I just wanted to verify a few things about the rebalance mod. Does it change the second wave options? For example red fog disappears. Also on the first mission I seem to get a shiv and some really unbeatable units. My question is how can you tell when this rebalance mod is installed and working properly? Thanks in advance to those who help me.

You won't get "unbeatable" units for the first (or indeed any) mission with LW 1.0 (with or without rebalance). If you select "classic" mode or below, it'll be easier than the equivalent for LW 1.0 though, and you do start with a couple of shivs at your base (can't recall if the very first mission has one though).

There are two things they changed which are really noticeable: pods now activate whenever they're in sight range of another pod that is already active (which can lead to pretty much the whole map activating in some cases); and squadron unleashed has been added, which allows sending up to three interceptors to shoot down UFOs. Both are of course huge improvements to LW 1.0.

There are definitely changes to SW options - you should notice them when starting a new game, and is one way to check stuff's working as it should. Red Fog should be on by default (but pretty sure you can still turn it off - I could be wrong about this though since I always left it on).

BTW the old "green fog" has also changed, it's called something else now, is also on by default, and works differently: by default your soldiers have more "fatigue" the more turns a mission goes for (except for base defence and EXALT missions). There's a second, really retarded bit they added on to this too: after a certain number of turns, your soldiers will actually start taking injuries (!!) - it's a truly baffling, idiotic idea that makes no sense, but thankfully it can be turned off separately (while keeping the new fatigue increase on, or not, as you prefer). Luckily they did away with the previous "green fog", which messed up your soldier's will and aim as the battle dragged on (this was possibly even more stupid than the health reduction thing).

Note that there are other changes related to squad sizes - they've arbitrarily limited the number of troops for certain missions now. While this makes little sense narratively, this happens on the smaller maps and allows those maps to contain fewer total units while still being challenging, so it's probably an improvement.

The biggest change I noticed that I actually didn't like at all, is that they've made Chryssalids ridiculously difficult to hit for some reason, which effectively forces one to use explosives against them. It's the only thing I actually edit in the config file (I'm still experimenting with this as just reducing their defence back to LW 1.0 levels will probably make them too easy?). It's a strange change since for almost every other enemy, the rebalance favours significantly increasing armour as opposed to defence (which usually makes much more sense - rebalance has been criticized for having armour that's almost impossible to pierce, but that's what HEAT is for - and it's a lot less frustrating than enemies suddenly becoming more difficult to hit).

Perhaps the devs were providing some basic environmental archetypes for others to modify more easily? This sounds ghastly to play (not a lot of fun micromanaging injured soldiers) but does open the field to incorporate action in hostile areas, perhaps NBC hot zones hostage rescue missions? Or even extraterrestrial missions. Yikes. Is editing the config file the only way to change this Chryssalid evasion tactical advantage?

Well you can turn it off, so it's not a big deal - it's easy enough to toggle on game start (it's under the second wave options).

I was actually wrong about it being on by default - green fog is off by default. The thing that is on, which is separate to that, is soldier fatigue increases as the mission drags on, which IMO makes some kind of sense. If you want, you can turn that off too - in which case you'll just have soldiers receive a base level of fatigue irrespective of turns (i.e. the way it is in LW 1.0). Personally I like the newer fatigue mechanism, as it doesn't affect their performance during the battle - they're just fatigued for longer at the end of it, which just means you'll need to rotate more/different soldiers through if you do a bunch of long missions. Yeah, but the config file is really easy to edit. Just look for "Chryssalid" near the top of the file (should be under <install_folder>\XEW\XComGame\Config\DefaultGameCore.ini), it should start with something like this:

Characters=( strName="", iType=eChar_Chryssalid, HP=4, Offense=0, Defense=50, Mobility=24, ....

Just adjust their "Defence" value to be whatever you want. At least it's only 50 in the more recent versions, it was 60 before.

Yeah it's still crazy-high, I think the idea is that they're supposed to be fast-moving so therefore hard to hit, like in Aliens or something (except we don't have smart guns, hence they're REALLY hard to hit, at least until your guys level up a ton, and even then it's probably still difficult).

I used to think this was stupid, but on reflection I've changed my mind as it makes some sense, and it definitely makes them much more dangerous than before where they'd just get mowed down en-mass. It also provides a way to make them more dangerous without cramming more of them into the level - LW/LW Rebalance already cram more aliens into levels, adding even more would just make things more tedious and possibly slow things down.

Just make sure to bring tons of explosives, that works well since they're generally pretty weak and like to cluster up.

I agree about the fatigue, since I rarely use more than a dozen soldiers in a game. Of course that will require more MELD to upgrade more soldiers … Many thanks for this. I agree the Chryssalids seemed underpowered in the vanilla game.

I have just retrieved the mod [Long_War_EW_1.0_for_PC-88-1-0] and I was perusing the FAQ: That's a nice addition, I look forward to many hours of frustration. :/

Features listed to include: There are a lot of references to problems with Steam, is Gog's version unaffected …? I guess I'll find out.

