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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Anyone Interested In Making X-com Way Better?


60mm

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I've been playing X-Com for coming up on a decade now. Why it's so great I can't quite put my finger on. I only play it through maybe twice a year, because one thing bugs me. How imbalanced alot of the items are. How there are items that make all other item's obsolete. I would love to get an editor program or someone who could do it to help me make a new, better version of X-Com. Some small examples:

 

*Make the Flying suit lighter armor then the Power suit, so you have two different armors which different uses.

*Do something to make the laser weapons a viable choice compared to the plasma weapons.

*Do something to the plasma weapons so that the Heavy Plasma isn't the only choice.

 

Basically, what I want to do is modify the stats on the weapons,armors and hwps to make most of them worth using. Imagine having a squad all equipped with different weapons, some with different armors who can specialize in certain tasks. I'm tired of having a crew full of clones. I want more tactics!!!

 

If anyone is interested in helping me do this, email me at [email protected] Please!!!

 

If we could do this, maybe we could do more interesting things that I think should have been in the game, lika a Laser/Hover Tank ora Stun Launcher/Tanks

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Hi. I've been playing X-Com for near on two weeks, I noticed a lot of the same problems, and took the initiative to make the changes that I felt were appropriate. I reduced the Flying Suit to 80/70/60 and boosted the Power Armor to 120/100/80. Here are the weapon stats; pardon the formatting, the forum software blows for this sort of thing. I would have just attached the text document with this info, but the forum won't let me do that either. The info on how I outfit my squad is in this thread.

 

ACCURACY........Aimed...Snap....Auto

 

Pistol.................100.......70........n/a

Rifle..................120.......70........30

Auto Cannon......n/a........50........25

Heavy Cannon....110.......60........n/a

Laser Pistol.........90........60.......n/a

Laser Rifle..........110.......60.......20

Heavy Laser.......n/a........50.......25

Plasma Pistol.......80........50.......n/a

Plasma Rifle........100.......50........15

Heavy Plasma.....n/a........40........20

Small Launcher...110........65.......n/a

Rocket...............120........60.......n/a

Blaster...............n/a........n/a......n/a

 

 

SPEED................Aimed......Snap.....Auto

 

Pistol..................25............20........n/a

Rifle...................40............25........40

Auto Cannon.......n/a...........40........40

Heavy Cannon....70............40........n/a

Laser Pistol.........25............20........n/a

Laser Rifle...........40...........30........35

Heavy Laser........n/a..........40........40

Plasma Pistol.......30...........25........n/a

Plasma Rifle........40............30........40

Heavy Plasma......n/a..........40........40

Small Launcher....70............40........n/a

Rocket................70............40........n/a

Blaster................80...........n/a.......n/a

Stun Rod.............30...........n/a.......n/a

 

 

DAMAGE/SHOT.....Type 1...Type 2..Type 3

 

Pistol....................20AP

Rifle.....................40AP

Auto Cannon.........80AP....50HE....50I

Heavy Cannon.......120AP..75HE....75 INC

Laser Pistol............40L

Laser Rifle.............60L

Heavy Laser..........120L

Plasma Pistol.........50P

Plasma Rifle...........80P

Heavy Plasma........115P

Small Launcher.......90 Stun

Rocket..................120HE..160HE...100 INC

Blaster..................200HE

Stun Rod...............100Stun

Grenade................60HE

Smoke Grenade.....60HE

Proxy Grenade.......70INC

Alien Grenade........90HE

High Explosive........210HE

Edited by Empyrean
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I used Edit. It's in the System 32 folder in your windows directory, or you can just click start>run and type "edit" to run it. From there, you can open up the data files you want to change, and tweak values from there. The file with weapon info is OBDATA.DAT in the Geoscape directory of X-Com, but the armor values are in the main executable and I wouldn't mess with them until you're comfortable with tweaking the weapon values. The UFOPaedia has some really good information on what different files do, and what the values in each file mean.

