Greater Mind Merge cooldown to 4 turns (from no cooldown) - Encourages psionic units to do more than mind-merge camp at squadsight distances (esp with psi shielding mechtoids) and prevents the psi shield from being too oppressive (Sorry X, that was painful to watch =P)
- Will To Survive grants 40% DR (from 35%) - Helps accommodate for red fog DR (it didn't hit biotanks as hard because they are heavily %-based DR which is unaffected)
Bug Fixes:
- Szmind helpd with code to fix a bug with the F1 display only displaying flat DR at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc. It should now display 1.0, 2.0, etc when appropriate and the 0.5 when otherwise appropriate.
- Fixed a bug with heavy floaters not getting tactical sense still - i swear I got it this time
- Fixed a bug where aliens would be able to throw grenades too far
- Hit and Run no longer deactivates abilities when catching breath
- Mechtoid Shield (Psi Shield) is properly 20 health
- Suppression text fixes
Version 1.21.08
LW Rebalance v1.21.08 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Incresed research time requirements of various late game, UFO, autopsy, and interrogation - Makes laboratories more worthwhile, especially into the end game (note that most campaign critical research was not affected)
- OTS: 1st SS swapped with Lt, 2nd SS swapped with Major, and # of successful missions adjusted slightly - Push major earlier for increased xp on soldiers, move 2nd SS back a little to make early choice more impactful
- Renamed most officer perks to names that are easier to tell what their function is - I always got the latin ones confused... This makes it a lot easier for me, hopefully for you guys/gals too
- Meld sells for 4 (from 5) - Encourages using meld as a resource instead of as much as a cash sink
- The first missions contains 2 pods of 4 with an additional pod of 4 (from 3) on brutal and 2 additional pods of 4 (from 3) on impossible - Helps act a little bit more as a litmus test for players attempting brutal and impossible
- Large Squad Size upgrade now increases number of soldiers on assault missions by 3 (from 2) - Gives you 9 soldiers on exalt assault, ABA, and temple assault as those missions are quite challenging.
Tactical:
- The acid effect now reduces aim by 30 (from 20) - Makes chem grenades more effective and medikits more important
- Hitting a Shredded target grants +20% damage (from +40%) but nullifies their DR from being hardened (from no additional effect) - Shift in shred focus with the ability to deal with mechanical threats, makes a little more sense (as it's supposed to 'shred' armor). Now shred deals less against non-hardened units (20%, from 40%) but 20% + 50% against hardened (so 60%, from 40%). This also is good because the larger threats tended to be hardened so it should act as an overall boost.
- Overall scatter reduced by 10% - Slight buff to rocket accuracy
- Rocket scatter is affected by abilities that reduce aoe ranges by doubling scatter per effect (similar to how grenade range and other aoe abilities are affected except instead of range it's scatter) - It was left out of the scatter change and should have been included. Note that rocket "range" is not affected by debuffs. :O
- Each base health above and below the average alters the throw range of soldiers by 5% (Soldier base health = 6) - Makes it important to have high health users of grenades, slight boost to the benefit of health
- Red Fog now affects mechanical units start at 100% health (just like biologic units) - Simplicity as the rule was slightly confusing, easy to forget, and the overall effect was quite minimal
- Red Fog now reduces flat DR of all units (by up to 100%) - Means you can soften up units with high DR by hitting them with your heavy units first, so a Sectopod with 8DR at half life would have 4DR, and a cyberdisc with 4DR at 25% life would have 1DR. Note: this is only flat DR and does not affect %DR that you get from abilities like absorption fields, damage control, hardened, etc.
Perks:
- Fire in the Hole and Platform Stability reduce scatter by 20/40% (from 15/30%) - Buff to rocket accuracy from perks. Note the effect of both is multiplicative, not additional.
- HEAT warheads grants +8 penetration (from +4) - Buff for competitiveness on the trees
- Mind Merge additionally reduces rocket scatter by 50% - Buff to the perk
- One For All grants 30% DR (from 20%) - Buff to encourage more use
- Mayhem grants ITZ a 20% chance to trigger per enemy in sight - With the inability to command this isn't so abusive and 10% was too low, overall a boost to the Jaeger
- Comradery (previously So Others May Live) can stack up to 20 times (from 6) - Buffed: the potential is now to have up to +20 aim and will
- Combined Arms grants +2 penetration (from +1) - Helps alien leaders stay dangerous and makes the Fld Commander choice balanced
Equipment:
- MEC weapons receive double normal ranger for squadsight (from just +10 tiles) - Buff to the SS Jaeger
- LMG aim to -20 (from -10) - It is supposed to be the less accurate version of the SAW (gaining 33% more base damage, 2 more ammo, and danger zone) but the 10 aim malus was not very effective at this, especially due to increased holo rounds aim
- Arc Rifle damage to +9 (from +7) and penetration to +4 (from +2) - Buff as they were pushed too far down in the last round of nerfs
- Breaching Ammo again completely nullifies DR from the hardened perk (from only reducing it to 30% from 50%) - Buff, made necessary due to new shredder mechanics making the item a little less useful
- MEC2/3 suits receive slight bonuses (5-10 def, 0-2 hp, 10 will) - Slight buff to later MEC suits
- MEC1/MEC2/MEC3s can now carry 1/1/2 large items (from 1/2/2-3) and 2/3/3 small items (from always 2) - Slight rework, more small items, less large, no distinction between different MEC3 suits
XCOM:
- Regular SHIVs have 2 of their base health converted into armor, Alloy and HOVER SHIVs have 4 converted - Buff to the sustainability of SHIVs - SHIVs have 4 small item slots (from 3) - Only applies to newly built SHIVs (Sorry!)
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs, Drones, and Seekers have 1 less DR growth - Makes early to mid game DR feel less punishing
- All Exalt soldiers gain very little damage with research (from +2-7 damage) but Exalt Operatives gain Covering Fire + Lightning Reflexes and Exalt Elite Operatives gain Lightning Reflexes - Tone down the ability of overwatch to shut down exalt while at the same time significantly reducing exalt damage output into the mid and late game
- Mechtoid aim back down to 60 (from 70) - Tones down the offense with the reduction in # of smoke grenades
- Fixed a bug where smoke would cause cover to mess up and grant weird values
Bug Fix:
- Heavy Floaters now correctly get tactical sense at 350 research (instead of a 50% chance to get it at 3 research)
- Fixed some erroneous suppression descriptions
- Fixed a bug that was letting HEAT Warheads work with electropulse
- Fixed a bug where mind merge sometimes wasn't applying the +25 aim
- Fixed a bug where the bonus damage on suppression was not always applying
Bug that isn't fixed that we are working on:
- The F1 display only displays flat DR at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc. It should be able to display 1.0, 2.0, etc but currently can't. We're working on a fix.
Version 1.21.07
LW Rebalance v1.21.07 - Patch Notes
Balance:
- Stringray aim to 30 (from 35) - With the penetration they were eclipsing phoenix cannons too much, this is a good compromise
- In The Zone back to a 10 aim/crit malus per shot - Despite the new restrictions on steady weapon, ITZ is still very good (mental note: do not test new mechanics while drinking)
Perks:
- Suppression shots grant +50% base damage - Makes them more useful against aliens and more dangerous to try to break
- Fixed a bug causing a game freeze when ITZ was used
- Fixed a bug where the rocketeer could steady his/her weapon when unintended
- Fixed a bug where you could steady your active weapon without ammo
Version 1.21.06
LW Rebalance v1.21.06 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
The level of the soldier you acquire from country requests is increased by a full rank (0-33% shield level=CPL, 33-66%=SGT, 66-100%=TSGT) - Makes the requests more important to fill and more rewarding when filled
Reset the start date to 2020 - It's a cool enough date that I think it can stick :)
Using meld to reduce soldier wounds now costs 30 meld for a 50% reduction in time and there is no minimum amount of time - Makes it more effective for the longer injuries (which it was intended for)
Chance of losing items on a mission you failed decreased to 10% per soldier (from 40%) - While a deeper barracks in LWR helped recover from lost missions, the equipment loss could still be too damaging. This should make it so that only 1/4 as many items are lost which should make losing a mission much more bearable.
Added the ability to unequip soldier items in the barracks - Thanks szmind! :)
Air Game:
Stringray missle penetration to 75% (from 50%) - Makes them stronger against fighters and destroyers
Raider health reduced by 20% - Makes them a little less of a roll of the dice to down in the early game
Tactical:
Reaction Fire is on longer capped at 100% before applying the 70 and 50% dodge (Thus, you can hit ~140 aim and still get 100% reaction fire shot against a moving target) - It felt artificially unfair to cut off additional aim
Aim no longer affects rocket accuracy - Decouples aim from the primary use of the rocketeer: allows low aim soldiers to be rocketeers
Firing a rocket after performing a costly action no longer reduces rocket range (from a 50% reduction) but still doubles scatter - Makes it more reasonable to attempt to move and fire a rocket
Steady Weapon grants +30 aim (from +20 aim) but can only be done if the squad is in sight of an alien - Prevents steady walking (half-move and then steady, slowly creeping and more boring play), encourages use during the battle, and makes a little sense as you'll have to steady the weapon aiming at SOMETHING, it really shouldn't grant an aim bonus if you've steadied your weapon 180 degrees from where the enemies come in
Alien Grenade Foundry project grants AP grenades +4 damage (from +3) and HE grenades +6 damage (from +4) - Increase in strength of late game AP and especially HE grenades for balance
Equipment:
Blaster Launcher range is no longer increased by aim - Fits with new rocket schema and it was a little OP anyway
Armor Piercing ammo grants +2 penetraion (from +1) - Boost for balance
Motion Tracker charges to 3 (from 2) and range to 35 tiles (from 30) - Boost to the item
The UL-MEC3 and L-MEC3 both receive 2 more health - Balance for MEC suits
Engineer requirements lowered on all MEC3 suits to a target of 80 (from 110) - Makes repairing and building them not require such a surplus of engineers
KSM damage to 25 (from 20) - It is still upgraded by 10 with the thumper, buff
Sawed-Off shotgun crit to 0 (from 20) but mobility to -1 (from -2) - Buff as use in the pistol slot
Plasma Stellerator, Alloy Jacketed Rounds, and Enhanced Beam Optics mobility to 0 (from -1) - Buff for item use balance
SAW/LMG weapons receive 1 additional ammo - Slight boost for the gunner's ammo conservation
Perks:
Psi Shield (Mecthoid Shield) no longer provides any DR (from 100%) but grants 20 health (from 10) - Less bias towards soldiers with penetration
Extra Conditioning to 10% reduction in fatigue and injury times (from 15%) - Slight nerf for tree balance
Psionic Rift (Ethereal ability) damage is affected by will half as much - It deals 8+modifier_damage intially and then 10+modifier_damage after a turn. The minimum damage is 4 and 5. The modifier_damage NOW is: (caster_will - target_will - 20)/20. In LW 1.0 it was /10.
Sentinel aim boost to 0 (from +10) - Tone down overwatch aim
Rapid Reaction aim malus to -15 (from -10) - Tone down overwatch aim (kind of nice how both rapid abilities [rapid reaction, rapid fire] impart a -15 aim)
Fire In The Hole reduces rocket scatter by 15% at all times - Accommodation for new rocket scatter mechanics
Platform Stability reduces rocket scatter by 30% - Accommodation for new rocket scatter mechanics
Double Tap reverted to a 1-turn cooldown - Nerf to the engineer and DT sniper
Mayhem grants strike/sniper rifles 50/80% more damage - Nerf, balance on the sniper tree
In The Zone allows for critical hits again and increments aim/crit by 10 after each shot (from decrementing aim/crit by 10 after each shot) - Balance due to the loss of the ability to steady pre-engagement, really captures the feel of being "In The Zone"
In The Zone will no longer work after commanding - Consistency as command is not supposed to grant access to multi-action perks and ITZ is one
XCOM:
Rocketeer Tree rework
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where Jellied Elerium was not extending rocket range
Fixed a bug on the squad size upgrade descriptions
Fixed a bug with a freeze during soldier switching (thanks szmind)
Version 1.21.05
LW Rebalance v1.21.05 - Patch Notes
Research:
- Advanced power armor reserach requirements increased, but subsequent armor tech research requirements decreased by a similar amount - Overall just slows down the hit of corsair and titan armor making a little more room for Aegis and Banshee
Resources:
- Elerium gain increased by ~20% - Helps with later game projects
Equipment:
- All MEC suits have a 35% chance to get damaged on a soldier who has taken 100% of their health in damage (from 95%) - Compared to other armors it was too debilitating to have MEC suits get damaged so frequently
- Shadow, Aegis, and Banshee armor receive an additional health - Balance
- Small ammo items costs reduced - Balance
- Chameleon suit grants +5 defense (from +10) - Nerf to high defense on bio units
Perks:
- Distortion panic chance upon seeing the ethereal increased to 60 base test (from 30) - At 30 it was mostly a non-issue and with the plasma stellerator the ethereals are dropping a little too fast, this should help keep them dangerous
- Tactical Sense defense bonus to 15 (from 20) - Slight nerf
Bug Fixes:
- Esprit De Corps should now be correctly granting 5 defense
- Hopefully fixed the tac sense bug that was causing the old native tac sense to sometimes grant extra defense - please let me know if this didn't work as I'm at a conference and can't test it because I'm only remoting in
- One For All should now correctly remove all innate defense and still be affected by other modifiers (body shield, smoke, etc.)
- Fixed a bug where the base defense was prohibited from occuring within the first 10 months (instead of 8 as intended)
- Floaters properly gain tactical sense half way through the campaign (instead of right off the bat)
- Fixed a bug where difficulties higher than normal were receiving too few weapon fragments
- Fixed a bug where muton bersekers would sometimes receive double the DR than intended
- Fixed a bug where floaters could fire at squad sight when elevated even if they didn't have squad sight - They still do this, but it should be a little less
Version 1.21.04
LW Rebalance v1.21.04 - Patch Notes
Fixed a CTD bug
Version 1.21.03
LW Rebalance v1.21.03 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
- Squad Sizes reworked: Either are attainable after 30 successful missions but once attained the next is not attainable until 60 missions. Both cost 300 credits. SS1: Increase squad size by 1 on reduced soldier missions. SS2: Increase squad size to 7 on normal missions and to 8 on assault missions." - Increases difficulty on late game abduction, covert op, council, UFO, and terror missions (due to 1 less soldier), creates more choice in the early game, decreases sluggishness of regular late game missions
- Abductions have 1 less alien in months 1-3, normal aliens in months 4-6, 1 more aliens in months 7-9, and 2 more in months 10+ - Balances out abduction difficulty a little more throughout the game
- Exalt missions only lower panic by 2 (from 5) - Slight decrease in their ability to control panic
- Maintenance costs of radars increased - Slight tweak on overall credits from expansion
- SHIV Suppression Foundry project now grants both Suppression and Danger Zone - Buff to suppression on SHIVs
- Gene mods are ~33% cheaper - makes them a little more reasonable to acquire
- Target will for psionic training altered to 40/40, 45/45, 50, 55, 60, 70 (from 45/45, 30/30, 40, 50, 60, 70) - Makes it slightly more accessible for lower will soldiers and makes higher will soldiers less of a slam dunk while progressing through the tree
- Base Psi Training time is 20 days (from 30 days) - Accommodates for longer training times in subsequent levels
- Enhanced Plasma foundry project no longer grants +1 damage to plasma weapons - It simply unlocks the stellerator now
- Beam Strengthening foundry project grants +1 damage during critical hits (from +1 penetration) - Nerf and distinction from gauss
- Once you research meld, you can now inject wounded soldiers with 30 meld to reduce their wound time by 10 days (to a minimum of 10 days of wound time) - Gives the players some flexibility if they have a meld surplus during highly injurous times - Thanks to szmind for the amazing work on this feature
- You can now reset perks of a soldier for the cost of 100 meld - Allows some minor experimentation at a signficant cost. This is also useful if you are upgrading to a new version of the mod and the perks have changed as you can use the console command and "`giveitem meld 100" if you want to repick new perks due to a new version of the mod - Thanks to szmind for the amazing work on this feature
- Antyhing that causes Country and/or Continent panic increases in strength by 5% per month - Makes late game prevention of panic more important
Resources:
- Country funding decreased by ~10% - Slight tweak on overall credits from expansion
- Funding received from non-satelittle countries increased to 40% (from 30%) - Overall more cash regardless of expansion
- Overall elerium gain from UFOs decreased by ~30% but elerium gain from crashed UFOs increased from 20-30 to 40-60% (which is really now just 28-42% due to the 30% overall reduction) - Evens out elerium flow a little bit if you happen to not get many landed UFOs and gives a slight overall increase
- Meld gain per canister will no longer drop below average if the aliens are doing poorly resource wise - It was frustrating to be doing well and then become meld starved. Now meld will always be the same and only go up if the aliens are doing well, but never go below the normal values.
- Salvage team cost for alloy/elerium reverted back to 13/19 (from 11/13) - Was too effective at acquiring additional resources (yes, I'm aware in some campaigns it was hardly used)
- Cut the meld cost of late game plasma weapons by 50% - Makes them much more attainable in larger quantities
- Europe continent bonus reduced to 10% increased funding (from 20%) - Significant nerf
Air Game:
- Lead/Rear formations affects UFOs less: LEAD = 150% UFO aim, REAR = 66% UFO aim (from 200% and 50%, respectively) - Makes rear less dominating and lead a little more appealing
- Stingray missle damage/cooldown to 1000/10s (from 1200/12s) and aim to 35 (from 30) - Slight buffs, the cooldown allows it to fire an extra time in a normal battle
- Terror Ship health to 10000 (from 14000) and DR to 125% (from 175%); Harvester health to 8000 (from 10000) and DR to 100% (from 150%) - Makes them both easier (more possible) to down
Tactical:
- Zombie Terror missions now spawn an additional pod of chrysallids and an additional pod of zombies - Makes them more challenging
- Overwatch modifier and dashing modifiers reverted back to vanilla (70% and 50% of aim from 80% and 60%) - Slight nerf to overwatch consistency
- You will only panic from damage if the damage you took was more than 30% of your remaining health - Helps prevent little ticks from causing panic
- Bleed out timer is extended to 4-7 turns (from 2-5 turns) - Makes it easier to save soldiers (50-100% more time) who are dying as the battles can last longer in LWR
- Elerium batteries foundry project upgrades the stun rifle to 5 charges (from 2) - Buff to make capturing easier and to make the field repairs foundry project more useful
- Shredded targets receive 40% more damage (from 30%) - With the nerf to the bullet wizard having more effect than intended it's an ideal time to make shredder back to how it was intended, to be a significant debuff
- Rocket scatter reduced by 33%(!) more than before (almost half of LW 1.0 how) - Makes it easier to land rockets and javelin rockets with lower aim rocketeers, especially if they are steadied
Perks:
- Will to survive grants 35% DR in cover (from 30%) - Buffed to make biotanks slightly stronger
- Tactical Sense reworked: grants 20 defense if the unit is flying or protected by cover - It was gamey to try to move into and out of vision with units to lower or raise defense, this is more consitent and a little stronger
- Packmaster grants only 1 additional use to restorative mists to MECs (from 2) - Nerf for perk tree balance
- VPT and CST grant +3 damage to MEC primary weapons (from +2) - Boost to the effect of the perk on MECs to keep the perk on par considering the higher damage weapons
- Disabling shot does not trigger covering fire - Allows a unit with disabling shot to nullify a unit on overwatch without being targeted by covering fire
- Tenacious defense grants 60% crit reduction when in cover (from 20%) - Makes the perk similar to being hardened while in cover, buffed for aliens to help prevent autocrits and xcom to help guarantee no crits
- Psi Shield (Mechtoid shield) now reduces damage by 100% (from 50%) and provides 10 health (from 6) - It means you need to remove the sectoid to damage the mechtoid (or you can try to brute force through it if you have enough penetration), encourages more movement and strategy on the battle field
- Units with ITZ cannot crit - Nerf to ITZ builds
- Mayhem damage to sniper/strike rifles increased to 120/80% - Buff to mayhem snipers
- Mayhem grants 10% chance to trigger ITZ per enemy in sight (from 20%) - Nerf to mayhem jaeger to include more unpredictability with low to medium #'s of aliens
- Mayhem now re-enables critical hits with ITZ (note: There is no more crit reduction on subsequent ITZ shots) - Accommodates for ITZ nerf and mayhem nerf on Mayhem Jaegers
- Lightning Reflexes no longer grants +1 mobility - Nerf
- Hit and Run bonus damage to +1 (from +2) - Nerf
- Fire in the Hole grants +10 aim (from +20) - Nerf for tree balance
- First Aid grants 3 free medikit charges (from 2) - Buffed
- Extra Conditioning reduces fatigue and injury times by 15% (from 20%) - Slight nerf
- Reactive Targeting Sensors no longer grants additional ammo (from +2 ammo) - Nerfed, focuses the perk more on reaction fire and overwatching, distinguishes it from LnL and RfA
- Mind merge aim bonus to 25 (from 10) - Significant boost, it's not as abusive anymore on ITZ due to the ITZ nerfs, this also helps compensate for them
- Savior grants 1 free medikit use (from 3) - Nerf, as it was overbuffed, the extra healing on the kits is big
- Brawler grants +1 ammo (from 0) - Buff
Equipment:
- Engineers can, once again, use the battle rifle, arc rifle, shotgun, sawed-off shotgun, stun rifle, shredder ammo, and drum mags - Not a necessary restriction due to HEAT Ammo changes
- The Plasma Stellerator now grants plasma primary weapons +1 damage (from +2) but also grants +1 ammo (from +0) and bypasses the 30% dodge distorted targets receive - Buff as the damage wasn't as important in the end-game due to already very high damage capacity, gives players a more definitive reason to use plasma, and also gives an nice counter against distortion
- Chitin Plating HP to 1 (from 2) and DR to 0.5 (from 1) - Nerf due to strength of melee reduction and strangulation resistance
- Alloy plating HP to 4 (from 5) - Slight nerf
- New item: Large-Cal High-Cap Mags: increases ammo by 1 for MECs/SHIVs, weighs 1 - Gives SHIV/MECs an additional small item and an additional potential ammo source, more of a buff to the Jaeger due to ITZ with ammo
- Tactical Sensors renamed to Extended Sensors and grants +10 def (from +0) but no longer grants tactical sense - Similar function, slightly more consistent, slight nerf overall to cap out high defense
- Laser and Pulse weapons no longer grant +1 additional ammo (the only remaining buff is the +1 mobility the primary weapons receive) - Nerf b/c they were too strong
- Plasma Rifle can be equipped by all classes
- Arc Rifle penetration to 2 (from 8) and aim to 0 (from +10) - Nerfs as it's very effective right from the get go, makes it similar against most robotic threats but significantly less effective against heavy DR robotic threats
- KSM damage to 20 (from 25) and Thumper bonus damage to +10 (from +5) - Makes the KSM slightly less damaging in the mid game and makes the thumper a more useful item
- SHIV weapon ammo to 2 (from 3) - Nerf to SHIV, helps accommodate for DZ Suppression upgrade, especially with the holo targeter, also the LCHC Mags helps make up for it
- Adaptive Tracking Pod now weights 0 (from 1) and grants +10 aim (from 0) - Buffed
- Smart Shell Pod now weights 0 (from 1) and grants +10 aim (from 0) - Buffed
- Autosentry Turret weight to 0 (from 1) - Buff due to no ammo supplied from RTS
- Smoke grenades now properly match their graphic and only last until the end of your next turn (instead of the end of the 2nd enemy turn) - Nerf for only 1 enemy turn's worth of smoke which reduces smoke spam's effectiveness. Very nice how it matches the graphic now.
- Battle Rifle Penetration to +1 (from 0) but mobility to -2 (from -1) - Slight buff, gives a source of early game penetration
- Breaching ammo takes the hardened perk DR against shotguns to 30% DR (from 0% DR) but weighs 1 (from 2) - Nerf but lighter
- Shotgun mobility differences normalized to the weapon tier mobilies (0/1/0/1/0 from 1/2/0/1/1) - Slight nerf on shotguns and normalization for simplicity
- Plasma weapon special bonuses have all been boosted/tweaked - Buff to plasma
- Flak ammo just works on the primary weapon (not rockets) - Standardization of ammo equiping and it didn't really make sense that a box of ammo helped the rockets
- Aegis and Banshee both gain 2 health and lose 1 mobility
- Motion tracker is now sorted with SHIV items instead of soldier items
XCOM:
- Perk tree modifications (see perk tree image)
- SHIVs lose 2 armor health (4 for the alloy SHIV) - Slight nerf
Aliens:
- Cyberdiscs will not longer use Death Blossom (It causes a CTD bug that I just can't seem to fix)
- Cyberdiscs now always have HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads - Makes them less able to be trivialized by tanks, pushes them more into the fragile but highly offensive threat they are meant to be
- Drone leaders now always have HEAT Ammo - Makes drone packs more threatening
- Sectoids and Sectoid Commander will gain with research significantly increased - Best way to encourage them to use psionic abilities and not shoot
- Thinmen gain more damage (+2) and sharpshooter during mid game - They were falling off too much in the mid to late game, this keeps them more relevant
- Floaters and heavy floaters both gain tactical sense during the mid-game - Makes explosives, high aim units, holo, and the deadeye perk more important
- Floater health reduced to 5 (from 7) which they gain 2 of back during mid game - They were too much of a difficulty spike in the early game
- Mutons start with tenacious defense (similar to muton elites) - Increases cover-based tankiness more
- Zombies mobility increased to 16 (from 14) - They are faster now!
- Zombies gain a little more health with alien research - They are stronger now!
- Zombie regen to approximately half of their health each turn (from full health each turn) - Makes enemy turn strategies and not completely killing one still have a useful (albeit diminished) effect against them
- Exalt Elite are upgraded: Elite Snipers have Sharpshooter, Elite Operatives have Tenacious Defense, Elite Heavies have Shredder Ammo, Elite Medics have Holo Rounds + Smoke and Mirrors
- Mechtoid aim to 70 (from 60) - Was too low at 60 making them too easy to trivalize with smoke
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where WtS would give -15 defense in cover even when flanked
- Fixed a bug where you could use flak and shredder ammo with plasma sometimes
- Fixed typos that said holo rounds still only grants +20 aim (they grant +30 aim)
- Fixed a bug where reaction fire hit chances over 100 were not being capped at 100 before applying aim malus' for moving or dashing (now plays like LW 1.0 again)
- SHIVs correctly are discounted from NeoPanzers
- Fixed a bug where perfect information would display weapons shooting aliens =p
- Updated description on smoke grenade to include the fact that it will not prevent suppression from triggering a reaction shot
- Updated description on SHIVs to emphasize that they need to have full actions before aborting or they may get left behind on a mission
- ITZ now correctly fires and triggers off of all standard/disabling/precision shots
- Fixed a bug where mayhem ITZ was recording too many shots affecting aim too much
- Fixed a bug where the blaster launcher was doing 1 more damage than intended
- Hit and Run should no longer grant 2 full turns if aliens mind control your soldier (instead, the aliens will only get a single shot, best compromise I could come up with)
Version 1.21.02
LW Rebalance v1.21.02 - Patch Notes
Strategy Game:
Tweaks to country starting bonuses - balance
Air Game:
Interceptor speed increased to 22 (from 20), UFO scanners research project only increses interception time by 10% (from 20%) - Overall no change except your interception times are slightly longer before UFO scanners making the project a little less essential
Significantly increased speed of interceptors and firestorms - You should always be able to engage UFOs multiple times and initial country selection should have minimal impact on this
Equipment:
Laser and Pulse Pistols no longer grant +1 mobility - Even just the +1 ammo is strong on them, the +1 mobility was too strong
Bug Fixes:
Shredder and Flak ammo are now correctly restricted to ballistic/gauss weapons
Fixed a bug where MECs and SHIVs were getting double defense - Thanks szmind! :)
MEC Laser Lance now correctly has 4 ammo (from 3) - Was missed in the update
Updated description of "Sturdier UFOs" to indicate that fighters/destroyers are not included
Jaeger now receives 20 aim during level ups (from 22)
Reduced interception time of firestorms so that no battle should exceed 60s - Prevents bugging out
Electropulse should grant it's +8 penetration now
Arc Rifle should grant only +8 penetration (from +9) - Was picking up extra from sniper rifle by accident
Blaster Launcher damage was off slightly and is now corrected
Version 1.21.01
LW Rebalance v1.21.01 - Patch Notes
Air Game:
Repair Times for aircraft to 300 (from 400) - Was accidently increased too much (sorry Henriks)
EMP Damage to 420 (from 350) - Was left off with the aim decrease
Destroyer hitpoints to 3000 (from 4000) - Was supposed to be decreased with the fighter decrease due to not being able to be shotdown
Stingray missle aim to 30 (from 25) - Slight buff
Bug Fixes:
You can now perform fighter analysis if you have raided a scout and destroyer analysis if you have raided a raider - Needed to be tweaked
Fire in the Hole Aim bonus incorrectly listed as +30 aim (it's +20 aim)
Stingray missle correctly have 50% penetration - Was fixed everywhere but the dgc.ini
EMP Cannon requires drone wrecks (instead of sectopod wrecks) - Was accidently left out of changelog and changes
Version 1.21.00
LW Rebalance v1.21.00 - Patch Notes
Features:
The following are official 'features' of LWR and are to be expected:
- Aliens will sometimes double move off the bat as some of them were waiting for you in ambush and will get an extra move to reflect this
- Covering fire shots will sometimes inactivate the target's action because getting fired at sucks and it's hard to do things with bullets flying at your face
- Suppression will sometimes not fire when the target moves (and you'll get a cool slow motion view of it) because you were distracted while suppressing and maybe some bullet shells or a fly got in your eyes
- Exalt will always know where your covert op is as soon as they are activated as they have a transponder on everyone and figure out that he's the mole!
- Alien bases have invisible floating teleportation devices that are usable by floaters -- they aren't used a lot because they really hurt but sometimes if one or more floaters is desparate they will use these devices to teleport around the base
- Sometimes a dying soldier will fall into a hole the aliens dug inside the mountain/building/dirt. If they do it's best to just move on as the holes will often form an inpenetrable barrier that prevents access until the occupant is completely dead (or sometimes reloading works).
- Sometimes it looks like a soldier can see an alien to shoot at but they can't. You may think this is ridiculous but the aliens are equipped with reflective padding that can really cause a glare. From above it looks like the soldier should see the alien, but the glare is quite deceptive the soldier just thinks the alien is a broken street light or something. This is especially common on ramps as everyone knows glare can be a problem when changing elevations.
- Close Combat Specialists usually have PTSD and will sometimes not fire at an enemy when you want them to. The training that they take is very intensive and these momentary freezes in the heat of battle are to be expected.
- Run and Gun trained soldiers will sometimes not move if they try to run and gun aftering being commanded or if they try to run and gun during an xcom scamper. Again, this is because of very intensive training causing PTSD which acts up when too much is happening at once.
- If you rapidly click on buttons to purchase or sell or place equipment/buildings/etc. sometimes the engineers and assistant engineers will get confused and order too many or too few and the accountants sometimes also get confused and you lose money.
- Some exalt missions will CTD if you try to enter them. This is because the covert op has already died in such a gruesome way that the game is trying to spare you the suffering of witnessing his final condition and instead encouraging you (quite forcefully) to just skip that mission.
- NEVER SAVE/LOAD ON THE XCOM BASE DEFENSE MISSION
Air Game:
Repair times back to 400 for XCOM aircraft (from 200) - Necessary to prevent overdowning UFOs
There are now 4x as many scouts and fighters each month but all extra scouts and fighters will appear randomly on Earth (instead of at countries with XCOM satellites) - Gives XCOM more opportunity to down a UFO and acquire resources and makes spreading to new continents potentially more rewarding, also makes the medium and largers UFOs relatively more rare
Cut the chance of destroying a UFO in the air (instead of downing one) by approximately half. The new formula is overkill damage / 10 is the % chance to destroy a UFO (from overkill damage / 5). - Should make a lot less destroyed UFOs, especially in the early game.
EMP cannons are much cheaper and acts as a bridge between laser/gauss and pulse: 350 damage, 3.5s cooldown, 150% penetration, 15% crit, 50 aim, Potential: 100dmg/s, Average Realized:50dmg/s, UFO Destruction Chance: 22%
Stingray penetration back to 50% (from 25%) - Slight buff to help with early game fighters before phoenix (esp with fighters increased DR)
Laser Cannon and Phoenix Cannon alloy cost decreased by half - Makes it easier to bring them online in more resource starved games
Scouts and Fighters now yield 50% more alloys (for the purpose of being destroyed and/or raided) - Helps prevent early game resource stalls by increasing early game alloy yields
Coilgun upgrade costs significantly less - Was too costly for it's benefit
Fighters again have 75% DR (from 50%) - Makes lasers less effective against them
Fighters/destroyers/imp.destroyers have ~40/20/20% less health - Makes them easier to reasonably down
Fighters/destroyers/imp.destroyers are always destroyed and never shot down - Reduces mission density. The real reason is that the aliens will self-destruct all such craft as soon as they are at risk of being shot down. =P
Firestorm health increased to 6000 (from 4000) - Significant buff to it's use as soon as you get 1 of them
Overseer battle speed reduced by 30% - Results in 43% more battle time to try to down it
Interceptor battle speed reduced to 20 (from 25) - Results in 80% of the normal battle time (encourages more aggressive stances)
Strategy Game:
Decreased cost of dispatching salvage teams (from 13/19 for alloys/elerium to 11/13) - Balance for use
XCOM Training Programs provide double the xp to soldiers - With the inability to 'rush' it, it's viable to make it stronger again. Now your PFCs will level in 5 days (from 10), your SPECs level in 10 days (from 20), and your LCPLs level in 10 days (from 20) - Should help with mid to end game roster depth
EMP Weapons can now be researched after attaining Pulse Weapons and is much cheaper and quicker to research - Bring EMP online earlier in a campaign
Beam Strengthening provides +1 penetration (instead of +1 crit damage) - Buff to laser/pulse to help low damage weapons stay competitive against mechanical threats
Significantly reduced the cost and time to build of multiple end-game researches, buildings, etc. - Helps end a campaign more quickly
Exalt will be significantly less likely (never?) to target a country that has already left the council - Having it in a non-council country felt frustrating so this should help avoid that
Terror missions have a 15% chance to be zombie missions (from 20%) - Slight tweak that tries to fill the spot of: will occur in each campaign randomly but not too often
You start the game with 4 interceptors and 2 spare satellites (from 3 interceptors and 1 spare satellite) - Helps offset bad RNG and increased liklihood of encountering fighters
Tactical Game:
Units with inside smoke will no longer trigger reaction shots from enemies - Acts as another tool against enemies on OW. Thanks to fjz for the awesome idea!
Shred causes units to take +30% damage (from +33%) - slight nerf, and prevents miscalculations due to rounding
Using a rocket no longer grants the rocketeer +1 mobility - It was cool idea but ended up being lame to have an ultra fast unit after using a lot of rockets and a really slow one before, now the rocketeer is like all other units that use items: at a consistent mobility
Rockets have ~20% less scatter in general - Makes using them on units without high aim more reasonable
Equipment:
Electropulse damage to 8 (from 6) and penetration to 8 (from 0) - Makes it significantly more damaging and more likely to do damage and thus actually disable
Ammo Drums, Flak Ammo, Breaching Ammo, AP Ammo, and Shredder Ammo can only be equipped on Ballistic and Gauss series weapons - Realism, creates more diversity between the weapon tiers
AP Ammo is restricted to MEC weapons, SHIV weapons, Carbines, Assault Rifles, and Battle Rifles - Realism and diversity
Laser and Pulse weapons gain +1 ammo and +1 mobility - Significant buff for balance and the lack of ammo small items
Pulse weapons gain +10 crit - They were a little weak in their niche, slight upgrade that focuses on their niche
MEC weapon and Strike Rifle range increased to +10 tiles (from +5) - Boost to SS Jaeger, strike rifle sniper, and strike rifle scout
Breaching Ammo can be equipped by any soldier class (from just assault) - grants more options for other classes to effectively use the shotgun
Engineers can no longer equip shotguns, battle rifles, stun rifles, drum mags, shredder ammo, or arc rifles - Nerf to their shooting strength, encourages use of other weapons and items
L-MEC2 gains 2 mobility, L-MEC3 gains 1 mobility, 5 defense, and 2 health, UL-MEC3 gains 2 health and 5 defense - Balance
Core Armoring DR to 1 (from 1.5) - Slight nerf to static DR stacking (can be border-line abusive in the mid-game)
Javelin rockets will now damage through cover, but will still not destroy cover, and weight to 1 (from 3) - Not working through cover was too challenging with the minimal radius and very frustrating when you did 0 damage (Note: it still does not destroy cover due to programming limitations)
Regular rocket radius to 4.5 tiles (from 6 tiles) - Nerf to rockets
Regular extra rocket grants 2 rockets and weight to 1 (from 2) - Helps supply the rocketeer with ample rockets while not burdening him down
All 3 Rocket launchers damage to 5/7/9 (from 7/10/10) - Nerf to earlier game rockets for balance
Carbine aim to +10 (from +15) - Slight nerf to open up use of other weapons
Battle Rifle ammo to 2 (from 3) but mobility to -1 (from -2) - Slight buff to open up use of other weapons, especially since it can use the drum mags
Arc Rifle bonus damage vs mechanicals to +7 (from +9) but gain +8 penetration - They will now more consistently deal 6 damage to mechanical units, open up the anti-mechanical role to more units
Perks:
RTS (Reactive Targeting Sensors) grants +30 aim on reaction shots (from +20 aim) - Significant buff to overwatch potential of SHIVs and MECs
New Perk "Critical System Targeting": Grants 2 additional damage to primary weapons (1 additional damage to sidearms) against autopsied mechanical units
HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads no longer double the damage against mechanical units but instead provide +4 penetration against all units - Makes more sense for HEAT to increase penetration rather than damage and keeps damage ranges in check, makes HEAT units a little more versatile (example: effective against berserkers and lids and units in cover)
Sapper penetration to 0 (from +2) - Was already very strong due to the sheer strength of cover destruction
Grenadier grants +1 damage to destructive grenades again (from 0) - Makes the perk more worthwhile in the early game
Officer perk "Fortiores Una" grants 5% DR (from +0.5 DR) - Tweak away from static DR stacking, and nerfed for balance vs Semper Vigilans (on a 11 damage or higher shot it's actually stronger, on a 9 damage shot or lower -- i.e. most shots -- it's worse)
Fire Rocket perk grants 2 free rockets (from 1) - Accommodates for weaker rockets
Holo Rounds grants +30 aim (from +20) - Significant buff to support aspect
Fire in the Hole to +20 aim (from +15) - Buff due to new position in the perk tree
Field Medic grants 3 item-free medikits - Helps the medic more strongly fill the healing role while making it easier to open up other slots
Savior grants 3 free medikits (from 2) and increases the healing from medikits by +3 (from +2) - Significant buff to mid-late game medics (as they were too easily replaced by AoE healing from Shoguns)
Danger Zone suppression radius increased to 2 tiles (from 1.5) - It will now affect units 2 spaces away and all units on diagonals
Mayhem grants a 20% chance (per enemy in sight) to trigger ITZ on the Jaeger (from 10%) - Buff for balance
Mayhem grants sniper rifles/strike rifles/explosives +100/+50/+30% base damage (from +6/+3/+2 damage) - Keeps it relevant in the late game and not so overpowered in the early game
Sentinel grants +10 aim to reaction shots - Buffed
Double Tap aim bonus to +10 (from +20) - Overall 5 aim nerf on the perk for balance
Onslaught can no longer combine with run and gun and prevents movement after use - Balance vs CE, reigning in Hit and Run style KSMs. The new onslaught is more useful for a double KSM or a KSM + Overwatch. The old one was too strong.
