Most recent patchnotes

2018-10-07

Bugfixes
- Fixed Bulletstorm not always requiring the 2 actions it is supposed to.
- Fixed Snapshot not applying the additional aim penalty to Squadsight. Turns out that Scoutrifles might just have been "a little bit" better than intended this whole time Oo
- Fixed Tier 3 Templar armor not getting the new rebalanced values

Localization
- Included a russian translation, provided to me by XCOMrades, a group of people that is tirelessly at work doing translations for mods. Much appreciated, guys!





2018-08-11

Animation fixes
- The Coilrifle now shows an animation when suppressing.
- The Coilcannon is now actually fired like a cannon, not like a rifle.

Attachment fixes
- The attachments for Coil and Laser (and Rail and Pulse) weapons now have the proper visualisations, including ingame models and inventory icons.

Other bugfixes
- The Trigger Happy perk, which was introduced last week, is supposed to give Spray to all weapons. I set it to give Spray to non-cannons to avoid having the ability twice. This meant that the Smartgun couldn't receive Spray. While i don't think Spray is particularly useful on a Smartgun, i fixed that. Trigger Happy will now give Spray to all weapons. The additional aim bonus for Spray on cannons will not apply to Smartguns, though.
- Tear Down, another recently introduced perk, displayed the wrong preview radius for the explosion while targeting. This radius is no longer displayed at all. I will see if i can improve it in the future, but for now i'd rather display no radius than a wrong one.

Operative perks
The following recently introduced class perks have now also been added to the Operative pool:
- Drive Out is now available for non-Agents as a tier 2 Op perk.
- Dense Smoke is now available for non-Grenadiers as a tier 1 Op perk.
- Driven by Vengeance is now available for non-Rangers as a tier 3 Op perk.
- Breach is now available to non-Saboteurs as a tier 3 Op perk.
- Perforating Shots is now available to non-Scouts as a tier 3 Op perk.
- Trial by Fire is now available to non-Sharpshooters as a tier 3 Op perk.



2018-08-07

New heavy weapon: Psi Blade Projector
- Goes into the heavy weapon slot of heavy armors and SPARKs. Provides Rend.
- Useful to give melee options to soldiers that don't have any.
- Deals 6 damage, can not miss.
- Non-Templar can not store Focus, this item doesn not change that.

Resistance Warrior Pack
- The special kevlar armor from the Resistance Warrior Pack now also has ablative armor, just like the regular kevlar.

More class perks
- Here's another round of class perks, one for each class.
- Agent: Drive Out. Tier 1. Run up to an enemy and strike him with the rifle butt for 2 damage. Applies a 2 tile knockback.
- Grenadier: Dense Smoke. Tier 1. Your smoke grenades apply an additional 20 defense, to a total of 40.
- Infantry: Trigger Happy. Tier 2. Reduces the aim penalty on Spray from -20 to -15. Also, allows to Spray with all primary weapons, not only with cannons.
- Ranger: Driven By Vengeance. Tier 3. Whenever the Ranger is damaged, he gets +5 aim and +10 crit for a turn. Whenever hit, he will also gain +3 Will. That Will bonus is permanent.
- Saboteur: Breach. Tier 2. Fire a shot at a target, using 2 ammo. Should you miss, you will rip apart the targets cover instead.
- Scout: Perforating Shots. Tier 3. Ignore all defense from enemy low cover.
- Sharpshooter: Trial By Fire. Tier 3. At the beginning of each mission, gain 1 Aim and 1 Will permanently.
- Specialist: Multitasking. Tier 2. Whenever you Aid Protocol a target, you also Aid Protocol yourself.

Perk tweaks
- Moved Mine Layer up a tier, from tier 2 to tier 3. It's a bit too powerful to get that early.
- Shuffled around the Sharpshooter perk tree a bit, with a bunch of perks changing their tier. Most importantly, Faceoff moved from tier 3 to tier 2 to make room for Trial By Fire.
- Double Barrel no longer requires a perk point. It's now an innate ability of the sawedoff shotgun.



2018-08-03

Update: Ingame Archives
- The ingame archives, accessible through the Commander's quarters, have been updated to reflect the changes of this update. Inception!

Major rework: Body armor
- All non-SPARK body armors have been rebalanced.
- As a general rule, they now provide much smaller bonuses to health.
- They do however give bigger bonuses to armor mitigation and/or ablative armor
- Ablative armor is identical to shields. Its main benefit is that losing it won't count as a wound, thus improving your recovery timers. Its main drawback is that it can not be healed with medkits and that damage to it isn't reduced by armor.
- As an example, a vanilla Warden armor provides 6 hp and 1 armor. ABB now changes the Warden armor bonuses to 1 hp, 2 armor and 3 ablative.
- As a rule of thumb, heavy armors lean towards hp and armor while light armors lean towards ablative.
- Of special note is the Kevlar armor, the basic stuff that everyone starts with. It now provides 2 ablative points, a considerable buff to the early game. To offset that just a bit, the promotion to Squaddie no longer increases hp by one, but i didn't remove this 1hp completely, i moved it up into later ranks that previously didn't have a hp increase attached.