 

Info on using edit: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=HackerTools

Info on OBDATA.DAT: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=OBDATA.DAT

 

If you have any questions or problems, feel free to ask and I'll help if I can. I hadn't done any editing in binary until about a week ago, but I picked it up pretty quickly thanks to the info on the links I provided. I'm sure you won't have any trouble, but it's a good idea to make a backup of your files before editing them just in case.

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As an afterthought, I'm going to make Blaster Bombs an unguided weapon. They're just way too powerful as they are. Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole "guaranteed instant kill against any target from anywhere on the map" thing doesn't seem right to me. Blowing away just about everything in a 15 yard radius is ok I guess, but you should at least need line of sight to do it.
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Nothing, actually; you're supposed to be seeing hearts, spades, smiley faces and other symbols. Open the file in binary and look at the bottom right corner of your screen, you'll see a little tag that says "value" followed by a number. That's what you'll be looking at. When you enter in a value, you'll be doing that in binary as well. After you do it for a while, you'll start to recognize familiar symbols by sight and not even have to look in the bottom corner.
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Another Q, I opened up UFO Defense.EXE to see where I could find the armor values but I cant find a word in it. Just pure jibberish. Did I open the wrong file or what? How do you find what to edit?

 

Just a side note, after I figure more out I plan on making a Laser Hover tank

 

Also, I'm probably getting aheads of myself, but for future use; does anyone know how to create a mini-patch that would patch my changes into someones files without out-right replacing files?

Edited by 60mm
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As an afterthought, I'm going to make Blaster Bombs an unguided weapon. They're just way too powerful as they are. Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole "guaranteed instant kill against any target from anywhere on the map" thing doesn't seem right to me. Blowing away just about everything in a 15 yard radius is ok I guess, but you should at least need line of sight to do it.

 

Way I see it, since this is sorta aquired later in the game and seeing as how you have to spend most of the game getting kicked around by the aliens, it's sorta poetic justice to get something like this. It's kinda like earning rewards for all your hard work.

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As an afterthought, I'm going to make Blaster Bombs an unguided weapon. They're just way too powerful as they are. Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole "guaranteed instant kill against any target from anywhere on the map" thing doesn't seem right to me. Blowing away just about everything in a 15 yard radius is ok I guess, but you should at least need line of sight to do it.

 

Way I see it, since this is sorta aquired later in the game and seeing as how you have to spend most of the game getting kicked around by the aliens, it's sorta poetic justice to get something like this. It's kinda like earning rewards for all your hard work.

 

I don't think the waypoints should be removed outright. Why? Think about it, you'd almost never bea able to use it. You'd only be able to use it if you found an alien in a clearing a good distance from you with no obstructions. AKA, down a street in a Terror mission and that'd be it. If you want to balance it more, how about fewer waypoints, like 3?

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The whole weapon concept just completely negates battlefield tactics on both sides. All of the important elements of the tactical game (taking cover, establishing line of sight, making good use of reaction fire, accurate shooting, unit armor, hit points, experience, etc) are made irrelevant by the blaster launcher, where you can win any battle with one rookie in a t-shirt sitting inside the Skyranger on a big pile of blaster rockets with a Hovertank to spot for him.

 

Psionic attacks are another feature that I don't like. Anything that lets you win without leaving the Skyranger is a bad thing in a tactical infantry game. It's ruins the game when you can just mind control everybody, and defending against it is as simple as bringing along a couple of unarmed psi-puppet rookies in t-shirts and leaving them in the skyranger to hallucinate and think angry thoughts about the other soldiers. It's just a bad game mechanic all around.

 

I don't think the waypoints should be removed outright. Why? Think about it, you'd almost never bea able to use it. You'd only be able to use it if you found an alien in a clearing a good distance from you with no obstructions. AKA, down a street in a Terror mission and that'd be it. If you want to balance it more, how about fewer waypoints, like 3?