Hit and Run deals +2 damage against uncovered targest again (from +1 damage) - It had a fun use and is likely more balanced vs S&M at +2 than at +1
Lightning Reflexes grants +1 mobility - Slight buff, makes it more offensively orientated
You can now use disabling and precision shots when "in the zone" - More for convinience than anything else
Smoke and Mirrors grants 1 extra smoke grenade (from 2) - Nerf due to increased strength of smoke stopping reaction shots
XCOM:
Multiple perk tree modifications - See perk tree image
SHIVs all gain 2 more base health, 5 defense, and lose 0.5 DR - Should be just as strong as before but a little less abusive with high static DR
Aliens:
Zombie mobility increased to 14 (from 9) - Makes zombie missions more challenging and the fights against them more engaging (slow melee units are fairly poor gameplay against xcom which is heavy range damage)
Exalt Heavy damage reduced by 2 and Exalt Elite Heavy damage reduced by 4 during research upgrades - Balance to pull down their offensive strength some
Mechtoid aim to 60 (from 75) - Makes their offensive potential a lot less oppressive (15 less aim on normal shots)
Seekers/Sectoids aim to 55/50 (from 65/55) - Ranger is now working on them which grants them +10 aim so this is a wash - they inadvertently had +10 aim. Whoops! =P
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug with sniper rifle ranges be inadvertently a few tiles short of double normal range
Fixed a bug where a lot of reaction shot aim modifications were ineffective (RR, Sent, RfA)
Fixed an issue with defensive items not showing the correct hit chance in perfect information (note: this was a display issue only)
Fixed misleading descriptions on SHIV chassis
Fixed a bug with the stun rifle incorrectly showing 100% hit chance when it wasn't 100%
Fixed a bug where chryssalids automatically had chittin plating equipped (and therefore got the 60% DR against melee weapons)
Fixed a bug where ITZ would activate even if steady aim was lost due to damage during the alien turn
Fixed a bug where holo rounds would sometimes give different amounts of aim bonus (we hope)
Fixed a typo on breaching ammo suggesting it only had 1 weight
Fixed a typo on HE grenade - Thanks bilf
Fixed text on autosentry turret
Updated description on the flamethower
Fixed typo on mayhem suppression descriptions being inconsistent
Fixed a bug where HEAT ammo could apply to secondary weapons
Bug we can't fix yet:
Covert Op and crew doesn't gain xp or psi xp if the covert op is extracted before the mission is over
Version 1.20.03
LW Rebalance v1.20.03 - Patch Notes
Air Game:
Avalanche missle damage increased to 160 (from 140) - Makes the early air game slightly easier
Overall aircraft repair time reduced by 50% - Makes bad air engagements much more forgiving as getting a fleet of aircraft back on their feet is much quicker
Equiping an alien weapon now only takes 12 hours (from 24) - 24 seemed too long and swapping weapons is no longer abusive
Moving an aircraft to another continent now takes 12 hours (from 36) - 36 seemed too long and swapping planes is no longer abusive
Tactical:
This isn't a change, more of a note about rounding of DR that I had miscalculated: The FINAL DAMAGE is rounded. So if you have 0.5 DR and are hit for 4 dmg, that 4 dmg goes to 3.5 then that 3.5 is rounded to 4. So 0.5 DR on it's own does nothing. However, 0.5 DR in any cover (10-30% DR) or on a hardened unit (30% DR) will always round to at least 1.
Perks:
Reconnaissance now grants the scout detailed tracking information on the aliens after each move - Thanks to szmind for this this really cool code. I wanted to get it into 1.20.02 but just couldn't keep stalling, didn't realize how close we were to finishing it.
Equipment:
Motion Tracker is now only equippable by a SHIV (from Scout) and base charges to 2 (from 3) - Increases the utility of the SHIVs and was a little redundant on the scout with the buff to Reconnaissance
AM Rifle aim penalty to -10 (from -5) - They were too good, slight nerf
Arc Rifle now grants squadsight - Gives it more room for use on support classes that aren't on the front lines
Aliens:
Chryssalid base health to 4 (from 6) but gain 2 more health with mid-late game alien research - Makes them easier to kill in the early game, no effect on late game strength
Bug Fixes:
Fixed some typos
Fixed description of dangerzone to reflect the 1.5 tiles where it was inaccurate
Updated description on double tap to point out there is no cooldown
Fixed a bug where bonus stats were being applied twice to new soldiers
Fixed a bug where grit would prevent shredder from working when it was inactive (i.e. not in cover or while performing a move)
Fixed a bug with reaction fire not calculating hit chances correctly on flanked targets and other situations
Fixed a bug where psi panic was too accurateby 20%
Fixed a bug where ITZ + Mayhem would sometimes only grant 1 additional shot instead of an entire new chain of shots when triggering
Version 1.20.02
LW Rebalance v1.20.02 - Patch Notes
Tactical:
CCS will trigger before OW now - quality of life
Damage Reduction is now always rounded to the nearest integer instead of randomized - This means 0.49DR will always be 0DR and 0.5DR will always be 1DR, the reason this was done is for consistency in UI and kill cams as it was causing bugs. Also, it makes understanding the damage we deal a little bit easier (by removing another source of randomization).
Balance:
Toned down the # of sci/eng to 2-3 (from 2-5) for country requests
AP/HE Greande damage to 4/6 (from 5/7) but alien grenade foundry upgrade grants +1 more damage still setting them to 7/10 (from 7/10) - Tones down early game grenade dominance
LMG damage to 200% of base (from 150%) and aim to -10 (from -15) - Buffed for balance
SAW aim to 0 (from -10) - Buffed for balance
Strike Rifle crit to 30 (from 20) - Slight buff
Marksman's Scope aim to 15 (from 10) - Slight buff
FitH grants 15 aim (from 30) - Was too strong of a rocketeer build
Cost for salvage teams increased slightly - Was too much additional resource per credit
Stingray penetration to 25% (from 50%) and aim to 25 (from 30) - Nerf for balance
Reduced the damage on plasma I UFO weapons from 400 dmg to 350 dmg - Slight increase in survivability
Alien Base assaults now reward a fusion core - Makes assaulting them more valuable in a way that isn't overpowering
SHIVs (all types) gain 2 more health - Helps them survive a little longer
QoL:
Increase the exalt scan recommendation by 2 days - Should be a little more accurate
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug with wonky KSM damage possibilities
Fixed a bug where some soldiers did not acquire bonus stats from things like Strict Screening, Survival Training, etc.
Fixed a bug where heavy missions were sometimes getting too many aliens and swarming too few
Grit no longer auto-kills the unit when activating and should be working properly
Salvage teams now correctly only work on crashed/landed UFOs and alien base assaults
Fixed bug with salvage teams only being granted on loaded games
Fixed disarrayed Goliath and Marauder perk trees
Fixed a bug where chrysallids were receiving too much DR
Fixed a UI issue where stun rifles and medikits were displaying incorrect hit chances
Fixed an issue where rapid reaction would sometimes fire too many (infinite?) shots
Fixed a bug where ready for anything would sometimes fire too many (infinite?) shots
Fixed a bug where the hit chance was incorrectly displayed for overwatch shots that did not have opportunist
Fixed a bug with hit chances being too inaccurate
Fixed a bug with extra salvage team costs sometimes being incorrect
Fixed a bug where the KSM could do x100 damage
Fixed a bug with Grit not triggering properly
Fixed a bug with kill cams and rapid fire not triggering properly
Fixed a bug where psionic attacks and acid would trigger DR
Fixed a bug where overwatch shots were incorrectly gaining aim
Fixed a bug where the elerium emitter was granting too much DR
Fixed a bug where council credit rewards could be too high sometimes
Fixed a UI bug for the stun rifle hit chances
Fixed an incorrect description on plasma carbine defense
Fixed a UI issue with inner fire not showing it's aim bonus in the barracks
Misc text fixes
Version 1.20.01
LW Rebalance v1.20.01 - Patch Notes
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where flanking aim bonuses were receiving a -30 aim malus
Version 1.20.00
LW Rebalance v1.20.00 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
After a UFO mission the player has the option to send additional salvage teams (at a cost) which will yield 0-100% additional alloy and elerium. The cost is proportional to the size of the resource haul - Gives players a little more control over their resources (thanks to szmind for the awesome code and awesome idea!)
Meld/Elerium/Alloy sell cost to 5/3/3 (from 4/2/2) - They are valuable enough that having a higher sell cost is reasonable so that players can have a little more control over resource vs credit management
Elerium gained from shotdown UFOs increased to 20-30% (from 10-20%) - A little more consistency in the strategic game for elerium supply (especially into the late game where you shoot down more UFOs)
Zombie terror missions occur 20% of the time (from 10%) - They were a little too rare previously
Weapon Fragment gain increased by 20% - The new abductions lowered the amount overall and this seems to put it back to a more reasonable place
Number of aliens on light/medium/heavy/swarming abductions increased to 6-7/8-9/11-12/14-15 (from 6-7/8-9/10-11/12-13) - More challenging on heavy and swarming abductions as they have more pods which was sometimes making them a little easier due to smaller pod sizes
Increase the rate of exalt clue accumulation - You should be able to find the exalt base much quicker now
Engineering Items are now sorted slightly better - QoL: Makes it easier to find things
OTS Ranks required to 20/60/80/100/120 for officer ranks and 40/140 for squad size upgrades (from 20/60/90/120/150 and 40/180) - Decrease missions required so you can reasonably achieve it by the end game
Cut the late game elerium cost of most research and foundry projects by 50% - Makes Elerium not such a late game bottle-neck
Council requests are more costly, more rewarding, and will have less of the "that deal is amazing" and "I would never do that" trades - Makes council requests slightly more engaging
Alien Nucleonics is unlocked with Alien materials (instead of UFO Power Systems) - Allows players to start accumulating extra elerium early if they so desire
Bombing Run panic increase to 14 (from 12) - Slight boost to panic addition through the game
The Base Defense mission will not occur until November - Gives players a little more wiggle room to prepare
The Base Defense mission will only have you equip 10 soldiers (instead of 12) - Helps prevent RNG from causing a squad wipe, still has RNG of who you will actually get on the mission
On an alien base defense, if you lose, you only lose 500 cash, all of your alien captives, and 20% of your scientists and engineers - Makes losing it not as detrimental to the campaign
Shotguns are basic tier weapon tech (not adv tech) and SAW/LMG are adv tier weapon tech (not basic tech) [Except for plasma which has no changes due to it's divided techs] - Brings shotguns on a little earlier and pushes SAWs/LMGs a little later
Reward for completing exalt missions increased to 100 credits for covert op extractions missions, 100 credits and 30 meld on capture and hold missions (with +100 more credits if the encoder/transmitter were not destroyed) - More encouragement to pass the missions
Exalt scan cost increased to 100 (from 50) - Compensates for greater rewards
Starting cash amounts decreased by ~50% - The cash rewards were too great, this makes them less significant
Base Psionic training time is 30 days (from 20) - Slight nerf to late game psionic potential of xcom and makes higher will values more useful
You are protected against swarming abductions in the first 2 months (from first 3) - Bring the potential of them on slightly earlier
MEC2 research requires Elerium (instead of mobile power armor) - Bring MEC2s online a lot quicker for a stronger MEC mid-game
Air Game:
Firestorm costs significantly less - Makes their late game investment more worth it
Interceptor health to 2000 (from 3000) and firestorm health to 4000 (from 5000) - Increases proportional damage received from UFOs by 20-33%
Phoenix Cannon aim increased to 30 (from 20) but cooldown increased to 3s (from 2s) - Makes experienced pilots less impactful on the weapon
Phoenix Coilgun upgrade does not increase the damage of phoenix cannons and penetration increases from 50 to 100% (instead of 50 to 150%) - Significant nerf to the upgrade, puts it on par with plasma for penetration
Stingray cooldown increased to 12s (from 10s) - Slight nerf
Overseer is significantly faster meaning you have around half the time to engage it as normal - Means that an air weapons stronger than phoenix of some sort is much more important to shoot it down (though straight coilguns is still 'possible'). Also, this solution makes the overseer less damaging to the player as well (should things go badly).
Fighter DR decreased to 50% (from 75%) - Makes lasers a more reasonable option against them
Scouts and Fighters start with 800 health (from 500), Raiders and Destroyers start with 5000 health (from 4000) - Slight buffs
Upgraded Destroyers no longer gain more health and armor than the regular destroyers - They were difficult enough with their increased firepower
UFOs have a 100/66/33/0% additional chance to be shot down in march/april/may/june (from 100/80/60/40/20/0) - Only the first 3 months are protected (from the first 5), makes it a little more important to use lower yield weapons, and begins to reduce mission density a little quicker
Tactical:
Reaction fire suffers a 20% miss chance normally, and a 40% miss chance when dashing (from 30% and 50%) - Makes overwatch fire a little more effective
You can collect weapon fragments from aliens destroyed by explosions - Removes some of the negative of using explosives. Also, logically makes sense as they guns explode anyway when their user dies, so if he died by explosion there should still be some fragments. Now the only real negative is no corpse. This should have already been added when the reduced elerium and alloys from corpses was added to make all 3 resources not dependent upon explosive usage.
Ammo Conservation foundry project only affects SMGs, Carbines, Assault Rifles, Battle Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Strike Rifles and cost reduced some - Nerf to ammo capacity for late game MEC/SHIVs
Shred now grants +33% damage BEFORE DR (from +33% after DR) - Consistency with everything else and a buff.
HEAT Ammo no longer works with shotguns - Consistency with other penetration effects not working with shotguns and realism
Shredder and HEAT are now calculated into the expected damage display - This means the numbers you see will more often line up with the expect numbers and you won't have to do any additional calculations
Beam Strengthening grants +1 damage during critical hits (from just +1 damage always) - Nerfed, it was too strong for such a universal upgrade
Advanced Servomotors Foundry project (sprinter to all MECs and SHIVs) now only applies to SHIVs and is cheaper - Accommodates increased early mobility of MECs, and allows for the sprinter perk on the MEC trees
Steadying a weapon does not trigger covering fire anymore - Gives players more options against units with covering fire
XCOM:
Multiple perk tree changes (see image)
MECs start at 13 mobility (from 10) - Significant boost to early game MECs
Choppping a MEC grants a 50% chance of bonus stats for each level above LCPL (from 100% chance) - Makes chopping higher ranked soldiers less something you strive for and more something you do only if you need to
Rookies cannot use pistols - Helps fix a bug and also makes the promotions feel a little more distinct
Aliens:
Exalt Elite Medic navigators lose WtS, covering fire, and CCS - Was too much on them, helps make late game exalt a little easier
Exalt Elite Operative navigators lose Tenacious defense - They were already tanky enough, helps make late game exalt a little easier
Exalt Operative navigators gain CCS - Makes the earlier exalt operatives a little more dangerous
All Exalt lose Grit - Makes overwatch still effective against them into the late game
Cyberdiscs pick up Awareness - Makes them more threatening and harder to kill when on overwatch
Mechtoids lose Damage Control - Helps drop them with multiple shots and lowers the extreme end of their DR
Sectoid Command defense to 40 (from 20) and ethereal defense to 60 (from 40) - They were too easy to drop from a long distance. This pushes them back towards enemies that you want to get close to deal with and not just stay at range (or out of sight) and pick off.
Perks:
New Perk 'Penetrator': Grants +2 penetration - This applys to all sources and all targets. This acts as a replacement to Adv HEAT Tech. Adv HEAT was too strong in certain situations (trivializing them) and too weak in others. This is a more moderate solution that is slightly less effective against mechanical units but gives a nice boost against non-mechanical enemies with DR as well.
%DR has been reduced across the board: Grit to 10% (from 20%), Tenacious Defense to 10% (from 20%), WtS to 30% (from 40%), Absorption Fields 20% (from 30%), SAA to within 15 tiles (from 20 tiles -- now caps at 30%), Damage Control to 20% (from 30%) - Overall reduction in DR to make shots not feel so ineffective in many situations. Effects both xcom and alien tanks.
Opportunist no longer grants an aim bonus on reaction shots (it only allows for reaction shot crits now) - Overall nerf to overwatch builds, also dashing is now always effective at reducing overwatch chances even against opportunist.
Lighting Reflexes dodge to 70/50% (from 80/50%) - Slight nerf with new weaker OW
Rapid Reaction no longer stops firing on a miss, still grants 3 reaction shots, but also grants -10 aim on all reaction shots - It didn't really make sense that missing a shot would make your reaction time slower. It fits better that this unit is firing quickly with less aim at more targets (similar to rapid fire). Fits better with the new overwatch shots all having an aim malus.
Will To Survive grants -15 defense (from -10) - Helps biotanks maintain taunts
Double Tap only works with the primary weapon and has no cooldown - Significant buff, Prevents annoyances with DT triggering on the last ammo, and prevents annoying abuses with using the sidearm to trigger it (e.g. firing the sidearm to trigger the +20 aim on DT to get your primary weapon +20 aim on it's shot), and it didn't make sense to swap between weapons in the middle of a 'double tap'
Dense smoke DR to 30% (from 20%) - Buff to the effectiveness when not using it for defense, boost to the support engineer
Psi panic no longer receives it's +20% chance to hit - It was a little too strong, makes it less dominant vs psi inspiration and encourages use of mindfray
Psi inspiration grants +10 will to the psionic - Buff for balance
Mind Merge Aim bonus to 10 (from 25) - Was too strong for late game stacking, this balances the offensive and defensive aspects of it to be more even
Extra Conditioning reduces the effects of fatigue and injury by 20% but only grants 1 armor health (from 2) - A more unique perk
Hit and Run to 1 damage on uncovered targets (from 2) - Balance
Sharpshooter aim against units in cover to 10 (from 15) - Slight Nerf, it still provides +2 penetration against units in cover
Fortified grants 1 DR (from 0.5) - Slight buff to the perk, balance on the trees
Covering fire doesn't half the cover-base defense during reaction shots at targets, instead it just removes the reaction shot aim penalty against stationary targets - Simplification and removes some bugs associated with cover on covering fire shots
Awareness defense when on overwatch or steadying to 30 (from 40) - Nerf due to perk tree modifications
Neural Feedback now always does 6 damage (from a previously complicated formula) - The consistency is nice and previously the damage was too high too often doing things like clearing out entire pods of aliens. There was also some bugs that would cause it to do upwards of 100 damage. Also gives another nice choice for units that became psionic with the bare minimum will.
Danger Zone allows suppression to affect an area of 1.5 tiles (from 3 tiles) - Significant nerf to the bullet wizard to put it in line (especially with the boost to shredder and holo)
ITZ now triggers off of both standard and precision shots - Gives it more flexibility
Holo Rounds no longer grants +2 damage against mechanical units but grants +20 aim against marked targets (from +10) - Simplification and focus on the support aspect of the ability
Executioner grants +20 aim and +30 crit (from +10 aim and +50 crit) - Always wanted to do this change but could never previously adjust the values. Thanks to szmind for figuring out how and the relevant code.
Mayhem suppression damage up to 1/2/3/4/5 (from 1-3), can be affected by HEAT, but no longer penetrates all DR - Since it's affected by DR the damage needed a boost. The lack of 100% penetration and the ability to be affected by HEAT is for consistency with all other damage types.
Mayhem grants +3 damage to strike rifles (from +4) - Nerf for balance, opens up more options for strike rifle snipers
Mayhem grants a 10% chance per enemy in sight to activate ITZ after any shot without being steadied (for Jaegers) - New perk addition on the Jaeger tree to help get ITZ off
Disabling Shot no longer grants Precision Shot - Nerf to disabling shot scout
Combat drugs aim bonus to 10 (from 20) - Nerf for balance
Reactive Targeting Sensors grants +2 ammo - Buff to help with ammo consumption problems
Equipment:
New small item 'Javelin Rockets' replaces the old shredder rocket: grants 2 rockets, weighs 3 (from 2), has a 1.5 tile radius, shreds the target, and damage to 150% - Gives the rocketeer more options against single targets and more capability to shred
Rocket radius back to 6 (from 5) - With the smaller abductions the rocketeer and rockets took a significant nerf, this helps them gain back some footing (as well as the new tree)
Sniper/Strike Rifle damage to 100/125% of base (from 125/150% of base) but ammo to 4 (from 3) - Nerf to damage output on the sniper/scout, but boost to consistency. Puts them more inline with other weapons.
SAW/LMG damage to 150/150% of base (from 150/175% of base) and aim to -10/-15 (from -5/-15) - Slight nerf on both, brings them closer together. Low aim and high damage makes sense since they are both fired from the hip and are huge.
Hi Cap Mags can be equipped by all 8 biologic classes now (previously restricted from gunners and snipers) - No need to cap it with the higher ammo on the weapons
Psi Screen gains +10 defense but loses +1 DR - Reversion to a defensive item for non-tank psionic classes
Elerium Emitter DR to 1 (from 1.5) - Slight nerf to make officer tanks more competitive vs psionic tanks
Combat Stims grant +6 mobility (from +4) - Buffed
MEC3 suit costs decreased significantly - Makes it more reasonable to field multiple in the end-game, note that the cost to research the MEC suits has increased. Overall it's cheaper and more of the cost is in the research instead of the actual suits.
LMEC suits no longer have an aim bonus - Nerf to make heavier MEC suits more of an option and it was never actually working (even though it showed up in the total aim #)
Aurora/Vortex Armor will bonus to 10/20 (from 20/30) - Nerf to accommodate bonus will on psi inspiration
Assault and Strike Rifle crit to 20 (from 10) - Balance
SMGs mobility to 2 (from 3) but critical chance to 40 (from 0) - Gives them a more unique niche and reduces the gamey aspect of it
Shotguns regain a mobility, 5 crit, and an ammo - Helps them reposition close to targets and keep firing, in the previous iterations of the mod shotguns felt slightly too weak due to increased prevalence of CCS and CCS+CF
Regenerator Vest DR to 0.5 (from 1) - Slight nerf
Chitin plating reduces melee damage by 60% (from 30%) - Was too ineffective at 30%
Reinforced armor health to 3 (from 2) - Buffed, balance
Ceramic Plating health to 2 (from 3) - nerfed as a free item
Breaching Ammo now negates the hardened perk (instead of just reducing it back to 30%) but mobility to -2 (from -1) - Creates a more unique role to further distinguish it from AP ammo
Flamethrower/Incinerator Module damage to 6/6 (from 5/8) - Slight buff before you have the module
Arc Rifle loses disabling shot - Acts as a nerf to the rifle, it was quite overpowered before (note: a sniper/scout with disabling shot can still use the arc rifle to disable targets)
MEC weapons regain their squadsight range - To accommodate SS on the Jaeger
Bug Fixes:
Fixed and cleaned up multiple bugs related to explosives not granting enough damage and/or granting too much DR - Most of the work here goes to szminds entire rework of the DR mechanism. Thanks to him!
Fixed a bug where cover defense was not calculated correctly for aliens around ethereals with distortion
Inner Fire now correctly displays the bonus aim in the F1 panel
Laser Sight and Scope no longer show a crit bonus when using a pistol
Mindfray no longer shows >100 damage when targeting someone
Ready For Anything removed from all aliens - It was bugged and would sometimes allow the aliens to fire multiple (>2) shots per turn
Fixed a bug where if you had 100+% chance to hit you would ignore the effects of distortion
Fixed description on danger zone so that it correctly says it only works on grenade launchers, mines, and rockets - Not on grenades
Mutons no longer display the intimidate perk on F1 - Was a display bug only
Fixed typo on AM Long Rifle description
Version 1.19.16
LW Rebalance v1.19.16 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
DR now is applied correctly - There was a bug applying it twice in many situations
Version 1.19.15
LW Rebalance v1.19.15 - Patch Notes
QoL:
Fixed some formating issues on the new damage display readout and fixed some inappropriate numbers from popping up - Should be very accurate now. Basically what it does is takes an average shot and rolls DR against it and gives you the result. Note: checking multiple times may change the result (as the DR could round up or down), but it should give a good rough idea about your shot.
Bug Fixes:
Soldiers no longer start with double equipped items (as it should have been technically impossible)
Fixed a bug where flak ammo could cause a crash to desktop
Fixed various inaccurate or slightly erroneous descriptions
ITZ was supposed to have decrementing aim/crit and the inability to steady the weapon while ITZ in the last patch but it got left off - Just like previously on ITZ consecutive shots lower aim and crit by 10 and you cannot steady aim after ITZ (prevents command from overpowering it)
HEAT, Shredder, and Holo do not work on pistols - Was bugged on shredder, sometimes doing so. Other are for consistency. Helps ensure the primary weapon is the primary weapon and not just used for stats (e.g. SMG).
Mayhem Suppression correctly is not affected by HEAT Ammo
MEC1 correctly has body shield and not damage control
Combat drugs now correctly increases aim for the purpose of scatter reduction when firing a rocket
The 0 scientists/engineers gained per month on the satellite screen are long displayed - Cleaning up the UI
Version 1.19.14
LW Rebalance v1.19.14 - Patch Notes
Note: Sorry about another balance patch, it's just that HEAT, explosives, MEC1, and penetrations were a little too imbalanced to leave it all for 2-3 months. This patch should add smoothly into existing campaigns. NO MORE balance changes until the new year!
Strategic:
Campaigns are now limited to 1 base defense mission per campaign - It never made sense with the cut scene that we got mind controlled again and were completely surprised. Plus, the mission is so spontaneous and punishing it's not really adding a good element to the game to have multiples.
Tactical:
You can now see your weapon penetration and expected damage and DR amount when firing at targets - Gives players more information to help them more quickly understand how much damage they'll do - Thanks to szmind for the code.
Perks:
HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads grants double damage BEFORE damage reduction (Advanced HEAT Technology increases this to triple damage) - This is the most smooth and effective method. It was abandoned previously due to quite a lot of programming difficulty. However, where there is a will, there is a way. Or in this case, where there is szmind, there is a way. After 3 days of many tests and many hours of programming we finally got it to work for both HEAT ammo and HEAT warheads. Overall this makes DR still relevant when using HEAT while still allowing HEAT to be quite effective against mechanical units.
Equipment:
AP grenade damage to 5 (from 4) - Boost for balance, was a little too weak compared to the other variants
Grenade Launcher damage to 10 (from 8) - Boost for balance, buff to grenade-based Shogun and Goliath
Grenade AoE increased to 3 tiles (from 2.5) - Boost for balance, makes it a little easier for grenades to hit airborne units
Flak ammo to +3 damage (from +4) - Was too strong at +4, especially with collateral
Sniper Rifle penetration to +1 (from +2) - Reduces it's strength against high DR enemies giving it a little less 'overall' dominance (Makes more room for HEAT-based builds), more balance for strike vs sniper rifle snipers
MEC-1 Suit defense increased to 30 (from 15) and gains the body shield perk, but mobility to 0 (from 1), DR to 0 (from 1), HP to 8 (from 10), aim to 0 (from 5) - The defense with the body shield perk makes the MEC1 much more able to survive in the early game as biotanks in light cover and SHIVs will still taunt more - Now the MEC1 is more like an early version of the LMEC2
XCOM:
Tandem on Rocketeer replaced with Danger Zone - Tandem was too strong that the perk level wasn't balanced
Bug Fixes:
UI display of DR on MECs no longer incorrectly reduces static DR (display only) if the %DR gets too high - Thanks to szmind for finding and fixing the erroneous code - was a display bug only
Updated possibly misleading descriptions of HEAT Ammo, HEAT Warheads, and Advanced HEAT Tech - It should now be more obvious what they do
DR display when using explosives is now fixed (no longer seeing 0 dmg and 8 DR grenades against units with 2 DR that didn't make any sense) - thanks to szmind - It was a problem with the original LW code that didn't incorporate DR into the fall-off reduction. Previously it would always show the DR BEFORE fall-off damage (e.g. on an 8 dmg grenade that only did 2 damage due to fall off that hit a unit with 50% DR the DR display would be 4 where it should have been 1). Things should work perfectly now.
Updated psi panic description to include "Psi panicked units may unpanic at the beginning of their turns." - It's a bug that I'm not sure we'll be able to fix so until then it's a feature. =P
Version 1.19.13
LW Rebalance v1.19.13 - Patch Notes
A note on future updates:
There will be no further updates (besides bug fixing or unintended problems) until 2019 to allow players to start campaigns without having much modification.
Strategic:
High or low health will now alter the threshold for when a soldier becomes injured due to fatigue - For example, a soldier with 4 health will become injured from fatigue at ~18 turns. A soldier with 8 health will become injured from fatigue at ~22 turns. A small change that was intended to be in the original system.
Soldiers who become injured from excess fatigue will only receive an extra injury time of +3 days (from an actual 1 health point of injury damage worth of injury time which could grant +6-15 days) - Makes it less penalizing to players for pushing past 20 turns during a mission. Note: this does not apply to bringing fatigued soldiers on missions, only to keeping healthy soldiers on missions for a long time
New Warfare reduced to 20% discount (from 30%) - Balance
Equipment:
Shots from the Arc Rifle do not apply HEAT ammo - Was too powerful in combination, was an oversight being left in
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where sharpshooter wasn't working on units with Low Profile in low cover
Psi Screen now correctly grants +1 DR
Version 1.19.12
LW Rebalance v1.19.12 - Patch Notes
QoL:
Geoscape now pauses on all notifications (not just those you have the ability to immediately fulfill) - So you don't waste time on those that might be difficult to fulfill - Thanks szmind for the code! :)
Perks:
Savior grants 2 additional free medikits again (from 0) - Helps medics retain adequate healing due to item restrictions
Fire in the Hole back to 30 aim - The lack of HEAT and mayhem is actually a siginficant nerf on FiTH rocketeers so they needed a little more oomph
Lead by example grants 0 armor health (from +1) and +1 DR (from +0) - Bringing back the officer tank, gives an option for non-psionic classes to be competitive tanks. On non-tanks gives them a little more resiliency than just the 1 armor health.
HEAT and HEAT warheads to double damage (from +150% base damage) and Advanced HEAT Tech upgrades this to triple damage (from +300% base damage) - Slight nerf. Also, just because of coding there was a bug in HEAT and I couldn't get HEAT explosives to work like HEAT ammo and I felt them being consistent was important. Now they simply double your damage (triple with Advanced HEAT Tech) dealt against mechanical units (just like how shredder works). This means they interact with +damage and +penetration perks/items (e.g. sapper, enhanced beam optics, etc.). Note: you will not see the DR #'s increase visually when HEAT triggers.
Aliens:
Mechtoids lose LnL - While it helped with their ammo and made them less likely to be disabled, they were tanky enough with the new HEAT changes that they didn't need the extra boost
Equipment:
Flak ammo grants +4 damage against flying targets (from +3) - buff for competitiveness
Mind Shield renamed to Psi Accelerator and mobility to 0 (from -1) - buff for balance, name changed because it was mostly used in an offensive capacity and the shield didn't really reflect this component
Psi Screen defense to 0 (from +20) and DR to +1 (from 0) - The defense was not useful enough and made the item uncompetitive
Banshee and Aegis armor gain 2 mobility but lose an item slot - Provides a more unique niche for the mobile power armors
Motion Tracker base charges to 3 (from 2) - Helps visualize larger maps to help speed up completion times
Bug Fixes:
HEAT warheads now correctly provides extra damage - There was a bug preventing it from triggering and was one of the other reasons both versions of HEAT received a slight rework
Grenade Launcher now correctly states it starts with 2 ammo - accidently had it saying 3
Packmaster no longer grants proximity mines an extra ammo - was accidently increasing it
Grit was incorrectly granting +2 armor health - previous code I forgot to remove
Version 1.19.11
LW Rebalance v1.19.11 - Patch Notes
Strategic Game:
Removed some coding that made late game abductions gain 4 aliens - Thanks Jexats
You will not get heavy abductions in the first month and you will not get swarming abductions in the first 3 months - Prevents getting overwhelmed before you can get a reasonable squad together
# of aliens on abductions are now (on average): Light 6-7, Medium is 8-9, Heavy is 10-11, Swarming is 12-13 - There was some code that was modifying the numbers that I fixed, also lowered the difficulty of the difficult missions some more. Makes Swarming closer to what Heavy was before (effectively eliminating old swarming missions).
First mission has 7 aliens on normal/classic, 10 on brutal, and 13 on impossible - Due to SHIV strength nerf
All OTS upgrades after LT require 10 more missions - Slight push back to balance missions vs previous ranks again.
The Zombie mission occurs randomly now (1 of 10 chance each terror mission) - Means you can't count and prepare for it
Each mission grants 20 extra experience for each soldier - Helps accommodate for lower overall mission xp gain on abduction due to fewer troops deployed
You can now research tactical rigging after sectoid interrogation (from muton elite interrogation) and the cost is much cheaper - Allows players to get 3 item slots much earlier in the game (thanks to all those who pushed this idea)
Condensed the spacing of equipped items on soldiers in the barracks so you can see the 3rd item slot by default - Just a little QoL change
Soldiers can only equip 1 of each small item - Makes early tactical rigging not so overpowered and encourages diversity in builds
Jungle Scouts now permanently grants tactical rigging (from an early armor only tactical rigging) - Neccessary as tactical rigging is much easier to acquire (use console command with "`givefoundry TacticalRigging" if you are already in the middle of a campaign)
Tactical Game:
Officers now share will with any ally within 19 tiles (from 8 tiles) - Makes it much more useful to have officer's with high will - Thanks szmind for the code! :)
Air Game:
Increased the speed of interceptors and firestorms significantly - Helps get access to UFOs quickly in large continents again
Equipment:
Battle Rifle can now be equipped by the rocketeer - Helps with the OW build and there really wasn't a good reason to restrict it from them - thanks xwynns
Rocket AoE reduced from 6 to 5 - Nerf to the strength of the rocketeer
Shedder Ammo weight back to 1 (from 2) but has a 90 elerium cost - With the nerf it didn't need the extra weight - makes the item better but more expensive
XCOM:
All SHIVs have 1 less DR but gain 2 more armor health - Helps prevent trivialization of content with the early SHIVs and when you get the alloy SHIVs early
Disabling shot on the sniper replaced with shredder ammo - Further distinguishes the scout and sniper
Bombard on the Medic replaced with packmaster - Since item slots are limited you needed this to be a competitive support
Sniper Class stat growth aim bonus to +20 (from +15) - Slight buff
Bug Fixes:
Sawed-off Shotgun correctly is described as -2 mobility
Version 1.19.10
LW Rebalance v1.19.10 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
Psi training base amount of time to 20 days (from 30) - Brings psionics online faster
Interceptor and Firestorm speed increased slightly - Makes it a little less likely for the UFO to dodge your fighters
MECs have 50% increased fatigue (from 100% increased fatigue) - Makes them a little easier to field more frequently
MECs now have 50% increased threshold of "when fatigue turns into injury" (i.e. 9 days of fatigue instead of 6) - They get 50% more fatigue but were still getting injured once they passed 6 days which made them almost always injured. Now they will get injured from fatigue around the same time as regular soldiers (~20 turns)
Beam Strengthening now requires 14 UFO power sources (from 10) - It was coming online too early making skipping gauss a more common than ideal occurance. It is designed so that if you get stuck without gauss and if you happen to get a lot of power cores, you can pump your laser strength, not act as a planned skip.
The alien grenade foundry project is now displayed even if you don't have an alien grenade - QoL improvement
Tactical:
Abduction missions have 33% less enemies and you can only bring 4 soldiers (to start) - This is probably the biggest change of the version. The maps were too small for such high density of XCOM and the aliens. This keeps the challenge similar but allows more tactics by giving more room for players to move around. # of aliens on abductions by difficulty are now: 5-7/8-10/11-13/14-16.
Squad size upgrades work on all missions now - helps with mid-late game EXALT missions
Base Defense Missions have 20% less enemies - Helps make them not so punishing as they are not optional missions and can be devestating to a campaign
Trap UFOs do not occur - With the increase in research landed UFOs were already difficult enough. While they had the advantage of forcing players to consider retreat, they unfortunately were not that enjoyable as they were long missions; too long; exhaustingly long. Large landeds were already long enough.
Soldiers no longer take smoke grenades on the first mission (as the sectoids can bypass it too easily) and instead equip ceramic platings again - Just makes sense
Soldiers are 10% less likely to panic and chain panic - Now, compared to LW 1.0, they are 20% more likely to panic and 10% less likely to chain panic - Panic was a little too much of a factor and chain panic could be too devestating
XCOM:
Disabling shot on the scout grants Precision Shot instead of Squadsight - helps eliminate a visual bug (the marksman's scope grants squadsight now, just like vanilla)
Brawler and RnG swapped on the Marauder - Makes a more competitive tree and puts the marauder into a more mobile role
Gunner gains 20W (from 10W) - With the nerf to HEAT and Shredder Ammo it needed a boost. Helps make sure each of the 4 major classes have a good psi unit
Aliens:
Significantly reduced the amount of ammo aliens had: now all small and medium weapons have 3 ammo and all large weapons have 5 ammo (from 4-8 ammo) - Makes long drawn out fights not so disadvantageous just for XCOM due to ammo constraints
Ethereal and Uber Ethereal regeneration lowered to 10/15 (from 20/30) - Makes them not so essential to drop in a single turn
Mechtoids now start with LnL - Helps with RR ammo problems
Perks:
HEAT ammo/warheads extra damage is now subject to DR, but grants 150% of base damage and works with shotguns and sidearms - Slight nerf to it's strength. Buff to tanky mechanical units. Means it now works in conjunction with acid and shred (previously it ignored shred and didn't care about acid). Allowing it to work with shotguns and sidearms is for gameplay convenience.
Mayhem grants +2 damage to rockets (from +3) - Nerf for balance on the trees
Fire in the Hole grants +20 aim for the purposes of reducing rocket scatter (from +30) - Nerf for balance on the trees
Shred grants +33% damage (from +50%) - Nerf so that it's not so mandatory, also nerf to the bullet wizard. Now the effect on a full life alien is similar to removing 25% of it's health (from 33% of it's health). As an example, shredding a 20 health muton was similar to dealing 6.6 dmg with the previous shred. With the new shred, shredding a 20 health muton will be similar to dealing 5 dmg.
CCS no longer grants +1 ammo but instead grants covering fire - We finally got it to work bug free (I'm pretty sure). Should be a significant improvement to how often CCS triggers and thereby a significant boost to the perk. It makes more thematic sense than +1 ammo. Works even more synergistically with brawler.
Hardened grants no bonus DR if being hit by an AM rifle (from 30%) - So: hardened is +30% DR but with 2 exceptions: 1) It's 50% DR against shotguns without breaching ammo and 2) It's 0% DR against AM rifles - Gives AM rifles a unique niche
Shock-Absorbent Armor grants proximity DR if the target is within 20 tiles (+2% DR per tile up to +40% at point blank) (from within 15 tiles and +30% at point blank) - Buff as it was too ineffective at ranges around 10 tiles
Awareness grants +40 defense (from +30) - Buff so that both builds on the Jaeger are more likely to avoid getting hit while surrounded by enemies
Equipment:
Flak ammo grants +3 damage which is subject to DR (from +3 or +30% after DR) - Slight nerf, simplification, and standardization
Marksman's Scope grants Squadsight (instead of Precision Shot) - Switch of scout perks to prevent a display bug
Sawed-off shotgun damage back to 4 (from 3) but mobility to -2 (from -1) - Makes it more impactful at the cost of more mobility loss. With proximity bonus it hits 6 damage at point blank. Now it's like a normal ballistic shotgun but: it can fit in a pistol slot, has 1 ammo, has -2 mobility, and suffers from both shotgun and sidearm aim decrements further than 10 tiles.
KSM damage to 25 (from 20) but no longer penetrates all DR - Buff against low DR units, nerf against high DR units. Overall slight nerf to MECs (specifically the Maruader was too strong with onslaught) and buff to alien mechanical units.
AM rifles are now like normal gauss sniper/strike rifles except they reduce the hardened perk DR to 0% (from 30%) and have 5 less aim (they lose their 100% penetration) - Prevents them from trivializing WtS and other high %DR tanky units but still focuses them on higher DR units. Note: getting rid of 30% DR on a unit can be similar to doing 50% more damage.
