Hello, sorry for the delay I just saw your message. You are in luck, if you search for Better Exalt Missions you'll find one of my other mods that allows exalt missions to be very heavily customised. One of the things you can customise is the percentage chance that an extraction mission will spawn. You can set that to 0%.
Oh lovely! Thank for the reply and info on that, and of course for making these mods. :)
That actually sounds super awesome. No more getting completely screwed just because the game decides to put transmitters 60 tiles apart with 30 exalt in the middle. Even with a 15 mob assault with sprinter it can troll you hard with the placements.
PS. I gave you kudos but no idea why it's not showing lol.
Yup I completely understand, the difficulty of Exalt missions in LW was one of the reasons I started modding the game in the first place! That being said personally (and I'm totally biased of course) using this + Better Exalt Missions does make Extraction missions less difficult because of the balance changes. So it might be worth trying it out. Another thing you could try if you're still having issues is using another mod "No Reinforcements for LW Covert Extraction Missions" made by Liquid (One of the original LW devs). I find that goes a bit too far and makes them way to easy but to each their own! If all that fails however you can always turn them off completely and just do the Data Extractions, you have that option.
I wonder if I could change the way the transmitters spawn in to favour the ones closer to the extraction zone 🤔🤔🤔 Might look into that. This is before I release v3 of Better Exalt Missions where I completely overhaul the whole system! But that will take a while yet.
Yeah, I think the extractions would be balanced if, like you said, the Xmitter placement was rigged for close proximity. I feel you wouldn't really need to change anything beyond that to make the mission not totally reliant on RNG. Not even artificial/doctored placements, just limiting it to deafult close proximity seeds. I don't know, maybe that's too convoluted lol.
I figured disabling Extractions all together would be the best policy as it would at least still retain intended balancing, just without chronic RNG. The data recoveries are at least all normalised to where you can make it work one way or another. Never had a problem with those personally.
One other aspect is that Extraction missions with dodgy seeds, even while doable, are a waste of time. You typically don't get the xp in kills to justify taking higher ranking soldiers. In my experience this only changes lategame when you have the tech and roster for it. Maybe in light of that another way would be to leave balancing intact but block Extractions until a certain month, possibly the end of the first year.
It just feels wrong that in contrast those extractions can be the hardest mission in the entire game by far, depending on RNG for placements/spawns. Sometimes striking a rather evil combination.
Hey, this mod looks interesting. Is there any way to be alerted what type of exalt mission you are sending your operative out on? Is it possible to mod that into the game at all? I'm in early summer in my game. Will this mod work on an existing game that already has exalt active? Thx 4 reply if you get around to it. Edit: I did first extraction mission. The evac zone is not highlighted and invisible in the fog of war. Sniper look like it had a gauss stuttergun as a side arm. I left a bug report. Thx!
That's an interesting question and would be a good change, let me look into that.
The mod should work with a game already in progress although I have not tested it myself, I see no reason why not.
Yes I do need to get around to figuring out how to highlight the evac zone, that's not a bug per say just something I haven't changed yet as normally you start next to it so the game doesn't keep it highlighted like in "normal" council extraction missions.
Thanks for the bug report, not seen anything like that before but I'll look into it!
interested in this mod, but think it could do with a slightly better description. I have just installed xcom randomized for EW so anything that works with that is a win for me
9 comments
Happy extracting commander :)
That actually sounds super awesome. No more getting completely screwed just because the game decides to put transmitters 60 tiles apart with 30 exalt in the middle. Even with a 15 mob assault with sprinter it can troll you hard with the placements.
PS. I gave you kudos but no idea why it's not showing lol.
Yup I completely understand, the difficulty of Exalt missions in LW was one of the reasons I started modding the game in the first place! That being said personally (and I'm totally biased of course) using this + Better Exalt Missions does make Extraction missions less difficult because of the balance changes. So it might be worth trying it out. Another thing you could try if you're still having issues is using another mod "No Reinforcements for LW Covert Extraction Missions" made by Liquid (One of the original LW devs). I find that goes a bit too far and makes them way to easy but to each their own! If all that fails however you can always turn them off completely and just do the Data Extractions, you have that option.
I wonder if I could change the way the transmitters spawn in to favour the ones closer to the extraction zone 🤔🤔🤔 Might look into that. This is before I release v3 of Better Exalt Missions where I completely overhaul the whole system! But that will take a while yet.
Yeah, I think the extractions would be balanced if, like you said, the Xmitter placement was rigged for close proximity. I feel you wouldn't really need to change anything beyond that to make the mission not totally reliant on RNG. Not even artificial/doctored placements, just limiting it to deafult close proximity seeds. I don't know, maybe that's too convoluted lol.
I figured disabling Extractions all together would be the best policy as it would at least still retain intended balancing, just without chronic RNG. The data recoveries are at least all normalised to where you can make it work one way or another. Never had a problem with those personally.
One other aspect is that Extraction missions with dodgy seeds, even while doable, are a waste of time. You typically don't get the xp in kills to justify taking higher ranking soldiers. In my experience this only changes lategame when you have the tech and roster for it. Maybe in light of that another way would be to leave balancing intact but block Extractions until a certain month, possibly the end of the first year.
It just feels wrong that in contrast those extractions can be the hardest mission in the entire game by far, depending on RNG for placements/spawns. Sometimes striking a rather evil combination.
Edit:
I did first extraction mission. The evac zone is not highlighted and invisible in the fog of war. Sniper look like it had a gauss stuttergun as a side arm. I left a bug report. Thx!
That's an interesting question and would be a good change, let me look into that.
The mod should work with a game already in progress although I have not tested it myself, I see no reason why not.
Yes I do need to get around to figuring out how to highlight the evac zone, that's not a bug per say just something I haven't changed yet as normally you start next to it so the game doesn't keep it highlighted like in "normal" council extraction missions.
Thanks for the bug report, not seen anything like that before but I'll look into it!