For those who are interested I have put out "A Better Start" for Chimera Squad.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077831303

If you have XCS then give this a try. I'll be coming out with a Lite version and then A Better Agent and A Better Arsenal all with Lite versions here soon.

It's been a while since I cracked open or even used this version. Now with LW for WOTC (LWOTC) you might want to check out my new version for LWOTC (link above in the table).

I'll still check on it though.

its not giving me all the stuff only intel and supplies and even then its bearly 1k

Good point and an interesting perspective. Thanks MountedCombat

I don't think that the starting issues you mentioned actually go against the lore.
IMO, Central wasn't sheepish about the "gone for decades" thing because he was flipping tired of being the one to deal with this crap, so he wanted to give you the flat sitrep and let you take the reins.
All scientists and engineers were lost because only a few made it out of the base when it fell in the first game, and of those members only Shen's daughter was still in contact.
There was almost nothing in the way of supplies because the fight seemed impossible, so only a few small groups were willing to fund XCOM's attempts at continuing survival almost all of which was then used on finding you.
-All research and such was lost when the aliens took the base and seized the servers - not starting with the ability to take 6 people, a simple *seating arrangement issue,* is a little odd though.

You're a saint for the versions chart you have. THANK YOU!

lore vs game play right here lol. i like it...but that plasma game is coming very early

another thought is to set the scalar to 2 or 3 and see if your injured soldiers don't get flagged gravely.

Then another guess is they are looking at the time it takes to heal the soldier to flag it as gravely injurred.

No, this is the only A Better mod that I'm running, and the near-instant healing is working as intended. However, I've had soldiers return with exactly one HP left, but were only listed as Slightly Wounded. I have made many of my own changes to the .ini files for LW2, but I'm pretty sure I never touched anything having to do with wounds.

So bloodsplatBOOM, this specific mod tweaks settings in the XComGameData.ini. The base file (without my tweaks) contains lines that begin with "WoundSeverities=". These look like what you might want to mess with to get what you are looking for. My mod doesn't mess with these. My mod does mess with "HealSoldierProject_TimeScalar[0]" which is the multiplier applied to the soldiers wound severity to calculate how long they take to heal.
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(continued)
A possible reason you are not getting grave wounds is that you could be using my other mod, A Better Rookie. The health on your soldiers gets buffed so high that it is super rare they ever get killed, let alone damage to the level of risking bleed out. If I understand the game mechanics soldiers get flagged as gravely wounded when they lose well over 50% of their health on a mission. When they return and the buffed heal time scalar is applied you may not even notice the few hours it took to heal them as you were getting ready for the next event or mission.

What bit in the .ini would I change to get rid of the lack of Grave Wounds? Just increase the healing scalar, or is there something else to do?

WOTC Compatible versions of my A Better' MODS have been released!!!

A lot of additions were made by WOTC that made upgrading a few of these a bit more tedius.. I'm looking at You, A Better Arsenal!

Thank you all for your patience. In the interest of getting these out ASAP I didn't get to do the full amount of play testing that I would like. Please send me your feedback. (please refrain from commenting that these mods are too OP as that is their intent. That said, if I didn't dile back the LITE versions enough then pass those notes along.)

--- A special thanks to reCLUsive7 for sponsoring this work.

Links to new mods:

+ A Better Start for WOTC | A Better Start for WOTC(LITE)

+ A Better Rookie for WOTC | A Better Rookie for WOTC(LITE)

+ A Better Arsenal for WOTC | A Better Arsenal for WOTC(LITE)

Just had awesome subscriber gift me the DLC so that I can get these mods updated. You can thank, reCLUsive7 for his sponsorship of the update of these mods. What a crazy cool XCOM gamers community we have!

An additional shout out goes to Spartan A291 and Force2reckon for their generous offers to pick up the DLC for the cause as well.

I expect to get WOTC compatible version of this mod within the next 2 weeks.

can also do research

The strange part elerium cores can be obtained in the very first mission when killing first sectoid.

Yep. This will work for the vanilla game without the LW2 mod. You may just want to use the regular "A Better Start" or the less OP version, "A Better Start (LITE)" both of which work with the vanilla game.

is the LW2 edition of these mods compatible with the vanilla game?

I so wished STARTING_ELERIUM_CORES was something you could set... *sigh* but that's not something that is configurable. The creation of cores is an event or trigger burried in the code with no default setting for baseline ammount.

To Mircea The Young, check to see if you have other mods trumping this mod and reverting the starting values for most resources. The contacts at 20+ and power at 900 basically means you won't need to build our power plants and more than one communication room.

How do you add Starting Values for Elerium Cores in GameData?