Regenerator Vest grants +1 HP (from +0) - Slight boost for competitiveness
Bug Fixes:
OW shots will not receive a covering fire bonus if the overwatcher if flanking a unit - It was bugged previously where covering fire against a flanked unit would grant an additional bonus
Sentinel Drone now correctly gives CCS to SHIVS - It was a LW 1.0 bug =P
Will to survive defense malus is now a bonus in the UI - Fixes a display issue for calculating aim in the UI
Fire in the Hole now correctly provides additional aim for the purposes of reducing rocket scatter - Thanks szmind
Terror missions are no longer accidentally receiving extra aliens in the end game - There was code that was never adjusted by -30% which now is
Again, tried to completely remove the invisible sectoids that can appear during terror missions - Thanks szmind
Fixed a bug where units injured by too much fatigue were getting too much injury time
Ready For Anything will work even if a free action was already taken - For example: if you used paramedic on the medic and then fired with RfA you will now still enter overwatch
Smoke now says it grants 30 defense on the user interface - Used to only say 20
Fixed various bugs with repair servos: Repair Servos will not heal more than the number of repair servos left, Repair Servos will trigger even if there is only 1 left, Repair Servos does not slow down when you only have a few left
LMGs now display their correct aim - Was a UI bug for LMGs
Version 1.19.09
LW Rebalance v1.19.09 - Patch Notes
Strategic:
All games start with 5 random soldiers from the country of origin (from 3) - Helps with earlier fatigue problems, though with the cost decreased to 50 per soldier and the large starting incomes you can just hire soldiers off the bat anyway
Soldiers gained each month are reduced to 6-10 for the first month, 5-9 for 2nd, 4-7 for 3rd, 3-6 for 4th, 2-4 for 5th, 1-3 for 6th and beyond - There was a bit of a flood and ideally soldiers are a more scarce resources, this helps
Meld sells for 4 (from 3) - Gives you more of an option to sacrifice it for credits
OTS upgrades SS1/SS2 and LT/CPT/MAJ/COL/CMDR require 30/170 and 20/50/80/110/140 successful missions - Slight increase in the late game # required. It was occuring slightly too early.
Interceptor/Firestorm refuel and rearm time to 5 hours (from 16) but UFOs will not spend as long on their objectives - In the end, this still means each plane can realistically only engage a UFO once, but it should make it easier to deal with multiple UFOs that are detected within the same day
Tactical:
Aliens never feel compelled to attack civilians over XCOM on terror missions - A big change and a very nice upgrade to the way terror missions play out. It was previously reverted because it was causing the LoS invisible sectoids to appear and the aliens to attack them, however, I think szmind may have found the fix to that. :)
Acid grants -50% DR (from -5 DR) - Makes it so that tanky units can still tank somewhat when they do receive acid. Also means that against high DR units (e.g. sectopods) higher damage weapons still perform better. Just in case anyone is interested: static penetration occurs before %-based penetration (same order as DR) and acid counts at %-based penetration. Helps make cover still relevant during battles where acid is a factor.
Base Fatigue per mission is now 1 day (from 1.5 days) - Slightly less fatigue overall by 0.5 days
Taking a fatigued soldier on a mission now grants sets them at 6 days of injury (+ whatever fatigue and injury times they acrue in the mission) (was previously 10 days of injury + the extra) - Makes it a little more reasonable to injur your fatigued soldiers, but still more punishing than LW 1.0
Soldiers who receive 6 days or more of fatigue (i.e. they take over 20 turns on a mission) are now auto-injured (from 10 days) - Still prevents abuse by not letting you reset long fatigue times by taking them on missions again -- but feels less punishing, also lines up nicely to the health degrade starting at 20 turns (note there can be fatigue increasing or altering effects, so it's not always right on 20 turns)
EXALT Elite have gauss weapons (I forgot to include this as a changelog note like 5 versions ago) but the EXALT snipers now carry strike rifles and EXALT Elite snipers carry laser strike rifles - Snipers don't carry the AM weapons b/c they are too strong against XCOM. Just as a note, exalt damage has been modified so the gauss isn't doing more damage, it just looks better and allows a larger reward if you capture their weapons.
Perks:
Grit grants +20% DR against all shots when in cover and not moving (from 0%) and armor health to +0 (from +2) - Boost to the gunner tank as it comes on quite late. Note: it still grants +100% DR against reaction shots when in cover and not moving. Also increases the relevance of cover.
Reactive Targeting Sensors grants +20 aim on all reaction shots (from +10) - Boost as it's now a SHIV/Alien only item
XCOM:
First Aid on the Infantry replaced with Grit - Boost to the infantry tank
SHIV "armor" health increased to 6/8/6 (from 4/6/4) - Makes it a little easier not to get injured with your SHIV (or if you do, a little less punishing)
Aliens:
All aliens lose the sharpshooter perk - Makes cover not such an unreasonable spot to fight against thinmen and exalt with the sharpshooter trait. Helps make cover more relevant.
Thinmen navigators will no longer acquire squadsight (note: leaders still will) - They originally acquired squadsight more because they needed a boost into the end game. However, with the new pod mechanics, squadsight is significantly stronger and feels too strong with multiple pods when on the receiving end.
Equipment:
Marksman's Scope aim to +10 (from +5) - Buff
Autosentry Turrent (Sentinel on SHIVs) now grants Reactive Targeting Sensors instead - Without opportunist and covering fire, sentinel wasn't as good and this gives the SHIVs a unique role (as RTS is not on any MEC anymore)
Adaptive Tracking Pods (Opportunist on SHIVs) now grants Deadeye instead but mobility to -1 (from 0) - Opportunist was bugged (i.e. wasn't applying - couldn't figure out why or how to fix) and this helps the SHIVs take on an offensive role
Smartshell Pods (Flush on SHIVs) mobility to 0 (from -1) - Balance. Without HEAT ammo this is a lot worse -- still good though.
Bug Fixes:
The Plasma Dragon now appropriately grants danger zone
Picking up disabling shot on the sniper no longer resets the sniper/scout perk tree
SHIV Chassis now state that they can be sold freely
Hit and Run now properly allows psychokinetic strike to be used afterwards
Version 1.19.08
Version 1.19.08
LW Rebalance v1.19.08 - Patch Notes
QoL:
"Shot is Blocked" text is now more obvious - for xwynns =D
Strategic:
Added in a 2nd wave option, "Resilient Troops": Disables the 10% chance to lose 1 health per turn (cannot go below 1 health) after 20 turns, on non-EXALT and non-base defense missions, that soldiers and MECs receive.
Added in a 2nd wave option, "Consistent Fatigue": Soldiers and MECs will no longer receive extra fatigue for every turn that passes during a non-EXALT non-base defense mission but base fatigue per mission is increased by 3 days. Similar to LW 1.0.
Added in a 2nd wave option, "Sturdier UFOs": UFOs will never get destroyed in the air and instead will always be shot down.
The 2nd wave option, "Turn Off Red Fog" is renamed to "Just a Flesh Wound"
Cost of soldiers reduced back to 50 (from 100) - No need for the high cost with OTS not caring about ranks as much, with the high initial cash flow players can thicken out their roster to help avoid and fix early fatigue/injury spirals
Perks:
Hit and Run now triggers off of standard, disabling, and precision shots (from just standard shots) - Buff to the versatility of the strike rifle scout
Hit and Run now grants +2 damage to the first shot of each turn at uncovered targets (from +0) - Buff to the strike rifle scout, shotgun scout, and Shogun
Equipment:
Marksman's Scope now grants Precision Shot (instead of sharpshooter) - Sharpshooter did not synergize with HnR and the mobility theme of the scout, this gives the scout some nice reach when it can't find a target and some nice damage when it can
You can now only equip 1 small item armor (Chamelon Suit, Alloy Plating, Chitting Plating, Ceramic Plating, Reinforced Armor, Regenerator Vest, Core Armoring, Alloy Carbine Plating) at a time - Opens up options for other slots instead of stacking, allows the items to be stronger
Ceramic Plating HP to +3 (from +2) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Reinforced Armor DR to +1.5 (from +1) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Alloy Plating HP to +5 (from +4) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Chittin Plating DR to +1 (from +0.5) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Regenerator Vest DR to +1 (from +0.5) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Chameleon Suit Defense to +10 (from 0) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Core Armoring DR to +1.5 (from +1) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Alloy Carbide Plating HP to +5 (from +4) - Buffed as you can only equip 1
Bug Fixes:
Interceptors that disengaged can no longer immediately re-engage - There was a bug that sometimes allowed this
Alloy plating now states it grants the appropriate HP as intended - Was not update in the last version
Fixed a bug where psycokinetic strike was being disabled by Hit and Run
Version 1.19.07
LW Rebalance v1.19.07 - Patch Notes
QoL:
There is now a turn display at the beginning of each turn - Thanks to szmind for the code
Tactical:
Fatigue Mechanic Tweaks:
- Initial Fatigue is now set at 1.5 days (3 days for DW 0.5) instead of 0.5 days (1 day for DW 0.5) - Fatigue was a little too light allowing A and B teams to chain missions too frequently (esp for SHIVs, or all units on EXALT or base defense missions)
- After turn 20: On non-EXALT and non-base defense missions, each soldier or MEC has a 10% chance each turn to lose 1 health (this cannot reduce your health below 1) - While the new fatigue system is a great replacement to green fog, the ability to pass a mission is sometimes worth far more than the punishment of extra fatigue. For example, overwatch cheesing a large landed over 120 turns in the first month (I just did this) was easily worth losing the 6 soldiers for 60 days for the massive spoils. There needed to be 'some' form of light encouragement in the tactical game, but one that would not affect players on the majority of missions. This should not affect ~95% of missions as most are under 20 turns. The other problem was the base assaults and long missions which were really hard got significantly easier with the removal of green fog. This adds a comparatively minor but significant tactical difficulty increase on such missions. As an example, if you had a 40 turn base assault, on average each of your soldiers would lose 2 health, which is fairly negligible.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where grenades could trigger the shredder effect
Beam Strengthening now appropriately requires the experimental warfare technology
Version 1.19.06
LW Rebalance v1.19.06 - Patch Notes
QoL:
Included maintenance costs in the description of facilities when attempting to build them
Strategic:
Archtects of the Future SA continent bonus reduced to 80% (from 100%) - To make there be a minimal cost
Passive income from continents increased by 15% - The 20% was a little too strong of a reduction, this should be the happy medium and help accommodate for increased maintenance costs as well
Increased the maintenance costs on fusion reactors, elerium generators, workshops, and laboratories, decreased on some other facilities - Makes the continent bonuses that discount them stronger, accommodates for increased cash, makes building them more of a decision between cash flow and research/resources
Autopsies and Interrogations occur at normal speed (from 2x as slow) - The original purpose of increasing the length never panned out, and it was making acquiring them often a weaker option which was not ideal
Psi Labs are much cheaper to build and mantain - Increase ease of turning psionics on early. Too many late game campaigns had limited psionics due to starting late.
Xenopsionics is much quicker and cheaper to research - Increase ease of turning psionics on early. Too many late game campaigns had limited psionics due to starting late.
Starting Cash of various countries modified to reflect how easy or difficult it is as a starting location - This is one of those things I always knew was not balanced but needed someone to point it out. The balancing was really hard for me (as there are 1000 factors to consider) and will likely change if there is feedback. If you feel like one location deserves more or less please let me know.
Air Game:
Overseer health to 2000 (from 1000) - Was a little TOO easy to down
Tactical:
Green Fog is removed as a 2nd wave option - It's entire purpose is now replaced with the new fatigue system, using it would be serious overkill and I never could iron out all the display bugs on it
Red Fog 2nd wave option changed to "Disable Red Fog" - Red Fog is now automatic, and the 2nd wave option simply disables it
New fatigue system:
- Base fatigue per mission is 12 hours (24 hours for DW 0.5)
- Soldiers and MECs receive 6 hours additional fatigue each turn (except on base defense and EXALT missions) (12 hours for DW 0.5)
- Brining a fatigued soldier on a mission grants them +10 days of injury (+20 days for DW 0.5)
- Non-fatigued soldiers that receive more than 10 days of fatigue will become injured (+20 days for DW 0.5)
- This is a big change and is intended to replace green fog. Now, the penalty for taking too long is just extra fatigue on your soldiers and you don't have to worry that near the end of a mission you soldiers will be crawling towards the enemies and unable to aim. Also, it didn't really make sense that soldiers would be out for 4-5 days on non-gree fog missions so it's nice that on EXALT and base missions there is <1 day of fatigue. Also a buff to SHIVs that have very low fatigue (which makes sense). Another benefit is if you enter a mission for only a few turns you have very little fatigue.
Perks:
Stay Frosty reduces fatigue by 10% - Makes it clear how it works on all types of DW games
Adavanced Surgery reduces soldier injury time by 15% (from 30%) - Was too strong
Bone Marrow reduces injury time by 33% (from 66%) - makes all MECs/SHIVs/Soldier on par for how much they can reduce injuries with bonuses at 33% each
In The Zone has no aim or crit malus with consecutive shots (from -5 aim/crit on each subsequent shot) - Slight buff, simplification
Combat Drugs regains +20 aim, will, and crit (from +10 aim, +20 crit, +30 will) - Buff to the support medic (the other two medics were really good)
Dense smoke grants 20% DR (from 0%) - Buff to the support engineer. This was taken off before, but it has a great mechanic in how it allows dense smoke to interact with One For All.
Equipment:
Respirator Implant grants +1 health and +10 defense - Boost now that it doesn't help with green fog anymore
Alloy plating health to +4 (from +3) - Boost for balance
Alloy carbide plating health to +4 (from +3) - Boost for balance
Arc Rifle aim to +10 (from +15) - Slight nerf and consistency with other laser weapons
Units can only equip 1 small ammo item at a time - It was bugging out and I couldnt' fix it when you had multiples -- plus this makes more sense anyway
Bug Fixes:
Updated text on laboratories to reflect that they only grant 40% additional research
Szmind may have fixed the weird soldiers overlapping when equipping items for a mission from tracktwo's loadout mod - Go szmind. :)
Version 1.19.05
LW Rebalance v1.19.05 - Patch Notes
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where LW would throw out many errors (but not actually affect the game) - This is more behind-the-scenes clean-up. Thanks to szmind for the fix
Fixed a bug with UFOs always missing (whoopsies) - While fixing the UFO Scanner display bug this was an additional bug that was picked up. Thanks to szmind for the updated code
Onslaught no longer grants +4 damage to Kinetic Strikes - Remenant bug from the left over LW 1.0 aspect of MEC Close Combat
Onslaught will now stay as a perk on Maruaders post-battle - It would previously get 'unselected' and after each battle you could get a little extra level stats by selecting it again
Version 1.19.04
LW Rebalance v1.19.04 - Patch Notes
Strategy Game:
Laboratories/workshops can be built when you have multiples of 15 scientists/engineers (from multiples of 20) - Means you can bring the first one online much earlier (only requiring 5 of either)
Laboratories only provide +40% additional research (from +50%) - Note: adjacency bonus is still 20%, this is to accommodate for them coming on-line earlier and to reduce their impact slightly so if you don't get them on-time it doesn't feel as punishing
Air Game:
UFOs have a 100% chance to automatically be shot down instead of destroyed (regardless of overkill) in the first month and then 20% less chance each month there after (from 25% less chance each month there after) - Increases the amount of shot downs (vs destroyed) in the early and mid game, removes a little more of the RNG
Tactical:
OW changes (in regards to triggering with less than 1 tile) reverted back to vanilla LW 1.0 - There were too many bugs occuring and too many fringe cases that were not consistant that I couldn't fix, so I think it's best to leave it as it was (OW triggers only if you move >1 tile) - A few situations that caused an indefinite hang, some crit not be calculated correctly, and a lot of inconsitency made the new system not worth the effort. We tried. =P
Equipment:
Sawed-Off Shotgun crit to 15 (from 0) - Consistency with other shotguns
Perks:
Death From Afar aim to +10 (from +15) - Was too easy to keep active the majority of the time and thus was too strong
Aliens:
All EXALT lose the ability to use grenades - Grenades were too strong if they were used and too much RNG to see if they'd be used. It's not like normal aliens where you can keep them at a distance because they are dropping all around you.
All EXALT base health decreased by ~20% - Tone down the mission difficulty
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a sporadic bug where the display of health for UFOs (with the UFO Scanner foundry project) was updating inaccurately - Despite evidence to the contrary, in the end, it appears that it was just a display bug. Regardless, it has been fixed now so the display should be accurate.
Fixed a bug where flak ammo being used on flyers could cause a crash to desktop
Sprinter description updated to say it grants 2 mobility - It was accidently still saying it granted 3 mobility
Infantry correctly has First Aid as their GSGT pick - It was accidently set as Grit instead
Fixed a typo on the holo charger description
Fixed a bug with council request times being too short and asking for too many of certain items
Fixed a bug where it was more likely for the aliens to target the 'hidden' sectoid used in the line of sight mod during terror missions, but to do so I had to remove the fix to the AI which caused them NOT to preferentially target civilians
Version 1.19.03
LW Rebalance v1.19.03 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
Legacy of Uxmul grants 9 bonus will only for the purposes of psionic training (from 50% additive increase training chance) - Ability had to be reworked with new mechanics as the old ability was too limited
Patriae Semper Vigilis only grants 6 bonus will (from 8) - Too strong for psionic training making it overall imbalanced vs the other stats
The Old Patch grants 65% reduced psionic training time (from 50%) - Balance
XCOM:
Rocketeer Platform Stability, S&A, Snap Shot, EC, and Javelin Rockets rotated on the tree - Thanks to xwynns for the idea. Increases diversity among builds and makes more compelling choices throughout the tree.
Gunner will progression to +10 (from +20) - They are actually quite strong classes and had a little too much of everything (with suppression, grit, high damage weapon, high ammo, and HEAT or Shred) that good psionics on top was a little over kill.
Equipment:
SAW damage to 150% of base (from 125%) but aim to -5 (from 0) and ammo to 4 (from 5) - Significant buff to SAW gunners. Now SAW HEAT RF gunners with gauss or pulse will be hitting with 2x9 HEAT damage instead of 2x7 and overwatch gunners also gain +2 damage on all shots. Helps make Gunner weapons the high damage weapons they should be.
LMG damage to 175% of base (from 150%) but aim to -15 (from -10) - To keep consistency with the SAW
Perks:
Medikit renamed to First Aid - Differentiate the name of the perk from the item
Ranger grants 0 mobility (from +1) - Simplification and balance
Aggression grants +1 damage during critical hits (from +2) - Balance, slight tone down of high end (ITZ crit jaeger with Agg/Beo was a little too strong - Thanks )
CCS grants +0 damage within 4 tiles (from +1) - Simplification and balance
Snap Shot grants +0 aim for the purpose of rocket scatter (from +15) - Simplification and balance
EC grants +2 health (from +3) - Balance, slight nerf to biotank's maximum tanking potential per turn without injury
Sprinter grants +2 mobility (from +3) - Balance
Bug Fixes:
Sawed-Off Shotgun overwatch range set to the same as shotgun
Version 1.19.02
LW Rebalance v1.19.02 - Patch Notes
Strategy:
You can no longer get swarming abductions in the first month - Helps prevent difficult/unfair situations during the first month where you only have rookies
Advanced Servomotors (Sprinter on your MECs/SHIVs) cost and time to acquire is decreased by approximately 75% - Bring it online much quicker and much cheaper making early MECs stronger while not further boosting late game MECs
Beam Strengthening now applies to Pulse and Laser and is no longer restricted to just primary weapons - Makes pulse more competitive vs gauss
Quenchguns now applies to Ballistic and Gauss - Makes Ballistic not completely terrible in the later game
Council requests require a little less resources during the early game - makes it easier to fullfill during the early game (helping remove some RNG)
Equipment:
All Grenade AoE to 2.5 tiles (from 3) and All Rocket AoE to 6 tiles (from 7) - ~20% nerf to AoE damage via radius. It was too strong for too much of the game. Thanks fox10 for the save files and the convincing.
XCOM:
Scout LCPL and SGT perks swapped - It was too important to get Squadsight, packmaster, and/or LR early on the scout to turn on the individual builds despite the scout already being a strong class.
Rocketeer Lock N' Load replaced with Ready For Anything - Buff to overwatch Rocketeer
Perks:
Close Combat Specialist grants +1 ammo - Due to the restriction on shotgun ammo and the fact that assaults have RF and CE, CCS took an inadvertent nerf due to ammo restrictions. This should help alleviate this.
Snap Shot scatter aim bonus to 15 aim (from 20) and Fire in the Hole scatter aim bonus to 30 (from 40) - Both were a little too strong. FitH invalidated extra aim too much, and snap shot was too powerful for a mobile rocketeer.
Javelin Rockets no longer grant an extra Rocket - Was too strong
Shock and Awe only grants +1 rocket (from +2) - With only 2 possible rockets, boosting it to 3 is a large enough boost (+50%) to be competitive on the tree
Lightning Reflexes Dodge rate increased to 80/50% (from 75/25) - Slight boost for balance on the trees and to help more with OW clearing (Die MECs waren sehr stark)
Absorption Fields grants 30% DR (from 20% DR) - Slight buff to the Goliath, reverting a little bit of the nerf as the MEC armor nerf was enough
In The Zone subsequent shots only have a 5 aim and crit malus for each previous shot (from 10) - Slight buff due to the new ammo restrictions being a significant hit
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where the stun rifle would permamently grant an extra inventory space when equipped after some missions
There is now a 100% chance to have the UFO shot down (instead of destroyed) during the first month - Previously, due to my poor coding, there was a 1% chance of actually still destroying it. =P
Sharpshooter now correctly grants +15 aim at targets in cover and no aim bonus if you're flanking a target or if the target was flying
The shredder ammo perk now works properly on infantry - It was bugged and not working previously
Stay Frosty now works with Dynamic War - updated the description to reflect this
Disabling shot aim bonus to 0 (from +20) - In a test version it received this boost and it was accidentally left in
Fixed some situations in which overwatch wasn't triggering when moving - It should now trigger on any movement > 0 tiles (includes step-6outs) - Thanks szmind! :)
Version 1.19.01
LW Rebalance v1.19.01 - Patch Notes
Balance:
EXALT Snipers and Elite Snipers no longer gain penetration from their weapons - It was too damaging to tanks, especially with sharpshooter already granting +2
EXALT Elite Snipers no longer acquire Mayhem - Their damage is high enough without it
Laser aim to +10 (from +15) - Was an oversight
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a game-breaking bug where aliens would do no damage to certain units and could hit xcom for 90+ damage - Bug was created with some of the final tweaks in v1.19.00
Beam Strengthening has an appropriately prohibitive cost - Wasn't updated in 1.19.00
Fixed some typos
LMG aim is now correct on all LMGs
EXALT snipers and elite snipers no longer get ITZ (as they don't know how to use it) but instead get double tap (at high levels)
Version 1.19.00
LW Rebalance v1.19.00 - Patch Notes
--STRATEGIC--
Overall:
Bombing Run panic gain to 12 (from 14) - Slightly less passive panic gain
Abduction difficulty is no longer automatically increased by 2 points after 210 alien research - so you can still get some light abductions in the mid-late game and beyond
OTS Training Programs xp gain per day reduced by 50% - Slows down the rate that new recruits accelerate up the ranks
OTS Rework: OTS Projects require successful missions to unlock (instead of being based on total soldier ranks): Successful missions required for SS1/SS2 and Lt/Cpt/Maj/Col/FC are 30/150 and 20/40/60/90/120 (modified by DW) - This is a large and great change. You don't have to try to rank up as many soldiers as possible to unlock OTS projects. Squad wipes and MEC conversions do not set you back in OTS projects.
The number of successful missions you have completed will appear first thing on the ticker in the situation room - Makes it easier to figure out how many successful missions you've completed as it is an important statistic to know now
At the end of each month you gain more soldiers (11-15 for the first month, 9-13 for 2nd, 7-10 for 3rd, 5-8 for 4th, 3-5 for 5th, 1-3 for 6th and beyond) but recruiting extra soldiers costs 100 (from 50) - Makes reward soldiers more valuable and replacing soldiers with weak stats a less viable option. Also provides a lot more free soldiers in case you are doing bad. :)
Number of exalt clues reduced by 20% - Makes it slightly later when you find the exalt base
Psionic Training Rework:
For each will under target_will: your chance decreases by 10%. Example: if target_will is 45 and you have 40 will, you will have a 50% chance to learn the ability in 30 days.
For each will over target_will: your time decreases by 1 day. Example: if target_will is 45 and you have 60 will, you will have a 100% chance to learn the ability in 15 days.
New Target Will for the psionic levels (starting at the first level) are: 45,30,40,50,60,70
The minimum chance to succeed is always 10% - Makes it 'possible' for anyone to succeed! =D Example: if target_will is 45 and you have 10 will, you will have a 10% chance to learn the ability in 30 days.
Overall this is a slight buff to the speed at which you can train psionics but more importantly removes a lot of RNG out of it. When you are below target_will the time is not increased more than 30 days as it can lock up psi training slots and soldiers, so that's why % chance drops instead.
Air Game:
UFO health is now displayed when choosing which interceptors to engage with - Makes it so you do not have to access the website to do calculations before each fight
Interceptor health to 3000 (from 2500) and armored fighters foundry project health increase to 500 (from 1000) - No change for the late game, but early and mid game our interceptors will be more robust
Lead of a formation grants the UFO double aim (from +10 aim and double damage) and XCOM +10 aim (from +10 aim, no change); Rear of a formation grants the UFO half aim (from -10 aim and half damage) and XCOM - 10 aim (from -10 aim, no change). - Overall it makes the effect of lead and rear on UFO damage output less significant (so being in the lead of a formation is less punshing and something you might do a little more often). Plus, it never made as much sense that being in the lead would cause more damage if you got hit, but more aim does make sense.
UFOs are always shotdown in March, have a 75% chance of automatically being shotdown in April, a 50% chance of automatically being shotdown in May, and a 25% chance of automatically being shotdown in June - Removes some of the RNG from the early game
Overseer DR to 150% (from 100%) but hp to 1000 (from 4000) - Removes some of the RNG from downing the overseer. Now if you have enough penetration it's much easier to shootdown but if you don't have the penetration you shouldn't even bother. As a key element to the progression of the game, it was too tempting to try and then often too detrimental when you failed at shooting down the overseer.
Stingray damage to 1200 (from 1300) - Slight nerf to decrease prevalence
Phoenix cannon penetration to 50% (from 75%) - Slight nerf to make the upgrade more relevant
Phoenix coilgun upgrade increases penetration to 150% (from 125%), damage to 500 (from 400), and costs 60 elerium and 30 alloys (from 60 elerium and 120 alloys) - Buff and significant cost decrease to make it more affordable and effective
EMP cannon aim to 80 (from 50) - Balance, makes it the superior choice for downing UFOs and protecting aircraft, but the boost is less (or not at all) effective against the larger UFOs due to aim capping at 100
Laser cannon aim to 60 (from 50) - Balance
UFO Scanners foundry project prolongs interception time by 20% and reveals all UFO health bars (even if they are not researched) - Quality of Life
Interceptor battle speed (interception time) reduced to 25 (from 30) - Accommodates for the battle scanners project (higher battle speed gives more time to interceptions)
Firestorm battle speed (interception time) increased to 50 (from 45) - Makes it even more rewarding in terms of battle time if you only send up firestorms (as the aircraft formation's speed is the speed of the slowest aircraft in the formation)
Effect on battle speed (interception time) from damaged interceptors to 0.8 (from 0.7) - Makes sending up damaged interceptors less penalizing
Destroyed UFOs provide 75-100% of the alloys (from 25-75%) - Makes it less penalizing if you destroy instead of down a UFO
Foundry:
UFO Scanners foundry project can now be researched immediately and has a negligible cost except for 2 UFO computers (1 on DW) - Allows you to turn on the scanners within the first few months
Removed the MEC Close Combat foundry project - It was converted into a new perk for the Marauder
Field Repairs foundry project upgrades stun rifles to heal 10 health to MEC/SHIVs - There was a potential for abuse when it fully healed
Beam Strengthening is a new foundry project that increases the damage of primary laser weapons by 1 - Useful if Gauss is taking a while to get to
Resources:
Cash from council countries and abduction rewards decreased by 20% - Decreases overall cash flow
More council requests will include scientists and engineers as rewards - Helps reduce the possiblity of getting too few of one or the other
Meld gain is 200% on normal, 166% on classic, 133% on brutal, and 100% on impossible - Makes it more reasonable that if you are winning your campaign on the easier difficulties you will still get meld in order to complete projects and build items
Council request randomness is a little less extreme - A few less "way too good" and "way too bad" requests
Council request reward soldiers are higher rank now: 0-33%=LCPL, 33-66%=CPL, 66-100%=SGT (from 0-20%=SPEC, 20-40%=LCPL, 40-60%=CPL, 60-80%=SGT, 80-100%=TSGT) - Makes them more likely to be a reasonable reward and less likely to be too strong or too weak of a reward
--TACTICAL--
Overall:
AI Modification: Aliens on terror missions will no longer feel compelled to target civilians first (Note: this does not mean they will not attack civilians) - This one is one of my favorite changes as it means the aliens stop rushing for civilians in the face of XCOM. It's a lot more realistic that the aliens target xcom as a high threat and makes the missions a lot less frustrating.
Overwatch triggers on any movement, not just movement of >1 tile - This is a big change. It really didn't make sense to have overwatch trigger only if the unit moved more than a tile. Previously, if a unit moved 1 tile, then moved 1 tile again, he could move 2 tiles without triggering the overwatch at all. Now overwatch triggers immediately upon any movement and prevents situations where if the unit only moved a little it might not get hit by multiple overwatches. Makes overwatch stronger, especially against aliens walking into your view into cover.
Green Fog will now only have an aim-30% chance to lower your aim each turn (from aim% chance) but decreases aim, will, and mobility by 1-3 each activation (from 1-2) - This change is big too. Overall nerf to green fog (much less effect on aim, more effect on will and mobility). Because most targets have ~30 defense losing aim was more punishing than the other stats and became noticable more quickly. This should put it on a more reasonable level so that aim, will, and mobility all lower in a similar fashion so that classes are effected by green fog more evenly.
High-Capacity Pistols Foundry project no longer works on the sawed-off shotgun - it wasn't really a pistol and it was a little OP and need to be toned back a little
The first terror mission of the game and the zombie terror mission both have an extra chryssalid pod - They were previously too easy and apparently I'm an evil person (!)
XCOM:
Rework of multiple perk trees and class bonuses - See perk tree
Alloy SHIV cost to 40 (from 80) - Makes it more affordable
Chopping (converting) a soldier to a MEC randomly grants 0-1 mobility, 0-2 health, 0-4 aim, 0-8 will for each rank above LCPL (from 5/10/20/40% chance to get 1 mob/hp/aim/will for each total rank) - Massive boost to the stats gained when chopping higher ranked MECs. A MSGT chopped to a MEC will gain on average: 2.5 mobility, 5 health, 10 aim, and 20 will and could gain up to 5 mobility, 10 health, 20 aim, and 40 will (!).
MECs have double fatigue times (from 70% more) and normal injury times (from 70% more) - Prevents injuries from being so devestating against MECs but still makes them harder to field en masse due to higher fatigue times
MECs start with 10 mobility (from 11) - Slight reduction for balance
Aliens:
Ethereal health to 40 (from 26), no health gain with research, defense to 40 (from 60), regen to 20 (from 4-10), will to 120 (from 150) - Higher health and regen allows resiliency to compensate for the significantly nerfed distortion with lower defense, lower will means they don't hit as hard (less OHKOs), lower defense means more units can engage them reasonably
Uber Ethereal health to 60 (from 70), no health gain with research, defense to 40 (from 60), regen to 30 (from 15 or so), will still stays at 200 - Consistency with Ethereals
Eliminated all % chance of acquiring perks for navigator aliens: Navigators will either start with the perk, or always gain it at a certain research level - Prevents checking F1 for their perks and makes it easier to know which aliens will have which perks. Note: F1 is still useful for determining which leader level you are facing (and thus the perk the leader will acquire)
Lightning Reflexes only occurs on Thinmen leaders and Chryssalid Queens (no other aliens) - Boost to overwatch, makes knowing when to look out for LR more obvious
Drones now start with holo rounds - Makes early SHIVs feel not so invicible (especially on the easier difficulties)
Sectoid Commanders will no longer shoot with their weapon and will only use psionic abilities instead - Prevents the AI from doing stupid things like taking a 100% shot against a tank instead of mind controlling it (yes, like I said, I'm evil)
Mutons lose the ability to intimidate - It is now restricted to only muton berserkers. It didn't really make a lot of sense that mutons could intimidate but muton elites couldn't. Also, it was a little unrealistic that the guy that you shot at 100 ft away roar and that caused panic but firing at you didn't. The beserker on the other hand actually charges you, which is much more reasonable to cause panic. Should also make mutons easier to deal with in a fire fight.
Exalt Elite gain less health with research - They were a little too resilient in the later game
Perks:
New Perk 'Onslaught': The first Kinetic Strike each turn is free - Now you can double use it for a lot more of a guarantee kill against... well everything. =D Also, makes it effective at moving in, punching, and retreating.
New Perk 'Awareness': Grants +30 defense when steadying a weapon or on overwatch - Helps the Jaeger set up ITZ and overwatch while in range of enemies
New Perk 'Grit': Grants +2 armor health and if in cover and not moving: 100% DR against reactions shots - A perk to help biologic classes against covering fire reaction shots
New 4th level Psionic Ability 'Inner Fire': Grants +10 aim and +2 mobility. Psionic potential unlocks a deep connection to and understanding of one's body. - Grants shooter classes and highly mobile classes a perk that benefits them directly
HEAT Ammo and Warheads back to 100% of base weapon bonus damage (from 75%) - The 75% made HEAT too weak on too many weapons (especially with rounding down) to justify the benefits of the reduction so it was moved back to the previous value. It's also a nice easy to calculate value.
The Disabling shot perk now grants Squadsight - Significant buff to the perk to make it easier to land disable shots
Will to survive grants -10 defense when in cover - Means you can taunt with will to survive without requiring a specific item. Opens up an item slot on tanks if they want.
Fire in the Hole grants +40 aim for the purposes of reducing scatter (from +15 aim) - Significant buff to help it hold balance at it's new location on the rocketeer tree. Also helps make low aim rocketeers viable.
Snap shot grants +20 aim for the purposes of reducing rocket scatter (from +10) - Boost for balance and makes it reasonable to fire without steadying (as this is like you are always steadied)
Javelin Rockets grants +1 rocket (from +0) - To give some more staying power to the rocketeer into the mid game. Overall the rocketeer has gained more roles and it's early game strength has been toned down slightly while boosting it's late game strength so that it fairs better over a campaign.
Bring 'Em On grants the primary weapon +1 damage plus +0.5 damage per enemy in sight during critical hits (from +1 always and a +10% chance per enemy in sight for +4) - Buffed, gives the a perk a higher ceiling and a higher consistency
Aggression grants +2 damage during criticals at any range (from +2 damage within 4 tiles only) - Makes it much more effective on more classes
Brawler grants +1 damage when within 4 tiles (from 0) and 30% DR against damage from within 4 tiles (from 50%) - Slight Buff. Put a more offensive take on the perk, nerf on DR to prevent abusive situations
Close Combat Specialist also grants +1 damage when within 4 tiles (from 0) - Buffed. Boost to the offensive potential of the perk
Lightning Reflexes dodge rate to 75% for the primary shot and 25% for subsequent shots (from 90/50%) but all reactions shots against units with LR only deal half damage - Rework to make the damage you take less deadly but more likely - slight nerf, more balanced on the trees, less effective at clearing overwatches (indirect buff to BOTH alien and XCOM overwatch as LR is less effective at 'clearing' OW)
Covering Fire removes half of the defense bonus from cover that overwatch targets would receive - Big change. Makes overwatch effective against units in cover (as it should be). This is nice reasistically (the unit does pop their head up out of cover) and helps make alien overwatch less effectively nullified by LR units firing from cover. It also makes XCOM overwatch with CF not so bad as firing into cover is not more likely to land your hits, helping it remain effective into the end game.
Sharpshooter rework: Grants +15 aim and +2 penetration when firing at targets through ANY cover (from 15 aim through full cover only and 15 crit always) - Gives players an effective means of dealing with units in ALL types of cover (similar to deadeye for flyers).
Executioner to 10 aim and 50 crit (from 10 aim and 60 crit) - Balance on the trees
Holo Rounds grants +2 damage against mechanicals (from +3) - Slight nerf for balance on the trees and because it's 2ndary effect of +10 aim is really strong
Lone Wolf now activates if no allies are within 4 tiles (from 7 tiles) - makes it more reasonable to calculate quickly and acts as a buff
Mayhem suppression now deals 1 damage (from 2) but can be upgraded by the equipped weapon if it is a SAW/LMG - It will now deal 1-3 damage depending upon weapon class of SAW/LMG. Makes mayhem suppression less powerful early game and more powerful late game to keep it reasonable throughout the game (instead of overpowered early and too weak late)
Distortion dodges 30% of aim-based shots (from 50%), does not affect explosives (from reducing all explosives to 0-1 damage), and causes units that can see the ethereal to panic (30 will test) at the start of each of their turns (from just panicking once on first reveal with a 60 will test) - Makes killing ethereals a lot less RNG based and allows more units to successfully engage them (explosives, aim-based units). Thanks to szmind for the code! =D
Death from afar grants 15 aim at squadsight (from 10) but has no effect on the crit at long range - Allows for a non-crit build to balance out BeO
Fortified grants +0.5 DR (from +1 DR) - balance on the trees
Lead by example grants +1 health (from +2), +0 mobility (from +1), and +10 will (from +10, no change) - Slight nerf to officer strength as now it just provides +1 armor health and +10 will so we aren't making officers just for stats
Grenadier no longer grants +2 range to grenades - Nerf to make grenades not so powerful and further distinguish them from rockets
'Into The Breach' grants +150% additional mission xp (from 200%) - Toned back slightly
Mind Merge grants +25 aim (from +10) but cooldown to 3 turns (from 2 turn) - This is a big early game change. It was too ineffectual at 10 and this makes sectoids and sectoid commanders more potent when they mind merge and makes XCOM psionic units more impactful
Danger Zone increases the explosive radius of grenades and mines by 33% (from ~22%) - Buff to the perk for balance on the trees
One For All grants 20% DR (from 30%) - Too much %DR was occuring on MECs. With the ability to provide tankiness and heavy cover in any location the perk was too strong.
Absorption Fields grants 20% DR (from 30%) - Slight nerf as it was too strong
Combat Stims grants 30% DR (from 50%) - Was too strong for biotanks
Shock-Absorbant Armor grants proximity DR if the target is within 15 tiles (+2% DR per tile up to +30% at point blank) (from 30% DR within 8 tiles) - Trying to guess where 8 tiles could be quite annoying, this is a more forgiving application
Savior grants 0 free extra medikits (from 2) - Balance, medic was quite strong and the extra healing was overkill
Dense Smoke and Combat Drug perks no longer grant a free extra smoke - They were strong enough on their own
Dense Smoke no longer grants 20% DR - It was one of the strongest (if not the strongest) perks in the game due to the strong immunity it granted and the +20% DR was a little overkill
Ranger grants +1 damage to all sources (it used to do all sources but grenades) - makes it a useful perk for boosting grenade damage as well
Equipment:
Various cost modifications - for balance, see in-game
The Stun Rifle no longer reduces throw range by 50% but does occupy a small item inventory slot when equipping it - Makes it more reasonable to use on a support class
Laser aim to 15 (from 10), Gauss penetration to 0 (still +1 with quench) and aim to 0 (from -5), Pulse aim to 0 (from +5) - Balance and simplification. As a summary: Ballistic=4dmg. Laser=4dmg,15aim. Gauss=6dmg. Pulse=6dmg,doublecritdmg. Plasma=8dmg,specialweapons.
