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This mod(re-)introduces Reaction Fire(RF) to the tactical combat in XCOM. It's a fairly well fleshed-out gameplay mechanic that must have been planned as a core feature then cut from the design at some point during development.
Tactical tools like Suppression, Flush, Smokes, group buffs and debuffs become more important with RF. On the other hand, approaching the enemy for a close ranged guaranteed hit or flanking critical is much more dangerous. All in all I would say that RF 'works' pretty neatly with the rest of the game but you could keep tweaking this sort of thing ad nauseam.
There are 3 different versions / implementations of reaction fire here, Balanced, Lite and a third, 'just for kicks' extreme version. All of the files have this core change in common:
Reaction Fire (RF):
- All organic units have a 20% chance to use reaction fire when an enemy moves through their line of sight.
- Robotic units, SHIVs, Sectopods etc have a 40% chance to react.
- RF is a 'free' attack in addition to any attacks from overwatch.
- RF can only trigger against units in your reaction angle, which is 360 degrees for shotgun (assault) weapons and your front 200 degrees for all other weapons.
- Assault type weapons have reduced range for RF. (20 rather than 27 where 27 is visible range)
- ***A unit can't use RF while Suppressed***
- A unit can't use RF if their current weapon is out of ammo.
- RF can benefit from soldier perks such as the Support ability "Covering Fire" and the Sniper ability "Opportunist".
- RF has a reduced chance to trigger against melee creatures (Chrysalid, Berserker, Zombie)
- RF has a reduced chance to trigger against enemys that have a higher reaction rating than the shooter.
For more details on each of the mod files see below,
Enjoy!
------------------------------------
REACTION FIRE MOD: BALANCED
This particular mod file isn't aiming to make the game easier or even significantly change the balance. My goal is to stay close to what the developers intended while introducing the new gameplay mechanic and delivering many of the tweaks that people on the Nexus expect or are familiar with.
It should significantly change the way you play but it shouldn't give you any natural advantage over the aliens.
PATCH NOTES
ARMOR
- Additional accessory slot for all armor except for Archangel. (This is to give the player more freedom, Archangel armor was singled out because it has a vestigial "BackpackLimited" property.)
CHARACTERS
Alloy/Hover Shiv
- +2 HP
All Mutons
- Base HP increased(they also recieve extra bonus HP depending on difficulty level)
Chrysalid
- HP increased (movement and HP also further increased on higher difficulty settings)
Outsider
- HP greatly increased
WEAPONS
Player
- All soldier classes retain the ability to use Carbines such as assault rifles.
- Pistols need to be reloaded (except laser pistols).
- Laser weapons have unlimited ammo.
- Sniper rifles gain the same accuracy at close range that heavy weapons and assault rifles do (Sniper rifles are still movement restriced).
- Sniper rifles include a new ability called "Aim". This action ends a soldiers turn but increases his offense rating by 20 for 2 rounds. (it was already in the game but no weapons had it, it seems like a natural fit for the reaction fire mod).
- Reduced the accuracy penalty when firing at a distant target with shotguns.
- Heavy weapons give a +1 HP bonus (This is just to match the visuals)
- Heavy weapons have unlimited ammo (This great idea is straight from ******'s mod. It allows Heavys to always provide suppressive fire... It's essential for this mod which emphasises suppression in the tactical game)
Enemy
- Sectoids, Thin Men and Outsiders normally have special, less damaging versions of their weapons. They now carry the regular, deadly versions of their weapons.
BALANCE MODS
Impossible
- Kept original 10% aim and crit bonuses.
- Further increases to enemy HP or defense or movement to make this setting even more Challenging.
- Soldiers no longer have a -2 HP penalty.
Classic
- Reduced the enemy crit bonus from 10% to 5%
- Further increases to HP or defense or movement of particular creatures to make this setting more challenging.
OTHER TACTICAL GAME CHANGES
Soldiers no longer shoot each other when they panic.
Offscreen Chrysalid kills always spawn a zombie.
No limit to the number of active enemys on any difficulty.
STRATEGIC GAME CHANGES
Second Wave enabled. (marathon working)
ShowUFOsOnMission=0 (personally I think =1 makes the strategic game too easy)
Reduced the time that it takes to test a soldier for PSI ability
Reduced the likelyhood that a soldier will be PSI gifted.
Approximately doubled the soldier recovery time
Soldiers are much cheaper to hire.
ITEM COSTS
Costs of early to mid game soldier equipment and small arms reduced.
Costs of Firestorms increased
Time required to produce a satellite reduced to 10 days
TECHS
Tech time multiplier up to 13.32 from 6.66 (this makes all research take longer)
Certain individual early techs such as Weapon Fragments, Arc Thrower, have had their time requirement lowered. Essentially cancelling out the raised multiplier for these techs.
As above, all autopsies and beam weapons have had their time requirement lowered to offset the increased time multiplier.