Links
ModDB
Nexus
UFOpaedia
[url=http://home.comcast.net/~johnnylump/Long_War_3_perk_tree.jpg]Perk trees[/url]
[url=http://home.comcast.net/~johnnylump/Long_War_3_tech_tree.png]Tech tree[/url]

mod [url=https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Change_Log_(Long_War)]changelog[/url]

I assume you're going to add the re-balance mod on top? My posts above relate to that version.

IMO rebalance is essential for LW, since it really does rebalance things (for the better IMO). Most importantly, you get the squadron unleashed mod included, which makes the air combat MUCH better (you can actually send squadrons now instead of one plane at a time).

The second thing it adds - and I'm not sure there's a separate mod for this or not - is it actually fixes the retarded "pod mechanic" that the nuXCOM games originally come with. There are still "pods", but as soon as one pod spots you, any other alien pod within a certain range is also informed and activated, which can potentially lead to the entire map activating in one hit. While this sounds like some kind of nightmare, it eliminates a number of really retarded gamey things that many people resorted to in vanilla nuXCOM, e.g. instead of using proper flanking tactics, the game effectively encouraged "pulling" one pod toward you at a time. The way rebalanced fixes this makes the game play SO much better.

Also note that rebalanced is overall easier than "standard" LW on the lower levels, but harder on the higher levels.

Another thing is that the rebalanced version reduced the number of MEC classes, from LW's 8 down to 4. While that sounds like a downgrade, it makes things more manageable (and we still have the 8 "standard" classes from LW, plus officers, psionics and SHIVs).

Rebalance also changes the tech tree from LW. Laser weapons are faster to get, researching specific UFOs takes much longer (and isn't really essential), and a number of techs require different things to unlock and build. Most importantly, unlike in LW, it's not necessary to have an "alien zoo" for capturing tons of aliens just to get their intact weapons (capturing aliens is now strictly for interrogation which unlocks techs, as it should be).

Finally, rebalance removes some of the really lame penalties that applied to officers, MECs and psionics - for reasons never properly explained, all officers, MECs and psionics need additional rest between missions as compared to other soldiers, and this increased with rank. Thankfully rebalance did away with that pointless mechanic.

Note that unlike "standard" LW (which has been "complete" for a few years now), rebalance gets updated quite frequently, and practically every update tweaks the balance (in addition to more bug fixes and the like). It's of course not required to get every update - which is good, because occasionally they make some really lame changes (as of the current version, most (all?) changes I'd consider lame have been reverted AFAIK - but definitely check out change logs etc. to see if it suits you, or if an earlier version might be more fun for you).

FYI, rebalance mod on Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/686

Hmm. I had abandoned my reply, since it didn't seem to post. Evidently the server just needed extra time to process it. I wasn't even aware of it. (The Rebalance mod isn't even on ModDB, which I was using because I have terrible trouble accessing my NexusMods account, with all that Google captcha olympic hoop ahtletics. So I wasn't even aware it existed. Thanks for the heads-up. :)

Still, if only to evaluate it, I shall continue with my current game to see what the Long War has changed. I agree it's beyond silly that the player cannot send more than one aircraft to intercept the aliens, after all this was the whole British WW2 defence strategy! A terrific improvement. I'm still struggling to understand this bit. Yes, I can confirm that the mod is exceptionally difficult with a bunch of pre-specialization privates. I am only just at the point where I rescued Chilong, so I wasn't even aware there were officers (I did presume) and no MEC nor psionics, yet.

I'm not sure how quickly mecs and psionics open up in standard LW - might want to check their research tree (should be on the LW wiki).

In LW Rebalance, mecs require research into Meld (as do gene mods, which I forgot to mention - these can be applied to any soldier that is NOT a mec or psionic). Both mecs and gene mods become available at about the same time if I'm not mistaken. Not sure how much this was changed from LW since I pretty much went straight to the rebalance.

Officers I believe are opened up even earlier - it requires the Officer Training School, which I believe is available from the start. I believe some other criteria might be required as well, such as number of missions done (in rebalance - I believe LW has different criteria, possibly relating to current (non-Officer) ranks of your soldiers). I believe the officer thing is a modification of the "medal" system that was originally in EW.

I must say I think the pacing is excellent so far. There is a lot of depth to the game that was merely in ovo with even the Enemy Within expansion, which however was a second tour de force of these games celebrating the advancement of enterprise (and against cruel extraterrestrials, too :).

Did you have a safe link to the wiki?


[slight spoiler]



I had just managed to solve some of the more grindy missions (many dozens of enemies in groups with complementary threats, team with rudimentary psionics and laser weapons) when I was finally feeling like I might have gained a tactical insight significant enough to make the missions a little easier (value the soldiers) when —— last game —— I encountered a hive queen. That is crazy. … ;O

I haven't played this in a long while, the other day was the first time in many months I had updated LW rebalance, and noticed that they had changed a TON of stuff since I wrote those replies above. You may have noticed that Chryssalids don't have that crazy defence any more - but instead they now have this skill where they're harder to hit the further they move (which makes more sense, even if it's a similar mechanic).