 

I don't think we can edit the number of waypoints. It's either all or nothing as far as I can tell. That said, I don't think they'd be useless. I find uses for rocket launchers all the time. Blaster launchers are about the same thing, they'd have the same sized blast radius except they deal more damage. I'd probably have to find a way to make rocket launchers useful even after you get them though... maybe weaken the human rockets a bit but make it so the launcher could hold two at a time, or do a similar change with the blaster launcher. I'll think about it.

Edited by Empyrean
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If someone got it to work, I think I wouldn't mind having that blaster launcher that fired like a regular rocket launcher. I think its still a cruicial tool for opening up other holes in UFO walls. Either that, or if someone did something with the high explosive to do that.

 

Actually I think XComUtil does this but haven't quite gotten around to playing with it yet.

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Okay, if you shrunk the blaster launcher's radius I can see it still being useful. Imeant with it's monstrous radius it'd be difficult not to hurt/kill yourself in most cases if you can only shoot by line of sight.

 

I think the main thing hurting the no waypoint idea is because it's no longer a cool, ew weapon. It's basically the extra big rocket. I say it needs waypoints. Atleast 2. 2 isn't crazy.

 

P.S. I'm currently redoing the weapons and will make some new ones with new graphics (hopefully)

Including an Auto Laser, Auto Plasma and Laser Tank. Maybe even Incendiary Grenades.

 

My goal is to make all of the laser/plasma wepaons useful.

Edited by 60mm
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If someone got it to work, I think I wouldn't mind having that blaster launcher that fired like a regular rocket launcher. I think its still a cruicial tool for opening up other holes in UFO walls. Either that, or if someone did something with the high explosive to do that.

Editing OBDATA.DAT and changing the value in the 49th column from one to zero takes away the waypoint capability. I've also edited High Explosives to be strong enough to breach the outer hull of a UFO. Currently I have them opening a 3x3 hole, although I could reduce the damage ten points and just have them take out a single tile. I like the bigger hole though, it gives more room for interesting firefights from the roof down into the ufo.

 

I think the main thing hurting the no waypoint idea is because it's no longer a cool, ew weapon. It's basically the extra big rocket. I say it needs waypoints. Atleast 2. 2 isn't crazy.

There's no way to do that. A weapon either has full waypoints or it doesn't have any.

 

Including an Auto Laser, Auto Plasma and Laser Tank. Maybe even Incendiary Grenades.

You can't add new weapons, but you can tweak existing objects to function differently. Basically, everything that you add needs to have something else removed to take its place. Oh, and we're having some trouble getting incendiary grenades to work properly. It seems that no matter what damage type you select, they always blow up as HE. Also, there is already a laser tank. I like it quite a lot because I don't have to buy ammo and it's way cheaper than the plasma hovertank.

 

My goal is to make all of the laser/plasma wepaons useful.

Definitely a worthwhile goal. When you've made some more hard numbers for weapons, we can compare notes. In my own efforts, I've tried to make the different firing options all useful as well, instead of having autofire > everything.

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While you guys are at it, do something with the standard pistol and rifle if you can. I'd carry those things around longer too if they were improved. I saw NKF's idea about altering the electroflare to act as a grenade, that's some awesome tweaking :)
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Is this not being able to add weapons due to a limit in spaces or what? Can you remove other items in the game to make space for more? If so, bye-bye craft cannon. There's some space . . . Or is it obdata itself that is limited? Meaning weapons have to be replaced by weapons . . . :( Oh well, I can still weed out a couple I don't intend to use. Like the stun rod. Once you're all wearing flying suits and don't need to capure anybody else, they become quite pointless . . .

 

 

 

Also, by laser tank I meant laser hover tank.

Edited by 60mm
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While you guys are at it, do something with the standard pistol and rifle if you can. I'd carry those things around longer too if they were improved. I saw NKF's idea about altering the electroflare to act as a grenade, that's some awesome tweaking :)

 

There'd be a problem with that though. Balancing, say, the plasma and laser rifles to make either good depending on the circumstances without being flat-out better than the other is going to be difficult as-is. Trying to balance three would start to make the wepaons more bland.