------------------------------------
REACTION FIRE MOD: LITE
In this mod no effort has been made to balance Reaction Fire, it simply introduces the mechanic to the vanilla game, this could be useful as a modular install.
The one little tweak I felt I had to make was to enable Second Wave as I felt this was a completely harmless change (and the marathon fix of course).
------------------------------------
REACTION SATISFACTION MOD
A version of Reaction Fire Balanced mod where moving from cover is extremely dangerous! Reaction ratings were doubled across the board.
------------------------------------
CREDITS:
The XCOM Nexus team: I'm glad you guys decided to create a site for XCOM mods despite there being no official mod support.
The pioneers in the XCOM Nexus modding community, especially those that have already released mods or researched a setting and shared what they learned on the forums. You guys did the heavy lifting! Thank you.
Modpatcher creator "dreadylein" Thank you for your utility.
NOTES:
Please be sure to start a new campaign or hire a totally new roster of soldiers when you first enable this mod. Your old soldiers from previous versions of the game can't learn reaction fire, new ones will have it when they arrive.
One of the things I'm still disappointed in / unable to address in the Balance mod is the difficulty curve of the strategic layer of the game. Managing panic is extremely hard until it becomes trivial. It is a shame that there is no tension at all in the 2nd half of the strategic campaign.
I dont recommend playing the tutorial with this mod enabled... you can do it but it's likely that the mod will break the tutorial scripts and your time might be wasted.
INSTALLATION
- Download one of the Reaction Fire mod packages from the "Files" tab, above.
- Extract the files (anywhere is fine).
- Double click on the batch file which will be called "RFBalanced.bat" or "RFLite.bat" or "RFSatis.bat" depending on which file you downloaded.
- The batch file will instruct Modpatcher to find your xcom installation automatically then create a backup called xcom-modded.exe and apply the mod.
- Start Steam in Offline mode
- Start the game
If you want to play this mod (or any .ini tweak mod) with Steam in Online mode you need to add these lines to your "WindowsSystem32driversetchosts" file.
127.0.0.1 prod.xcom.firaxis.com #XCOM phone home
127.0.0.1 65.118.245.165 #XCOM phone home
Just add those lines near the bottom of this file and save it. This stops the game from phoning home and overriding your changes. (Windows XP may require a reboot after this step.)
UNINSTALLATION
- I have included another batch file which you use in the same manner to re-patch the exe with the vanilla settings.
- Alternatively (perhaps more reliably) you could verify Steam game files to re-download any edited files.
- Any changes to the windows hosts file would need to be undone manually, just delete the XCOM lines you added previously and save the hosts file. (Windows XP may require a reboot after this step.)
Tactical tools like Suppression, Flush, Smokes, group buffs and debuffs become more important with RF. On the other hand, approaching the enemy for a close ranged guaranteed hit or flanking critical is much more dangerous. All in all I would say that RF 'works' pretty neatly with the rest of the game but you could keep tweaking this sort of thing ad nauseam.
There are 3 different versions / implementations of reaction fire here, Balanced, Lite and a third, 'just for kicks' extreme version. All of the files have this core change in common:
Reaction Fire (RF):
- All organic units have a 20% chance to use reaction fire when an enemy moves through their line of sight.
- Robotic units, SHIVs, Sectopods etc have a 40% chance to react.
- RF is a 'free' attack in addition to any attacks from overwatch.
- RF can only trigger against units in your reaction angle, which is 360 degrees for shotgun (assault) weapons and your front 200 degrees for all other weapons.
- Assault type weapons have reduced range for RF. (20 rather than 27 where 27 is visible range)
- ***A unit can't use RF while Suppressed***
- A unit can't use RF if their current weapon is out of ammo.
- RF can benefit from soldier perks such as the Support ability "Covering Fire" and the Sniper ability "Opportunist".
- RF has a reduced chance to trigger against melee creatures (Chrysalid, Berserker, Zombie)
- RF has a reduced chance to trigger against enemys that have a higher reaction rating than the shooter.
For more details on each of the mod files see below,
Enjoy!
------------------------------------
REACTION FIRE MOD: BALANCED
This particular mod file isn't aiming to make the game easier or even significantly change the balance. My goal is to stay close to what the developers intended while introducing the new gameplay mechanic and delivering many of the tweaks that people on the Nexus expect or are familiar with.
It should significantly change the way you play but it shouldn't give you any natural advantage over the aliens.
PATCH NOTES
ARMOR
- Additional accessory slot for all armor except for Archangel. (This is to give the player more freedom, Archangel armor was singled out because it has a vestigial "BackpackLimited" property.)
CHARACTERS
Alloy/Hover Shiv
- +2 HP
All Mutons
- Base HP increased(they also recieve extra bonus HP depending on difficulty level)
Chrysalid
- HP increased (movement and HP also further increased on higher difficulty settings)
Outsider
- HP greatly increased
WEAPONS
Player
- All soldier classes retain the ability to use Carbines such as assault rifles.
- Pistols need to be reloaded (except laser pistols).