AM weapons aim set to -10 (from -15/-10), crit to 0 (from 30/10) - to accommodate for them not getting reduced penetration and to make their stats easier to understand/memorize.
All sniper rifles, strike rifles, and shotguns have 3 ammo (from 4) - Nerf to their strength as they were a little too strong vs the regular rifle and was preventing other options from being reasonable. Now all basic weapons (shotgun, sniper rifle, strike rifle, MEC, SHIV, rifle, smg, carbine, battle rifle) have 3 ammo, the only exceptions are SAW/LMG, sidearms, and the arc rifle.
Shotgun mobility to 0/1/-1/-1/0 for ballistic->plasma (from 1/2/0/0/1) - Slight nerf in the strength of shotguns as they were eclipsing some of the other weapons too much
SAWs and LMGs now increase the damage of mayhem suppression by 0.5 for each weapon class above ballistic - Makes mayhem suppression less powerful early game and more powerful late game to keep it reasonable throughout the game (instead of overpowered early and too weak late)
SAW ammo to 5 (from 4) - Slight buff
MEC weapons no longer have squadsight range - As no MECs have access to squadsight. Part of this was because the high damage SS weapons were a little too strong for low risk so this forces the high damage MECs (Jaeger) to be targetable in order to deal damage
Arc Rifle aim to +15 (from +20) and ammo to 2 (from 1) - makes it easier to use (more ammo)
Sawed-off Shotgun range to 18.8 tiles (from 3.8), but damage to 3 (from 4), and crit to 0 (from 50%) - Nerfed as it was a little too strong and was eclipsing the need for even plasma sidearm tech. No need to check ranges anymore either.
Rocket radius to 7 (from 6) - Buffed. Increases AoE by 34% making it less punishing if you miss and more destructive when you hit where you need.
The extra rocket and extra shredder rocket can no longer both be equipped at the same time - Nerf to counteract the other rocketeer buffs. This opens up some much needed space in the rocketeer inventory for different class builds.
Destructive Grenade (AP/HE/Alien/Launcher) radius to 3 (from 3.5) - Grenades were too strong, doing too much AoE damage. This reigns them back to a 6 tile explosion AoE while further distinguishing them from rockets
Grenade Launchers start with 2 grenades (from 3) - Because you could equip 3 they became too plentiful to justify their 100% hit rate, AOE damage, and reasonable damage with 3 charges from each launcher, this puts them in a more reasonable place
Psi Grenade radius to 5.5 tiles (from 5 tiles) - Slight buff to support psionics
Chameleon Suit health to +2 (from +1), DR to 0 (from 0), mobility to 0 (from 0), grants tac sense, grants immunity to reaction shot crits, and no longer affects the rate of LR - Makes it useful for non LR scouts/assault to wear
Reinforced Armor health to +2 (from +3), DR to 1 (from 1.5), mobility to -2 (from -2), and defense to 0 (from -10) - WtS has negative defense for taunting now so biotanks aren't reliant on an item, Nerf to make other options more competitive and to prevent tanking from being too strong in the earlier missions
Ceramic Plating health to +2 (from +2), DR to 0.5 (from 0.5), mobility to -1 (from -1), defense to 0 (from -10) - WtS has negative defense for taunting now so biotanks aren't reliant on an item
Regenerator Vest health to +0 (from +2), DR to 0.5 (from 1), mobility to -1 (from -1), and is now equippable by all classes - Balance, and opens up more healing to all biotanks
Core Armoring armor health to +1 (from +3), DR to 1 (from 1), mobility to -1 (from -1) - Nerf as the DR is really strong
Elerium Emitter health to 0 (from 0), DR to 1.5 (from 2) and mobility to 0 (from +2) - It was too strong
Alloy Carbide Plating health to +3 (from +6), DR to 0 (from 0), and mobility to 0 (from -2) - Makes it a more competitive item as the weight was too restrictive on MEC/SHIVs
Chitin Plating health to +2 (from +2), DR to 0.5 (from 0.5), mobility to 0 (from 0), and DR against melee to 30% (from 50%) - Prevents too much DR against melee targets
Corsair armor to 8 health (from 9), Aurora Armor to 6 health and 2 mobility (from 7 health and 3 mobility), Banshee and Aegis armor lose 1 health - Balance, they were a little too strong at their respective stages of the game
HMEC DR reduced by 1 (except only 0.5 on the MEC1) - Reduction to static DR that gets too high
MEC1, HMEC2/LMEC2, HMEC3/UHMEC3/ULMEC3/LMEC3 armor health reduced to 10, 14/8, 18/22/4/10 (from 14, 18/10, 24/30/6/14) - Nerfed. Makes MECs more likely to dig into their base health and risk injury (so that there are less situations when the MEC can freely tank shots with no consequence)
Laser sight grants +15 crit (from +10) - Buff to make it more useful and fill more of a niche
SCOPE no longer has an upgrade and starts with the +5 crit - The upgrade was worth so little and this doesn't outpace the laser sight anymore
Adaptive Tracking Pods and Suppression Module weight to 0 (from -1) - Makes them more useful and acts as a small buff to SHIVs
Alloy Bipod equipable by snipers and scouts only (from snipers and gunners), mobility to -1 (from 0), and aim to 0 (from -5) - Significant buff, but only for snipers and scouts as gunners now acquire platform stability in their perk tree
Marksman's Scope grants sharpshooter intead of squadsight - As SS is now a perk on their tree
Shredder Ammo small item weight to 2 (from 1) - Slight nerf to make it not so easy to pick it up on classes where it is not a perk
--BUG FIXES--
Shotguns will no longer lose their bonus proximity damage during specific playthroughs - Or at least I think they won't. Szmind is a genius for suggesting how to find and do the fix. No idea if it actually fixed it as I could never even reproduce the bug to find out, but hope this works! :)
Attempted to fix a bug where sometimes a soldier could be deleted after completing a council request
You can no longer launch interceptors that are rearming
Fixed a bug where sapper and javelin rockets were not working as intended
Alien grenade description now correctly says it weighs 1
Fixed a bug where a UFO could do damage to disengaged aircraft (and even kill them)
Flak Ammo no longer grants a damage boost to mayhem suppression
Fixed a statistic display bug on the MEC chop screen
Fixed a bug where on DW > 1.0 terror missions had too few aliens
Fixed a bug where the Lock N' Load popup would sometimes occur when not actually using LnL
Heavy Floaters no longer appear to have bombard (on F1) - They actually do have bombard, but their grenade range was reduced to accommodate. Now, for all intents and purposes, they don't have bombard.
Updated the description of Command to include the fact that it can't be used by covert operatives
Javelin rockets no longer grants +20% rocket range - was bugged
Fixed some descriptions that were too long and were cut off during display
Fixed a bug where 100% shot could sometimes be displayed on mayhem suppression - It shouldn't pop anything up
Version 1.18.30
Bug Fixes:
Mindfray correctly does 2 damage - It bugged in the last update
Fixed various descriptions to be more clear
Executioner now grants +10 aim and +60 crit (from 30 aim and crit) - It was bugged and I can't increase the aim over 10 so I had to alter it to fix it and keep it relatively strong
Combat Drugs will no longer infinitely increase your aim if you check your aim over and over
Clarified the "catching breath" description to include the fact that it disables multi-action perks
Fixed a bug where sharpshooter's crit bonus sometimes wasn't appearing in the F1 overlay
Version 1.18.29
Bug Fixes:
There was some inaccuracy in how green fog was displayed before that is now fixed - It was underestimating how much green fog was actually occuring
To Hit displays now correctly display green fog when the weapon was steadied - It was bugging out before
Green fog stat decreases are now decreased to 1-2 per turn (when triggered) (from 1-3 per turn) - Green fog displays were bugged and were not showing the full amount of the effect and thus were uninentionally overtuned, this puts them more inline (should notice the effect really only on longer missions)
Failed council missions (e.g. Newfoundland) now grant normal panic levels - they were granting twice as much panic as intended
Mayhem suppression deals 2 unmodifiable damage that penetrates all DR - After a lot of testing, I realized mayhem suppression is actually quite bugged in LW 1.0. It does different things to the primary target and different things to adjacent targets and works different with HEAT depending on who you shoot, whose adjacent, etc. etc. Just one of many examples: In LW 1.0 it always penetrated all DR on adjacent targets if the primary target had no DR. This new method unifies it all so it works in a more simple and understandable fashion: 2 damage always (not affected by HEAT, other abilities, or DR -- though shredder does work).
Mayhem suppression no longer displays double damage pop-ups
Mimic Beacon does not trigger smoke & mirrors
Updated Danger zone description text when describing abilities
Fixed F1 DR display not showing hardened or cover-based DR
Fixed another bug with acid not showing F1 DR correctly - Thanks szmind! :)
Floater leaders/navigators no longer receive DangerZone or Mayhem. HeavyFloater leaders no longer receive DangerZone - They were useless (thanks lafiir)
Fixed thinmen so when they gain the ability to snipe they have appropriately lower health (that they can regain on later research) - Thanks lafiir
Chryssalid Queen is now named properly again (and might happen to pick up fortified) - Thanks lafiir
Sectopod high-level leaders correctly receive a health boost - Thanks lafiir
Combat Drugs now grants +10 aim, +20 crit, and +30 will (from +15 of all 3) - Combat Drugs was bugged on display and I couldn't fix it so I just tweaked the stats slightly on combat drugs to make it fit the display
SHIV rebuild projects no longer appear as a possibilty when you research certain techs - As you can't rebuild SHIVs anymore it was quite misleading
Rushed foundry projects now correctly only require 20% more resources and 5 meld - They were left at LW 1.0 levels by oversight (thanks to xwynns for pointing it out)
The mismanaged resources display on the montly report card will no longer display a cash value
All aircraft (in new games) will now correctly have a rank (even if you do not rename them) - Thanks to szmind for the great idea on how to fix this! :)
Exalt Panic operations will now cause 5 and 10 panic (from 20 and 40) - They were supposed to be incorporated into council panic but they had their own function and I finally found it
The option to assault an alien base does not pause the geoscape scan anymore - Thanks to szmind for the awesome code
Version 1.18.28
Equipment:
Changed the name of the "Marksman's Rifle" to "Strike Rifle" - Consistency with descriptions and the other rifles
Bug Fix:
Council requests will only occur for items you can produce - Previously sometimes the council would ask you for something you had not researched yet
Mutons who do not have blood call active will not get the 30% DR
Ethereals do not panic SHIVs - Thanks szmind for the code!
Melee damage does not trigger cover-based DR - it should not be effected by cover as it's melee
UFOs will not sometimes target itself - Whoops! :) Thanks szmind for the fix
Double Tap wording is more grammatically correct
Alien leaders will now increase in size
Packmaster does not affect the number of flamethrower charges - it was never intended to
Albert Komarov's armor flag is now Russia (instead of South Korea)
Marksman's scope description is more appropriate
Promotions for planes in dynamic war games > DW 1.0 now work correctly
Version 1.18.27
Note:
This is the last version of v1.18 (except for Bug Fixes). No new versions will be released for a few months, maybe even longer. This is to give players a chance to experience the game as is without constant adjustments occuring during their campaign.
Strategic:
Extra months of research on landed UFOs (for the purposes of what aliens appear) is now modified based on difficulty: +1 month of research on normal, +2 on classic, +3 on brutal, +4 month on impossible - Makes it less punishing on the easier difficulties
The rank of reward soldiers now varies based on the defense (shield icon) of the country offering the soldier: 0-20%=SPEC, 20-40%=LCPL, 40-60%=CPL, 60-80%=SGT, 80-100%=TSGT - Encourages boosting countries defense, prevents early soldiers from being too strong off the bat and late game soldiers from being too weak
Advanced Servomotors cost reduced to 10 mecthoid cores (from 20) but cost increased by 300 weapon fragments - Makes it acquirable earlier, but puts it up against other high weapon fragment options (quenchguns, tactical rigging, etc.).
Perks:
ITZ will now fire all shots continuously (instead of having an 80% chance to fail on subsequent shots) but decrease aim and crit by 10% for each consecutive shot - Buff (because it removes the RNG aspect making it more reliable) needed as the requirement to set up with steady weapon is surprisingly debilitating. Also makes it more consistent (read: enjoyable to use).
Opportunist loses it's aim bonus - Tones back overwatch as it was too good for volume of fire and accurate fire (innate covering fire really improved the late game viability of overwatch builds and the extra aim was overkill)
Equipment:
Recoiless Rifle no longer has an aim malus or grants bonus penetration - It was applied to the primary weapon's shots as well, which didn't make sense - Thanks to jfoevv820ueb for pointing it out
Anti-Materiel modifications: ammo to +0 (from -2), damage to +0 (from -1), mobility to +0 (from -1) - They needed a significant buff. Makes them more balanced for all sniper/scout builds. AM rifles vs normal are now: -10 aim and penetrate all DR
Aliens:
Uber Ethereal loses Lightning Reflexes - It just didn't fit and it felt wrong to invaldiate OW builds and CCS on a class that they are not that effective against anyway
Bug Fix:
Drum mag was granting +3 ammo (instead of +2) - Thanks for pointing it out ihateyoux10
Fixed a bug where rockets that did not hit a target through cover would still trigger the cover's DR - Thanks szmind! :)
Version 1.18.26
Strategic:
Income from abductions changed to 100/150/220/340 (from 40/80/160/320) - Makes lighter abductions a better source of income, overall slight increase of cash from abductions
Montly income increased on brutal by 12.5%, classic by 33%, and normal by 50% so that the spread on impossible/brutal/classic/normal is 50/60/80/100% (from 75/80/90/100%) - Gives more cash to the easier difficulties, helps accommodate for higher prevalance of light missions yielding less cash.
The 15 initial unique soldiers now all have set classes (instead of random) - Helps put them into reasonable roles and establish their character type throughout multiple campaigns (like van doorn as a gunner/rocketeer)
Genemod credit cost set to 5 and meld cost reduced by 33% - Makes it a lot easier to access as it only really requires meld now
Plasma Technology:
All foundry and research projects requiring alien plasma weaponry has been reduced to 0 or 1 of such weapons and replaced with an increased weapon fragment cost (based on how many you previously required) - Helps minimize the need to create a Zoo, gives more use for late game fragments
Plasma weapons require UFO power sources instead of alien plasma weapons to produce and have their meld costs increased by ~50% - Makes multiple captures (the zoo) unncessary and makes UFO power sources more valuable
Bug Fix:
Fixed a CTD bug that occured rarely when using multiple grenades in single turn - Thanks Umbira for helping me isolate it
Version 1.18.25
Strategic:
Cost for Jellied Elerium lowered - It's not as valuable without the grenade range boost
Tactical:
First mission made slightly easier: 10 aliens on normal and classic, 13 on brutal, and 16 on impossible (from 10/10/14/18) - It was slightly too punishing for a mission you can't prepare for and will still act as a good litmus test with the new numbers
Bug Fix:
Grenadier wasn't correctly granting the +2 tile range bonus
Version 1.18.24
Strategic:
Council requests will never include live prisoners anymore but will include a lot more requests for XCOM equipment - Makes more sense realistically. Gameplay wise it discourages farming aliens and the creation of the XCOM Zoo project and expands on the "always keep 3 laser rifles for recruits" issue so it's more variable and not encouraging XCOM to just always have 3 laser rifles on hand.
Council requested items and rewards are more variable in number - Makes some deals better and some deals worse so you'll have to judge for yourself
Tactical:
Will does not reduce the effect of red fog (though red fog still does reduce will) - Will hardly effected the redfog, and did so in an overly complicated manner. Will is already good enough with it's reduction of green fog.
Jellied Elerium only grants rockets +2 range (from all explosives) - Accommodates grenadier buff
Perks:
One for All now removes all defense (including that from body shield, smoke, etc.) - It was actually always this way. It could work either way but including smoke et al. was causing bugs so it's just easier to say it removes all defense. Now OFA officially turns you into this bright big beacon of hits (and it always did). :)
Grenadier regains the +2 range it confers to destructive grenades - Brings the range increase on earlier for grenades
Equipment:
Alien grenade damage to 8 (from 6) and mobility to -1 (from 0) - Buff to the alien grenade to plant it more inline with upgraded AP and HE
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where smoke was only ever giving 20 defense and not the full 30 - I'm surprised no one noticed, but it's actually hard to always tell what the enemies will be hitting you for.
Version 1.18.23
Quality of Life:
Modified the speed keys to the following: alt-F7 = Normal speed, alt-F8 = 1.5x normal speed, alt-F9 = 2x normal speed (from 1, 1.15, 1.5) - This is still .ini adjustable if you wish
Strategic:
Enhanced Plasma Weapons (which grants +1 damage to plasma weapons and unlocks the plasma stellerator) now unlocks with with the research: "Plasma Weapons" (instead of "Precision Plasma Weapons") and no longer requires a plasma dragon to produce (but requires more weapon fragments instead) - Allows you to bring the extra damage on earlier (thanks AxemanUnique for the suggestion)
Air Game:
Refuel time increased to 16 hours (from 12) - There were some UFOs that lingered long enough to send up the same fighter multiple times at 12 hours so it was increased to prevent having to spam the hangar to find that exact time to send them up again
Overseer armor reduced to 100% DR (from 125%) - Makes it possible for all weapons to do even a little damage (with upgrades)
Armored Fighters foundry project cost grants +1000 health (from +500 health) - Gives a little more resilience when the aliens start bringing out the plasma II
Air Game Weapons:
Phoenix Cannon aim to 20 (from 15) - With it being harder to be in the lead of a formation the phoenix cannon took a hit and needed a boost to stay competitive
Plasma II UFO Weapon aim reduced to 40 (from 50) - A little less damaging so when we do fight double weapons they hit a little lighter (upgraded destroyers, overseer)
Plasma II UFO Weapon and Plamsa XCOM weapon fires a little more rapidly (1250dmg/2.5s instead of 1500dmg/3s) - Makes it a little less likely to destroy a UFO and when the aliens use it: a little less likely to die from 2 shots. Also, makes it so the Plasma I and Plasma II weapons will fire at slightly different times making it easier to see what is occuring during the battle.
Fusion Air Weapon aim reduced for the aliens to 50 (from 70) but damage increased for both the aliens and XCOM to 3000dmg/3s (from 3200dmg/4s) - Less damaging overall to take it easy on the brave XCOM pilots that want to tackle this beast. Also makes it a little more likely to have an interceptor survive a single shot. Last, makes the aircraft boosters and little less effective at working with and against this weapon.
Tactical:
You can now hack multiple communication arrays on the same turn during exalt missions - Helpful for trying to disable multiple exalt and quickly pushing through missions
XCOM:
GSGT and LCPL levels swapped on Shogun - It needed earlier access to it's stronger perks so that it came online earlier
VPT replaced with Adv Heat Tech on Shogun - Gives it's anti-mechanical role a little more impact after the HEAT nerf
Aliens:
HEAT Ammo removed from Cyberdiscs and Mechtoids - It was too powerful when it was a surprise as it only occured on some versions of aliens and was more frustrating than fun when it hit you
HEAT Ammo always occurs on Exalt Heavies and Exalt Elite Heavies (from on just some leaders) - Again, it's better when something as strong as HEAT is always or never occuring so that it's easy to be aware of it. It's good on these enemies as exalt missions were a little too easy with strong MECs.
HEAT warheads removed from all aliens (Mutons, Muton Elites, and Cyberdiscs) - It was difficult to know when to hide your SHIVs/MECs and HEAT Warheads was more of a suprise annoyance than a good gameplay factor. Now no aliens have heat warheads.
Just a summary: HEAT Warheads will never occur on aliens and HEAT Ammo will occur on only 4 enemies: Sectopods, Heavy Floaters, Exalt Heavies, and Exalt Elite Heavies
Perks:
Damage Control grants +30% DR (from +50%) - Mechtoids and MECs were too strong with it and it led to some border-line abusive tanking situations (for both sides)
One For All grants +30% DR (from +50%) - Was too strong. Already a MEC gets 30% DR and with just One for all at 50% could get up to the level of a fully specced biotank but do it anywhere and this isn't even considering the other sources of tanking (More health, Damage control, absorption fields, more static DR, Shock-absorbant, brawler). This brings them back in-line a little more. This also makes tanky MECs less reliant on ALWAYS being in One For All, encouraging them to break it more often for offensive options (e.g. a Goliath using Double-Tap).
Bring 'Em On grants 1 + 4 extra crit damage (from 1 + 5) - Tones it back slightly. With pulse it was doing +12 extra damage. Overall toning back of crit builds.
Precision shot extra damage during a critical hit to +3 (from +4) - Was slightly too strong. Overall toning back of crit builds.
Grenadier no longer grants +2 range to grenades - With the jellied elerium +2 range, the overall +4 range was too strong.
Snap Shot's +10 aim bonus only applies to the purpose of reducing scatter (even if the unit has moved) - Needed a slight nerf as the x2 rockets (with command, after moving) and the ability to move and fire were extremely powerful. Helps force the overwatch builds back into rockets a little more by making the TSGT level all about rockets.
Equipment:
Pulse crit to 0 (from 20) but aim to +5 (from -5) - Overall toning back of crit builds. Despite wanting to give generically non-crit weapons some strength, it was too strong on crit-based weapons giving them both the double damage crits and the extra crit chances. As an example: a pulse shotgun (scatter blaster) could do 6 + 3 damage up close for 9 damage, then +2 with aggression, then +6 with BeO, for 17 damage base which means 34 damage crits (without considering items). With +20% crit it was too easy to guarantee crits. You can see how a rapid fire doing a guaranteed (100% hit, 100% crit) crit for possibly more than 68 damage is a little too much. This change also makes more room for +crit perks and items that werent' as necessary due to the bonus crit that pulse gave. This change also gives it +10 aim over gauss providing another distinguishing factor.
Alien grenade weight to 0 (from 1) - Gives it a slight boost to make it more competitive vs the HE and AP and makes it easier to carry as an extra item on more classes
Combat Stims grant +4 mobility (from +6) - It's multi-turn use and DR made it arguably superior to other items that should be stronger (e.g. walker servos), this puts it more inline
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where Ethereal Rift could do upwards of 100 damage (!) - Thank god no one complained of this =P I wonder if there is someone out there that tried the mod, got hit for 230 damage and thought "Man, those ethereals hit hard". =P
Fixed a bug where environmental explosions were acting like nuclear bombs and doing hundreds of damage
Fixed a possible bug where you might fire at a unit twice with covering fire before they got the chance to fire - Thanks to szmind for isolating what might be causing it
Anti-Grav systems is now correctly unlocked with Heavy Floater interrogation - Was missing before (thanks lafiir for pointing it out)
MEC3s are no longer restricted by heavy floater interrogation - thanks lafiir for pointing it out
Arc rifle was accidently dealing 3 base damage (where it should be 1) - Fixed
Version 1.18.22
Strategy:
Reduced early research time of Alien Materials, Xenobiology and Alien Weaponry by 20% to accommodate for increased overall research time - Thanks lafiir
Equipment:
Psi Grenades now have a reasonable but small cost - Thanks lafiir
Bug Fix:
Updated some (possibly) misleading text descriptions
Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where explosive damage always had DR when hitting targets in cover (even if there was no cover between the explosion and the unit). Now the explosive will only have DR if there is cover directly between the explosion and the unit. - Thanks to szmind for the awesome work on creating the mutator :)
Fixed a bug with DR display again - Thanks szmind and lafiir
Fixed sectoid commander health on lower difficulties - Thanks lafiir
Fixed misc ability description inaccuracies - Thanks lafiir
Version 1.18.21
Strategy Game:
UFOs now do 2x damage to all aircraft in the lead, and 1/2 damage to all aircraft in the rear - Makes the choice between lead, mid, and rear more engaging (as lead was still too rewarding and became an autopick for the entire formation once coilguns came around). This makes the choice between successfully downing a UFO and keeping your aircraft alive/undamaged more engaging.
Health on the interceptor/Firestorm increased to 2500/5000 (from 2000/4000) - To accommodate increased damage in the lead position
Bug Fixes:
The hyperwave relay was incorrectly calculating the # of species - Fixed
Removed covering fire from the possible perks in training roulette - Thanks lordathos
Version 1.18.20
Strategic:
Overall research time increased by ~28% - It was a little too fast
Research time doubled on plasma weapons - Acts as a gate so it's not so easy to skip pulse
The Overseer mission contains 6 more aliens - Makes it more challenging
The number of exalt clues you receive are reduced by ~30% - Makes it harder to locate the exalt base as early (especially with how challenging the base is it was ideal to space this out a little more)
Interceptor repair time increased to 400 hours (from 300 hours) - Makes defensive stances more important (as being aggressive seemed to be slightly preferable) - Now avoiding damage takes a more important role
Tactical:
Rework on cover-based DR:
Acid now works on all DR (including that from cover)
There is now no such thing as cover-based DR, it's just like normal DR - Simplification for ease of understanding
Partial cover provides 10%. Full cover provides 30%. Will To Survive provides 40%. Tenacious Defense provides 20%. Hunkering provides 50%. - Makes it more understandable - Overall in full cover with TD + WtS you get 1-.6*.7*.8 = 66% DR (again you can check this in game with F1 at anytime)
The significant changes are 1) simplicification, 2) acid is stronger, 3) biotanks are better in partial cover
To summarize cover: Full Cover grants 50def and 30%DR; Partial Cover grants 30def and 10%DR.
Equipment:
MEC Weapon ranges in squadsight increased to +10 tiles (from +5) - Buff to the SS Jaeger
Chem Grenade radius to 3 (from 2.5) and range to 12.5 (from 10) - Buff to usefulness
Arc Rifle aim to 15 (from 20) and base damage to 1 (from 3) but bonus damage against mechanicals to 9 (from 7) - Focuses it's role as anti-robotic and disabling, slight nerf to bring it more in-line with laser weapons
Flamethrower range to 8 (from 6) - needed a boost
Incinerator module to +8 damage (from +5) - needed a boost
Chameleon suit now grants 90% dodge on subsequent reaciton shots (from 75%) - Buff to dodging consecutive shots, slight buff to the suit
Skeleton key cost increased - Due to buffs in resources it actually became a resource boon to do them again (whoops!)
The AM Rifle renamed to the AM Strike Rifle - Makes it more clear vs the AM Long Rifle
AM Rifles (both types) no longer grant HEAT or effect hardened but instead penetrate all DR (like the KSM) and have 10 less aim - Alteration in use: makes them still effective against robotic targets (though slightly less) but now also effective against non-robotic targets with high DR (e.g. muton elites)
Alloy Bipod cost decreased to 20 alloys (from 40) - was a little too steep in cost
Breaching Ammo removes only the extra DR that shotguns get against hardened targets (instead of bypassing the hardened perk all together) - was too strong and needed to be toned back
Some of the plasma weapon bonuses have been improved - Touching up some of the less used weapons
SAW ammo to 4 (from 5) - Slight nerf to the SAW gunner, opens up more option for the LMG
Sawed-off shotgun range decreased slightly to 3.8 (from 4.4) - Was a little too prevalent and easy to equip, this makes it slightly harder to use
Perks:
Ranger grants +1 mobility (from 0) - Buff to the perk for balance on the trees
Concealment grants no mobility (from +2) - Was a little too strong as the perk is quite good even with the XCOM scamper mechanic (still grants +20 defense though)
HEAT Ammo grants +75% base damage (from +100%) - It was too strong on the aliens and too strong on many of our classes making engagements vs Mechanical units too easy
Adv HEAT Tech grants +150% base damage (from +200%) - Similar to HEAT nerf
Will to Survive provides a 40% DR when in cover (from doubling the cover-based DR) but no health (from +2 health) - Makes it more understandable and buffs the %DR while nerfing the overall health (overall should be around even with an easier capability to heal)
Tenacious Defense provides a 20% DR when in cover (from increasing cover-based DR by 5% additively), +2 armor health (from +3), and crit resistance in cover to 20% (from 30%) - Makes it more understanable and makes biotanks always suceptible to high crit enemies, balance on the trees
When ITZ is active it now allows you to steady your weapon as well - Fixed the bug where steadying would activate ITZ so it can have this back, it's nice to be able to set up for another ITZ chain if you didn't really use one.
Brawler grants +50% DR (from +30% DR) from within 4 tiles but 0 damage (from 1 damage) - Focuses the perk on defense over offense, makes it not such an offensive choice on the assault, helps make the marauder and assault evem more awesome at dealing with lids and zerkers and anything else that gets close.
Sapper grants +2 damage penetration to grenades (from +0) - Buff to make it more appealing vs packmaster and give it more of a role against units in cover
Repair Servos slight rework: You do not lose repair servos from taking damage but you only gain half the repair servos from damage - In other words: When damaged, gain servos equal to half the damage sustained -- at the end of your turn, use up to 2 servos (1 hp healed per servo). - The previous effect was too weak on tanking classes that took multiple shots per turn and too strong on classes that would only take a single shot over 3 or so turns.
XCOM:
SGT and GSGT levels swapped on Jaeger - It's important for both builds to have access to Fortified and/or Squadsight at an earlier level
Holo Rounds, Advanced HEAT Tech, and LnL swapped on Engineer - It was important for the engineer to get access to Adv HEAT Tech earlier in the shooter build and the anti-mechanical grenadier build (esp with the HEAT nerf)
Ranger replaced with Adv. Heat Tech on the Rocketeer - Helps accommodate for HEAT Warheads nerf
Aliens:
Sectopods no longer gain 2 DR at 120/240/360 research (now they just gain 1, like they did originally) - This opens up the option for other classes besides those with HEAT to deal some damage
Sectopod aim to 100 (from 90) - It needed an aim increase to be more threatening, as it was too easy to bypass (smoke + heavy cover + officer perk or arc rifle or EMP or scout with disabling shot or dense smoke). It's important to boost it's capability as it's often found in small numbers making it significantly less of a threat.
Sectopod cluster bomb damage to 30 (from 20) - It has such a low radius that the damage drops off really heavy often doing 2-3 damage and needed a boost (note, it can still direct hit and do severe damage but you can move out of the way so it should be effective)
Ethereals and the Uber Ethereal lose the tactical sense perk - It wasn't ideal that they were making normal soldiers have such low aim against them. This way the majority of your team should be able to participate in damaging them.
New Ethereal ability: When your squad encounters an ethereal for the first time each mission they will all attempt to panic at a 60 will test (steadfast does prevent this) - Allows the tactical sense nerf while still keeping the ethereal balanced and is a cool new feature (thanks to szmind for this amazing code!)
Thinmen gain squadsight at 240 research (from 150) - Makes them less dominating when you might be more suceptible in the early game
Sectoid Commander defense to 20 (from 40) and health to 20 (from 12) - Still needed a buff and the defense was frustrating how it excluded many of your soldiers from interacting with the sectoid commander
Suppression removed from floaters and heavy floaters - They were too ineffective with it, wasting their turns, and I couldn't fix the poor AI
Exalt Elite Snipers aim to 80 (from 90) - They were a little too accurate
All Exalt Heavies lose will to survive and tenacious defense - Make them easier to eliminate to avoid eating a rocket
All Exalt Medics gain paramedic and savior - They were so weak when the healed an ally for 3 health, this makes it more reasonable
Exalt Elite Operatives gain will to survive and tenacious defense - Make them stronger in the later game
Exalt Elite Medics gain will to survive and close combat specialist - Make them stronger in the later game
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where abduction cash rewards were set at 80% (they are now 80-120% as intended) - Thanks to ihateyoux10 for pointing it out!
Tuned up many descriptions to be more clear and contain more information - Thanks to Hellsigner for the updates
Fixed a bug where Damage Reduction was not being displayed properly in the F1 panel - Thanks szmind for the great work at fixing this!
Fixed a bug where acid penetration of DR was incorrectly being displayed
Fixed a bug where rapid reaction text wouldn't trigger properly on units with rapid reaction
Fixed a bug where Death From Afar would give double aim bonuses
Fixed a bug with covering fire and overwatch where it wasn't triggering as expected with multiple shot perks - Thanks to szmind for this code! (he's released it as an update to his sequential overwatch mod v1.3)
Fixed a typo where it said the Firestorm has 50% DR (it has 100%) - Thanks forefal
Fixed a typo on flashbangs - Thanks pharaon3
Fixed an unclear description on bone marrow - Thanks Heliet
Fixed a bug where steady weapon would trigger a free ITZ turn
Version 1.18.19
Note about patches:
I'm going to be away for a few weeks so hopefully there are no other bugs or issues that need to be addressed until then.
Strategic Layer:
Council mission credit rewards increased some - Makes doing council missions more rewarding
Light/Moderate/Heavy/Swarming abductions grant 40/80/160/320 cash (from 80/90/100/115) - Makes swarming missions not have such a negative on a campaign as previously if you got unlucky and got hit with a streak of swarming missions it could make your campaign a lot more difficult than otherwise
Abduction rewards are randomized between 80-120% of the reward - Adds some variability to the reward
Tactical Layer:
Exalt HQ reverted back to vanilla strength (i.e. no changes in #'s) - Was a little too easy and it wasn't ideal to be able to compelte it so early
Techs:
Added description to autopsies and interrogations about what techs they unlock - Makes it easier to understand what the benefit of the research is
Perks:
Blood Call grants 30% DR (from 0) - Makes using the ability less of a waste of a turn and a more reasonable use for the AI
Equipment:
Restorative Mist heals for 6 (from 8) - Needed to be toned down as it made packmaster too strong of a pick on the Shogun
Aliens:
Mechtoids get Rapid Reaction instead of Sentinel - This makes face-tanking their shots less appealing and dodging their shots more appealing. Helps open up options for neutralizing their overwatch on the first shot. (thanks to gimrah for the suggestion)
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a rare critical bug where ITZ could cause a CTD - If you got stuck on this in an ironman game it's pretty nasty, so nice that it's fixed. :)
Version 1.18.18
Strategic:
You can no longer rebuild SHIVs - However, you can still sell their remains on the gray market when they die... IF YOU'RE A CRUEL AND HEARTLESS COMMANDER
Tactical:
Red Fog now can also reduce will (up to 35) - This is a big change against sectoids as previously you could injure them but it wouldn't do anything as they'd just spam psionic attacks at you. Now those attacks will be far less successful when they are injured. Also, this has 2 other great effects: 1) Your psionic units will be more effective against injured aliens (boost to XCOM psionic units) and 2) Your injured units will be more vulnerable to psionic attacks
Soldiers will no longer auotequip ceramic plating on the first mission - Ceramic plating was a tanking item and wasn't ideal to have one of your units taunted that wasn't built to tank
Aliens:
Sectoids gain 35 less will (from 20 less) during the first few months - Makes them less dominating of an enemy type (as the increased psionic potential of mindfray and psi panic made them strong).
Sectoid Commander health to 12 (from 7, originally 15) and they regain their original health during level ups - While the idea was to make them fragile with high defense, the truth was they were too much of a non-threat at such low health. This should put them a little closer to the top of the scary list.
Equipment:
Carbine aim to +15 (from +10) - Needed a little boost
Regenerator vest only grants +2 health (from +3) - Was still too strong at +3, should make room for other items
Hi Cap Mags and Drum Mags are both now equippable by the rocketeer - Provides some more flexibility to the RR build
Arc Rifle ammo to 1 (from 2) and can be equipped by the rocketeer - Tone back as the item was balanced around Gauss when you could get it before laser -- it should be balanced around laser weapons. The main goal is to give you the possibilty of strong anti-robotic weapons early, not outshine other weapons.
MEC1 aim to 5 (from 10), mobility to 1 (from 0), DR to 1 (from 0), Defense to 15 (from 30) - Puts it more inbetween the heavy and light MEC2s
Plasma weaponry credit, elerium, and alloy cost cut by half (but they still retain their meld cost) - Makes it more of a meld sink than an overall resource barrier
Plasma, EMP, and Fusion air weapon cost increased significantly - Makes it harder to get to the level where you can consitently down large UFOs
Perks:
"So Shall You fight" grants 50% increased mission xp for soldiers ranked sergeant and higher (from +25%) - Buff to the perk to make the choice more competitive
Opportunist aim bonus to 15 (from 10) and damage bonus to 0 (from 1) - Helps shift the strength of overwatch to the later game vs early game and benefits RR a little more than sentinel. Overall slight decrease in strength.
XCOM:
Sharpshooter was replaced with Vital Point Targeting on the Shogun - Sharpshooter became a poor perk due to the new functionality of HnR not working against targets in cover, VPT seems strong but on high damage MEC weapons it has less impact and should be balanced
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where ITZ would trigger on things other than shooting (command, psionics, etc.)
Fixed a bug (hopefully) where the panic graphic would be displayed for some soldiers that were not panicked and vice versa - Thanks to szmind for the amazing code! :)
Fixed a bug where SHIVs that died were not removed from the engineer tab list of how many SHIVs you had - Again, thanks to szmind for finding the code to fix, he's awesome!
Fixed a bug with the display of negative DR (e.g. from acid) - Thanks lafiir for pointing it out
Fixed a bug where there were more than the intended # of exalt soldiers on the exalt base raids - Thanks to forefal for pointing it out
Fortified now grants the +1 DR in the Soldier Equip screen (instead of just the battle screen) so that it's easier to tell it's working - Thanks forefal
Reaper rounds was accidently granting 25 crit, it now grants 30 crit as intended - Thanks Lafiir
Fixed some typos and slightly incorrect descriptions
Fixed some spelling mistakes and gramatic errors - Thanks forefal
Added the steady aim description to the MEC weapon descriptions - Thanks Lafiir
Fixed a few inaccuracies/incomplete descriptions - Thanks Lafiir
Version 1.18.17
QoL:
Items that grant a perk now have the full perk description inside the item description instead of just saying they grant the perk
Perks:
Holo Rounds grants +3 damage against mechanical units (from +2) - Boost to the damage component and the perk overall
Mayhem grants +2 damage to grenades (from +3) - Tone down on strength, especially for AP grenades
Mayhem grants +4 damage to strike rifles (from +3) - Buff to strike rifle sniper
SHIV Equipment:
Weapon Supercooler mobility to -2 (from -1) - Puts it a little more inline with other small item options for the SHIV
Smartshell pod aim to 0 (from +5) - Didn't need the extra aim as Flush is pretty strong now
HEAT Ammo removed as an item - HEAT was too strong on the SHIVs as 200% damage weapons (Hover SHIVs with plasma were doing 64 dmg (32 x 2 with LeU) against robots), SHIVs are strong enough without it
Aliens:
Outsider health increased to 12 (from 10) - Slight buff granting them a little more staying power
Bug Fix:
Ready For Anything now properly grants +2 ammo - Was bugged before and not granting it
Version 1.18.16
Tactical:
Soldiers that have used all of their active moves will now have their health turn purple (from red) - Helps distinguish them from the aliens
Perks:
Grenadier grants +2 range to explosive grenades - Makes more of the range boost occur earlier game on grenade builds
Equipment:
Arc Rifle grants +7 damage against mechanicals (from +6) - Slight boost
Jellied Elerium now only grants +2 range to explosives (from +3) - Accommodates the new grenadier
MEC weapons now allow for "Steady Weapon" - Required for access to ITZ
Regular/Alloy/Hover SHIV health reduced to 10/22/18 (from 10/28/22) - They were a little too tanky
HEAT Ammo small item now grants -10 aim - It was removed previously because there was a lack of options for mechanicals: now with the engineer starting with HEAT and the arc rifle there is plenty of early game heat so this item shouldn't be such a dominant choice compared to other options
Strategy Game:
Cash from continents scaled back 10% - There was a bug in a previous save I was using to test cash flow that was incorrect so we didn't need quite as much extra cash as calculated in 1.18.14
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a typo with restorative mist - Thanks bturner1
Version 1.18.14
Strategy Game:
Countries give 50% more cash to xcom at the end of each month - Significantly more cash to encourage more cash based projects, put the restriction more on other resources, and help fend off late game upkeep from limiting cash flow
Meld sells for 3 (from 5) - As great as it was to make it a cash grab, it made it so saving meld was often not worth it (as selling was too valuable) and skipping meld based projects (MECs/Genemods) was too easy (which is not ideal)
Increased the strength of the continent bonuses by ~20% - To encourage players to consider not spreading their fighters out and reward them for covering full continents
UFO analysis research grants 30% more alloys and elerium (from 20%) and 30% more damage (from 10%) against the specific UFO but takes a lot longer to research - Gives more research targets and makes the targets more effective
Soldiers gained each month are now: 6-10 for the first month, 4-6 for 2nd, 3-5 for 3rd, 2-4 for 4th, 1-3 for 5th, 1-2 for 6th and beyond - Boosts early soldier gains and minimizes roster bloating late game. Alleviates some of the necessity for cash into recruits during the first few months.