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Is this not being able to add weapons due to a limit in spaces or what? Can you remove other items in the game to make space for more? If so, bye-bye craft cannon. There's some space . . . Or is it obdata itself that is limited? Meaning weapons have to be replaced by weapons . . . sad.gif Oh well, I can still weed out a couple I don't intend to use. Like the stun rod. Once you're all wearing flying suits and don't need to capure anybody else, they become quite pointless . . .

Your slots are limited to already existing objects in OBDATA.DAT. Although if I were you, I wouldn't get rid of stun rods. They're really important early in the game, but they could use a boost later on. In my game I increased the damage to 100 stun instead of 70, so they actually make a pretty good melee weapon.

 

While you guys are at it, do something with the standard pistol and rifle if you can. I'd carry those things around longer too if they were improved. I saw NKF's idea about altering the electroflare to act as a grenade, that's some awesome tweaking smile.gif

It's pretty hard to make them really worthwhile without stepping on the toes of laser weapons. In my game, I increased their accuracy (Rifle is 120/70 and Pistol is 100/70) and increased the Rifle's damage to 40. I reduced the Pistol's damage to 20 and gave it the ability to fire incendiary flare rounds in addition to the regular AP ammunition. The Pistol is better for training now and makes illumination more convenient, and the Rifle is a really good weapon for sniping Sectoids and Floaters. I still switch over to the Laser Rifle early on though, so maybe it could use a boost somewhere. Perhaps another ammunition type that is explosive, sort of like an underslung grenade launcher. I'll think about it.

 

As for modifying electroflares to act as grenades, it seems to be a fairly common idea. I suggested it recently, but I'm certainly not going to pretend that I'm the first one to think of it.

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Well, you could take some of the multi-ammo weapons, reduce the amount of ammo types that they use and then recycle the ammo into new weapons. For example, you could mod the heavy cannon incendiary clip and the incendiary rocket into a new weapon. Granted, the 'bullet' will look like a tank/cannon round, but it would still work.

 

You can even make some multiple weapons share the same ammo. For example, the auto and heavy cannon could share the same ammo belts. Leaving you with 3 unused ammo types.

 

The pistol and rifle could also share ammo as well. Or, give them the ability to load both types of ammo. For example, you could make the pistol bullets high powered but lower in quantity. While the rifle clip could be turned into an expanded-mag with hundreds of rounds, but does less damage (blunt, lower quality, rounds).

 

Speaking of exploding flares: Consider: elerium pods, 255 HE grenade. Massive dilemma right there.

 

It's pretty obvious, but turning any battlescape object into a grenade is easy. ;)

Turning any object into a new weapon on the other hand is a little trickier - as long as you can live with the weapon firing tank/cannon shells. I'm sure this can be changed in the executable.

 

The six unused slots in the game can be utilised. The problem is that you cannot get them to appear in the inventory screens in-game, so you can't buy, transfer or build them. Adding them into the Skyranger's stores with an editor works, but that's not a reasonable solution to this problem.

 

- NKF

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I've heard that the best program for doing that is PCK Manipulator, but I can't get it to work on my computer. It loads fine, but when I try to open one of the files in a .pck library the screen just goes black. I can't edit anything. :(
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Has anyone found where the weapon effects graphics are (the laser beams, plasma bolts)??? How do I edit those? I found out how to edit all the pck files.

 

I've heard that the best program for doing that is PCK Manipulator, but I can't get it to work on my computer. It loads fine, but when I try to open one of the files in a .pck library the screen just goes black. I can't edit anything. :(

 

http://www.daishiva.com/programs/PckView141.zip

 

worked for me

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In stock x-com I always use fly suits and laser rifles.... even to attack cydonia.

 

 

you could make all the plasma weapons take the same ammo. and you could make heavy cannon and auto cannon use the same ammo. then make pistol and rifle use the same ammo. and viola! 6 new slots.

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In stock x-com I always use fly suits and laser rifles.... even to attack cydonia.

 

 

you could make all the plasma weapons take the same ammo. and you could make heavy cannon and auto cannon use the same ammo. then make pistol and rifle use the same ammo. and viola! 6 new slots.