Doesn't seem to work... as intended. I'm certainly seeing changes and most seem to be the right ones, I think, but I'm not getting the resources and I'm seeing other changes, such as available power being 900+ (???.... do I even need that much?) and contacts at 20+. I'm not complaining, but I would like the resources.

Finally, my XCOM operatives are pulling up their big girl petticoats and not waiting for me.

You may want to check if another mod is overwriting the changes. If you have recently loaded a mod that is newer than mine that modifies the starting values for the base then mine will not work. If they have done an update to LW2 that could also be the reason but I haven't checked that.

Doesnt work for me. Subscribed, started a new game and... nothing. Do I need another mod first? Its been downloaded and everything.

Very cool thanks for maintinaing it too

You have to becareful with moving mods into your local mods folder. There is a load order priority that works like this: First XCOM loads the default ini files, then it loads the DLC ini's, then it loads any mods you have in your local space (my mods area), last it loads the mods from the workshop. This means any setting that is common in the LW2 mod (like starting supplies) that is also in a local version of my mod will lose out to LW2's settings. So the best thing todo is to use my mod from the workshop as it will always get loaded after LW2 and then modify that mod under the workshop folder if you want to tweak it. check out the description on this mod on how to do that.

Also, forgot to mention, I'm on Mac, so I'm not sure if that is adversely affecting the function of the mod. Thanks in advance for any help!

I'm having a slight issue with this mod. All of the starting supplies don't show up in the beginning of the game, I only have 175. I had it in the original workshop folder, the 268500 (or something) folder. It didn't work there, but I moved it to my mods folder in the Xcom 2 file and unsubscribed (in case I needed to modify the .ini) and it still is not working. Sorry I can't give more info, I'm on the way to school, but do you know of any possible issues that I could fix?

dude you are a life saver, I had to restart my LW2 save game (putting into 70hrs into it) because I put some incompatible mods and I was thinking I had to bust my ass playing all over again and having to earn everything back.

thanks!

Not sure I understand the question. I have looked at how to start off with a couple of scientists or engineers but there is no easy option in the ini files to do that. I am guessing this would require writing actual code that got fired off at start up that added new engineers and scientist when you got to the base. As for now I don't expect to be doing that.

If you are seeing some wrong numbers after start up a common suggestion is to purge the config directory under your MyGames folder. Adding and removing lots of mods can leave some residual settings in the game's runtime config load.

ok ty for reply and last question give some scientist or engineer at the start or remain "rare goods" as now in my playthrought?

Yes (sorta) and Yes. "A Better Start (all versions)" can be loaded after the game starts and even after your first visit to the base, however the "starting values" will be ignored. The build time, research time scalars will work (I believe).

The way I built the mod the "A Better Arsenal for LW2" and "A Better Arsenal for LW2 (LITE)" are definitely compatible with LW2 and they will work without LW2. So you could say they are backwards compatible too.

i can use the lw2 version even if i already started a campaign or i must remake a new story?and the lite version of arsenal is compatible with lw2?

I have released a LITE version of this mod with that offers increases to start values and scalars but not so much that it removes the base management game. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=862345221

Yeah, it really was quite an ambiguous explanation. I wish it were more clear. (I actually thought that XCOM 1 had happened fully and then XCOM 2 happened until just this last playthrough, where I noticed that there was actually an explanation.)

Such a great point too Heretic13. However you spin this the story tellers here seemed to rush through the finer points knowing that none of us are going to watch the thing more than once. For the alien simulation plot to have worked well then, yes the should have then explained the back story on Central.

That may be true, but it also showed the hq being overrun by aliens, and if so, then how would central remember the commander or even exist if eu was all an illusion?

I agree and it could be that I'm just slow on the pick up but they could have put more emphasis in explaining the fact that XCOM 1 was an alien created simulation. Clearly they were so subtle that I missed it when creating the back story for this mod. ;-)

Well, I mean... The beginning of the game suggests that the entirety of XCOM EU took place in an ADVENT simulation... For all you know, the mystic technology that allowed more than 4 people to be carried in the skyranger may have never been created!

Can you increase the amount of affordable recruits?

Scuba Steve for president !!

Yes! i sure could use a lite version of the arsenal mod. Feelin REAL op atm

I'll be working on a A BETTA' LITE version of this mod and my others this coming weekend. As I have folks who enjoy the OP'ness of this mod I don't want to rob them of that option I'll build a new mod and leave this one in place. I'll post here when the LITE version is released.

It is just way to much I can do with the resocrces but the powr, comms, and bulid times takes half of the game away

Nicesu !

:D Thanks

You can if you want to edit the config file directly... here is the path to it:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\268500\859904129\Config\XComGameData.ini
this is assuming your running windows and steamapps are on your c:\ drive.

I can change the values of starting supplies?