Laboratories provide +50% increased research speed (from +20%) and adjacency bonus increased to +20% (from +10%) - Boost to labs, gives the players a lot more control over research speed for resource cost
Air Game:
Chances to destroy a UFO instead of shoot them down increased to over_kill/5 percent chance (from over_kill/10) [Formula should be destruction chance = 1 - 0.5 ^ (weapon_dmg/700)] - Prevents as many late game UFOs from being shot down and encourages more strategy in shooting down UFOs (previously the ratio of shot down to destroyed UFOs for high damage weapons vs low damage weapons was too high). Note: in-game destruction descriptions were updated.
Interceptor cost to 500 (from 300) - Slow down expansion and make investment into the air game a little less effective of a strategy (encouraging credit investment into other areas)
You start the game with 3 interceptors (from 2) - Accommodates for interceptor cost
Tactical Game:
Landed UFOs gain 5 months of research (from 3) - Since it only increases the pool of aliens you can see and not their strength, this actually doesn't have that large of an effect besides forcing the player to be wary. You still could goto a landed small and only run into 3 pods of sectoids and drones. Overall decreases the number of landeds that should be successful.
Perks:
ITZ chain chances to 80% (from 75%) and you can no longer steady aim on an ITZ chain - It was costly to have to set up so this acts as a slight buff and steady aim was bugging out sometimes
Hit and Run only triggers when firing at non-covered units (from all units, originally non-flying non-covered units)- This is a nerf but a good one. It encourages more variable gameplay with the scout such as moving out towards flanks or seeking cover destruction. The scout and the Shogun had too much action economy with the previous HnR and needed to be pulled back.
Sentinel and Rapid Reaction now grant both Opportunist and Covering Fire (from just opportunist) - Overall an overwatch build buff making it much easier to use/trigger. Makes overwatch build strong against all enemies (instead of just enemies that are moving). Note: if you missed this perk on a soldier you can download the console command and type 'Give Perk 47' to pick up covering fire.
Covering Fire no longer grants +20 aim against targets in cover - Nerf to the perk (as it's automatic with overwatch builds now) and nerf to the strength of alien overwatch to pin down units in cover (it allows taking an action in cover under enemy covering fire overwatch to not be so penalizing)
Rapid Reaction no longer grants an aim bonus (from +10 aim) - Balance and simplification
Sentinel no longer grants a damage bonus (from +1 damage) - Balance and simplification
Ready For Anything grants +10 aim on overwatch shots (from +20 aim) and +2 ammo (from +0 ammo) - Makes it a lot easier to use RfA with the extra ammo.
Opportunist also grants +10 aim and +1 damage to reaction shots - Buff to overall overwatch to accommodate for loss in sent/rr and act as a further buff
Lead by Example (being an Officer) grants +10 will - The ability to boost psionics with high will officers requires too much juggling to be effective so this is a nice and reasonable buff to have on officer's again
Close Encounters grants -50% movement (from -65%) - Makes the ability to move slightly more reasonable as it was a little too restrictive previously
XCOM:
Gunner aim and will reduced to +5, HP reduced to +2 - Overall slight nerf as the gunner needed to be toned back a little more
Infantry will to +20 - Slight boost (balance)
Covering Fire replaced with Deadeye on the perk trees - Due to covering fire being acquired innately with sent/rr
Infantry and Jaeger perks tweaked slightly to accommodate deadeye - slight adjustments
Equipment:
Pulse weapons all gain -5 aim - Puts them more inline with gauss and helps counteract the 20% crit bonus they gain so they aren't so overpowered
Shotguns all gain +1 mobility except for the scatter blaster - Balance and with the proximity bonus reduced they needed a little buff to make them more competitive. This means the ballistic and plasma grants +1 mobility, the laser grants +2 mobility, and the gauss and pulse grant 0 mobility
LMG Ammo to 6 (from 5) - Makes it more of an option on non-bullet wizard gunners
Arc rifle to +20 aim (from +10) - Makes it easier to hit with and buffs it
Battle scanner ranged reduced to 7.5 (from 12.5) - It now throws exactly within visual range. This is to prevent scouting enemies before engaging them granting shots when the enemies have not moved. The battle scanner is intended to be used for around corners and over cliffs and in doors, not for expanding your vision and alpha striking. (Note: bombard can give you 3 tiles further than visual range).
Aim/tracking/defense Modules require a LOT more corpses - massive reduce to the ability to spam them
Motion Tracker to 2 charges (from 3) - We had a little too much scouting at 4 as this already got upgraded with elerium batteries
Bug Fix:
Fixed description on sawed-off shotgun - Thanks faffler
Fixed bug (hopefully) where some pods would still double move on the alien turn - Thanks szmind for the code
The panic bug (where panic lasts on soldiers) should occur a lot less often - Thanks to szmind for the code
Fixed the VIP health bug: VIPs now have 4 health instead of 3 - Thanks to szmind for the code
Fixed a bug on some outsiders being named incorrectly
Version 1.18.13
Change Log - LW Rebalance v1.18.13:
Tactical:
Number of aliens on non-hardcoded missions is no longer reduced by 0-25% - The effect was making missions too variable in difficulty
Equipment:
Breaching ammo crit to 0 (from -20) and AP ammo crit to 0 (from -10) - With anti-mechanical damage sources being more prevalent it pushed both of these items below reasonable competitiveness, this it to bring them back.
Reaper Pack to 30 crit and weight to 1 (from 0) - Consistency with other ammo and it is actually a great item.
Combat Stims weight to 1 (from 0) - Same as above. Consistency with other items and it is a great item even at -1 mobility.
Sawed-off Shotgun range to 4.4 (from 3.8), crit to 50 (from 5) - Buffed. Makes it easier to know that you'll always get a shot off at 4 tile range. Gives it a more distinct role (100% critting when flanking) and makes it more competitive against the stronger pistols.
Alloy bipod alloy cost to 40 (from 60) - Makes it a little more attainable
Regenerator Vest armor health to 3 (from 4) - Slight tone down in strength, making it not such an auto-equip on all assaults
Aliens:
Heavy Floater health to 16 (from 14) - Makes them a little tankier, they were killed too easily by the time they came around
Floater health to 7 (from 5) - Makes them tankier, they were a little too low of a threat
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where sometimes pods could still double move on the alien turn - Thanks szmind!
More than PI now correctly displays Psi Panic chances to work
Fixed a bug where targeting module weight was incorrectly displayed - Thanks GPraz
Fixed a bug (I think) where you got told of the possibility to do the super skyranger and wingtip sparrowhawk projects (even though you can't) when researching certain techs
Fixed a bug where Jaegers still had access to RTS
Version 1.18.12
Tactical:
Number of aliens on the first missions are 10/10/14/18 (based on difficulty) - Thanks to Lafiir for the suggestion
Perk:
ITZ now triggers additional actions at 75% (from 70%) - Slight buff
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a few typos - Thanks Lafiir
Fixed the problem with pods still not patrolling
Version 1.18.11
Strategic:
High-Capacity Pistols requires 45 alloys (from 70) - Makes it more accessible
Genelab cost and maintence cost reduced - Since the gene modifications are so expensive
Gene mods reduced in credit cost by approximately half - Makes them more attainable while still somehwat expensive
Stingray missles fire every 10s (from 8s) and deal 1300 damage (from 960) - Slight alteration in their effectiveness, makes them more likely to destroy their targets
Tactical:
MEC extra fatigue and injury time to +70% (from +50%) - A little more toning down of their strength
First mission has different number of aliens based on the difficulty you select (7/11/15/18 for normal/classic/brutal/impossible) - Slight tone down to not be oppressive on the easier difficulties
A mission cannot have less than 8 aliens - Prevents the easy missions from being so uneventful if you happen to get a string of them
Command, Psi Inspire, and Revive do not allow units to use multi-action perks - It was bugging out the majority of the time so for consistency it's just disabled and labeled as so
Perks:
Smoke and Mirrors now grants everything that smoke grenade did and replaces it on the perk trees - Part of the effort to have items not named the same as perks. Should have no effect in-game (including in existing campaigns) except for a QoL improvement as the descriptions are more reasonable.
Smoke and Mirrors allows the first action not to end the turn on any support grenade use (from just smoke grenades) - Buff to support classes in general. Note: Support grenades include flash bangs, psi grenades, chem grenades, and smoke grenades.
Double Tap grants +20 aim on the 2nd shot (from +10) - Balance on trees, distinction
Savior grants 2 additional free medikit uses (from 0, originally 2) - Buff to the mid-late game healing power of medics
Combat drugs grants +15 aim/crit/will (from +20) - Balance
BeO back to +7.5 crit (from +6) - The nerf was due to a bug, back to it's original now that bug fixed
Executioner grants 30 aim (from 10) and 30 crit (from 50) - Significant boost to the perk due to lack of synergy with ITZ, toned down crit to prevent as much +100% crit rates, balance on the tree since it's up against perks like sprinter, Sent+Opp, Disabling Shot, etc.
Greater Mind Merge and Mind Merge grants 10 aim, 25 crit, 25 will, 25% DR (from 25 aim, 25 will + 10% of caster's will and 33% of caster's will in DR) and mind merge gains a 2-turn cooldown - Simplification, allows weaker will users to be just as effective, and the cooldown is to nerf the strength of supportive psionics on xcom and the spam potential on sectoids
In The Zone reworked: When this soldier fires a shot with a steadied weapon, the shot is a free action and 'In The Zone' activates. When active, all subsequent shots have a 70% chance of being a free action and the soldier is restricted to shooting, steadying a weapon, overwatching, reloading, hunkering, or activating One For All.
Mindfray cooldown to 3 turns (from 2) but also now lowers target defense by 25 - Minimizes spam from the aliens and makes it more useful for both xcom and aliens, helps distinguish it from psi panic by acting like a super holo-targeting
Psi Panic gains +20% chance to hit - buff vs psi inspiration as psi inspiration is really good
Equipment:
Battle Scanners can only be equipped by the scout - It was bugging out on other characters due to the reconnaissance perk and realistically you never really used the item anyway
Battle Scanner weight to 0 (from 1) and is no longer considered a support grenade - Slight buff now that it's scout specific, and change of equipment class so it didn't bug out with S&M and reconnaissance both triggering on it's use
MEC1 gains 10 defense but loses body shield - Distinguishes MEC2/3 from MEC1
UL-MEC3 mobility to 8 (from 7) - Balance
H-MEC3 health to 24 (from 26) - Balance
Breaching Ammo to -20 crit (from -30) - Balance
AP Ammo to -10 crit (from -20) - Balance
Elerium Emitter back to +2 mobility (from +1) - It was (surprisingly) too weak at +1
Alloy Jacketed Rounds and Enhanced Beam Optics price reduced - makes them more affordable in the early game
Sniper and Strike Rifle base ammo to 4 (from 3) - Buff to multiaction perk builds
Alloy bipod regains -5 aim and has 0 mobility - It was too much of an autopick otherwise
Reaper Rounds to 0 mobility and 25 crit (from -1 mobility and 20 crit) - Buffed for competition for item slots
Targeting Module weight to 0 (from 1) - Buffed for competition (acts as a superior laser sight)
XCOM:
Jaeger loses LnL and gains Sharpshooter - LnL was too strong with the new ITZ
Jaeger loses RTS and gains Holo Rounds - RTS would interfere with Sent and also was too specific of a perk to feel forced into if the player didn't pick up squadsight
Aliens:
Sectoids gain 20 less will during the first few months - Tone down the strength of their psionics
Ethereal defense lowered to 60 (from 80) - It was a little unnecessary at 80 as it eliminated even trying to hit them for a lot of units. 60 is more reasonable to allow for the odd shot to hit (especially considering distortion dodges 50% of them) and to make firing at the ethereal from a distance not as pointless
Cyberdisc aim to 100 (from 90) - Buff to it's offensive capabilities
Uber Ethereal loses Shock-Absorbent Armor and Absorption Fields but health increased to 70 (from 50) - It was too punishing against shots with the DR + regen
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug when commanding that sometimes caused a popup to display for multi-action perks even when the unit was not getting another action
Fixed a bug where mind control was too easy to accomplish
Slight alteration of air battle reports to be more clear
Fixed a bug with BeO triggering too often
Fixed a bug where sometimes SHIVs getting hit would trigger a "Smoke Grenade" popup - Thanks faffler
Fixed a bug where combat stims were still granting 1 DR - Thanks faffler
Fixed a bug where lead by example was only granting 1 health (instead of 2) - Thanks faffler
Pods were not patrolling like they should - Thanks to szmind for the fix
Fixed multiple text and description inaccuracies - Thanks to lafiir
Fixed a bug where stingrays were only doing ~900 dmg instead of 1300 (1300 is correct) - Thanks zazuza7 and lafiir
Fixed a bug where EMP weapons were doing less damage than intended - Thanks lafiir
Fixed a bug where EXALT heavies were slower and had less aim than intended - Thanks faffler
Fixed a bug where squadsight activations were not activating all intended pods - Thanks szmind for the code update
Fixed a bug where the Jaeger was sometimes getting +1 mobility - Thanks Medevalman
Version 1.18.10
Change Log - LW Rebalance v1.18.10:
Strategic Game:
Cadre grants 5 soldiers LPCL (from 4 to CPL) all of whom are on your first mission - Balance (thanks to faffler for pointing out the intricacies of the balance)
You now start with 3 random soldiers from your country (from 1), but they are not with you on the first mission - Makes the country start more represented in the troop population and gives you a 'little' leeway of who to bring on your first 3 missions
MECs have 50% more fatigue and injury time (it's tiring being robocop!) - Means it's harder to consistently field and level a large contingent of MECs. this is the nerf to late-game MEC overpower that seems to work best (as opposed to damage reductions or ammo restrictions or other solutions). It's nice because the MECs still feel strong but you can't fill your battles with only MECs as easily.
Research:
Pulse Lasers requires Berserker Interrogation - Pulse was a little too easy to get to (easier than gauss?) and made it too ideal to skip to. This puts it more in line with the other technologies requiring an interrogation to unlock (Laser = none/drone autopsy, Gauss = ExpWarfare (w Floater Int), Pulse = Berserker Int, Plasma = M.Elite Int)
Tactical Game:
Reduced the number of MEC classes to 4. Now Jaeger upgrades from Sniper/Scout, Maruarder upgrades from Infantry/Assault, Goliath upgrades from Gunner/Rocketeer, Shogun upgrades from Medic/Engineer (thanks to AxemanUnique for the idea) -- Really there was a lot of overlap and it wasn't ideal to have 8 MEC classes as there wasn't enough distinction. Also, it wasn't great how if you wanted a specific MEC you needed a specific other class - now you can get each MEC from 2 classes.
Air Game:
Updated text during air battles to be more succinct
Aliens:
All Sectopods start with HEAT Ammo (instead of acquiring it at 420 research) - A minor change as most of the time you meet a Sectopod the aliens have 420 research. The reason is that before 420 research, if you happen to run into a sectopod, it was too easy to trivialize the encounter with sitting a MEC with OFA in front of the sectopod. Then, when you tried that strategy as the aliens ticked over to 420 research it was frustrating as your MEC got obliterated.
Perks:
Reconnaissance grants only 2 battle scanners (from 3) - Nerf to accommodate the extra range
Grenadier works for the Grenade Launcher as well - Balance in the trees
Equipment:
Gauss Weapons have 1 penetration (from 0.5) and quench guns grants 2 penetration (from 1) - Buff to gauss overall with further specialization and distinction from the other weapon classes
Pulse Weapons have 20% crit (from 10%) - Buff to pulse. Despite being powerful, it's a compromise to make it more viable on classes that generally fire with low crit chances. Plus, it helps distinguish the weapon classes. Last, due to pulse requiring more research it's slightly more challenging to acquire.
Battle Scanner range increased to 12.5 tiles (from 10 tiles) - Now when you throw it you can visualize the squadsight tiles
MEC/SHIV weapon ammo to 3 (from 2) - It was too restrictive at 2 for gameplay
AM Rifle and AM Long Rifle ammo to 2 (from 1) - Buff for balance and ease of use (gameplay)
Restorative Mists heal for 8 (from 6) - Buff for balance
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where Advanced HEAT Tech wasn't doing enough damage
Version 1.18.9
Strategy Game:
Cadre only upgrades 4 units to CPL (from 5) - Balance
Air Game:
Damage Reduction can now reach 100% (from 95%) on UFOs - Consistency with the rest of the rebalance and a little more realistic
Tactical Game:
The first mission contains an extra pod of 4: Now 5 pods (3,3,4,4,4) instead of 4 pods (3,3,4,4) but you start the mission with a SHIV - Makes it more consistant as the SHIV is really effective -- also helps players realizes that SHIVs in the rebalance are effective. (thanks to szmind for the code!)
Perks:
Lone wolf grants 10 defense when active (from 0 defense) as well as 10 aim/crit - Slight boost to make the perk more competitive
Equipment:
Sniper Rifle penetration to 2 (from 1) - Buff to the class and it's effectiveness at dealing with robotic targets and targets in heavy cover
Hi Cap Mags can only be equipped by Infantry, Scout, Assault, Medic, Engineer - The ammo was reduced on the SHIVs and MECs to tone down their offensive strength and the hi cap mags were too easy of a way to get around that. Also, a hi caps mag didn't really make sense for a Minigun or a Pulse Lancer so it's nice to have it restricted to the 'rifles'. =P
Bug Fixes:
Fixed some red fog description text from not appearing correctly (thanks faffler)
Fixed laser sight description (thanks faffler)
Light 'Em Up Removed from Sectopods because it didn't do anything (thanks Seph67)
Version 1.18.8
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with an incorrect dgc.ini with test values that made certain items too strong (e.g. avalanche missles)
Version 1.18.7
Tactical:
Elerium Batteries foundry project now also grants an extra charge to the stun rifle - Helps the stun rifle be more rewarding to bring in during the mid to late game (as the cost is often higher)
Jellied Elerium foundry project grants a +3 tile range increase to destructive hand grenades, rockets, proximity mines, and the grenade launcher - buff to explosives into the mid and late game
MSGT bonus stats are now proportional to base stats: For each point higher/lower than the base stats, there is a 1% decreased/increased chance of acquiring the bonus - Stops overpowering of MSGTs (Blame faffler for his super badger) :)
Health only provides a 5% increase/decrease in fatigue/injury time - At 10% it was too much and made required character pools significantly smaller (van Doorn, Japenese early MSGT, etc. were not ideal)
Equipment:
Incinerator Module increases flamethrower damage by 5 (from 3) and weighs 0 (from -1) - Buff to the damage component of the flamethrower
All MEC1-2s have their mobility reduced by 1 - Balance, tones back offensive power of MECs, make the distinction b/w MEC1/2 and MEC3 more distinct
KSM now has 1 weight (from 0) - It was too strong inhibiting equipment variety on MECs (but it's fun enough that it should still be a little overpowered -- and it is)
SHIV/MEC weapons all have 2 ammo (from 3) - Tone back their offensive power (200% damage is nuts)
Perks:
Advanced HEAT Tech increases HEAT bonus damage to +200% (from +150%) - Buff to the engineer's anti-mechanical role
Bring 'Em On bonus crit damage to +6 (from +7.5) - Slight decrease to keep it inline with other perks
Javelin Rockets no longer increase the range on rockets - They just grant the +2 penetration now, as Jellied Elerium already increases the range
Flush has 40 aim (from 30) - Slight buff to make it more likely to land hits and more useful as a finisher
Mayhem grants +3 damage to grenades (from +2) - Buff to Engineer Grenadier, Shogun, Archer, and the spare grenade on the Sniper and Gunner
Aliens:
Muton Elites no longer pick up Mayhem at 420 research - It wasn't triggering with suppression and they were not supposed to be strong grenadiers
Sectopod Cluster bomb damage increased to 20 (from 7) - Makes it a lot more dangerous -- for a 2 turn attack it was pretty weak (compared to, for example, ethereal rift which is single turn). Also, it tends not to hit directly causing minimal (i.e. 1) damage.
Sectopods start with Light 'Em Up (instead of gaining them at leader level 8) - Means the early ones you fight have more offensive power
Ethereal health to 26 (from 20) - They were dying a little too easy
All Heavy Floaters start with HEAT ammo (instead of only leaders having them) - Makes MECs not effective at tanking heavy floater pods (previously you could just disable the leader and be OK). Improves the role for late game biotanks, helps tone back MECs.
Muton Berserker Health to 28 (from 24) - Makes them more of a threat (they were still a little too easy)
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where interceptors would not be repaired and would sit at 1 day of repair remaining - Bad programming on my part, sorry guys
Fixed a bug where Mayhem would sometimes still grant a damage boost to SAW/LMGs
Fixed a rare LW 1.0 Bug (I think) where EXALT could permanently disable your research - Very rare, but possible and campaign ending if it does occur
Fixed some description typos
Version 1.18.6
Strategic Game:
XCOM now starts every game with a spare satellite - Means if you ever get your only satellite shot down you can always replace it
Refuel and Rearm time increased to 12 hours (from 4) - Prevents having to spam the spacebar to tick away time and get planes back up in the air
Increased credits gained from countries by 30-50% - We were a little tight and this gives a more reliable cash flow as opposed to more variable means. Helps in the late game when a full base can cost a lot each month and when the aliens have taken over more countries.
Raider, Destroyer, Overseer health reduced by 20%, Upgraded Destroyer health increased by 20% - Makes mediums a little easier
Tactical Game:
The first mission is harder. It now contains 4 pods of size 3, 3, 4, and 4 and 14 aliens overall (from 4 pods of size 2, 2, 2, 1 and 7 aliens overall) - This is to act as a bit of a difficulty guide: if the first mission is too hard you should consider lowering the difficulty. It helps give players an idea of the difficulty before getting half way through the game.
Number of aliens on each mission is reduced by 0-25% (from 0-50%) - 50% was too much reduction, turning some swarming missions into what felt like light missions
The number of aliens in a non-hardcoded mission is now clamped between 3*#pods to 8*#pods - Prevents easy missions from being too much of a cake-walk and prevents some larger missions from bugging out due to oversaturation of pods
Command, Revive, and Psi Inspire no longer restrict the use of multi-action perks - Consistency with other perks (such as ITZ, etc.). Note: if you already used a perk like CE then you can't use it again after being commanded, but if you haven't used it then it is fair game.
All multi-action perks now work with each other and display a popup - Example: Paramedic now works with both Smoke Grenade ane Close Encounters (previously using one of them would cancel the effects of any of the others). The popup helps the player understand when they have saved an action. Note RnG still does not work with CE or HnR.
Perks:
HnR now only prevents shooting - In other words, psionics abilities, command, KSM, etc. are all usable after HnR. A buff as the scout/pathfinder was too weak with only 1 effective action per turn.
The Battle Scanner perk renamed to "Reconnaissance" and now grants 3 battle scanners (from 2) and makes the first battle scanner use each turn free - Buff to the perk and the scout
Ready For Anything grants +20 aim (from +15) - Further boost due to the lack of control of who you shoot at
The Concealment perk grants +2 mobility and +20 defense - Concealment is not as effective with the XCOM Scamper mechanic so it needed a significant boost to keep the scout class competitive
The Grenadier perk bonus range to 0 tiles (from +3 tiles) and bonus damage to 0 (from +1) but using a destructive grenade only costs a half action - Change of function: instead of making grenades stronger it allows you to spam them. Overall a slight nerf as the range increase was really good for HE grenades.
So Others May Live officer perk caps at +6 aim/will (from +8 aim/will) - Balance with combined arms
XCOM:
Maurader perk Rapid Fire replaced with HnR - RF was a little too strong on the Maurader, esp in combo with RnG. This still gives a unique choice to the Maurader without making RnG too powerful. Also, RF was bugged on MECs and this was the last MEC to have RF.
Aliens:
Muton Rifles deal 1 less damage and Muton Elite Rifles deal 2 less damage - Makes them both slightly less of a difficulty spike when you start to face them and makes surviving multiple rounds against them more reasonable
Sectoids gain 1 health, Drones gain 1 health, Thinmen gain 1 health, Outsiders all gain Close Combat Specialist - Makes them more difficult. Increased difficulty in the early game as the early game was too easy. Outsiders are more difficult to run up to and kill now making them a lot more worth - suppression is a lot more useful.
Removed hyperreactive pupils, depth perception, deadeye, Fortiores Una, and other minor perks from aliens - The list of perks aliens could sometimes get was more in the realm of overwhelming than fun, this helps a little while having a minimal overall effect
Equipment:
Motion Tracker range increased by 5 tiles (from 25 to 30) and charges to 3 (from 2) - With the XCOM Scamper mechanic, scouting is less mandatory and needed a slight boost for balance
Rocket Radius decreased to 6 (from 8) - A tone down as the more enemies we fight at once have made rockets a lot stronger -- also makes it more useful in tighter areas
Foundry:
Enhanced Lasers and Enhanced Ballistic Foundry projects significantly decreased in cost - They were too expensive previously
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug where paramedic was triggering the movement reduction of close encounters
Fixed a bug where aliens were not activating all other pods that they could see at the end of each of their turns
Fixed a bug where concealment was activating enemy pods
Version 1.18.5
Tech Tree:
Added colors to some of the longer lines to make it easier to identify which techs are required for each item
Squadron Unleashed:
UFOs will target supporting aircraft in lead formation twice as often as supporting aircraft in mid formation and 4x as often as supporting aircraft in the rear of a formation. Note: this does not change the amount of shots or damage the UFO deals, just what the targeting priority of the UFO is - Thanks to szmind (again) for the fantastic code :) This basically means that the formation position of your supporting aircraft makes a difference. This active aircraft will always take 50% of the UFOs shots, but the supporting aircraft will divide the remaining 50% amoungst them. If you had 3 supporting aircraft (2 leads and 1 mid) the leads would each have a 20% chance of being targeted and the mid would have a 10% chance of being targeted.
XCOM:
All MECs start with 11 mobility (from 13) - The ability to never be flanked and not use cover is really powerful but was tempered by the previous pod mechanics which made getting close often a poor tactical decision. With the pod mechanics unleashed, MECs have become significantly more powerful. This mobility hit should pull them back a little so they aren't too strong.
Perks:
Aggression no longer grants the +1.5 crit at all ranges (now it only grants +3 crit damage if within 4 tiles) - Nerf due to the increased ease of getting close to targets -- +4.5 damage was too much. This still encourages the perk holder to get close but isn't as damaging overall.
Close Combat Specialist no longer grants DR (from 30% within 4 tiles) - Nerf due to the increased ease of getting close to targets significantly increassing the damage capabilities of CCS, makes the chitin plating more useful.
Shock-Absorbant Armor only grants +30% DR within 8 tiles (from 50%) - Nerf due to the increased capability of getting close to targets and activating SAA, makes the chitin plating more useful.
Brawler only grants +30% DR and +1 damage within 4 tiles (from 8 tiles) - Nerf due to the increased capability of getting close to targets. Keeps their effectiveness against melee units.
Equipment:
KSM damage reduced to 20 (from 30) but still penetrate all damage reduction - Was too easy to get close to enemies and use due to new pod activation mechanics. With the significantly increased ease of getting close to aliens shotguns were appropriately nerfed but KSM was left off. Also, they needed a little tweak down even before that due to the full penetration being a little stronger than anticipated. Thumper effectiveness is proportionally increased.
Pulse crit bonus to 10 (from 25) - Was too powerful with the added crit bonus damage due to flanking being easier with the new pod activation mechanics. Also it made some +crit% perks less ideal as it was passing 100% on some flanked targets
Aliens:
Berserker damage increased to 14 (from 10, originally 10) - Makes them more of a threat when they get close. Accommodates for the prevalance of Hardened, Brawler, SAA, and Chitin plating on xcom units. Makes the chitin plating more useful. Note: this does make using cover a poor strategy against them, but that is the dynamic they were designed to create. This is because you'll get charged for a lot of damage. This makes non-cover units like SHIVs and especially MECs even more important against them.
Chryssalid damage increased to 8 (from 6, originally 8) - Makes them more of a threat when they get close. Accommodates for the prevalance of Hardened, Brawler, SAA, and Chitin plating on xcom units. Makes the chitin plating more useful.
Bug Fixes:
LW 1.0 Bug Fix: Enemy pods that trigger on the enemy turn will no longer get an additional turn - Thank the lord for szmind and this fix. This bug has nailed me quite a few times in both LW 1.0 and the rebalance when an enemy pod triggers another enemy pod which the scampers and proceed to have a full turn against me. With this change all enemy pods SHOULD only ever scamper on the turn they are revealed.
Finally found a way to add an in-game icon to the stun rifle - Thanks szmind! =D
Updated the tooltip on Red Fog to indicate that will minimizes the effect and that it can decrease throw range
LW 1.0 Bug Fix: The battlescanner no longer prevents lone wolf from triggering - thanks to szmind for the code
Version 1.18.4
Marksman's Scope: Aim to +5 (from +10) but weight to 0 (from 1) - Consistency with the other scopes, accidentally left off 1.18.3 changes
Bug Fix: Regular Scope now properly is 0 weight - Accidentally left off previous version
Version 1.18.3
Strategic:
Item and Facility build times reduced back to normal rates (from double rates) - The rush time is still effective when you need it but it shouldn't be so mandatory
Item meld rush cost to 2 (from 5) - Makes it less than facilities
Initial panic levels decreased to 200/400/600/800 (from 300/500/700/900) - A little more wiggle room to pass the campaigns
Panic increase for UFOs not attacked dereased to 3 (from 5, originally 2) - Too much uncontrolled panic made RNG too much of a factor in how successful the campaign was
Panic reduction for successfuly abudction missions increased to 3 (from 2) - Offsets the normal gain from UFO missions so that country remains even on panic after a successful abduction mission
Panic increase from bombing missions reduce to 10 (from 15, originally 8) - They were a little too hard to prevent, making RNG a little too much of a factor. This tones them down.
Air Game:
Stingray Missle damage increased by 30% - Gives xcom always something to deal with armored UFOs at the cost of destroying the UFO
Interceptor repair time to 300 hours (from 450 hours, originally 600 hours) - Significant increase to xcom's ability to field an effective defense against alien UFOs and also helps recover from bad RNG
Resources:
UFOs grant 33% more alloys - It was a little light
Slight tweak to continent bonuses - Slight buff to NA, Europe, Asia. Slight nerf to SA.
Council requests can request a more variable amount of each resource and offer a lot more as well - Makes requests more various, provides more income if able to comply, makes random resources (e.g. thin man corpses) more valuable
Research:
Alien Power Systems no longer requires Berserker Interrogation - It was cutting off too much tech if you didn't happen to get berserkers
Advanced Power Armors now requires Berserker Interrogation - More fitting for the Berserker and less restrictive on overall research
Tactical:
New Feature: When you trigger any enemy pod, all of your units that have exhausted their moves get 1 free move to reposition themselves (just move, no other action). This does not work on units that are suppressing, overwatching, or hunkered. - Thanks to tracktwo and szmind for this amazing code! This works very similar to the alien scamper that they get when they are revealed. It prevents triggering a pod on the end of your turn and then getting destroyed by the aliens on their turn. Each time you trigger a pod it will give your units that have used all their moves a free move. You can tell which units it is affecting as their health pips have turned red.
Updated szmind's Sequential Overwatch to 1.2 (disabling instantaneous double firing with covering fire) - Makes mechtoids more effective and was a little unrealistic, Makes lightning reflex firing at units with covering fire and sentinel more doable
Shotguns only receive 50% of base damage for getting close to their targest (from 100%) - With the new pod mechanics, getting close to enemies is easier than ever and this has seriously boost the strength of the shotgun - a nerf was in order
Exalt Transmitters will only disable exalt 50% of the time - They are still nice at 50% and at 75% they were being used too strongly to avoid battles with exalt. This encourages the players to engage and fight the exalt more instead of disabling and running by as much.
Perks:
Collateral Damage now uses an entire ammo clip and is now fixed to deal 50% damage (was bugged before doing only 1 damage) - This is partly because it was really powerful (as it was bugged only doing 1 damage and is now fixed doing 50% damage), and partly because it has a bug that it can't be used with less than max ammo
Mayhem no longer grants SAWs/LMGs +2 damage - Balance on the gunner tree as mayhem suppression was too strong (especially with danger zone)
Hit and Run now allows you to reload, overwatch, stead aim, One For All, or hunker afterwards. No longer grants +2 mobility - Buff and nerf. Gives you a few more actions as it felt too restrictive before and was a little too weak
Will to Survive no longer grants +2 mobility but grants +2 armor health instead - Nerf to the use of it as a mobility buff for non-tanking purposes (was previously buffed to make biotanks effective but they are very effective already). Nerf to the offensive potential of close ranged tanky classes (as with the pod triggering mechanics they got a significant buff).
Equipment:
Scope weight to 0 (from 1), crit bonus on foundry project to +5 (from +10) - Sacrifices 5 crit to gain 1 mobility to make it more competitive (also standardizes scope/lasersight/neuralgunlink at 0 weight)
XCOM:
Chance a soldier is from each country is reset to vanilla levels - with set soldiers we already have soldiers from the major countries and it's nice to get soldiers from a larger variation (this is still dgc.ini editable)
Aliens:
Cyberdisc aim increased to 90 (from 70) - It encourages you to use tanking units to occupy their fire instead of trying to dodge it or suppress/smoke it away, and they needed a buff
Ethereal will to 150 (from 120) - Helps reduce the effectiveness of neural feedback against them (as high will neural feedback soldiers were too strong against them) and buffs their damage to levels that make you hate them more
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where there was a conflict with the Exalt Scan reminder and the Set 15 soldiers from the beginning of the game: Exalt scan reminders would accidentally give you 15 of the set soldiers. - Fixed now.
Fixed a bug where the Japanese "Ring of Fire" start would sometimes cause a crash
Fixed a bug that was supposedly fixed in 1.18.2 but had forgotten to be uploaded about medic saying it got 10 aim.
Fixed a bug where scopes were giving you 5 crit and not 5 aim - Whoops =P
Fixed a bug where pods were getting revealed by stealth units - thanks to szmind
Fixed a bug where battle scanners and/or the LoS indicating mod would reveal pods - thanks to szmind
Fixed a bug that was causing collateral damage to deal 1 damage (from 50% base)
Fixed a LW 1.0 bug where council requests were not evenly distributed for DW games
Version 1.18.2
Bug Fix: Hopefully fixed a bug where sometimes aliens would stand around in a hybrid active/inactive state and sometimes would be revealed without a 'scamper' vision
Bug Fix: Field Medic incorrectly reported the medic gained 10 aim (it only gains 5) - Fixed
Version 1.18.1
Bug Fix: Scout still was starting with Low Profile (instead of battle scanner). This is fixed now.
Note: The only file that has changed is the "defaultgamecore.ini" file. So you only need to replace that one to update from v1.18.0, but you can still replace all files for a full install.
Version 1.18.0
New installation procedure:
Patcher GUI is not necessary
Simply copy the files into the associated directories (see new instructions on webpage)
Will work on any clean install of LW 1.0 or any previous version of LW Rebalance -- no need to run any uninstall files when upgrading
New Incoporated Mods:
The following mods are now incoporated into LW Rebalance so you do not need to install them individually:
Line of Sight Indicators (by tracktwo): http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/666/?
LoadoutManager (by tracktwo): http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/656/?
Cleanse of the Clones (by SirDrD): http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/514/?
Campaign Summary (by tracktwo): https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/626/?
Squadron Unleashed (by szmind): https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/710/?
Overall Game:
New Second wave option: More Than PI (Perfect Information) - Displays popups of hit %, crit % and psi % - QoL improvement
New Second wave option: Fresh Recruits - The soldiers you start with will be random. Similar to LW 1.0 where all of your starting soldiers are randomized.
The Training Roullette second wave option is redesigned to work with LW Rebalance now - It wasn't really working before as it had class perks as random perks and other odd things happening when you used it
Squadron Unleashed Mod Incorporation:
Incorporated szmind's amazing "Squadron Unleashed" mod - Allows sending mulitple and/or damaged ships against UFOs - HUGE thanks to szmind and his amazing work with that mod as he helped me incorporate and fix it so it works well within the rebalance. It's incredible stuff.
You can always send 2 interceptors out, Lt's can send 3, Majors can send 4, and Cmdr's can send 5 (so it's 2,3,3,4,4,5 from 1,2,3,4,5,6) - This allows you to always be able to send out a squadron (which feels cool), makes that initial rank feel important (so ranks feel like they matter), and makes the strength of xcom not so various throughout a campaign (helps make it easier to balance and accommodate fluctuations in how players are performing as the majority of the game will be with 3-4 planes)
Enemy UFOs have no stance and the weapon item card does not show UFO stances anymore - Stops gaming the UFOs and it was getting a little too convoluted with all the different stance combinations to figure out a reasonable strategy quickly
Stances/aggro are replaced with formation positions: You can set your formation in the squadraon to either Lead, Mid, or Rear and have +10/-10 aim/dodge for Lead and vice versa for Rear. Lead planes will always be chosen over Mid planes which will always be chosen over Rear planes when selecting the squadron leader. It makes for some very interesting strategy and dynamics and is more simplified and clean.
Formation positions have no extra effects on modifying hits or misses above the +10/-10 (in the original Squadron Unleashed they have a 23% chance) - A little more straight forward
Lone Bullets (bullets that miss the primary interceptor) work differently than in the Squadron Unleashed mod: The UFO will now target the primary plane 50% of the time and a random supporting plane 50% of the time (from always targeting lead and all misses targeting supporting ships). The UFOs will also have it's normal aim on shots against supporting ships (instead of 0/20/40% automatically based on supporting ship stance). - Makes a little more sense as it wasn't realistic that each miss had a chance to hit every single supporting plane like they were all in a line in front of the UFO.
Fixed promotions to work with dynamic war and set a minimum number of kills you need for promotions to 1/2/3/4/5 so that you never actually skip ranks - Though this means at DW values less than 0.5 your pilots will rank up slightly slower than what is fair
Air Game:
Lots of air game stat changes for UFO weapons, XCOM weapons, XCOM ships, and UFOs - Balancing of the squadron unleashed mod to fit LW Rebalance (see front page for details)
Each kill a pilot gets grants +1 aim (from +3) and have no aim cap - It was too penalizing to lose high level pilots and now it is not so mandatory to have them (late game UFO stats were balanced around this)
Pilot kills no longer grant a damage boost - It was too insignificant vs the aim boost that it didn't really matter but was making calculations difficult unecessarily
Renaming ships will maintain their rank - Quality of life change
Critical hits do 150% damage (from 200% damage) - A little less extreme while fighting so planes don't disappear in a single shot as much and fights are more predictable
Chance to critically hit is now clamped between 0 and 100% (from 5-25%) - Makes it so the minimum crit chances aren't affecting normal ship weapons so it's easier to see your DPS (as weapons with 0 crit would previously gain 5 crit which is a really hidden mechanic that isn't obvious enough to players)
I thought this point might help people understand too: Crit chance is Penetration/10 and crit resist is DR/10. So an EMP with 200% penetration has a 20% crit rate -- Against a scout (0% DR) it would keep that 20% crit and against a fighter (75% DR, thus 7.5% crit resist) it would have only a 12.5% crit rate
Aim now clamped between 0 and 100% (from 5-95%) - Makes it so you can have ships that still suffer at the low end of aim and 100% is reasonable to achieve. Also, keeps it consistant with crit.