New items: Heavy Support Items
- A couple of new items are now available as loot from ADVENT. You can pretty much get them the same way as the ADVENT weapons (Smartgun, etc): Do well on Supply Raids and collect loot drops. They are relatively rare drops. They start dropping in the midgame and get a bit more common (but still rare enough to make them actual treasures) by the endgame.
- Each one uses the heavy weapon slot of a heavy weapon (like the EXO suit) or SPARK, but is a support oriented item instead of a weapon.
- The following items are currently up for grabs:
- Heavy Shieldgenerator: Works like the shield ability of Advent Shieldbearers. 2 charges, projects a 3 point ablative shield.
- Heavy Trauma Unit: Provides access to an AoE healing pulse. Since its not a medkit, it can be used to stack even more healing on top of your medkit wielding specialists. 2 charges, heals 6 hp in a radius around the wielder (same target area as the shield generator)
- Heavy Psi Negator: Provides the psi-cancelling Solace aura.
- The Rocketeer perk (+1 charge to heavy weapon) will add a charge to the shield generator or the trauma unit, if equipped. Rocketeer doesn't interact with the psi negator.

More class perks
- Every class gets one new class perk. These are added to the random pool that makes up the top perk line of the perk tree. The new perks are:
- Agent: Parkour (tier 2, passive ability, provides Wallclimbing ability)
- Grenadier: Mine Layer (tier 2, provides a free Proximity Mine)
- Infantry: Bulletstorm (tier 3, take 3 shots for 2 actions at -20 aim)
- Ranger: Take Under (tier 2, Sword Slash that can not miss and doesn't end the turn, only useable against wounded targets on 3 or less life.)
- Saboteur: Tear Down (tier 2, free action to detonate an environmental explosive)
- Scout: Scanner (tier 3, allows to throw a Battlescanner as a free action every 4 turns)
- Sharpshooter: Nimble Hands (tier 3, provides a free reload every 4 turns)
- Specialist: Reverse Engineering (tier 2, after killing a mechanical enemy gain 5 permanent hack score)

More operative perks
- A couple of other perks have been added to the Operative perk pool that makes up the second and third perk line. Details:
- Squadsight is available as a tier 4 Operative perk, but only for the two Rifle/Cannon classes (Grenadier, Infantry).
- Interrupt: This Skirmisher perk is very underused, maybe it can get some love as a tier 1 perk that is available for everyone. The perk has also been buffed, see below.
- Parkour: This new Agent perk is available for non-Agents as a tier 3 Operative perk.
- Nimble Hands: This new Sharpshooter perk is available for non-Sharpshooters as a tier 4 Operative perk.
- Fire And Advance: New tier 3 perk, available for everyone. For 2 actions, you can fire a standard shot and still get a full move afterwards. Particularly useful for soldiers with cannons or sniper rifles.
- Taunt: New tier 1 perk. Is used like Hunker Down, but increases dodge by 70 while actually decreasing defense by 30. This will make the soldier more likely to draw enemy fire.
- Hidden Reserves: New tier 3 perk. Once per mission, as a free action, reset all your ability cooldowns back to zero.
- Runner: New tier 2 perk. Passive. Gain +3 mobility.
- Packrat: New tier 4 perk. Passive. Gain one extra charge on all your utility items. This includes grenades, but doesn't include heavy weapons or heavy support items.

Nerf: Bluescreen ammo
- This item was overdue for a little slap on the wrist. I tried nerfing down its most extreme use cases while still giving it a niche to exist. It gets its bonus damage reduced, but a sizeable increase to the hack reduction.
- Extra damage to robotics nerfed to 2 (down from 5)
- Hack resistance of robotic targets will be reduced by 20 (buffed from 5)
- Cost reduced to 50 supplies (down from 75)

Buff: EMP Grenade and EMP Bomb
- The EMP Grenade never was really that bad, it just was completely in the shadow of the BS Rounds. By making them more reliable, they should become a very viable way to deal with heavy robotics.
- Increased the chance to stun robotics to 75% (up from 33%) for the Grenade and to 100% (up from 50%) for the Bomb.

Buff: Travel Light "vest"
- The Travel Light item can be used to sacrifice a slot for a mobility increase. In practice, that wasn't really worth it and deserved a buff. It now provides +2 mobility (up from 1).

Nerf: 'Hecate' PsiArmor
- The Hecate armor no longer provides the Solace perk. This was done because the ability is a bit too powerful to just be a throw-in on an already worthwhile item and because it was messing with Holy Warrior. It is moved to the Heavy Psi Negator item.