- Laser weapons have unlimited ammo.
- Sniper rifles gain the same accuracy at close range that heavy weapons and assault rifles do (Sniper rifles are still movement restriced).
- Sniper rifles include a new ability called "Aim". This action ends a soldiers turn but increases his offense rating by 20 for 2 rounds. (it was already in the game but no weapons had it, it seems like a natural fit for the reaction fire mod).
- Reduced the accuracy penalty when firing at a distant target with shotguns.
- Heavy weapons give a +1 HP bonus (This is just to match the visuals)
- Heavy weapons have unlimited ammo (This great idea is straight from ******'s mod. It allows Heavys to always provide suppressive fire... It's essential for this mod which emphasises suppression in the tactical game)
Enemy
- Sectoids, Thin Men and Outsiders normally have special, less damaging versions of their weapons. They now carry the regular, deadly versions of their weapons.
BALANCE MODS
Impossible
- Kept original 10% aim and crit bonuses.
- Further increases to enemy HP or defense or movement to make this setting even more Challenging.
- Soldiers no longer have a -2 HP penalty.
Classic
- Reduced the enemy crit bonus from 10% to 5%
- Further increases to HP or defense or movement of particular creatures to make this setting more challenging.
OTHER TACTICAL GAME CHANGES
Soldiers no longer shoot each other when they panic.
Offscreen Chrysalid kills always spawn a zombie.
No limit to the number of active enemys on any difficulty.
STRATEGIC GAME CHANGES
Second Wave enabled. (marathon working)
ShowUFOsOnMission=0 (personally I think =1 makes the strategic game too easy)
Reduced the time that it takes to test a soldier for PSI ability
Reduced the likelyhood that a soldier will be PSI gifted.
Approximately doubled the soldier recovery time
Soldiers are much cheaper to hire.
ITEM COSTS
Costs of early to mid game soldier equipment and small arms reduced.
Costs of Firestorms increased
Time required to produce a satellite reduced to 10 days
TECHS
Tech time multiplier up to 13.32 from 6.66 (this makes all research take longer)
Certain individual early techs such as Weapon Fragments, Arc Thrower, have had their time requirement lowered. Essentially cancelling out the raised multiplier for these techs.
As above, all autopsies and beam weapons have had their time requirement lowered to offset the increased time multiplier.
------------------------------------
REACTION FIRE MOD: LITE
In this mod no effort has been made to balance Reaction Fire, it simply introduces the mechanic to the vanilla game, this could be useful as a modular install.
The one little tweak I felt I had to make was to enable Second Wave as I felt this was a completely harmless change (and the marathon fix of course).
------------------------------------
REACTION SATISFACTION MOD
A version of Reaction Fire Balanced mod where moving from cover is extremely dangerous! Reaction ratings were doubled across the board.
------------------------------------
CREDITS:
The XCOM Nexus team: I'm glad you guys decided to create a site for XCOM mods despite there being no official mod support.
The pioneers in the XCOM Nexus modding community, especially those that have already released mods or researched a setting and shared what they learned on the forums. You guys did the heavy lifting! Thank you.
Modpatcher creator "dreadylein" Thank you for your utility.
NOTES:
Please be sure to start a new campaign or hire a totally new roster of soldiers when you first enable this mod. Your old soldiers from previous versions of the game can't learn reaction fire, new ones will have it when they arrive.
One of the things I'm still disappointed in / unable to address in the Balance mod is the difficulty curve of the strategic layer of the game. Managing panic is extremely hard until it becomes trivial. It is a shame that there is no tension at all in the 2nd half of the strategic campaign.
I dont recommend playing the tutorial with this mod enabled... you can do it but it's likely that the mod will break the tutorial scripts and your time might be wasted.
INSTALLATION
- Download one of the Reaction Fire mod packages from the "Files" tab, above.
- Extract the files (anywhere is fine).
- Double click on the batch file which will be called "RFBalanced.bat" or "RFLite.bat" or "RFSatis.bat" depending on which file you downloaded.
- The batch file will instruct Modpatcher to find your xcom installation automatically then create a backup called xcom-modded.exe and apply the mod.
- Start Steam in Offline mode
- Start the game
If you want to play this mod (or any .ini tweak mod) with Steam in Online mode you need to add these lines to your "WindowsSystem32driversetchosts" file.
127.0.0.1 prod.xcom.firaxis.com #XCOM phone home
127.0.0.1 65.118.245.165 #XCOM phone home
Just add those lines near the bottom of this file and save it. This stops the game from phoning home and overriding your changes. (Windows XP may require a reboot after this step.)
UNINSTALLATION
- I have included another batch file which you use in the same manner to re-patch the exe with the vanilla settings.
- Alternatively (perhaps more reliably) you could verify Steam game files to re-download any edited files.
- Any changes to the windows hosts file would need to be undone manually, just delete the XCOM lines you added previously and save the hosts file. (Windows XP may require a reboot after this step.)