 

 

hmmm . . . not a bad idea. Has anyone tried this before?

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Making different weapons use the same ammo would give each weapon the same damage, as the damage value is based on the ammunition used rather than the weapon firing it. I could possibly see some ammo overlap between the Heavy Cannon and Autocannon or Pistol/Rifle, but making all the plasma weapons deal the same amount of damage seems like a really bad move to me. From a gameplay diversity standpoint, it would be better to just edit the plasma weapons to not require an external ammunition source, the way that lasers don't.
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well, it wouldn't work with pistol rifle because pistols use much larger caliber bullets than rifles, so a pistol bullet just wouldn't fit into a rifle...

heavy cannon is supposed to be a more powerful and larger caliber bullet than the autocannon as well, so those wouldn't really be interchangeable, and the same is true for plasma weapons

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I don't know. When I changed the damage for the weapons in XCom I only changed attributes for the guns themselves, I didnt touch the ammo. Ill test to see, but I think the game just shows the weapons damage with the clips. I dont think the damage is assigned to the clip and then transferred to the weapon.
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Damage is based off the ammo. So you would be sharing the damage.

 

I would highly advise against having the plasma weapons share ammo. The aliens don't know this and will attempt to arm themselves with the original ammo. Once they use up what's in the gun, they'll not be able ot reload their spares.

 

As for the pistol/rifle ammo sharing -- is a 9mm rifle conceivable? Or a .556 pistol?

 

- NKF

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There are countless rifles and pistols that use the .22 LR ammunition in the real world, and the 30-06 springfield round has been the standard for battle rifles for a hundred years. It's not inconceivable that several different weapons might share ammunition. Regarding a 9mm rifle, the Russian VSS Vintorez sniper rifle fires a 9mm round.

 

well, it wouldn't work with pistol rifle because pistols use much larger caliber bullets than rifles, so a pistol bullet just wouldn't fit into a rifle...

heavy cannon is supposed to be a more powerful and larger caliber bullet than the autocannon as well, so those wouldn't really be interchangeable, and the same is true for plasma weapons

You are completely missing the point. We all know that the in-game description of the Heavy Cannon and Autocannon say they fire different ammunition, but that's not what we're debating. The point is whether or not we could free up some weapon slots by sharing ammunition without producing really weird side effects and without significantly hurting the variety of the current weapons. Making the rifle/pistol and Heavy Cannon/Autocannon share ammo accomplishes that.

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then it comes down to how much damage they do. do you really think a pistol that does as much damage as a rifle, or visa versa, is very balanced, or at least fair? and in plasma weapons, will the heavy plasma do as much damage as the plasma rifle? In that case the heavy plasma is worthless, and the rifle and pistol become the only ones worth having
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then it comes down to how much damage they do. do you really think a pistol that does as much damage as a rifle, or visa versa, is very balanced, or at least fair? and in plasma weapons, will the heavy plasma do as much damage as the plasma rifle? In that case the heavy plasma is worthless, and the rifle and pistol become the only ones worth having

 

As far as damage goes for the pistol and rifle, I wouldn'ty mind them being the same. In real life, getting shot by a 9mm pistol in close range is more deadly then a rifle is. The pistol is just a helluva lot less accurate. Rifle pass clean through for the most part, especially up close. Pistols make nasty exits. I think the pistols shouldn't have an auto, just snap and aim. both of which should not be particularly accurate. If you look at weapons used for tight quarters, like the mp5, most of them utilize pistol rounds.

 

In summary, the heavy weapons definitley need to be seperated from the rifleand pistols. The pistols and rifles however, I think can safely be distinguished with large differences in firing modes and accuracies. Pistols in most circumstances are desgined to be fallnack weaponry anyways. The laser "pistol" should not be a pistol ,but an uzi.

Edited by 60mm
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then it comes down to how much damage they do. do you really think a pistol that does as much damage as a rifle, or visa versa, is very balanced, or at least fair?