Normal hits do 80-120% damage (from 100-150% damage) - Same as above: A little less extreme while fighting -- also makes the displayed damage a reasonable calculation (instead of the minimum). Now max damage is 1.2 * 1.5 = 180% damage instead of 1.5 * 2 = 300% damage.
The list of interceptors does not re-sort itself everytime you select an interceptor of different aggro - Was sometimes annoying and would lead to misclicking and lack of awareness of which plane was where on the list (thanks to szmind for the code)
Aircraft weapons are now all long range graphically - Helps clear things up about what's going on in the chaotic battle view
You can't send the same aircraft back at a UFO repeatedly anymore -- It now must reach home and refuel before re-engaging - Stops some unintended behaviour (thanks to szmind for the code)
All ships explode (instead of being shotdown) at an x% chance where x is the overkill damage divided by 10. To figure out the chance you'll destroy a UFO the formula is %chance = 1 - (0.5^[dmg/1000]) (I hope) - Makes it so early game there are mostly shot down UFOs and later game more destroyed UFOs. Having all ships the same means that you don't have to try and recalculate for each ship and you can easily understand an apply the values.
DW modifies the kills you need to rank up your pilots and modifies the %aim bonus that kills net you - This is awesome and should have been in regular LW 1.0. It makes it so rank ups aren't half as effective in DW 0.5 games
Adjusted what the UI Weaponcard considers a fast, medium, or slow rate of fire - Because weapons generally fire slower
UFOs do not gain aim and damage bonuses each month but their health bonuses are +10% per month (except scouts/fighters which are +50% per month) - It's a lot easier to calculate the variables of the air battles and thus use strategy to win when the variables are not changing. The health means that the air game still gets a lot more difficult and even later game scouts get pretty tanky.
UFOs have 50%/40%/20%/0% less health on normal/classic/brutal/impossible - This is a big and really fantastic change. This makes it so that air game actually changes difficulty based on the difficulty you choose. Now impossible can have a more challenging air game and normal can have an easier one (instead of always trying to balance one setting for all 4 difficulties).
Removed wingtip sparrowhawks as a researchable tech - It made it very difficult to calculate air battle outcomes and made the air battles too chaotic when viewing. Plus, it minimizes the importance of the distinct qualities of each weapon so choosing a specific weapon became less important.
Medium UFOs and Large UFOs are easier to hit (50% more aim and 100% more aim to xcom aircraft, respectively) - It makes a lot of sense that the bigger ships are easier to hit and is balanced out in ship stats.
Strategic Game:
Modified costs of multiple gene mods, foundry projects, facilities, items, etc. - See in-game for details: mostly to make things easier/harder to get and to make the resources they required more desirable
Multiple modifications to starting bonuses (see in-game) - Balance reasons
Alien Command and Control requires only Sectoid Command Interrogation (and not Ethereal Interrogation) - Speeds up the end game a lot as you no longer need to capture and interrogate an ethereal to pass the game
You do not require mind control to use the gollop chamber, only mind merge - Speeds up the end game a lot as you not longer need to get rank 5 psionics, only rank 3
Mind control psi training chance to 2x(will-55)% (from 2x(will-35)%) - Since it is not needed anymore, it's nice to make it a lot more restrictive again as it was still somewhat abusive to the point that it's better being a more rare ability
Minimum and consecutive engineers/scientists required for workshops/uplinks/laboratories increased to 20 (from 15) - Slows down covering the planet with satellites, slows down lab and workshop blocks
Missions are slightly more difficult on average (0.5 increase in average difficulty) - Makes a few less light missions and few more harder missions
Build times for items and buildings increased by 100% - Makes engineers more valuable and rushing buildings sometimes useful (as oppossed to almost never)
Rushing a facility/item requires only 20% more resources (from 50%) and 5 meld (from 20 or 2+itemcost/40 more meld) - Makes it far more reasonable to rush something from a resource perspective
To get a grade of A at the end of the month you need to have no escaped UFOs - Makes the grade more variable and gives the player something to work towards
You cannot remove soldiers from psionic training once they start training - Makes psionic training similar to MEC chopping and genetic amping. The reason is because it was gamey and required unideal micromanagement to pull soldiers in and out of the labs all the time. Theoretically you should always have someone in the lab and pull them out for missions if need be, now it's more of a choice and less micromanaging knowing that they are more committed.
Fusion Reactors grant 12 power (from 8) - Makes it less necessary to rush for thermal
Aliens gain 20% more resources for successful harvest missions and lose 20% less from having their UFOs shotdown - overall it makes them more aggressive as they'll have a few more resources. (see: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Resources_(Long_War))
Friends in Low Places, Confounding Light, Gangplank, Deluge, and Furies all start 1 month later - Due to increased difficultly with the new pod mechanics and their enemies being hardcoded (see below)
Xenobiology and Xenoneurolofy does not research twice as quick anymore and at half the cost anymore - It was too fast off the bat with the added scientists
The Improved Stun Rifle foundry project renamed to "Elerium Batteries" and additional has the effect of increasing the motion tracker charges by 1 - The stun rifle buff wasn't that great and this is a nice way to increase scouting into the mid game. Also, with the new pod reveal mechanic (see below), some additional scouting was warranted.
The XCOM Training Programs have been beefed up. OTS 1: PFCs gain 20xp/day, OTS 3: SPECs gain 40xp/day, OTS 5: LCPLs gain 50xp/day (from OTS 2: PFCs gain 10xp/day, OTS 4: SPECs gain 20xp/day) - Significantly increases the depth of rosters making losing soldiers not so punishing and giving players more reasonable replacements into the mid to end game
Global Panic:
**Please note, you WILL lose more countries than before. It is a race for you to finish before the aliens successfully take over every major country around the earth.**
Initial Panic spread out slightly more to 300/500/700/900 (from 500/600/700/800) - Makes the difficulties of abductions more reasonable as the panic is a major factor in abduction difficulty. This then also makes the game difficulties a little more distinct.
Panic increases for undisturbed regular UFO missions increased to 5 (from 2) - More panic generation throughout the campaign, encouraging you to end it early as the entire world panics more and more
Panic increases for undisturbed bombing raids increased to 15 (from 8) - More panic generation throughout the campaign, encouraging you to end it early as the entire world panics more and more
Panic reduction for adding a satellite to a country reduced to 5 (from 10) - Makes overall a little harder to reduce panic and a net panic increase when a satellite is shotdown and then you replace it
Passing an exalt mission only lowers panic by 5 (from 20) - Makes it overall a little harder to reduce panic
Council missions that lower panic only lower it by 5 (from 20) - Makes it overall a little harder to reduce panic, stops 0.5 DW games from getting a significant advantage in panic reduction each month
Failing a council mission raises panic by only 10-20 (from 20-40) - Makes it less devestating when you do fail a bomb mission or something (remember 0.5 DW games can double everything)
Terror mission panic changes are decreased to around a third of what they were: for each civilian you lose the panic goes up by 1 (from 3) in the country and 0.3 (from 1) in the adjacent countries to a max of around 15 (from 45) in the country and 5 in the adjacent countries (note: DW does double this and you still lose the country straight out if you fail the terror mission) (double note: if you do well you can still actually improve the panic situation) - It's a little more realistic. The # you save should be so essential. With the huge weight of the terror missions before it was too easy to lose countries after each mission even if you did reasonably well.
Resources:
At the end of each month you will always recruit 2-4 soldiers (instead of the complicated formula) - It's actually nice to get fresh blood and it was too gamey to try to keep less soldiers to get more each month. At an average of 3 per month it shouldn't cause much bloataing and you can always dismiss excess soldiers. It also makes recruiting soldiers less necessary.
Newly hired recruits take 18 days to arrive (from 9) - Encourages using which troops you have when the roster gets tight
Elerium gained from shot down UFOs increased slightly to 10-20% (from 5-15%) - Helps offset RNG from screwing you as much if you don't get many landed UFOs (or fail at them because they are pretty hard sometimes)
Alloy gain increased by approximately 33% - There were too many tasks that couldn't be completed upon reaching the end of the game, this should help (elerium can still be player controlled by tackling landeds which can give ample)
Alloy gain per UFO changed to 15/30/60/75/120 (from 28/42-48/56/70/84) - Makes the larger ships worth the plunder and helps balance out the alloy gain curve as we were getting a little too much early
Weapon Fragments increased by 15% on brutal difficutly, 25% on classic difficulty, and 50% on normal difficulty - The less aliens and more frequent light missions were yielding too low fragement amounts - this should accommodate for that
Alloys and Elerium sell for 2 each (from 1, originally 3) - It's still not smart to sell them. But at least if you are really cash strapped this can help you in a pinch. It also makes resource management easier by allowing costly but at least somewhat reasonable conversion of materials to cash.
Meld sells for 5 (from 10) - Prevents cash influx from being as swingy (a few triple meld missions vs a few no meld missions) and may help encourage players to hold on to meld a little longer, helps accommodate for increased meld accumulation from the 20% boost and from aliens having more resources
Starting cash to 500 (from 1000) - We were getting a little too much cash off the bat. This makes some better early tension on facilities vs interceptors vs soldiers that makes early choices more impactful
Overall funding per difficulty reduced to 100/110/130/150% (from 100/120/160/200%) on impossible/brutal/classic/normal - This hits normal the most and is a 25% reduction in month-end cash flow on normal and has no effect on impossible. Overall a decrease in cash flow on the easier difficulties.
Overall funding from countries decreased by another 25% - We had slightly too much cash still
Council requests reward more cash for fullfilling them - Makes giving away resources more appealing
Tactical Game:
Revealing a pod now also reveals all other pods that that pod can see, and at the end of each alien turn any active pods will reveal any inactive pods they can see - Thanks to szmind for the code! This is a huge change in gameplay. It is a really nice realism touch (as aliens would call for help from any of their buddies they can see when they see you) but is much more than just that: It means when you are fighting a pod you will always be able to immediately approach that pod without worry about "pod mechanics" and triggering an inactive pod (as all pods within sight of the originally triggered pod would have become active. It prevents feeling like you have to "game" the pod mechanic. It means you don't have to sit back when fighting a pod worried that if you move foward another tile you'll trigger another pod. Now if you are fighting the aliens you can feel confident that no other pod is within sight range of the triggered pod. The gameplay change is a very welcomed change, especially to those players who dislike the feeling that they have to game the pod mechanic. Comments like this from levand "However, I find it quite immersion breaking that (especially at higher difficulty levels) pod activation is, by far, the most important tactical consideration. Reliably pull one pod at a time, and you can't lose. Accidentally activate 3, and you are screwed." or this from gotoucanario: "pod activation is easily what I dislikethe most of EU/EW and Xcom 2. I hate that most of the time I am more concerned on not popping another pod than dealing with the current pod, I hate that 50% of the time I want to do something aggressive I won't because there's a good chance I'll meet another pod and get insta flanked by the alien's free move. Feels like a good portion of winning is centered around "gaming" the game rather than legit tactics." won't apply anymore. Overall the testing has been really positive. This does make the game more difficult though, so alien numbers have been turned down, but it will require some adjustment to usual strategies. More prudent scouting, killing straglers quick, and battle scanning use can really help you activate in the right situation.
Overall number of aliens on non-hardcoded missions is reduced by 0-50% (it's random) - Accommodates for more pods triggering at once, and makes the size of the alien force more unknown. Note that this means swarming missions can be more dangerous than ever and you may have to retreat the odd time
Exalt numbers and pods on covert ops and extractions reduced to 50% and 70% (from 70% and 100%) but number of xcom sent on the missions reduced to 2 and 4 (from 3 and 5), respectively - Exalt missions were not affected by the 0-50% normal reduction of aliens. Makes the covert op more important and further distinguishes these type of mission from other missions. Less pods works better with the new pod mechanics.
Exalt base raid alien numbers and pods reduced by ~30% - Was the only other missions that wasn't accommodated for the new pod mechanics (testing showed that this was a reasonable compromise to keep difficulty on par)
Terror Mission pods reduced by 30% - There were too many and it was triggering a few too many at once due to the concentration. This seems to work the best.
For each base health a soldier has above/below the average health of a soldier, fatigue and injury times are reduced/increased by 10% (from 5%) - Makes health more important (it needed a boost) and slightly lowers overall injury and fatigue times (as people level up and gain more base health)
Acid grants -5 DR (from the greater of -3 DR and 50% of the DR) - Simplification and acts as a buff.
Shotguns no longer have an overall +50% DR penalty -- instead, they only have a penalty against hardened targets (in which hardened grants 50 %DR instead of 30%) - so now they aren't worse against cover-based DR, absorption fields, damage control, innate DR, etc. Overall this is a buff to shotguns. Previously a drone with [2 innate DR and 30% DR] against shotguns used effectively have [3 innate DR and 45% DR] but now would have [2 innate DR and 50% DR]; so the shotgun would do slightly more damage to hardened targets. Previously a muton with wts in cover with [50% DR] against shotguns used to effectively have [75% DR] but now would have [50% DR]. Overall acts like +1 damage up to double damage on shotguns against hardened targets.
MEC Close Combat perk does not increase the damage of the KSM anymore, it simply provides it with the light 'em up capability only - Slight nerf to damage on KSM (due to thumper dmg increase and keeping it relatively balanced)
Enhanced Lasers (and thus the item Enhanced Beam Optics) is now available after researching Beam Lasers (instead of Advanced Beam Lasers) - Puts a much needed damage upgrade to laser weapons on the table a lot earlier
Green Fog no longer affects SHIVs - Many people requested this and after beating my head against the wall I now realize it's a nice buff to SHIVs and more realistic
Green Fog ticks down aim/will/mobility by 1-3 (from 1-2) - Makes it slightly more impactful and more random how it affects each soldier
XCOM:
The soldiers you start with are always the same 15 soldiers + 1 from your home country (you can use the 2nd wave option Fresh Recruits to turn this off) - This way you can get to know the soldiers are little more between campaigns and talk to others about similar soldiers. Also you'll recongize the soldiers more. It worked awesome with the few set soldiers in X2 and through testing this version it is working well in the rebalance.
Some of the soldiers you start with have more unique faces - Incoporation of some of the 'cheat' character models in the set of 15 soldiers you start with (note: you can still modify how the set characters look by changing their race which resets them to a normal character so you can modify their look - but you will lose their original look if you do so)
Customized unique soldiers (e.g. Van Doorn, Freaky, Zhang, etc.) will now receive the country starting bonuses (e.g. Survival Training = 2hp) and second wave options will affect them (Strict Screening and Cinematic Mode) - This was kind of ignored in LW 1.0 so it's nice to have now
Zhang, Alecto, and Carlock start at lower ranks - So that it's less likely they are the highest ranking soldiers in xcom when they join (even if Carlock was a SGT in his old service)
Starting SHIV base health to 10 (from 16) - Help tone back the early game SHIV dominance. Note: this does not affect alloy or hover SHIVs.
SHIVs take twice as long to repair (2 days base instead of 1) - It was too insignificant before
Hidden potential causes promotion aim/will gains to be randomized between 50-150% (from 0-200%) - makes it a little less extreme so you don't end up with some super soldiers and some low soldiers after promoting. It was previously more extreme because all soldiers were 'balanced'. Now that 'balanced soldiers' is a second wave option the extremeness is not as needed and some of it's drawbacks can be addressed.
A few minor perk tree changes and class stat changes (see image)
MSGTs always have a chance (from a 40% chance) to gain bonus stats when completing a mission (5/10/20/40% for mobility/health/aim/will) and lower ranks do not gain bonus stats - Instead of a 10/20/30/40% chance to gain the stats for SGT/TSGT/GSGT/MSGT it's simply 100% chance after each battle for MSGTs (it was too slow for MSGTs previously and barely made a difference for the other classes)
MSGT xp required to 7000 (from 6500) - It was a little too tight
Weighting of stats for will/aim/health/mobility changed to 1/2/4/8 (from 1/3/6/12) - Will was a little too underweighted, this mostly just gives will 50% more weight vs the other stats. Effects MEC chopping bonus stats, SGT->MSGT bonus stats, "balanced soldiers", and initial country bonus stats
Psionic XP levels reverted to LW 1.0 levels - With no need for mind control to pass the game there was also no need to rush the growth of psionic units
Range of mobility levels for soldiers decreased to 12-14 (from 11-15) - Makes it less likely to get the frustrating low mobility soldiers
Perks:
New perk Death from Afar: activates when firing at squadsight range and grants +10 aim and removes the critical hit penalty - A new perk for snipers with distinct gameplay that encourages you to keep your sniper at range
New perk Distortion: Aim-based attacks will miss 50% of the time, exposions will dissipate dealing 0-1 damage, and nearby allies in cover gain +10 cover-based defense - New perk for Ethereals
New perk Brawler: Grants 30% DR and +1 damage when within 8 tiles of the target. Grants Opportunist [Reaction shots have no aim penalty and can crit]. - A perk for the assault and maruader that further distinguishes them from other classes and boosts their CCS.
Dense smoke grants +20% DR on top of the +20 defense (+50 defense total) - Buff to dense smoke -- makes it useful even when you aren't interested in additional defense
Holo is applied during both reaction fire and during collateral damage (it used to be applied during neither) - Makes more sense and is nice for reaction fire classes with holo rounds and the shogun
Mayhem no longer grants a damage boost to the arc rifle - Due to redesign
Grenadier grants +3 tiles to grenade range (from +20% range) - Acts as more of a buff to the shorter range grenades
Executioner grants +50 crit (from +40) - With the recent changes in the last few versions to the perk trees it needed a little buff to be more competitive
Close Encounters reduces mobility by 65% after activating - Nerf due to the +DR removal on shotguns and balance between classes. Discourages the hit and run style of approach, distinguishing it further from Hit and Run by encouarging sitting close and being engaged in the midst of it all. Focuses this perk more on damage output as opposed guerilla attacks. It pairs more with the theme of RnG which is move in but stay there. It plays out that you feel like pushing the assault to the front lines more often (which is where he/she should be).
Close Combat Specialist only reduces damage within 4 tiles by 30% (from 50%) - Slight nerf as the stacking with SAA was problematic and the perk got a significant boost with the Brawler addition
Battle Scanner grants Low Profile (from vice versa) - just a QoL change
Hit and Run reworked: The first standard shot of each turn does not cost an action but subsequent actions are limited to moving and move-based actions. Also grants +2 mobility. - Nerf for balance (esp with the +DR removal on shotguns). Focuses the use on 'hit and run' and mobility as it was often being used as a 'use 2 actions but try not to make it dmg related' and was a little too strong. Also, the damage reduction was fairly illogical and sometimes a hard pill to swallow. Side Note: Finally I got Hit and Run to actually be about Hit and Running! =D
ITZ now grants +10 aim/crit when first triggered each turn (from -5 aim/crit after each successive kill) - Buff to the subsequent shots on the perk, fits the role of feeling "In the zone". With the requirement of holding still and requiring a kill on generally more sturdy aliens this perk needed some more love to be competitive. Plus it didn't makes sense that a soldier who was "In the zone" had aim and crit maluses. This new version feels a lot better.
Double Tap grants +10 aim on the 2nd shot (from +0 aim) - Minor buff to the perk
Mind Merge grants +25 aim (from +0) - It was too focused on only tanking. This should make it more balanced between boosting psi, boosting damage, and boosting DR. It also means it is not a poor move when then AI does it and is now quite deadly. Also is a lot nastier with greater mind merge.
Rapid Reaction grants +10 aim on reaction fire (from +20) - It was a little too strong at +20. Also gameplay was worse due to too much encouragement to save shots for only overwatch. (Thanks siemic)
Ready For Anything grants +15 aim on reaction fire (from +10) - Slight buff to be more competitive on the trees
Covering Fire grants +20 aim on reaction fire at targets in cover (from +25) - Slight nerf for balance
Bioelectric Skin range increased from 7.5 to 10 tiles - It was a little too short range and could use a slight buff
The officer's Command ability can be used once per turn (from once every other turn) - Makes officers more relevant and important
Disabling shot is not affected by +dmg perks and items - makes it easier to not kill targets you are trying to disable (i.e. holo rounds would do 3 damage, etc.)
Mind control has a -50% success chance (from -60%) - With it being harder to acquire, a mild alleviation in the difficulty of it's effectiveness was reasonable
Blood Call grants +6 mobility (from +4) - Makes it much more effective when the mutons use it (instead of a strategically poor move)
Hardened grants 50% DR against shotguns and 30% against everything else (from 30% against everything) - Buff to accommodate for shotguns not having an innate +50% DR penalty
Offensive Equipment:
Shotgun reaction range reduced to 7.5 tiles (from 8.75 tiles) - Due to increased damage of shotguns when the target gets closer this seemed like a more ideal time to fire an overwatch as previously it was often just slightly too far away
Rocket radius increased to 8 tiles (from 7) - Further boost to rocketeers and distinction from grenades
Arc Rifle redesigned. It can be created as soon as alien computers is researched. Damage:3 (+6 against robotic targets), Crit:0, Aim:10, Ammo:2, Mobility:0, Range:18.8. Grants Disabling Shot. Assault, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, Scout, and Infantry only. The Arc Rifle is designed to combat any robotic threat. It is lightweight, easy to handle, and will severely damage any robotic target. It can temporarily disable alien weaponry, allowing our soldiers to assist in alien captures. - Gives us more early game options for countering mechanical units and makes the rifle more competitive and useful.
Gauss weapon technology aim to -5 (from -10) - Increase the weapon tier distinctions more, slight boost to gauss
Pulse weapon technology crit dmg to +100% (from +50% like normal) and crit to +25 (from +40) - Basically making a shot from a pulse weapon do 2x dmg on crit instead of +50% dmg on crit -- overall boost to pulse strength
Plamsa Stellerator grants +2 damage (from +1) - Was too weak at +1 because the plasma weapons already had a lot of damage
Plasma carbine grants +10 def (from +5) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Plasma Rifle grants +3 crit damage against biologics (from +1.5) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Heavy plasma rifle grants +2 damage when steadied (from +1) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Reflex Cannon grants 3 crit damage (from 1.5) when within 4 tiles - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Reflex Rifle grants 3 crit damage to flanked and uncovered targets (from +1.5) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Plasma sniper rifle bonus crit damage against targets >20 tiles away to +3 (from +1.5) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Plasma Dragon grants +2 damage against flying targets (from +1) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
MEC Partical Cannon grants +2 damage to mechanicals (from +1) - Boost to unique capabilities of plasma weapons
Laser sight crit to +10 (from +0), aim to 0 (from +5), weight to 0 (from -1), and does not benefit from the foundry upgrade - Makes it a lightweight boost to your soldier's shooting power and distinguishes it from the scope (worse offensive increase, but light weight)
Markmsman's Scope aim to +10 (from +5) - Buff to the strike rifle scout
Strike Rifle mobility to 0 (from -1) - Buffed
Breaching Ammo nullifies any DR gained from the hardened perk but also has a -30 crit penalty - Against hardened targets, shotguns will be doing double normal damage and 50% more than regular weapons. This ammo makes them the superior anti-chrys and anti-zerker weapons and also quite effective against mechanical units. It also works great on CCS builds as they can't crit anyway and will be used commonly against hardened melee units. However, losing the crit makes them worse at dealing with soft targets (especially when flanking them).
Thumper grants +5 damage to the KSM (from +3) - Was a little too weak at +3
Shotgun ammo to 4 (from 5) - slight nerf, puts it at +1 compared to normal weapons
AP Ammo mobility to -1 (from -2), and crit to -20 (from 0) - While it is the most damaging small-item, it's only more useful on low crit builds or against hardened and crit resistant targets. This gives it a nice niche to make it still useful and competitive.
Alloy bipod mobility to -1 (from 0) and aim to 0 (from -5) - It's a lot better than the scope now (as it grants double aim) but is more expensive and requires no movement
LMG/SAW ammo to 5 (from 8/6) - Balance to nerf the suppression effectiveness
Reaper Rounds grants +20 crit (from +15) - It was not competitive enough at 15 (5 more than targeting module but doesn't increase damage), especially with the draw back and restriction to laser/pulse
Defensive/Other Equipment:
Impact vest redesigned. Renamed to Regenerator Vest. It now grants 4 health, 1 DR, and Repair Servos. It can still only be equipped by the assault. It can be produced as soon as the experimental warfare foundry project is reserached - Makes it come online early, buff to tank assaults to give them a method to heal themselves that they really needed as they are often away from the medic on the front lines.
Combat Stims no longer require an action to use, DR to 0 (from +1), mobility on use to 6 (from 4) - Makes it easier to use in a bad situation and opens it up to non-tank classes a little more
Stun Rifle mobility to 0 (from -2) - With the decreased throw range and missing primary weapon the rifle has sufficiently nerfed one of your soldiers and does not need the decrease mobility as well. This was an old solution to make item-based classes still nerfed (e.g. supports or grenadiers) but is less necessary now as the throw range is halved. It's also nice to not have to rely on speedy classes to use the stun rifle.
Alloy plating health to 3 (from 2) - Buff to make it more distinct and more useful
Walker servos grant 0 mobility (from +2) but grants the jetboot module perk -- also costs 50 more elerium and alloy - Make items not so inexpensive and makes them item stronger (at peak +5 mobility and trasversal of heights)
Elerium Turbos grant +3 mobility (from +2) costs 120 elerium - Make it not so trivially inexpensive and is basically like +4 mobility
Corsair armor gains 1 hp (from 8hp to 9hp) - Slight buff
Aurora armor gains 0.5 DR (from 0DR) - Makes it more useful for tanks and a slight buff to psionics
Vortex armor gains 1 DR (from 0.5DR) - Makes it more useful for tanks and a slight buff to psionics
Elerium Emitter mobility to +1 (from +2) - Was a little too strong at +2
Aliens:
Upgraded Enhanced Tactical Info - You can view alien stats if you have autopsied them when you click F1 - So instead of just their perks you can also view their aim, mobility, etc. - Slight modificaitons to display
Uber Ethereal no longer starts with 4 DR - He is hard enough to kill without it (considering his buddies)
Drone base health to 1 (from 2) - Makes them easier to drop
Sectoids lose supression - Encourages them to use psionic abilities or fire
Damn Good Ground on Exalt snipers and Thinmen replaced with Death From Afar - The DGG was too frustrating when they got into a good position at long range
Outsiders lose suppression - Encourages them to be more aggressive (due to their high aim high damage shots and being commonly approached alone, suppressing was often a bad AI decision)
Mechtoids no longer start with combined arms but do start with sentinel - Makes their overwatches more dangerous, tones down their damage a little. Encourages use of disabling shot.
At 1200 research (really late game) aliens gain quadruple their normal bonuses (from double) - Puts an end to the game if you take too long (some of the aliens are LOL) =P
Sectopods gain 2 DR isntead of 1 DR at 120/240/360 research - Makes them more tanky and less likely to be 1-rounded (overall +3 DR)
Sectopod aim increased by 10 - Not a huge deal, just makes their cannon slightly more deadly
Ethereals are no longer hardened (as it really didn't make sense for such frail bodies in robes) and no longer reflect damage (made it too frustrating to attempt to damage them with low hit chances) but gain Distortion (50% dodge, virtual immunity to explosives) - Overall, this actually doesn't change them that much except for making explosives ineffective against them. Hardened was 30-50% DR and -60% crit so losing that and gaining Distortion (50% dodge) is a bit of a wash. This accomplishes a few things. 1) It makes a lot more sense that an 'ethereal' unit is not hardened and instead could dodge more. 2) Shotguns were too weak against them, this makes them more like other weapons. 3) Reflection was fairly poor verisimilitude and poor gameplay due to frustration with low chance shots. 4) Explosives were buffed in the rebalance and were too effective at dropping ethereals. Now you pretty much have to get close if you want to drop an ethereal. Both sectopods and ethereals are enemies you really don't want to see and are part of the end-game encouraging you to finish things before it gets out of hand.
Sectoid Commander defense to 40 (from 30) and lose Distortion - Makes them slightly harder to kill from a distance and obviously they really shouldn't be gaining distortion. =P
Bug Fixes:
Fixed LW 1.0 bug where Muton Elites were triggering shredder when using grenades - This has been fixed so only their primary weapon triggers shredder (thanks tyranthym for pointing it out)
Fixed LW 1.0 bug (I think I fixed it) where HEAT ammo would sometimes trigger on explosions of aliens (e.g. cyberdisc explosion) - Thanks AxemanUnique for pointing it out
Fixed LW 1.0 bug with close proximity perks not triggering at the correct range
Fixed LW 1.0 bug where shredder damage was not being calculated correctly
Fixed LW 1.0 a bug where crit damage would sometimes be 1 less than normal
Updated MEC conversion description to include the fact that there is a stat bonus based on current rank
Fixed incorrect text suggesting that intel scans increased in cost each month and reset at the end of each month
Fixed typo on mayhem saying it only gave 5 damage to sniper/arc rifles (it gives 6)
Fixed some errors in stat progression on MEC classes
Fixed incorrect description on Psi Panic
Fixed typo on command suggesting you got 2 command charges perk rank (you only get 1) - Thanks Seph67
Fixed typo on carbines showing lower crit than intended - Thanks tyranthym
Fixed some exalt accidentally still having resilience
Fixed a bug where psi panic chances were not being displayed correctly
Fixed incorrect text on motion trackers interaction with packmaster - Thanks mmd1x2
Fixed a bug where the bonus stats post-mission to soldiers were not applying - Thanks tyranthym
Version 1.17.9
Perks:
Snap Shot grants +10 aim instead of +1 mobility - Needed a boost against the competition on the tree, gives the RR rocketeer a pick to help with firing a rifle
Equipment
Ballistic Sniper and Strike Rifle ammo to 3 (from 5) - It was out of line with everything else and made the laser and even gauss upgrade sometimes not worth it
AP Ammo grants -2 mobility (from -1) - Was too strong compared to the other options
Carbine crit to 20 (from 15) - Needed a buff
SMG ammo to 3 (from 2) - Needed a buff
Version 1.17.8
Tactical:
Smoke now provides 30 defense (from 20) - Generic smoke was too weak at 20
Dense Smoke now provides 50 defense (from 40) - Buff to concur with smoke buff to keep dense smoke a strong and effective perk
Limited squad sight is now 5 tiles more than normal (from 3.8 tiles more than normal) - This affects Strike Rifles, MEC Weapons, and aliens. It was buffed to give a little more wiggle room and buff to the squadsight perk on mobile snipers, strike rifle scouts, MECs, and aliens.
Perks:
Combat Drugs and Dense Smoke grants an extra smoke grenade charge if the user has the smoke grenade perk - With the smaller AoE's having a few more smokes isn't as much of a visual and/or gameplay problem
XCOM:
Converting (chopping) a soldier into a MEC now grants a 5/10/20/60% to gain +1 mobility/health/aim/will for each rank the previous soldier had acquired - Gives a small reward for coverting higher level soldiers into MECs. This reward is identical to the reward a high ranked soldier can receive when completing a mission.
Bug Fixes:
SHIVs had incorrectly assigned mobilities (thanks Lafiir)
Some dnvironmental damages were assigned incorrectly (thanks Lafiir)
Shredder ammo had an accidental -5 aim malus (thanks Lafiir)
Some descriptions of class stats were inaccurate (thanks Lafiir)
Some descriptions were missing the line break (thanks Lafiir)
Version 1.17.7
Bug Fixes:
Some gauss weapons still didn't have the correct ammo and penetration descriptions
MSGT exp was set a little higher than intended at 7000. It is now fixed at 6500.
Version 1.17.6
Aliens:
Alien explosives no longer trigger the shredder effect - This was never an intended effect (thanks for help szmind!)
XCOM:
Telekinetic Field and Mind Merge have their pre-requisites removed - Makes it easier to advance through psionic ranks if you don't have all the research
OTS Training Programs increased in xp gained per day to 10/20 (from 2/8) - Due to decreased number of soldiers we often have less rookies that can benefit making the programms insignificant. At these number the programs should be significant again. (thanks for pointing it out tyranthym!)
Officer OTS ranks required reduced to 10/50/100/150/200 (from 10/70/130/190/250) - Due to generally less soldiers the ranks needed to be reduced some (thanks forefal)
Officer Squad Size upgrade ranks required redcued to 80/250 (from 100/300) - Due to generally less soldiers the ranks needed to be reduced some (thanks forefal)
GSGT and MSGT xp requirements increased to 3500/5000/6500 (from 3000/4000/5000) - Prevents capping out on exp too early (MSGTs before the new year) (thanks for pointing it out tyranthym!)
Coverting to a MEC now removes all ranks and experience and does not grant bonus will - Prevents starting out with GSGT MECs. Provides late game growth potential. Stops MECs from being so powerful too early. All MECs now start with 0xp and as a SPEC. The will bonus was bugged and would give too much too often.
Equipment:
Hi Cap Mags and Ammo Drum mobility to 0 and -1 (from -1 and -2) - Makes getting more ammo on your soldiers easier and makes these items more competitive
Gauss weapons receive +1 ammo (back to standard levels, 1 less than LW 1.0) - Makes all weapon ammo standardized across weapon tiers. Gauss didn't seem to need a boost vs the other tiers (almost the opposite)
Gauss weapons grant 0.5 penetration (from 1) and the quench gun upgrade grants 0.5 penetration (from 1) - Nerf to gauss tier penetration (was too much penetration)
Shotguns lose their +1 mobility (except scatter laser stays at +1 mobility and alloy cannon goes to -1 mobility) - Balancing out the tiers of shotguns (scatter laser was a little too weak and alloy cannon was a little too strong)
Alloy and Hover SHIV DR back to 4/3.5 (from 5/4.5) - Helps prevent static-DR stacking and the mobility was already a lot of help
KSM damage to 30 (from 24) - Surprisingly even with the 100% penetration it still needed a little boost as getting close is dangerous
Carbine crit to 15 (from 5) - They needed a slight boost
Version 1.17.5
Tactical:
Close range aim bonus on shotguns weapons decreased slightly to 8 aim per meter (from 10) - Makes it a little less likely to get 100% aim when you are still multiple tiles away (encourages closer play)
Sniper/Strike rifle aim malus increased slightly to 8 aim per meter (from 7) - Helps offset their buff slightly and make being within range of an enemy more significant
The "shred" effect is permanent throughout a battle (from 3 turns) - Makes it more effective against xcom units and really makes more sense (shredded armor shouldn't become unshredded after a few turns)
Full/Half cover-based DR to 15%/25% (from 20%/30%) - Slight reduction on the amount of %DR units gain from cover. Only really effects tanky xcom/aliens and makes them less tanky in such cover. Both WtS aliens and xcom units were too resistant to damage.
Full cover grants 50 defense (from 45) - Slight buff to the ability to stick around when in high cover for all xcom and aliens. So half cover = 30def and 15%DR; full cover = 50def and 25%DR
Aliens:
Muton Berserkers gain 4 health - they were a little too weak
All aliens gain 5 aim on impossible difficulty only - Helps accommodate for the increased defense full cover is granting xcom (as we tend to use it to a far greater extent than the aliens)
XCOM:
DGG on the Jaeger replaced with platform stability and LnL swapped with Jetboot Module - Really DGG just didn't work well on the jaeger and Jetboot Module didn't work that well since ITZ requires no movement
Distortion field removed as a psionic option leaving only mind merge as the option on the 3rd psionic level - It was buggy in the sometimes you didn't get the 10 defense. It also had a visual effect that could be annoying. It also buffed the defense of XCOM a little too much and I couldn't affect it.
Perks:
Mind merge now grants %DR equal to a third of the caster's will (from 2% of the caster's will in static-DR) - Makes it more useful and not abusive with static-DR stacking
Javelin Rockets now grant +2 penetration (from 0) on rockets - Helps them stay more relevant in the late game against high DR enemies
Lightning Reflexes loses it's 2 mobility - It was already plenty strong and didn't need the mobility boost, acts as a nerf to the pathfinder
Mayhem grants sniper/arc rifles +6 damage (from +5) - Needed a slight boost considering the higher penetration rifles on the sniper and the earlier +dmg perks
Ready For Anything grants +10 aim on reaction shots (from 0) but requires no movement again - Surprisingly, it was still not that strong with the move and fire and was bugging so I switched it back to how it was before: +10 aim on reaction shots and you can't trigger it if you've already taken a costly action
ITZ aim/crit malus to -5/-5 (from -10/-10) - Slight buff to consecutive shots
Covering Fire grants +25 aim against units in cover on reaction shots (from +20) - Slight buff
Equipment:
Chameleon vest increases dodge of LR to 90/75% (previously it was 90% on all reaction shots) - Makes clearing multiple overwatches not as easy thus making multiple enemy overwatches more 'pinning' and not as much 'wasted enemy turns'
Gauss tier weaponry has -1 ammo (vs +1 ammo) - Gauss was too much of an upgrade over laser and too close to pulse. This makes ammo small items more useful and puts gauss more firmly between laser and pulse.
Titan Armor and Archangel armor gain 1 mobility and 0.5 DR - buff to make them a more obvious choice over the previous tier
Alloy and Hover SHIV both gain 3 mobility and 1 DR - Significant buff to make them more useful into the later game
Elerium Emitter mobility to +2 (from -1) - Buff to psionic units; and this item was too lack luster previously
LMECs defense to 20/30/30/40 (from 30/40/40/50) - Was a little too strong previously making the LMECs superior to the HMECs
Sniper Rifles and Strike rifles grant 1 penetration - Buff to snipers and strike rifle scouts, specifically against mechanized units and cover-taking units. Makes sense that these higher calibre weapons would have more penetration. Puts these weapons more into the 'hit hard' category even against DR enemies.
Arc Rifle damage to 1 (from 2) - With the penetration and mayhem buff it was getting a little too strong
Scope grants 5 aim (from 10) and cost to 20 credits (from 70) - Nerf to offensive items to make more room for defensive/grenade/support items
Alloy bipod grants -5 aim (from 0) and mobility to 0 (from 1, originally 0) - Nerf to offensive items to make more room for defensive/grenade/support items, gets a slight boost because it's actually worse when you move now
Illuminator Gunsight aim/crit to 10/15 (from 15/25) - Nerf to offensive items to make more room for defensive/grenade/support items
Neural Gunlink aim/crit to 10/10 (from 15/15) and weight to 0 (from 1) - Nerf to offensive items to make more room for defensive/grenade/support items, gets a slight boost to boost psionics and make them more competitive
Cognitive Enhancer aim/crit to 5/5 (from 10/10) - Nerf to offensive items to make more room for defensive/grenade/support items
Impact Vest DR to 1.5 (from 1) - Slight buff
Carbide Plating to 6 hp (from 8, originally 4) - Was a little too strong
Version 1.17.4
Strategic:
Exalt multiclues are disabled again (like LW 1.0) - Due to the exalt intel tweak (by Eclipse666) being implemented a while ago, multiclues are not necessary to make exalt doable in DW games and they were allowing players to find Exalt HQ a litte too quick.