So yeah, if you haven't tried the rebalance version yet, give that a shot. Now that you've played some LW without rebalance, it will likely be a minor adjustment (hopefully for the better). That said, they recently changed some things that I'm not sure I agree with, such as overwatch only being possible if you have aliens in sight (which IMO kind of defeats the purpose of overwatch). And unlike a lot of the changes, I think the overwatch change isn't something that can be reverted via config either... Still, if you try it out I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts, since I likely won't have time to play this any time soon...

The Chryssalid Queens are pretty crazy. How did you go? Persevere in the end or did she wipe you out?

Wasn't this the original overwatch implementation? Still, I really dislikee this change - and I just don't understand the rationale behind it, in terms of 'realism". It seems entirely artificial.

I agree with you in your disagreement - I haven't actually fired this game up in a long time now, despite downloading the latest update every month or so.

Although I appreciate the dedication to tweak the game seemingly forever on the one hand, on the other hand it seems they're going for an insane level of "ultimate balance", even at the expense of logic.

I really like some of their stuff - incorporating the squadron unleashed mod, and even more importantly, the way that pods now activate each other (so you could have the whole map activated at once now, which removes one of the stupidest gameplay elements of Nu-Xcom, namely the idea of "pod activation" and lame ways to game the pod activation system).

And I understand that they want to continue to remove the stupid/unrealistic/tiresome gameplay strategies, of which I guess "overwatch creep" was considered one of them... But IMO that change wasn't necessary, and it doesn't make much sense - setting people on overwatch as you advance isn't a lame gameplay mechanic, it's based on how soldiers cover each other in combat. It's not like it makes them super-strong, they can still miss and they can still be hit.

I get the idea behind removing the "steady weapon" effect - that's effectively an alternative to overwatch, makes the next shot more accurate, it makes slightly more sense that one would only do this if an enemy was nearby - but then again, they could have just removed that altogether if they thought it too strong.

At least Chryssalids make more sense now - no longer do they have stupid defence, but instead they become harder to hit the further they move (simulating their speed I guess) - THAT makes sense IMO.

The other thing I was never on-board with entirely - but this could be due to how it's based off of Nu-Xcom - is this idea of "bio-tanks". IMO, there shouldn't be things to "taunt" enemies with your meat soldiers, since even with the best armour they should at best be able to survive one or two direct hits. For "tanks", one should use the literal "tanks" - either the SHIVS, or later the MEC troopers (the tanky ones anyway, since there are also nimble versions). Luckily the game didn't actually require one to use bio-tanks due to the variety of stuff we get to play with...
Pretty sure overwatch was always available, whether you had enemies in range or not..? Unless it required a POD to be active first? I honestly don't know since I don't think I've ever actually played vanilla Nu-XCOM...

I tend to binge on a game for hours / days / weeks then abruptly change to a new one. The game I was playing when I wrote the above comments I adjourned for almost eighteen months before I went back. (I find that, especially if I am making heavy progress through a particular game, I will be better trying another before returning. This always yields better tactics, I find, as I take the learnings from other games and apply it to the earlier one. Even different genres provide lessons and sharpen the mind, so a break always improves my performance.)
No doubt I will give it a whirl, but I'd like to complete the vanilla mod before I try the update. (I agree the overwatch change is stupid.)
Actually I only played the one mission when she showed up; immediately after I started a brand new game. (I have only played three games of the Long War, and I am still experimenting with the toggles to see what effects I like. For instance, I switched to short missions, where a small UFO has six alien crew, plus the outsider, instead of a dozen or more. This made a huge difference.) Now that I think about it, I went back to play UFO: Aftermath, first, because the aircraft battles are so much better. I was able to progress rapidly almost to where I reached when I stopped playing it earlier. Then I restarted Long War.
I had just beaten the Queen (in this new game) as I luckily had a rocketeer with the team (but lost a rookie as a Chryssalid snack, first turn, before taking her out). I was able to concentrate my fire after shredding her carapace, so I don't know how many hitpoints she regenerates (but I would guess at least ten per turn).
When I was finally able to launch a satellite over the country that had left the coalition (because of the base) I took another break. (Once I was able to do so I realized that I probably should have done so much earlier —— I am in October —— but that would mean abandoning dozens of hours of gameplay. But it would mean the subterranean base would have less fearsome aliens. Also I could tweak the feats on my troops to prevent dead-end upgrades that resulted from experiments to test them.)
Currently I have been playing Neverwinter Nights. (I want to carry a character through the entire game.) I am in the middle of Chapter 3. I had forgotten most of the plot (I have finished all three games) and I finally have a fun character to play (Monk-Sorceress, since you asked) that allows me to avoid most of the usual micromanaging.

edit: link syntax