There's a lot more you can change to differentiate different weapons, even if they deal the same damage. Making pistols less accurate but faster firing is more than enough to distinguish the two.

 

and in plasma weapons, will the heavy plasma do as much damage as the plasma rifle? In that case the heavy plasma is worthless, and the rifle and pistol become the only ones worth having

Making plasma weapons share ammo is a bad idea. But even if we were going to have three weapons that use the same ammo, it's still possible to balance them. For example, make the heavy plasma the only one with autofire but make it rather inaccurate and take away the ability to make aimed shots, give the pistol a faster firing rate and lower accuracy than the rifle, and use the rifle as more of a sniper weapon. Then the "best" weapon depends on your distance from the target and the size of what you're shooting at. The rifle would be best for long range, the pistol would do well at medium range, and the heavy would be best against large targets, groups of enemies, and close range fighting. TU usage for different firing modes can also make some weapons better for reaction fire than others, balancing them that way. Still, because nobody's going to replace all the plasma ammo with a single ammo type, that style of balance job isn't necessary. Point is, there's a lot more to balance than just how much damage a particular weapon does.

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As it is, there's only a 4 point difference between the pistol and rifle rounds. Compare that to the generation gap between the plasma rifle and the heavy plasma. Massive. So I'm sure it would hardly matter if the pistol/rifle rounds did 30 damage or 26 damage at this juncture. The pistol/rifle should definitely differ with their stats. As it is, pistol excel with the snap shot while the rifle dominates the auto and aimed shots. Perhaps upgrades should be along similar lines? This keeps both weapons unique.

 

The laser pistols is already a sub-machine gun. Were I to change it, I'd probably remove its aimed mode, or improve the aimed mode so that it's worth using.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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What about changing the laser pistol to a laser sub-machine gun then? Take away it's aim mode, change the graphics. Maybe even give it only an inaccurate , but quick, auto and make it's damage ideal only for chopping down humanoid combatants in close quarters. Make it an light, ideal weapon for close quarters. Give the rifle a choice of all three modes, and make it more accurate but slower. More of a general purpose weapon for mixed conditions or outdoor use. I'm going to convert the Heavy laser to a cross between a light anti-armor weapon and a sniper weapon. Like a like a light 50.

 

Also, would test this myself but I'm at work. Anyone know if the listed weight for suits of armor contributes to the overall weight your character is carrying? If so I want to make the Power Suit more armored, but heavy enough to keep a playe from sprinting all over the map. Enhance the personal armor a bit and keep it real light. Also drop the armor on the Flying suit. Make them all good choices for different specialty troops.

Edited by 60mm
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Armor that you're wearing doesn't contribute to your weight limit. The listed weights are for corpses with different suits, but the suit itself is not an object and has no weight. Also, I'd recommend keeping a snap shot available for every weapon that you want to be able to use for reaction fire.
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Armor that you're wearing doesn't contribute to your weight limit. The listed weights are for corpses with different suits, but the suit itself is not an object and has no weight. Also, I'd recommend keeping a snap shot available for every weapon that you want to be able to use for reaction fire.

 

Yeah, the snapshot should be kept.

As for the armor, if anyone can think up a way to give armor the abiliity to encumber thatd be great. Differences in armor rating would suit fine, but being encumbered by the power suit would be awesome. You could really have lumbering heavy weapons specialists then.

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I've thought about this too, but I don't think there's any way to do it. I wanted to slow down power armor and give personal armor a speed boost to make it attractive to scouts and skirmishers.
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  • 2 months later...

But the Power Armor is an armored mechanical exoskeloton, and therefore carries it's own weight, making encumbrence a non-issue. You could even argue that it makes the troop move faster.

 

Well just because it "carries it's own weight" doesnt mean it wouldn't change a person's speed or increase it. Maybe it has enough power to carry it self but it's not lightning quick. Maybe the limbs are hydraulic which are not known for speed. The suit maybe very strong but not extremely speedy in the responsiveness department. So says currently drunk me!

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