Exalt data recovery missions have a few more exalt - They were slightly too easy, you should feel forced to fall back to the transmitter sometimes
You still gain 1 soldier at the end of each month if you have 50 or more soldiers - Prevents gamey behaviour around 50 soldiers (e.g. dismissing soldiers to get under 50 to get more)
Gollop Chamber build time cut in half - Helps accelerate the end game
Cash and Meld cost of Alien Metallurgy, Alien Nucleonics, and Improved Salvage Techniques reduced by 50% - Improves player agency for how they use and acquire resources by making these changes more attainable
Perks:
Grenadier grants +1 damage to grenades again (from 0) - Explosives needed a buff
Mayhem grants +3 damage to strike/marksman rifles (from +5) - Nerf to the mobile mayhem sniper
Mayhem grants +3 damage to rockets (from +2) but does not increase their range - Minimizes squad sight engagements (which can be bad gameplay) and gives the perk more hitting power
Hit and Run grants 75% less damage (from 50%) on subsequent shots - Encourage more 'hit and run' instead of 'hit and hit' and nerf the perk a little more overall to make it more balanced vs other options
XCOM:
Infantry picks up grenadier at LCPL and Tandem at MSGT - Gives another class reasonable grenade use and prevents the overwatch and crit infantry from being so one-dimensional
Lone Wolf and Ranger swapped on the sniper - Deadeye was too strong vs ranger considering all the damage the sniper was already dealing and the early +dmg perks
Equipment:
Rockets do 7/10/10 damage (from 6/9/9) - Explosives needed a boost
Bug Fixes:
The medic was only getting 5 aim during his promotions (when he should have been getting 10)
Research speeds accidentally set too fast (fixed) - Overall result is things take a little longer to research
Fixed missing information on some air weapon descriptions
Version 1.17.3
Quality of Life:
Updated the Enchanced tactical info display to include autopsied alien stats and display both static and %-based DR - Huge thanks to the mastermind szmind for this code, it's really awesome stuff :)
Bug Fix:
Typo: Fixed some 'tips and tricks' that were not updated for LW Rebalance
Version 1.17.2
Bug Fixes:
The OTS now correctly requires 300 ranks for the squad size 2 upgrade (was bugged before at 44) - Thanks kdm2k6
Typo: More clearly indentified what Australia's start bonus "Per Ardua Ad Astra" does: All soldiers receive +1 health, +2 aim, and +4 will - it has been this way for quite a few versions but it was kinda left out of the notes and never correctly described
Version 1.17.1
Bug Fix: UK "Their Finest Hours country start was supposed to give Armored Fighters but was not - this fixes that
XCOM starts with only 2 interceptors (from 4) - Cuts down on the amount of extra resources we have off the bat (this change was supposed to be in 1.17 but it got left off in one of the beta versions and I didn't notice)
Version 1.17.0
Strategic:
Failing or skipping an exalt mission now increases panic in that country by 1 bar - Gives incentive to complete the exalt missions
Exalt scan cost to 50 (from 100) - It was a little too expensive to keep the scans up
Number of free recruits gained at the end of each month cut by ~60% - New formula is [1 + (50-#Soldiers)/15 + Rand(50-#Soldiers)/15] - Overall this means you cannot rely on this for soldiers and must recruit some manually but still acts as a slight ecouragement to keep a tight roster and a slight help if you happen to lose too many soldiers
Overall alloy/elerium gain increased by 75/50% - We were too starved in the mid to late game for expensive items and projects. Scarcity is good but it should sacrifice actually attaining most things.
The first squad size upgrade is attainable at 100 ranks (from 150) - Makes the mid game not quite as difficult and gives the players a little more option in their loadouts when the aliens starts to pick up in diversity
Gene mods meld cost cut in half but equivalent added to cash cost - Acts as more of a cash sink in the late game. This makes gene mods something you'll use if you're floating in cash and will give players who have extra spending $$ something to spend it on even if they didn't actually have the meld.
Chopping a soldier to a MEC cash/meld cost increased to 60/60 (from 30/30) - With MECs becoming a lot stronger more resource strain was necessary to prevent fielding full teams of them
Psionic training times reduced by 50% but will_required upped to 35/20/25/30/35/65 (from 35/5/5/5/5/75) and chance is 2x[will-will_require] (from 3x) - Overall a minor increase in speed. However, psionic training was too long previously which made bad luck too punishing. Also, once a soldier was psionic, will levels weren't mattering enough with 100% training chances through the middle levels.
Strict Screening grants every soldier +5 will - Necessary so that they can reasonably field psionic soldiers, while almost any soldier can become psionic then, the chances will be consistently low. +5 will was felt like a reasonable balancing point. Without the +5 psionics was too hard to reasonably acquire with Strict Screening.
Interceptor full repair time reduced to 450 hours (from 600) - Helps accommodate for not being able to transfer/switch loadouts on damaged ships
Alien air weapon loadout time reduced to 1 day (from 7) - No need to be so long anymore because you can't swap weapons around on damaged ships
Damaged interceptors cannot be transfered to other continents and their loadouts cannot be changed - Makes it less gamey (no swapping out to other continents to repair and sending back and no taking weapons of recently damaged craft and swapping to new craft after each engagement)
Listed air weapon dps on their item cards - for easier understanding and calculations
Tactical:
The effect of green fog has be increased by 50% (you lose 1-2 of the stat per activation instead of 1) - With the % effect, the will effect, the tapering effect, and the respirator implant effect, it cut the overall effect of green fog by more than half which started to become insignificant (e.g. a loss of 10 aim after 15 turns on a guy with 80 aim and 30 will). This makes it more significant again.
Hacking trasmitters (arrays) has a 75% chance to disable each exalt (from 100%) - It was too often smarter to just avoid using them - this should make it more likely to be a tactically wise decision to use them
XCOM:
Weighting of stats modified to 12/6/3/1 (from 12/4/3/1) for mob/hp/aim/will - Health was a too low and needed to be worth more due to the fatigue/injury time reductions
Survival Training country starting health bonus to 2 (from 3) - Balance
Reworked perk trees a lot: significant changes on Sniper and Scout (see perk tree list), moderate changes on most other soldiers and MECs
Soldier experience lowered at the high end to 3000,4000,5000 (from 3500,5000,7500) - Makes it easier to acquire MSGTs and progression of MSGTs is still OK due to the bonus stats
Zhang no longer starts with lone wolf - Consistency and possible conflict on trees
Perks:
New Perk Medikit: Grants 2 free uses of a medikit - Spreads out the ability to heal a little more without using item slots
Low Profile now grants battle scanner (instead of vice versa) - Swapped to allow the engineer to pick up battle scanner
Fortified now grants steadfast and DR to +1 (from 0.5) - Buff to the perk and tanky MECs in general (thanks AxemanUnique)
Lightning Reflexes mobility to 2 (from 3) - Balance on the trees
Shock and Awe grants 2 normal rockets (from 1) - Buff to the perk for balance
Snap shot grants +1 mobility (from 0) - Buff to the perk for balance against Tandem and S&A
Combat Drugs aim to +20 (from +10) - Buff to the perk
Hardened perk grants 30% DR from all sources (instead of just from explosives) - Huge buff to SHIVs/MECs. Has less effect on alien mechanicals as HEAT was commonly used against them, but does alien hardened targets so they have been accommodated for (see Alien section).
Grenadier no longer grants +1 damage on grenades - Slight nerf as the engineer grenadier was a little too powerful still and the hardened buff it didn't really effect them as much as other units so they had another reason to be toned down some
ITZ grants -10 aim/crit per shot (from -15) - slight buff
One For All % damage reduction to 50% (from 30) but static DR to 0 (from 3) - Was too complicated a perk to include both static and %-based DR and this works similar without being as abusive at the low damage end
Holo-targeting renamed to Holo Rounds and grants +2 damage against mechanical units - buffed to make it more appealing, renamed to more accurately represent it's role
Hit and Run triggers off of any shot (not just flanked or uncovered units) but on subsequent shots, damage is reduced by 50% of base and proximity damage (on shotguns) is reduced by 50% - Makes you more likely to hit and run instead of hit and hit and increases the consistency of the perk
Equipment:
Alien Trophy grants steadfast and will to 0 (from +15) - Originally steadfast was fairly useless on it as it buffed your will and made you fairly immune to panic (in LW 1.0). However, in this rebalance panic is definitely an issue and steadfast can be quite useful. Thanks to Forefal for the idea.
Markman's scope aim bonus to +5 (from +15) - with early ITZ it didn't need the significant aim boost
Breaching ammo no longer grants additional penetration and aim to 0 (from -10) - with the increased damage of shotguns it’s good on its own
AP ammo grants 1 penetration (from 2) and can be equipped by anyone (from engineer/gunner/MEC) - With the prevalence of %-based DR, 1 penetration is more often worth more than 1 damage making this item still quite useful at 1 penetration
Altered the visible naming schema on the MECs slightly to focus on MEC tiers and function: MEC Mk1 = Paladin(Light), MEC Mk2 = Defender(Heavy)/Valiant(Light), MEC Mk3 = Devestator(Ultra Heavy)/Dauntless(Heavy)/Vanguard(Ultra Light)/Vindicator(Light)
Heavy MEC suit DR increased to 2/3/4 for the Defender/Dauntless/Devestator (from 1/1/2) - To make the static DR still useful without extra from OfA and act as a buff to the tanky MECs
Light MEC suits all grant +10 aim - Further distinguish them from Heavy MEC suits
Mark 3 MEC's all grant 10 will (from 5) - Buff to later game psionics and helps resist panic a little more
Sniper Rifle loses the +10 aim and +1 damage penetration but base damage to 150% (from 125%) and crit to 30% (from 20%) - Overall this is less of a buff/nerf and more of a roll change. With high aim builds and with gauss weaponry the aim bonus and damage penetration would sometimes feel wasted. As well, they both added a little complexity to the weapon. Damage and crit scale very well with the sniper rifle and it feels better if the sniper rifle hits more like a truck.
MEC/SHIV weapons deal 200% damage (from 150%) - Big buff for balance, but also it makes sense if you look at them. =P
Original SHIV weapon (SHIV Autocannon) ammo reduced to 2 (from 3) - Consistency with MEC cannon and tapers down early strength with the new weapon buffs
KSM damage to 26 (from 30) but bypasses all DR - buff to the ability overall, helping it deal with things like hardened mechtoids with absorption fields and damage control or secotopods with 8 innate damage reduction
Holo-Targeter renamed to Holo Charger - Just to fit the new holo rounds explanation
AM Rifle and AM Long Rifle ammo to 1 (from 2, originally 1) - Was a little too effective at 2
Flak ammo does the greater of 3 or 30% damage (from 2 or 20%) - Needed a little buff
Alloy bipod is equippable by the gunner and sniper (previously just the sniper) - It made sense on the gunner and it gives room for the medikit for the gunner tanks on the final level
Aliens:
All aliens have 10 less defense on normal difficulty - Makes it slightly easier on Normal difficulty
Exalt regain their initial 1 damage bonus and the 2 damage bonus during research upgrades - Unfortunately the damage bonuses were not effecting explosives so while a rifle shot might do 4 damage, and HE grenade or rocket could still do 10 which was much too far out of line. Also, reducing the damage upon research really nerfed exalt in the mid to late game and made them too hard early on. This even things out more.
There are ~30% less starting exalt soldiers on cover op and data recovery exalt missions - There were too many with the higher damage and it was too easy to get swarmed
ExaltHeavy and ExaltEliteHeavy lose 6/8 health, health progression reduced, lose 10/20 will, lose 2/2 mobility, and lose access to danger zone and javelin rockets - Makes their rockets a little less painful and makes them overall weaker (as they were far too effective/threatening before vs other exalt). It might seem extreme, but there was no reasonble way to nerf the rocket (that is 100% accurate) so this makes them high risk, high reward exalt soldiers like snipers.
ExaltOperative and ExaltEliteOperative gain 2/4 health - Make them more of a front-line unit and bring some health back to exalt teams (since the heavies lost a lot)
Chryssalids have 6 health (from 8) - Nerf to accommodate for hardened buff
Berserkers have 20 health (from 28) - Nerf to accommodate for hardened buff
Seekers have 5 health (from 6) - Nerf to accommodate for hardened buff
Mechtoids health to 20 (from 25) - Nerf to accommodate for hardened buff
Ethereal / Ethereal Uber have 20/50 health (from 24/60) - Accommodates for hardened buff (the other option, removing hardened, was bugging out sometimes and was too strong for crit builds)
Cyberdiscs lose damage control - Nerf to accommodate for hardened buff
Bug Fixes:
Tenacious defense properly grants +3 health - It was bugged and only giving 2
Fixed a situation where exalt could possibly sometimes still use explosives when disabled - Hope this helps reduce the number of disabled exalt that sometimes will fire a rocket
Typo fix: Awkward instead of akward on the stun rifle description - Thanks kgable10
Typo fix: Ranger did not include the +10 aim it gave to sidearms in it's description
Sectopods are only getting -1 HP on classic difficulty when it should be -11 - thanks dawnpromise89
Hit and Run typo fix where it said it granted +2 mobility (it does not and this has been fixed)
Version 1.16.4
Strategic:
Country requests for Satellite Transfers do not occur anymore - They were too difficult to fill too often and took the space of other requests. Even in LW 1.0 they were poor requests. This should make space for more of the other requests.
Version 1.16.3
Strategy Game:
Soldier cost back to 50 (from 100) - With the monthly recruition it's not that necessary to have a high cost
Foreign Legion (France country bonus) back to 15 soldiers (from 10) - balance
Starting number of engineers and scientists increased to 10 (from 5) - Prevents players from having RNG screw them over too much
XCOM:
Sniper LCPL and SGT levels RE-switched back - It's a fair arguement either way and I feel like I'm in the minority thinking it should be a SGT perk so I'll go with the majority here and put it at LCPL
Items:
Smoke Grenade radius reverted back to vanilla at 3.5 tiles (from 5 tiles, originally 3.5) - Nerf to the ability to smoke your entire team unless clustered. Similar to LW 1.0 use.
Perks:
Semper Vigilans defense to +10 (from +5) - When using SHIVs or MECs to tank this does little (as they don't gain the defense and are the ones taking the hits) so it was only strong for teams that had primary biotanks and/or no tanks. Fortiores Una on the other hand was good in all situations. So vigilans was boosted for balance but it was overbalanced a little to increase the value of cover in the mid-late game when cover was becoming a little less valuable.
Packmaster grants 2 additional mist uses (from 3) - To put it more inline with the medic so it's not so superior in terms of healing
Dense smoke grants 0 extra smokes (from 1) and has 0% increased radius (from 50%) - Decreases the amount of use and the likelihood to get full-team coverage. It stops it from being so mandatory and prevalent. Acts as a slight nerf to the support engineer. Plentiful and full-team dense smoke could act like full free turns, which could be borderline abusive. The new smoke requires players to be closer together which can be hard and can make the team an easy grenade target.
Combat drugs grants 0 extra smokes (from 1) and has 0% increased radius (from 50%) - same as above except for the medic instead of the engineer
Version 1.16.2
The XCOM recruition soldiers at the end of each month were accidentally being charged to xcom. They are now free of charge.
Version 1.16.1
Strategic:
Exalt Extractions/Data_Recovery missions are limited to 3/5 skyranger slots (from 4/6+) - Makes them more difficult and unique missions (as they were a little too easy with their reduced damage -- but the reduced damage was good gameplay on those missions)
Overall fatigue and injury time reduced by 25% - Means you need less soldiers overall and become a little more intimate with each of them
Experience gain bonus per mission reduced to 0 (from 30, originally 0) - This 'bonus' was added previously to speed up experience slightly. Removing this pretty much directly counteracts the increased experience we'd be getting from extra fatigue.
Starting cash back to 1000 (from 100, previously 1000) - Gives you more freedom of how to proceed off the bat
Starting soldiers to 16 (from 25) - Encourages you to use all of your original soldiers (and 2 SHIVs!) during the first missions
Each month you gain approximately [1 + (50-#Soldiers)/5 + Rand(50-#Soldiers)/10] soldiers (from 4-6) - Still helps you if you're getting overwhelmed or growing off the bat while being much less of a significant a problem towards roster 'bloating'. This means if you are over 60 soldiers you will gain none, and the lower you are from 60 soldiers the more you will gain at the end of each month. At the end of the first month if you have 20 soldiers you should gain 7-9 soldiers. When you have 40 soldiers you'll gain 3-4. When you have 50 or more soldiers you'll gain none at the end of each month.
Soldier recruition cost to 100 (from 50) - Discourages mass recruition while still allowing it if you want (you should get enough soldiers simply from the amount you get at the end of each month + the extras throughout though). It means the best option is not automaticaly purchasing a lot of soldiers off the bat but it is available anytime you really need. Also, due to less fatigue each soldier is actually worth around 1.33 normal soldiers.
Barracks capacity back down to 100 - Helps discourage roster bloating and there was a bug over 100
France "Foreign Legion" start extra soldiers reduced to 10 (from 15) - Balance
Weapon Fragments gained per mission increased by around 25% - Helps with lower difficulties with less aliens per mission
XCOM:
Medic and Guardian lose their +1 starting mobility - balance
Perks:
Damn Good Ground aim/crit to 0 (from 40), defense/crit_resist to 50 (from 40) - The aim wasn't useful because snipers/jaegers are high aim classes and you already get +20 for being at height -- most of the time you were at 100+ aim anyway. The crit was buggy and I couldn't fix it and it was frustrating when you didn't get it for no apparent reason. Also, when you did get the crit off it was a little too strong offensively for a unit with 100 aim. These changes turn the perk into a weaker but unique and defensive perk.
Savior grants no extra medikits - Makes the medikit item more useful and savior was already really powerful at 50% greater healing. End game healing can be compensated for by Guardians. Overall nerf to the medic.
Medic's CCS swapped for EC - Slow down on the strength of the medic tank, give the assault tank something more unique in the early game (CCS)
Sniper LCPL and SGT levels swapped - It was too powerful to have Mayhem/DT/ITZ so early and gave the sniper too little to grow in to. They already start with weapons that have an extra damage than most others - getting those strong perks that early was too much.
Dense Smoke grants +50% smoke radius (from +0%) - Buff to support engineer
In the zone grants -15 aim/crit per kill - Balance
Equipment:
Rocket damage back down to 6/9/9 (from 7/7/10) - They are just really good and the hardened effect is having a more minimal effect on them then anticipated so there was no need for a buff
Marksman's Scope aim to 15 (from 10) - Boost to strike rifle scout
Bug Fixes:
Fixed typo where engineer starting stats were still on the grenadier perk description instead of the HEAT ammo perk description
Fixed a bug where alloys from destroyed UFOs were less than expected (due to rounding errors inherent in the code)
Fixed a bug where assaults were not getting the +1 mobility on their first rank - Thanks siemic
Version 1.16.0
Strategic:
Destroyer DR reduced to 75% (from 100%) - Makes them a little easier to take down with stingrays and phoenix cannons and possible to reasonble damage with non penetrating weapons
Increased speed of xcom research by ~20% - It was a little too slow, especially with the new UFO projects and mandatory interrogations taking a while
Starting cash reduced to 100 (from 1000) but XCOM recruition services locates and hires 4-6 soldiers at the end of every month for free (250 credits worth per month) - Discourages the mass recruitment that occurs off that bat. Encourages use of all soldiers throughout the game. Increases sense of progression as you're always acquiring new soldiers. Helps you if you're not doing well, losing soldiers, and are tight on cash -- you will always get replacement soldiers.
You start with 25 soldiers (from 20) - Gives a little choice in who you take to the early missions and accommodates for the loss of early cash somehwat (another 250 credits)
You start every game with 2 SHIVs (from 0) - Makes access to SHIVs easier off the bat and should help with sectoids in the early game (as they can't use psionic on a SHIV and the DR is very effective)
Barracks Capacity increased to 150 (from 100) - Little reason to cap it, going too high can bug it though so 150 is good.
Decreased the average difficulty of abductions slightly - You'll see a few less swarming missions in the early and late game
Laser Cannon damage increased to 1000/2000 (from 750/1500) - With the lack of damage penetration and slow fire rate it needed a damage boost to be more competitive
Interceptor/Firestorm engagement times reduced by ~25% and alien air weapons do ~25% less damage - The longer engagement times and significant damage taken during air battles were making aggressive stance and tracking devices too ineffective, this balances it out better
Meld sells for 10 cash (from 7) - Significant increase in cash influx and the drive to gather meld. With restricted cash it was still too hard to purchase MECs and gene mods.
OTS ranks required for squad size upgrades increased to 150/300 (from 100/200) - The larger squads lead to some of the mid-late game 'clog' feel. This means more of the game is done with smaller squads. Also, it was too easy to reach 200 ranks once into the breach was acquired so it had to be slowed down slightly.
Advanced Body Armor research cost and time reduced by 50% - Helps encourage us to become tanky quicker
Gangplank moved 30 days earlier (back to the original time, from 1 month delayed) - It was a little too easy one month later and with the new perks and research it should be easier to handle in this rebalance
Sandhurst country bonus reduced to 20% (from 25%) decrease in ranks required for OTS projects - balance
Ghost in the machine starting bonus grants 4 extra SHIVs (from 2) - It needed a buff
Start year changed to 2018 - Gotta stay up-to-date! =D
XCOM:
Multiple perk tree modifications (stats and perks) - see perk tree image
SHIV DR increased by 0.5 (now it's 3/4/3.5 DR for normal/alloy/hover SHIVs) - Slight boost to further strengthen their tanking role
Perks:
Grenadier (instead of Mayhem) grants the +20% range increase to destructive hand grenades and also grants +1 damage to destructive hand grenades - Switched which perk gave the range increase due to a re-organization of the Engineer tree, slight buff to make up for later damage acquired on the engineer tree
Added a new perk called "Advanced HEAT Tech" (Increases the bonus damage of HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads by 50%) - Acts as the engineer's new TSGT perk. Buffs the anti-mechanical roll of engineers and works on all engineers builds.
Shredder no longer removes 2 innate DR - It was confusing (what was innate? What wasn't? I think I was the only one who knew =P) and shredder really didn't need a buff
Executioner crit bonus to 40% - Was a too strong at 50%. With all the enemies with more DR and health finding an enemy below 50% health that you need a heavy hit to kill is a lot easier than in LW 1.0 and early versions of this rebalance.
Precision shot grants +6 crit damage (from +3 crit damage) - Was a little too weak and had to be competitive against executioner
One For All grants +30% DR in addition to the +3 DR (from only +3 DR) - MECs needed a way to mitigate the high end damage coming at them from long range more than just through absorption fields
Will to Survive grants Steadfast - Boost to biotanks and opens up their perk trees for more options to go with the tank roll
Steafast no longer grants +2 health - due to it being incorporated into WtS
Tenacious defense grants +3 armor health (from +2) and 30% crit-resistance (from 20%) - Slight buff, balance
Hardened grants 30% DR against explosives - Overall the most significant effect of this is making chryssalids more resilient against explosive damage (as they were a little too easy to wipe out with explosives). This also acts as a small boost to all hardened targets and kind of makes sense from a realistic point of view. It also reigns in HEAT grenades a little as they are less effective at decimating pods of mechanicals.
Into The Breach toned down to triple mission experience (from quadruple, originally +25%) - At quadruple it was a little too much. Needed a little reigning in.
Savior grants 2 extra medikit charges (from 1) - boost to medikit supply due to medikits healing less and needing more healing in the late game
Packmaster grants 3 extra restorative mist charges (from 2) - boost to healing due to needing more healing in the late game
Ready For Anything aim on overwatch to 0 (from 10) but will put the unit on overwatch even if they've moved (i.e. does not require you to fire at the beginning of your turn to trigger) - Prevents RfA from making the class a "don't move" class which was a large negative of the perk
Equipment:
Alloy plating health reduced to 2 (from 4) and alloy cost reduced to 10 (from 40) - Makes it more reasonable to produce when you research it
Chitin plating alloy cost increased to 30 (from 0) - Balance vs the alloy plating as it's now strictly superior
KSM damage increased to 30 (from 26) - Getting up close is hard and it has to be rewarding
Arc Rifle damage to 2 (from 3) - Due to mayhem buff
SAW/LMG ammo reverted to LW 1.0 levels: SAW ammo increased to 6 (from 5); LMG ammo increased to 8 (from 6) - Act as a small buff to the gunner as suppression isn't as strong in the rebalance and limiting the ammo isn't as important
HEAT Ammo for SHIVs lose the 10 aim malus - Buff to the strength of HEAT on SHIVs, gives them a good role and helps you accommodate if you don't have enough soldiers to fight against mechanicals
Rocket damage increased to 7/10/10 (from 6/9/9) - Accommodates for hardened's increased resistance against explosives
Aliens:
Exalt regain their 2 hp they lost - With up to 3 less damage they were a little too easy with the health loss as well. This makes the battles more of a fire fight instead of a massacre in xcom's favor.
Cyberdiscs regain their level 3 leader damage control - With the easier access to HEAT (engineers and SHIVs) they aren't so threatening and can regain their LW 1.0 damage control
All Sectopods gain damage control - It helps eliminate 1-2 turn kills on sectopods making them more of a threat
Outsiders start with 1 DR (from 2), but gain 1 DR extra at 120 research - Makes the early game and the early UFOs a little easier
Bug Fixes:
Servomotor upgrade now correctly says 3 mobility (from 2) - Thanks siemic
Fixed a bug with Per Ardua Ad Astra (Australia bonus) not working 100% correctly sometimes
Fixed a bug where dense smoke and combat drugs was not granting an extra smoke grenade - Thanks AxemanUnique
Fixed a typo with pistol ammo capacity upgrade - Thanks 8sbraz8
Version 1.15.6
v1.15.6 Change Log:
Strategic:
Cash/Meld cost to chop a soldier reduced to 30/30 (from 40/40) - Makes MECs slightly easier to bring online
Special Warfare School bonus increased to 80% (from 65%) - It was a little too weak
Adaptive Bone Marrow cost increased to 30 meld/cash (from 5) - It was much too cheap making it easy to mass apply to your soldiers. It's actually a fairly strong ability that should be more appropriately aligned now.
Added in a 2nd wave option called "Balanced Soldiers (#31)" that balances soldier stats like they were in LW 1.0 - Basically gives and takes away soldiers stats so they are all realitively equal when considering their overall stats (like LW 1.0). Weighting of stats: M=12, HP=4, A=3, W=1.
Base health now modifies the effects of fatigue and injury times: For each base health above the average (6 for soldiers, 10 for MECs), your unit will have 5% less fatigue and injury time, and vice versa for health below the average. - Gives health more of a roll and makes it a little more worth while. This means the survival training bonus (+3 HP) gives your soldiers 15% reduced injury and fatigue time as well!
Equipment:
MEC-2 DR to 1 (from 0.5), MEC-7 DR to 0 (from 0.5) - Balance
Perks:
So Shall You Fight grants +25% experience for SGT ranks and higher (from +50%) - Was too strong at 50%, makes Into the Breach more appealing (which is ideal)
One For All DR to +3 (from +2.5) but sets base defense (the defense from your equipment, not perks or abilities) to 0 - It was too strong on the MECs with high defense to still have such a large defense bonus and become a full cover element with good DR. Also, it didnt' make sense that turning into a full cover element in a MEC-6 still gave you 50 defense.
Aliens:
Exalt and Exalt Elite gain 2 less damage during research upgrades - Makes them hit lighter and not be as threatening as the game progresses. Makes exalt rockets easier to deal with.
XCOM:
Reworked MSGT stat gains per mission to includes SGT, TSGT and GSGTs: SGT/TSGT/GSGT/MSGTs have a 10/20/30/40% chance to gain stats after each mission (% chance is proportional in DW games: double chances in a DW 0.5 game). If a soldier does gain stats, the stat distribution is as follows: 5/15/20/60% chance for +1 mobility/health/aim/will. - A lucky soldier could gain one of all 4 stats after a mission. Roughly, a MSGT will gain a single stat every other mission (every mission on DW 0.5). Increases the feel of soldier progression during the later ranks when promotions take longer to acquire.
Version 1.15.5
Perks:
Lock N' Load grants 1 ammo (from 2, originally 1) - It used to need the buff to be competitive on the trees. In it's current placement however, it actually does better at vanilla values (+1 ammo). This also opens up more impact of ammo small items and ammo foundry proejcts. Also nice to get back to LW 1.0 LnL.
Dense Smoke and Combat Drugs only grant +1 smoke (from +2) - It was too powerful on non-support classes to pick up 3 buffed smokes for 1 item slot. This makes it more balanced while still giving the perks a little buff compared to vanilla.
Aliens:
All Exalt soldier damage reduced by 1 - Makes the missions a little less difficult
Chryssalids defense to 60 (from 40) and damage to 6 (from 8) - Their defense was actually good because it forced the player to consider different options to eliminate them at a distance than simply firing with rifles at long range. However, to keep them in line their OHKO potential was minimized.
Sectoid Commander defense to 30 (from 20) - They were a little too easy to kill with their low health and only 20 defense. Again the defense encourages players to seek other means of killing these units than long range rifle fire.
Zombie health to 16 (from 12) - Slightly more threatening as they are so easy to kill
XCom:
Mobility ranges of initial soldiers tightened to 11-15 (from 10-16) - Having 16 mobility soldiers was not worth the negative of having 10 mobility soldiers
All starting stats are assigned randomly (from half random and half balanced, originally in LW 1.0 it was completely balanced) - This means when a soldier has low mobility they have no extra chance to have higher other stats. All of the soldiers stats are randomly assigned. You can still use strict screening to override this. This makes the soldiers you aquire more likely to be different from each other with some soldiers being good and some being bad. This also means stat weightings have no effect anymore.
Deadeye and LnL swapped places on the engineer tree - With LnL being weaker it needed to swap out. Also makes +ammo items and foundry projects more valuable.
Bug Fix:
Updated szmind's Sequential Overwatch code to v1.1 - Fixed bug with seekers decloaking not triggering overwatch and overwatch occuring multiple times causing units to move too far
Removed the second "Monthly Reward:" label (unneccessary in LW Rebalance) that pointed to nothing - Thanks to szmind for the code!
Version 1.15.4
Equipment:
Battle Rifles crit to 0 (from 20) and ammo to 3 (from 4) - Needed a slight nerf with the aim loss. Makes them a little less ideal (and a more difficult choice) on high crit builds and classes that shoot multiple times per turn. Now the only diff b/w heavy vs normal rifle is: [+1 damage, -10 crit] vs [+2 mobility], a clearer choice to make.
Strategic:
Time required for gene mods increased a little - Make it so there is a 'little' bit of thought due to soldier time outs
Cash cost for gene mods increased proportional to the meld costs - Make the gene mods act more as a sink for both cash and meld
Bug Fix:
Fixed typo on battle rifles saying they still had an aim malus when moving
Fixed typo on flush saying it granted 50 aim (it only grants 30)
Fixed a bug where sectoids picked up damn good ground and lost ranger - Accidently left it in from some tests. Whoops! =)
Version 1.15.3
Tactical:
Overwatch shots now occur sequentially (i.e. all of your soldiers do not shoot at once but shoot one at a time like in xcom 2) (Thanks to szmind for this great piece of code!) - This buffs mass overwatch for xcom and makes it less frustrating as you won't all blow your shots on that one drone in front of the cyberdisc. Makes overwatch more effective into the late game. Sometimes some shots will still occur simultaneously.
The reaction shot +2 damage buff removed - With sequential overwatch shots this buff was too powerful and would make overwatch walls too effective. It also undermined damage upgrades (e.g. using a battle rifle) as overwatch units already had +2 damage. The sequential overwatch shots is a more elegant change to keep overwatch effective into the late game.
Green fog will not affect a soldier (will/2)% of the time (from will% of the time) - Green fog was becoming too ineffective in high will soldiers, this makes it still occur in those soldiers and prevents it from becoming too ignorable. So now a soldier with 40 will avoids the effects of green fog 20% of the time (from 40%).
Perks:
Mayhem to 4 damage (from 5) - It was still too much at 5, especially on the strike rifle variants.
Sentinel grants +1 damage on all reaction shots - With the lack of +2 damage on reaction shots and the late covering fire on their trees it needed a buff
Rapid Reaction regrants +20 aim on reaction shots (from +10) - With the lack of +2 damage on reaction shots it needed a boost
In The Zone only works if no costly action has been performed (i.e. you have not moved yet that turn) and each successive ITZ shot has 10% less aim and crit (from 10% less crit and 1 less damage). Note: it still triggers on kills through cover. - The perk was too strong on mobile classes - for perks that grant multikill turns it needed more of a draw back (the not trigger through cover restriction from LW 1.0 wasn't good enough due to less cover destruction in the rebalance). This helps define ITZ as a situation where you sit in one location and unleash. It also helps position the sniper as a more stationary class. The aim at -10 per successive shot was to prevent gamey actions (I'll save the 1hp guy for the last shot b/c my bullets won't be hitting hard then) and be more realistic. Also acts as a nerf to the Jaegers offensive power.
Battle Scanner grants Low Profile (instead of Lightning Reflexes) - It just felt great to always have it on the scout and LR needed a slight nerf
Lightning Reflexes grants 3 mobility (from 4) - Was a little too strong at 4
Equipment:
Battle Rifle aim malus after taking a costly action removed - Buff to the weapon. This is because the battle rifle is most often desired on classes with double tap and light 'em up and the 10 aim on the 2nd shot is too penalizing to justify use a lot of the time. Plus, it was a little unrealistic that with (for example) LeU you could shoot>move and do so at full aim but move>shoot cost you 10 aim on the shot. Also, the fire+steadyaim combo on LeU classes didn't feel like the type of gameplay the battle rifle should be encouraging.
Arc Rifle damage to 3 (from 2) - To compensate for the mayhem nerf
Chameleon suit health to 1 (from 2) and is equippable by both the scout and the assault (from just scout) - Makes LR on the assault more viable and the assault a primary LR class (instead of a 2ndary). Nerf to health makes the item not so dominant compared to other options.
Aliens:
Floaters and Heavy floaters now have a 15% chance to gain lightning reflexes at 180 research (just like thin men) - helps reign in the strength of overwatch
Chryssalid Queens regain their vanilla lightning reflexes - This was removed previously due to their 60 def but now that their def is only 40 it makes sense for them to have it again
XCom:
Scout: swapped a few perks around - The strike rifle and shotgun scout now turn on a little earlier and the support scout is later. With early bombard the support scout was too strong of a support vs the other scout variants so it was moved to MSGT. Also, this perk tree gives early access to disabling shot to help deal with early mechtoids and cyberdiscs.
Strategic:
Genemod 'modding' times reduced by 80% - Makes the only significant restriction the cost - The time penalty was too severe on so many soldiers
Bug Fix:
Mindfray shows 2 damage before using the ability (from 1) - Thanks HinoOokami
Version 1.15.2
Fixed rocketeer tree that wasn't updated from 1.14 - Bug Fix
Version 1.15.1
Fixed typos on R4A, RR, and CF saying they gave 10 more aim than intended
Fixed typo on Lightning Reflex saying it gives 1 more mobility than intended (it gives 4, not 5)
Fixed typo on fire in the hole saying it gives 5 less aim than intended (it gives 15, not 10)
Damn Good Ground grants 40% crit resistance as well - Makes it more reasonable to stand in the open with height advantage and DGG
Dense smoke and Combat Drugs grants 2 extra smoke charges instead of 1 - Boost to the non-scout supports (make the supports a little more comparable)
Version 1.15.0
Bug Fixes:
You can now successfully use the stun rifle to repair MEC/SHIVs with the field repairs upgrade - bug fixed (thanks szmind)
The displayed healing now matches exactly how much healing will occur when using medikits or other healing devices on wounded soldiers and MEC/SHIVs - bug fix
Fixed a bug causing less threat when you assault the aliens in a DW game - thanks lemaign
QoL:
Interrogation techs now show up in your research list even when you don't have the item prerequisites - Makes it so it's obvious which interrogations you still have to do
Changed times from 0-2 days to display in hours (from 0-1 days only displaying in hours) - Makes it a little easier to read
Tactical Layer:
Hacking EXALT arrays only has a 50% (from 100%) chance to disable each exalt soldier (hacked exalt have a debuff represented by a downward facing red arrow beside their character and you can check on their f1 screen) - Makes exalt missions QUITE different (and more engaging) as they were too much of a cake walk previously by just chaining towers, having complete immunity, and mowing down exalt
All reaction fire gains +2 damage - Represents catching the target unaware. Makes xcom overwatches more effective and enemy overwatches more pinning. Also acts as a minor buff to suppression and close combat specialist.
Shredded targets lose 2 innate damage reduction as well as taking +50% damage - Slight buff to the effect of shred on mechanical targets - it's a little more realistic and it helps give more players access to anti-mechanical strategies. Note: this only affects the innate static DR units have, not the ability-based or cover-based DR. Units without innate DR are unaffected by this change.
Holo-Targeting and Shredder effect back to 3 turns (from 2) - Makes them a little stronger and the reapplication at 2 turns wasn't actually modifying gameplay enough
Large mechanical units get normal reaction fire dodging instead of no reaction fire dodging - It's not as advantegous as it was in LW 1.0 to suck up reaciton shots with heavy MECs so there was is little need for this overly complicated ability
Green fog requires a will test (vs 100 will) each turn in order for it roll for random stat losses (from simply rolling for random stat losses every turn) and also affects mobility - Example: if a soldier has 50 will, green fog will only affect that soldier 50% of the time - Significant nerf on the effect of green fog and makes will more valuable and useful on soldiers that previously may not have cared about it. This means that green fog isn't just hurting shooting/psi classes. Also, mobility loss is low (0.11-0.16 mobility per turn, IF the soldier fails all will tests). The overall goal is to spread the green fog penalty out on more stats and tone it down a little so that it's less likely to cause 2% shots but still likely to motivate xcom into action.
Perks:
Combat Drugs grants +50% area of effect (from 25%), will boost to 20 (from 40) and grants a 10 aim boost as well (from 0 aim) - prevents will stacking from getting too high and gives more of an offensive roll to the smoke, Make it easier to encompass the entire team
Combat Drugs and Dense smoke both grant +1 smoke grenade charge (from 0) - Slight increase to the strength of the perks and the use of smoke
New Perk added: Tenacious Defense. Grants +2 armor health. Also, when in cover and unflanked, reduces chance to be crit by 20% and increases the cover-based DR of half/full cover by 5% (to 25/35% from 20/30%). - This means WtS gives 50/70% DR (from 40/60%) which is equivalent to a 20%/25% DR perk (just less than absorption fields but also reduces crit) while in cover
Damn Good Ground aim/crit/defense bonus to 40 (from 30) - Buff to the perk and allows units to stand in the open at height advantage with higher than half cover defense (40 defense)
Run and Gun no longer grants Killer Instinct (Killer Instinct removed as a perk) - Balance on the Assault/Marauder trees
Will to Survive no longer grants Resilience, it's a perk only for mechanical units now - Nerf to the perk to make biotanks still care about being crit and being exposed. Also acts as a indirect buff to smoke. Though with WtS and cover-based DR being %-based, immunity to criticals is not as important as in LW 1.0.
Resilence renamed to Fortified and grants 0.5 DR as well as immunity to critical hits - Since it only is used on mechanical units now, resilience didn't seem to fit and it needed a slight boost as a solo-perk
Close Combat Specialist grants 50% DR against damage within 4 tiles (from 33%) - Buff to make the user more resistant when attacked at close range (it's so dangerous to be there it needed a buff)
Covering Fire grants 20 aim on reaction shots into cover (from 30) - With the damage buff to reaction shots the aim was too much
Rapid Reaction grants 10 aim on reaction shots (from 20) - With the damage buff to reaction shots the aim was too much
Ready for Anything grants 10 aim on reaction shots (from 20) - With the damage buff to reaction shots the aim was too much
Fire in the Hole aim bonus applied to scatter to +15 (from +10) - slight buff to the perk for balance on the tree
Flush aim bonus back to 30 (from 40, originally 30) - The boost wasn't necessary with the new trees and the really high aim wasn't ideal gameplay
Aggression only grants the primary weapon (from any weapon) the bonus damage - Consistency with other perks
Grenadier bonus grenade range to 0% (from 20) - Nerf to the distance of early grenades on the engineer
Mayhem grants 5 damage to sniper/strike/arc rifles (from 6) - Was too strong at 6 (esp mayhem strike rifles)
Bring 'Em On crit damage to 1.5 (from 3) and bonus crit damage to 10% chance for 7.5 (from 4.5) for each enemy you can see - Pushed more of the damage to the situations where there are lots of enemies (more of a comeback mechanic)
Savior only grants 1 extra medikit (from 3) - Nerf to medic tank and overall biologic healing
Lightning Reflexes grants 90% dodge on the primary shot (from 80%) and +5 mobility (from +2) - Makes the first shot a little more reliable and significantly buffs the perk overall (for balance on the trees)
Sprinter grants +3 mobility (from +4/+2) - Slight nerf on biologics, slight buff on MECs - more for balance on the trees
Extra conditioning grants 3 armor health (from 2) and 1 mobility (from 2) - increase overall health on units and decrease mobility, balance of the perk on the trees
Aliens:
All Exalt have 2 less health - Makes killing exalt on exalt missions more reasonable
Muton health to 12 (from 14) - Make them a little less tanky
Chryssalid defense to 40 (from 60) and DR to 0.5 (from 0) - Modest increase to their ability to be countered by something other than close shotguns and explosives
Sectoid Commander defense to 20 (from 30) - Same reason as above
Zombie health to 12 (from 8) and regen to max - Makes them more challenging and unique (be careful... you can get swarmed now...)
Muton Elites gain Tenacious Defense but health to 24 (from 28) - Makes their cover and working around it more important
XCOM:
A lot of perk modifications and starting stat modifications (see perk tree) - Balance and opening up of options
Starting health of all soldiers to 6 (from 4) and MECs to 10 (from 8) - Decrease the likelihood of death while still making injuries just as likely; also makes the early game light armors more reasonable to wear
All SHIVs receive 2 MORE DR and 1 less mobility - Significant buff: helps them fullfill their tank and mobile cover role a LOT better
MECs no longer start with the combined arms perk - Slight nerf to offensive power, and buff to the perk on the officer tree
New stat weighting for initial soldiers. Will:1, Aim:3, HP:4, Mobility:12 - Previously will wasn't worth enough and health was worth much too much (especially since it's not armor health)
Officer ranks reverted back to 10/70/130/190/250 (from 10/40/70/150/250) - The reduced officer ranks weren't necessary due to soldier ranks being the main restrictor
All Unique special character stats slightly buffed and perks removed (except zhang) - Slight increases, the perks were preventing choosing certain classes, makes sure that unique characters are always at least decent soldiers (e.g. on hidden potential games with poor rolls), only perk left is lone wolf on zhang because it doesn't realistically interfer with any class he'd go
Equipment:
Laser and Gauss based weaponry have 5 less aim: lasers are +10 (from +15) and gauss is -10 (from -5) - Lasers and guass were too strong compared to ballistic, pulse, and plasma, this balances them better
Shotguns do 100% of base damage (from 175% of base) (i.e. ballistic do 4 instead of 7) but gain extra base damage when within 10 tiles (+10% per tile up to +100% at point blank) (i.e. at point blank ballistic do 8 instead of 7), mobility to +1 (from 0), and ammo to 5 (from 4) - Buffed: gets flanks off easier, more consistent, damage boost at close range. Ballistic used to do 7 damage, now do 4-8 damage with 1 more mobility and ammo.
Sawed-off shotgun damage to 4 (from 5) - Consistency with other shotguns
Rocket radius increased to 7 (from 5) - This is a big change and buff. Makes it easier to hit with and easier to hit large groups with. Give the rocketeer more of a roll when the enemies are plentiful.
Rocket damage decreased to 6/9/9 (from 8/12/12, originally 7/9/12) - Was doing too much damage with the extra AoE. Also helps balance mayhem vs HEAT on the rocketeer
Extra rocket weight back to 2 (from 1, orginally 2) - At 1 weight it made it an auto equip and other items not competitive
Arc Rifle to 2 damage (from 1) - Due to mayhem nerf
AM Rifle also reduces the hardened bonus by half now (just like the AM Long Rifle) - For consistency with the AM Long rifle and a slight buff to crit builds with strike rifles
All Sniper Rifles aim bonus to +10 (from +5) - Slight buff
All Strike Rifles aim bonus to 0 (from +5), damage to 125% of base (from 100% of base), mobility to -1 (from 0) - Slight buff overall
Marksman's scope damage to 0 (from +1) - Nerf to make it not as strong -- it was overriding other items too much and the strike rifle already has +1 damage
LMG ammo to 6 (from 5) - Makes it slightly better at suppressing, slight buff, more competitive against the SAW
Breaching ammo crit to 0 (from +10) and damage penetration to +2 (from 0) - Buff to the item making it more focused on nullifying damage reduction
Covert Ops armor to 5 mobility (from 4) - Makes it easier to hit relays in the more challenging exalt scenarios
Upgraded Medikit healing to 4 hp (from 5, originally 6) - Makes the other healing abilities and boosts more important
Flashbang radius to 4 (from 3.5) - Buff to supports
Damage Control removed from all heavy armors but mobility increased by 1 - Nerf to biotanks (the 60-70% DR they can achieve was eclisping MEC tanks too much)
Carapace, Titan, and Archangel armor lose 1 hp; Vortex Armor loses 2 hp - Balance
Tac Vest health to 3 (from 2) and mobility to 1 (from 2) - Makes it a little more tanky for the early game usability
Chameleon suit health to 2 (from 3), LR dodge to 90% on all shots (from 95%) - It was too strong at 95% for the purposes of making overwatch fire threatening
Ceramic plating and reinforced vest back to -1/-2 mobility (from -2/-3) - Makes tanks slightly more mobile
Alloy plating alloy cost to 40 (from 16) - Makes them harder to bring online and acts as an alloy sink
Impact Vest hp to 3 (from 4) and grants Damage Control (instead of shock-absorbant armor) - Buff to the assault tank as DC is better than SAA for a tank. Nerf to non-assault tanks making equipping this item not so mandatory making room for other items.
Chittin Plating hp to 2 (from 4), but mobility to 0 (from -2) - Alteration in it's use. Since it was on highly mobile chryssalids it didn't make sense to have it as the heavy duty slow armor. Plus this helps fill a need of a light health boost.
Respirator Implant can be equipped by all classes, armor health to 0 (from 1), defense to 0 (from 10), mobility to +1 (from 0), and reduces the effect of green fog by half - Gives it a unique role for combating green fog on long missions and gives more classes more options for what to equip on other classes
Heavy MEC suits grant Damage Control instead of Resilience - Buff to the overall tankiness of MECs
KSM deals 26 damage (from 24 damage) - Slight boost to the strength of it
Resources:
Countries now provide double income but XCOM gains 30% (from 50%) of the country income with no satellite coverage - Makes acquiring satellite coverage more rewarding and gives a higher influx of montly cash to xcom both with and without satellite coverage
Alloys gained from UFOs decreased by 33% - We were getting too much
Elerium gained from UFOs decreaesd by 25% and you only receive 5-15% (from 10-30%) from crashed UFOs - We were getting too much
Thermal Power plant power to 30 (from 40) - Makes it not so ideal to always just rush it (even on the 4th row)
Autopsies and interrogations require twice as much time to research - Makes them more significant technologies to consider
Increased the time to research different UFOs and gain bonus damage/resources from them by 10x - They are actually quite powerful technologies and previously were very quick. This gives the player a research sink incase you were slow on captures and had nothing else to research and makes their value more apparent and more of a choice.
Xenopsionics no longer is researched twice as fast and at half the cost - Makes it more of a choice whether you want to venture into psionics early or not
Engineer requirements for building equipment reverted to vanilla levels (from half of vanilla), except for stun rifle at 10 (from 25) - Makes engineers more desirable and building equipment significantly slower
Uplink/Nexus now require 15 engineers (from 10) - Makes engineers more desirable
Workshops/Laboratories now require 15 scientists/engineers (from 5) to build and each consecutive one requires 15 more (from 5) - Makes scientists/engineers more desirable, reduces workshop/lab spam
XCOM starts with 5 scientists/engineers (from 3) - Makes the early items/research more reasonable in terms of time
Strategic Layer:
Balance of starting country bonuses and continent bonuses - Due to new weighting of stats and just general balancing
A new file "subtitles.int" has been added to the mod. This file simply has tips and tricks displayed during loading screens that are modified to fit with LW Rebalance instead of LW 1.0.
The XCOM Training Program XP/day decreased to 2/day for Rookies (from 10/day) and 8/day for Specialists (from 20/day) - Nerfed. Mass soldiers don't sky rocket up to their rank so fast -- also means reward soldiers are worth more. Each rank now takes 50 days.
Abductions are slighty more likely to be more difficult - There were too many light abductions
Initial panic levels changed to 500/600/700/800 (from 250/500/750/1000) on normal, classic, brutal, impossible - It was too low on easy difficulties and too high on impossible
Typos:
Fixed typo on carbines - Thanks notanoctopus
Fixed typo on ceramic plating - Thanks notanoctopus
Fixed typo on the anti-materiel long rifle (it has more than one ammo) - Thanks szmind
Fixed typo on XCOM base defense blue shirt foundry projects - Thanks szmind
Fixed typo on Reflex Rifle - Thanks szmind
Fixed typo on alien grenades foundry project - Thanks szmind
Fixed the <br>'s appearing in some text - Thanks szmind
Fixed misrepresentation of the research info on the alloy cannon - Thanks szmind
Fixed typo on disabling shot to correctly indicate there is no aim bonus or malus anymore
Fixed typo on AP ammo saying it was only for gunners and MECs (it's actually for Engineers, Gunners, and MECs)
Fixed typo on neural feedback: you do not need to see the psi attacker for it to work (only your allies)
Fixed typo on Rapid Reaction and Ready for Anything - Thanks Forefall
Fixed typo on laser sight and scope suggesting they benefited side arms (they do not)
Fixed typo on base stat gains with grenadier on engineer and fire rocket on rocketeer
Fixed typo on the soldier augmentation screen of incorrect defense
Version 1.13
Recoilless Rifle loses Shock & Awe - Rocketeer had too much ammo for 12 damage rockets
Rocketeer MSGT perk Tandem Warheads switched to Shock & Awe - Tandem was too strong on the high damage rockets as it reduces the significant negative of requiring reasonable aim to do good damage on rockets
Blaster Launcher damage to 12 (from 16) - The ability to aim it whereever you want is simply too strong with the high damage and it was borderline abusive gameplay
Shredder rocket AoE to 80% or 4 tiles (from 100%, originally 150%) - makes it more comparable to a normal rocket (smaller aoe, doesn't destroy cover, but shreds targets)
Aggression grants +3 crit damage (from 0) when within 4 tiles of the target - Boost to make it more competitive on the assault and encourage close play
Bring 'Em On grants a 10% chance for 4.5 crit damage (from 3) for every enemy you can see - Slight buff
Lightning Reflexes picks up +2 mobility (from 0) - At 80% dodge on the primary reaction shot it was a little too weak and while this is good for gameplay the perk suffered too much. The +2 mobility should make it more competitive again and make the Pathfinder a little better too.
Chameleon suit raises LR to 95% (from 90) - Makes it a little more secure at avoiding shots
Bug Fix: The marksman's scope now only provides the damage benefit to the marksman/strike rifles (and not the sidearms)
Disabling shot aim boost back to 0 (from 20) - Was a little too strong of a choice at +20 aim with the new support scout
Shotgun damage increased to 175% base (from 150%) - Encourages close-ranged gameplay
Breaching ammo crit bonus to 10 (from 20) - It was a little too strong
Version 1.12
Zombie hp to 8 (from 3, originally 12) and regen to 8 - They were too easy to kill previously and gameplay should trump realism
Cyberdiscs lose damage control - They were too tanky for a flying unit
Muton elite health increased to 28 (from 24) - Slight boost
Sectoid Commander defense to 30 (from 20) and health to 6 (from 10) - Encourages close range tactics or explosives to deal with
Ethereal defense to 60 (from 40) - Encourages close range tactics or explosives to deal with
Executioner aim to 10 (from 15) and crit to 50 (from 40) - Makes it more unique in its roll and acts as a slight nerf
Disabling shot grants 20 aim (from 0) - Buff to the perk
Increased neural feedback chance to succeed to +100 (from +30, originally +0) - Means it's very likely to trigger if you're in the right scenario
Increase mind control success to -60 (from -50) - It was still a little too strong for both the aliens and xcom
Holo-Targeting and Shredder down to 2 turns (from 3, originally 1/2-4) - Makes it more useful to reapply
Packmaster once again works on motion trackers - It nerfed the support scout too much
Scout perks altered slightly - To accommodate for extra motion tracker charges, and give more appealing options for a 'scout'
Arc Rifle aim to 0 (from 10) - To accommodate for the increased aim of disabling shot
Flashbang radius to 3.5 tiles (from 3) - With the worse perk trees the supports needed a little boost, also makes non-psionic support a more reasonable option
Chameleon Suit crit to 0 (from 10) - It was a little powerful already
LMG mobility to -3 (from -4) - It was a little too slow, makes it a more competitive choice
Marksman's Scope aim to +10 (from +20), damage to +1 (from 0) - Loses 10 aim for a damage boost, slight buff to the strike rifle scout
Overall alloy gains increased by ~20%, overall elerium gains decreased by ~20%, weapon fragments gains decreased by ~20% - balance of resources
Improved Salvage, Alien Metallurgy, and Alien Nucleonics grants 50% increased resources (from 20%) but costs increased significantly - Gives the player more control over which resource they want to focus on
LW 1.0 Bug Fix: Dynamic War will no longer cause a proportional increase in base assaults - This is lemaign's mod and I finally understood it and have implemented it so you shouldn't expect proportionally more base assaults when using DW
Psionic training success is x3 (from x2) but training time is increased by 50% - increases consistancy and creates less micromanagement of putting soldiers in and out of the psi labs
Satellite uplinks require 10 engineers (from 7) - Make them less dominant compared to nexuses (nexi?)
Version 1.11
Ranger aim bonus to 10 (from 20) - Was too powerful on the classes often trumping primary weapons and was too easy of a pick on the assault
Reflex Cannon Description fixed to say it gets 1.5 crit damage at 6 tile range - It was always 6 and was inadvertently listed as 4
Reflex Cannon other typo fixed - Thanks settingsupremacy
Psionic training success doubled but minimum required will for the first level increased to 35 - Makes training a lot more successful and predictable for higher will soldiers
Slots available for the psi lab, gene lab and MEC lab decreased to 2 (from 3) - Less annoying with constant psi training messages and accommodates for increased psi success rates
Sapper perk type fixed - Thanks settingsupremacy
Meld cost to chop someone into MECs increased to 40 (from 20) - Makes it slightly more difficult to mass them
Executioner aim to 15 (from 20) - Balance
Increased gene mod costs slightly - Balance
Fixed other misc typos
Version 1.10
Fixed text not updating to new second wave option friendly sky and cinematic mode aim bonuses
Fixed elerium bug causing you to get ~50% more elerium than intended - Thanks apjanic
Misc text description fixes
Fixed a possible CTD when using ITZ on flanked enemies with sharpshooter
Suppression was sometimes (rarely) disabling some enemy AI functions - fixed
Version 1.09
- Rapid Reaction aim bonus on reaction shots to 20 (from 10) - Overwatch needed a boost
- Ready for Anything aim bonus on reaction shots to 20 (from 15) - Overwatch needed a boost
- Lightning Reflexes only grants 80% dodge on the primary shot (from 90%) - Makes LR less 'all-powerful' in dealing with reaction fire encouraging reaction fire to be more effective at pinning xcom (note: chameleon vest still grants 90% dodge on all shots)
- Mayhem does +2 damage on rockets (from +3, originally +2) and grants +6 damage to sniper/strike/arc rifles (from +5, originally +4) - Balance
- Rapid Fire is now disabled for sidearms - There was a bug letting it fire 2 shots with 1 ammo shots and it was a little too strong with pistols
- Packmaster no longer affects the number of motion trackers on the scout
- Infantry EC, LnL, Steadfast swapped places on their tree - Makes the infantry tank slightly stronger and the overwatch slightly weaker (balance), also stops overshadowing the usefulness of the pistol (and ranger) and the extra ammo on the battle rifle
- Smoke grenade range to 12.5 tiles (from 7.5) - Slight boost to it's strength
- Tac Armor HP to 5 (from 4) and mobility to -1 (from 0) - Gives the option to cover lower hp soldiers to ideal HP thresholds
- Ceramic Plating HP to 2, mobility to -2 (from -1), and defense to -10 (from 0) - Allows biotanks to turn on right away with a 'taunting effect' (prevents acquiring the reinforced vest being such a priority)
- Reinforced vest mobility to -3 (from -2) - Makes tanks desire mobility a little more
- Marksman's Scope aim bonus to 20 (from 10) - Needed to be stronger than the regular scope and the strike rifle scout needed a boost
- Arc Rifle does 1 damage (from 2) - balance due to new mayhem strength
- Arc Thrower renamed to Stun Rifle - It's not a little item anymore and is a rifle so it didn't make sense to have it be technically an arc rifle when there is already something named that
- Meld only sells for 7 (from 10) - It was too much of a cash influx throughout the game
Version 1.08
Increased elerium from shotdown and landed UFOs - We weren't quite getting enough. While it's supposed to be rare it was a little too rare
Normal difficulty alien defense adjustments to -10% (from -30%) - It made cover based strategies less important
Friendly Skies and Cinematic Mode aim bonus to 35% (from 25%, originally 15%) - More strongly acts as an option to make the game easier for those who want/need it
Version 1.07
Machine Pistol Ammo to 3 (from 2) - Needed more of a boost to make it worth it vs the normal pistol
Shock Absorbant Armor DR to 50% - While both CCS and SAA were too much at 50%, both at 30% was a little lackluster, this seems to be the reasonable compromise
Steadfast health gain to 2 (from 3) - It was strong enough that it doesn't need the 3 health
Scout picks up CCS instead of Flush at LCPL - makes the shotgun scout a little more doable (encouraging more engaging gameplay), and flush was too weak for a shotgun with the smaller range between 0 aim and 100 aim on the shotguns
Assault picks up Opportunist insated of Flush at MSGT- With the decreased range of the shotgun flush has become weaker and more ineffective, Opportunist allows for a unique synergy with CCS
Packmaster on the Guardian only grants 2 restorative mists (from 3) - put healing a little less powerful compared to the medic
Version 1.06b
Bug Fix: Shredder Rocket was weighing 2 when it should only weigh 1
Alloy and Elerium amounts per UFO tweaked and made more different per difficulty - you were getting a little too much alloy and a little too little elerium, also now difficulties get significantly different amounts (see front page)
Soldier cost to 50 (from 25) - discourages players from not using worse soldiers and even sometimes 're-rolling' soldiers
Start cash to 1000/1200/1400/1600 (from 500 all) - Accommodates for more expensive soldiers
Funding amount sycronized to start cash at 100%/120%/160%/200% for impossible/brutal/classic/normal - consistency of cash throughout each campagin
Version 1.06
- Flush aim reduced to 40 (from 50) - A little strong on the new scout/engineer build at 50 - Lone wolf tiles back to 7 (from 5) - With the increased range of the sniper rifle the reduced tiles was not needed and the perk was slightly edging out other perks - Mayhem grants 3 damage to rockets (from 2) - Keep it comparable vs HEAT warheads with the rocket damage increases - Savior grants +2 healing (from +4) but 3 free medikit uses (from 2) - Makes larger wounds feel more punishing and harder to deal with - Into the Breach provides +300% experience (from +200%) - Buff to make it even easier to level troops with less experience
- Medikit upgrade grants +2 healing (from +3) - Makes larger wounds feel more punishing and harder to deal with - Soldier exp to 100/500/1000/2000/3500/5000/7500 (from 100/500/1500/2500/3500/5000/6500) - lowered the 3rd and 4th level by 500 experience so you can bring the classes online earlier (earlier access to HEAT), raised the last level to make maxing out take longer - Officer ranks required to 10/40/70/150/250 (from 10/70/130/190/250) - Brings on mid-range officers a lot earlier - Cadre grants 6 soldiers @ CPL rank - accommodates for the less experience gained with the experience drop - You get more alloys for crashed and exploded UFOs: a landed UFO gives 100% alloys (was always 100%), crashed 50-100% (from 30-45%), and destroyed 25-75% (from 7-18%) - Prevents bad luck from ruining the game by locking you out of a resource and makes it easy to get alloys without doing landeds - Landed UFOs grant 3 extra months of research (from 1) and do not gain an extra increase the number of enemies - The increase in enemy number made them more tedious missions and sometimes not that much harder. Previously the 3 months was too hard because HEAT was not readily avaiable, but with now earlier access to HEAT and the early SHIV HEAT Ammo that's not the case - EMP cannon doesn't grant extra alloys on shotdown UFOs (just artifacts and elerium) - It bugged if the % of alloy recovery was over 100% - Bug Fix: You were supposed to only get 0-30% of the elerium from crashed UFOs but were getting 100% due to a bug in the code. You now get 10-30% elerium on crashed UFOs. - Means that the best way to get Elerium is on landed UFOs (cue evil music) - Cash bonuses from destroying UFOs reduced by 80% - With the extra alloys the cash was too much - The 2 steam vents only occur on the 4th level - Somewhat stops rushing down to the 3rd/4th level to get steam online - Elerium Generator provides 25 power (from 35) - Make the interaction with steam more interesting and less ignorable - Ring of Fire to 8 bonus steam vents (from 6) and allows vents on the 3rd and 4th floors of the base - Buff compared to normal - Alien Containment build cost altered: alloys to 0 (from 20), cash to 100 (from 200), maintenance cash to 10 (from 30), power to -1 (from -10) - It was sometimes restrictive and because it is a necessity for technology it should not be restrictive at all - Monthly cash on normal increased to 200% (from 150%) - Makes normal easier - Alien defense on normal to -30% (from -20%) - Makes normal easier
- Drone aim to 70 (from 60) - makes them more of a threat with their reduced damage - Drone health to 2 (from 3) but DR to 2 (from 1) - Consistency (all alien robotics are hardened and start with 2 DR) and increase in difficulty - Seeker DR to 2 (from 2.5) and they gain the hardened trait - Consistency (all alien robotics are hardened and start with 2 DR) - Sectopod initial DR to 2 - Consistency (all alien robotics are hardened and start with 2 DR) and increase in difficulty
- Avalanche missle damage to 80 (from 300) and cooldown to 0.5s (from 2s) - Makes them easier to shoot down UFOs with - Sniper rifle aim to 5 (from 10) - Was a little too strong with the extra damage penetration - Pistol damage increased to 75% of base (from 50% of base) but ammo on machine pistols to 2 (from 3) - Boost to their strength and the strength of ranger on the assault/infantry, ballistic pistols now do 3 damage (from 2) - Rocket damage to 8/12/16 (From 7/9/12) - Due to enemies being more tanky in general the rocketeer wasn't quite as good - Recoiless rifle mobility to -2 (from -1) - Accommodation for increased damage and the extra rocket (that grants mobility when fired)
Version 1.05
HE grenade damage to 7 (from 6) - with the short range it needed a little boost
Typo fix: Steadfast grants 3hp, not 4
Outsider DR to 2 (from 1.5) - slight buff to make them stronger
Sectoid Commander will increased by 30 - With the nerf to mind control hit chances their AI was prioritizing away from using mind control too often - this makes them realize it's a good ability to use again
Floater and Heavy Floater mobility to 14 (from 13 and 12) - Makes floaters slightly more threatening and helps accommodate for the significant range nerf that heavy floater grenades received
100% of Thinmen (from 25%) gain DGG at 240 research (from 90) and all gain squad sight at 120 research (from 50%) - Makes them more of a threat into the mid-late game and prevents early access to DGG which was sometimes problematic
Version 1.04
- Swapped Engineer 1st and 3rd levels - Slow down it's progression - Engineer deadeye replaced with flush - The engineer's was supposed to be poor against organic fliers but early Deadeye was superseding that. Flush+HEAT gives it more of a focus on mechanical fliers. Flush augments it's lower aim. - Engineer light 'em up replaced with double tap - double tap is more synergistic with Flush - Engineer Rapid Fire replaced with ranger and swapped with LnL - Rapid Fire was too strong an addition on a class with HEAT (the support engineer was pulling of 4x shots of RF HEAT) - Swapped rocketeer 1st and 3rd levels - Speed up it's progression, earlier access to HEAT - Medic picks up steadfast over sprinter and swaps position with CCS - Necessary due to it's reduced will and to make it a more reasonable tank - Medic swaps combat drugs and bombard - It's now the best support for smoke and augments the smoke earlier, but it's an overall nerf due to bombard coming on later - HEAT Ammo and Rapid Fire swapped on the gunner - earlier access to HEAT - Rocketeer will to +20 (from +10) - More opportunity for a psionic rocketeer - Engineer will to +10 (from +20) - Nerf the support
- Rapid Reaction aim bonus on reaction shots to 10 (from 5, originally 0) - Boost to overwatch builds. The innate negatives of overwatch (sitting and accumulating green fog and allowing the enemies a chance to fire) needed more compensation. - Covering Fire aim bonus on reaction shots to 30 (from 20) - Boost to overwatch builds. Also boosts alien use of covering fire. - Lead by Example will to 0 (from +20) - Nerf to the officer acting as a will emitting beacon - Neural Feedback chance to activate increased by 30% on will tests and the radius of protection increased to visual range (from 8 tiles) - This now covers any ally your soldier can see and is much easier to proc; it was too hard to proc previously - One For All DR to 2.5 (from 2) - Puts MECs more on even terms with biotank max static DR values and the ability is really cool so it's great with higher values - Mayhem grants sniper/strike/arc rifles 5 damage (from 4) - Boost to the perk on the sniper, engineer, and rocketeer trees. The increased % based DR (instead of static) nerfed the perk slightly so this should help boost it back. - ITZ triggers on any kill (not just flanked/uncovered kills), but yields 1 less damage and 10 less crit on each subsequent shots - Significant buff to the ease of triggering the perk and the perk overall, helps cap the potential number of free actions - Officer ability Command cooldown to 1-turn (from 2) - Makes officers more significant in their role and higher level officers stronger - Vital Point Targeting only works on humanoids (from all units) - Slight nerf and makes some logical sense - Bring 'Em On grants the primary weapon 3 crit damage with a 10% chance per enemy seen to grant 3 more crit damage (from 1.5 + 1.5 per every 2 enemies) - Tweaked so it's more useful with only a single enemy but nerfed at the mid-higher end - Aggression bonus damage to 1.5 crit damage (from 3) - Nerf to offensive damage builds (crit infantry, crit assault, high damage crit MECs) - SAA and CCS DR to 30% (from 50%) - It was too easy to bait the aliens into attacking you at close range and borderline abusive in some situations
- Sniper Rifle range to 37.5 tiles (from 30, originally 200) - They now have double normal weapon range: this is a 7.5 tile increase to make it a little easier to position them and still fire - Sniper Rifles gain 1 damage penetration - Buff to the sniper rifle to make it more competitive - Gauss Long Rifle and Gauss Strike Rifle have 2 ammo (from 1) and are renamed to the Anti-Materiel Long Rifle and Anti-Materiel Rifle - slight boost to their strength. Consistency and distinction in their naming convention - Battle Rifle crit to 20 (from 10) - Another small buff - The arc thrower now reduces throw range by 50% - Makes it so it's not an auto equip on support classes as a way to skip the negatives of not having a primary weapon - MEC-1 DR to 0 (from 0.5), Defense to 30 (from 0) - Makes more sense with body shield and allows the early MEC-1 to survive a little better - MEC-3, MEC-6, and MEC-7 mobility to 3/5/7 (from 3/4/6) and defense to 40/40/50 (from 30/30/45) - The high mobility defensive MECs needed a buff - Medikit loses the 0.5 DR - It made it too good of an item compared to other tank options due to poison resistance, ability to heal, and DR - Adaptive Tracking Sensors grants SHIVs Opportunist instead of advanced fire control - Slight buff to the item - Plasma Sniper Rifle bonus crit damage occurs when firing at anyone greater than 20 tiles away (from 35 tiles away) - It was too hard to activate at >35 tiles away considering the rifle only fires 37.5 tiles =P - Short range aim bonuses/penalties on shogtuns, sniper/strike rifles, and pistols starts at 10 tiles (from 8.8 tiles) - Buff to shotguns and pistols and nerf to sniper/strike rifles - Autopistols do not benefit from the ammo conservation project - Now both pistols and autopistols receive no benefit from the project - Shredder Rocket weight to 1 (from 3) and AoE to 5 (from 7.5) - Loses it's large AoE in exchange for making it easier to carry. This increases the capability of xcom to shred units - Shredder Ammo aim malus to 0 (from -10) - Increase the capability of xcom to shred units
- Floater health increased to 5 (from 4, originally 6) - They were a little too easy - Muton health increased to 14 (from 10) - Makes them more likely to survive in reasonable numbers to engage in a firefight - Muton Elite health increased to 24 (from 20) - Makes them more likely to survive in reasonable numbers to engage in a firefight - Chryssalid defense to 60 (from 40) - They are still a little too easy and this further encourages alternative strategies to deal with them, and makes them scary. >:) - Mechtoid damage to 10 (from 8) - It was a little too low - Sectoid Commanders lose absorption fields but gain 20 defense (from 0) - Makes them harder to eliminate from long range (half the defense of ethereals), the absorption fields was just like more hp - Mechtoids and Cyberdiscs start with Opportunist - Covering Fire wasn't effective enough without Opportunist for the aim bonus
- Psionics can be chopped to MECS - Officers still can't. Psionics will lose all psionic abilities when chopped. - You receive more exalt clues per month - This is a modification of the 'EXALT Intel Tweak' by Eclipse666. Note: exalt multi clues are still enabled so you can clear exalt early if you have the strength. - Pressing k now hunkers your unit without requiring a confirmation dialogue - A modification of wghost81's hunker down fine tune mod - MECs now have in-game models which relate their bulk to their tankiness - Just makes more sense (Thanks Lafiir) - Included a new file "DefaultContent.ini" in the mod so that I could correctly assign the MEC loadout icons (Thanks Lafiir) - Interception times increased to double (from 140%) - Allows better use of more defensive stances to address UFOs and slightly more of a chance at downing difficult UFOs - Carlock loses his bonus perk - So he can still be an engineer without losing a perk and he was a little too strong for a random SGT engineer (He's not Van Doorn and Friendly doesn't even get a perk!)
Version 1.03
Danger Zone suppression reverted to LW 1.0 levels (from 3.5 radius to a ~2.9 tile radius) - The bullet wizard is a little strong and doesn't need the extra AoE
Outsider and Floater leaders do not gain CCS - Wasn't ideal gameplay to discourage getting close to them and minimizing close range damage
Carapace Armor health to 8 (from 7) - Make it more competitive against the Kestral
Version 1.02
Failing an abduction causes 5 continent panic (from 10, orginally 20) and 5 country panic (from 10, originally 25) - It was still too punishing to lose a mission
Losing a satellite causes 5 continent panic (from 5) and 10 country panic (from 25) - Again, too difficult to recover from or prevent
Slight tweak to perks (still works with 1.x save games)
Battle Rifles gain 1 extra ammo compared to assault rifles - Gives them a slight boost that they kinda needed
Savior grants 2 extra medikits (from 3) - With the support picking up packmaster it doesn't need the extra kit
Rocket radius increased from 4.5 tiles to 5 tiles - Slight increase to their strength
Extra Rocket small item mobility to -1 (from -2) - Increases the mobility of the rocketeer slightly when equipping rockets
Version 1.01b
Updated some descriptions that I missed in the update from 1.00 to 1.01
Version 1.01
Aggression grants 3 crit damage (from 1.5) - Minor buff to make it more competitive on the perk trees
Carbine aim bonus to 10 (from 15) and crit to 5 (from 20) - Carbines got an inadvertent buff with the lack of static cover-based DR, this puts them back in a more reasonable place
Strike Rifle aim bonus to 5 (from 0) - It was too weak with the damage nerf and needed a buff. Also makes it reasonable to equip over an assault rifle.
Marksman's Scope aim bonus to 10 (from 5) - It was often getting replaced by the scope which was not ideal
Rapid Reaction grants 5 aim on overwatch shots (from 0) - Slight boost to RR vs Sentinel
Close Combat Specialist DR to 50% (from 30%) - Needed a boost, more simple calculations, encourages closer engagements
Shock-Absorbant Armor 50% DR occurs at 8 tiles away (from 4) - Needed a significant boost, encourages closer engagements
The chameleon vest allows dodging multiple reaction shots, all at 90% (from 95%) - slight nerf to it's strength
Medic starting will to +20 (from +30) - Puts it more on even footing with the rest of the classes
Assault starting will to +20 (from +10) - Allows easier access to psionic abilities
Savior grants 3 extra medikits (from 2) - Allows the support class more room for support items
All chryssalids lose lightning reflexes - They are strong enough against arms fire with their 40 defense
Version 1.00
This is the first non-beta version
What is this Mod? This is a modification of a modification. :) The popular Long War 1.0 modification for XCOM:EU/EW was amazing and very successful. However, there was still room for improvement... thus this mod.
What difficulty should I play on? LWR Easy is easier than Long War 1.0 Normal. LWR Classic is similar to Long War 1.0 Classic. LWR Brutal is around as hard as Long War 1.0 Impossible. LWR Impossible is really tough, and pretty unforgiving. It's probably best to start out a little easier if you've never played LWR before.
I'm amazing and am going to play on Impossible anyway! If you feel like being masochistic and decide to play on impossible: please expect to lose many (literally many) times before you even come close to winning. I'd recommend treating impossible as more of a "How far can you get?" rather then a "Can you beat the game?". Impossible in Long War Rebalance is much harder than that difficulty was in Long War 1.0. _____________________________________________________ REVIEWS Articles Written:
The mod is a huuuuge improvement upon the base game, with mechanics far outmatching even the sequels of Enemy Within. The variety of builds, strats, and enemy leaders offer a massive sum of replayibility. The quality of life improvements are indispensible, and you cannot imagine not playing with anymore. The mod is one of the best I have ever played in any game.
-- ImperatorSimo
It’s legitimately the best version of xcom I’ve played, even including some of the shenanigans you can do with modded xcom 2
-- Admiral Billy
LWR is beyond expectations. Some of the code adjustments have completely changed the game for the better. I love the pod mechanics, Xcom scamper, air game changes, recon & perk adjustments, the list goes on. And over all balance of perks, gear, everything is much better than LW.
-- bcdaphi
LWR represents in my opinion the best modification of - hands down - the best pc-strategy game of the last 30 years (I was born in 1982), Long War-Mod included of course.
-- guitarwolf03
XCOM Long War was already my favorite game of all time, and you've made it even better! Finding your mod was a revelation. I particularly like how the new pod activation mechanics fundamentally change the feel and tactics of the alien engagements. Very nicely done.
-- Grendel13G
u shaped my favourite game in a drug
-- Nuvola84
I have sunk hundreds of hours into this mod and will sink in thousands more. This mod has taken the awesome core of LW and removed all of the the boring bloat - no more will you be overwatch crawling across the map for hours avoiding pods at all costs, now you will spend most of your time murking aliens, strategising, and actually doing the stuff that makes XCOM fun. Absolute killer, thank you.
--Regatronification
I absolutelly love the mod – one of the best games I have ever played.
-- cloxx3
XCOM LWR is officially best XCOM ever.
-- familiar72
I can't play any other version of LW or XCom. Anytime I try them they feel so inferior with so many of the LWR features missing that I just go back to LWR. I've spent more hours on LWR than any other game in my life. Thank you.
-- JohnDorreer
You've really gotten rid of all the tedious cheese and focused down on the essence of meaningful decisions in both the tactical combat layer and the strategic layer. Excellent job. This easily makes XCOM: EW the most enjoyable tactics game I've ever played.
-- RogueRifler
11/10 would spend another 60 hours!
-- darkhunterbg
this is the definitive experience of xcom, nice job
-- sheeptraveler
I have 2000+ hrs on both LW and LW2. This is the best mod I played!
-- serbu_lent
I have to say that this is the best xcom mod I've ever played, tried long war 1.0, long war 2, wotc, lwotc etc. this mod is very good.
--moil23
Never believed to play the first XCom remake again. But your overwatch and pod dynamics are gold. Its the best 'newer' XCom experience for me. I'm currently in Dezember, second base assault.
-- Hector
LW 1.0 was world class, LWR is GOD. Thank you so much.
--muttermund _____________________________________________________ MAIN GOALS
1) Eliminate the reverse difficulty curve 2) Make easier difficulties easier 3) Discourage abusive and tedious strategies (e.g. shadow device stacking, first turn kills, pulling enemies, etc.) 4) Encourage engaging choices (air combat stances, equipment slots, base construction, etc.) 5) Improve choices on the perk trees (so more perks/builds are reasonable and competitive) 6) Improve underused or underpowered items 7) Make parts of the game less frustrating (e.g. psi training, arcthrower capturing) while still preserving difficulty 8) Make cover and cover-based strategies more valuable in the mid-late game 9) Remove the feeling of needing to play around pod mechanics
I have played quite a few campaigns of LW 1.0 (mostly on I/I) and consider myself to be an experienced player but by no means have the best answer to everything. If you find that this mod has strayed from any of the above goals please let me know in the comments section so I can improve and/or fix it. This has gone through many versions with many player testers. I hope you enjoy. _____________________________________________________ SOME DIFFERENCES FROM LW 1.0
1) You cannot overwatch or steady your weapon unless you have a target in sight 2) Alien pods trigger other alien pods when they are activated 3) You can send multiple aircraft at a single UFO 4) Impossible is harder, Easy(Normal in LW 1.0) is easier 5) The number of soldiers you can take to each mission is determined by the mission type, not any OTS upgrades 6) SHIVs are strong and you can only control a single SHIV each turn 7) Late game progresses quickly 8) Alien base assaults are much easier _____________________________________________________ INSTALLATION
Required files: XCOM: EU/EW, Long War 1.0, LW Rebalance
3) Copy the files from the 'Config' folder into XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\Config
4) Copy the files from the 'Localization\INT' folder into XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\Localization\INT
5) Copy the files from the 'CookedPCConsole' folder into XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\CookedPCConsole
6) Copy the files from the 'Movies' folder into XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\Movies
7) [Optional Download for Alien Skins] Place the CharSkins folder into XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\CookedPCConsole
8) Play the game
You may want to backup the files that this mod changes before installing.
The directories are most commonly found with this path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\"
Do NOT use Long War Mod Manager as it will try to remove LW Rebalance and reset you to LW 1.0 each to you install a mod.
If you are installing on Linux please read the "Linux Install Readme.txt" contained within the LW Rebalance zip
LW Rebalance will only work with campaigns that were started with LW Rebalance. Different versions of LW Rebalance are mostly compatible with each other. I recommend checking version differences to determine how significant changes were and if they would affect your game before you upgrade to a new version. _____________________________________________________ INCORPORATED MODS
Thanks to szmind for Squadron Unleashed, Sequential Overwatch as well as many many pieces of code and help with coding. Thanks to Lafiir for her various contributions to the programming, consistent feedback, and new programs that she created. Thanks to Pathologic for setting up and doing the leg work to get this wiki going. Thanks to SweetMochi for all his tireless work of making this wiki look better. Thanks to martofski for his work at making the tech tree way easier to use and look way better. Thanks to AzXeus for teaching me how to code and helping me with a lot of the coding. Thanks to tracktwo for so much of the amazing code: Line of Sight Indicators, LoadoutManager, XCOM Scamper, Campaign Summary, etc. Thanks to Dustin and Terrible Name for helping me with conceptual code problems and getting through some difficult coding. Thanks to SpazmoJones (aka Eclipse666) for the meld expiration timers, carlock, Exalt reminders, steam vent, and enchanced tactical info. Thanks so much to Grobobobo, cjriches, Levko, Forefall, bigjet, Youge, Tacklezz, and LateNight_Rax for their excellent feedback and tireless beta testing. Also tremendous thanks to johnnylump, wghost81, and Amineri and everyone else who has made LW such an amazing game.
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