Removed: Lone Wolf and Focus perks
- Both Lone Wolf and Focus are suspected of either not working at all or at least being more buggy than justifiable. They won't spawn on new soldiers for now. They might return at some point, although that's particularly unlikely for Lone Wolf.
- Reapers had access to Lone Wolf through the XCOM perks. Due to how short that list is, i felt like needing a replacement perk. Reapers can now get Combat Fitness in that slot.

Buff: Interrupt perk
- For some reason this already somewhat controversial perk has only one charge in vanilla. This is clearly in dire need of some love.
- Interrupt now has 5 charges and a cooldown of 2 turns.

Localization
- The Operative perk "Zero In" shared a name with a similar Skirmisher perk. It has been renamed to "Zone In"







2018-07-02

INGAME ARCHIVES
A lot of documentation for this mod has been moved ingame, into the Archives that can be accessed from the Commander's Quarters. It has information on classes, items and whatever else is changed with ABB. Please check it out, i am sure you will find lots of new things you didn't know about even if you have been running with ABB for a while!
I was originally planning to put requirements on the entries so that they would unlock one after another once certain things get researched, but i did scrap that. Everything is visible from the beginning, so you can plan accordingly.

VISUALS/TEXTS
In an effort to make some of the ABB changes a bit more obvious, some stuff that was changed has now also been renamed, similar to what has been done with the Scope.
- Stock is now "Marksman's Stock"
- Repeater is now "Compensator"
- Medikit is now "First Aid Kit"
- Nanomedikit is now "Nano Aid Kit"
- Nanoscale Vest is now "Sealed Nanoscale Vest"
While i was at it, i also renamed "Proficient" (the ability that is known in LW2 as Center Mass), because of name overlap with the Proficiency perks.
- Proficient is now "Competent"

BUGFIXING
I got a few reports over the last months that the psi offense bonuses from the psi amps might not be working correctly, leading to things like having 5% chance to mindcontrol an Advent Trooper despite using high tier equipment. While i was never able to replicate this on my end, i did find some inconsistencies that i adressed. Hopefully that clears up the problems for whoever was affected before. For reference, here's how it's supposed to work: Every soldier has a psi offense stat. Since there is no Psi Op class that would increase it, the bonuses to this stat come from the amp and the armor. The bonuses are: Medea Armor +25, Hecate Armor +50, any tier 1 amp +25, any tier 2 amp +50, and tier 3 amp +75. So with best gear you can get +125 psi offense. I will likely introduce one or two perks in the future that also give bonuses here.
Note that this bonus isn't terribly important for Oppressor and Savior amps, as those don't actually have a chance to hit. It is however a vital stat for use of the Dominator amp.

CHOSEN WEAPONS
The weapons that are looted from the Chosen invalidate other weapon choices by being pretty much universally better than anything else. This goes completely against everything i am trying to achieve with my mod, so i tweaked some numbers. They are still supposed to be a prize for taking down the Chosen, but there should be some gear choice left in the end.

TL;DR: A minor damage nerf to the Darklance and a more sizeable damage nerf to the Katana, otherwise the Chosen weapons were (surprisingly) fine.

Here's the details:

- Darklance
The Chosen Sniperrifle can fire for one action. Sounds like a scoutrifle to me. Accordingly, the Darklance now uses the same stats as an Elite Scoutrilfe (6-9 damage, 4 crit damage, 1 armor pierce). Unlike regular Scoutrifles, the Darklance doesn't have the Squadsight penalty though and also comes with 4 upgrade slots.
- Darkclaw
Unchanged. I think this weapon is in a good place and already has healthy competition from the Shadowkeeper.
- Katana
Possibly the worst offender of all Chosen weapons, the Assassin's swod has received a major damage nerf. It now deals 5-7 damage, that's 1 damage less than regular Fusion Blades. However, unlike Fusion Blades, the Katana always hits and it does pierce 5 points of armor.
- Arashi
Unchanged. The Assassin's Shotgun already uses the same stats as a Beam shotgun, just with extra mod slots. I could easily see myself picking a Flammenwerfer, Rail or Pulse Shotgun over this weapon, so there's no need for tweaks.
- Disruptor Rifle
Unchanged. Again, the Warlock's rifle uses the vanilla Beam Rifle stats, which seems fine to me. The guaranteed crit and the extra against psi enemies that it has is a nice upgrade over the normal thng, but not enough to make Rails and Pulselasers obsolete.

OTHER WEAPONS
- SMG
The SMG got a respectable crit buff to make it a more desirable option. To underline its' role as a close combat flanking weapon, it got its critical chance upped by 10 percent (from 0 to 10) and its crit damage upped by 1 (from 2/3/4 to 3/4/5). Of course, these values can be further increased by using a Repeater or Lasersight - or both.

ITEMS
- Penetrator Scope
The armor pierce on Penetrator Scopes has been reduced by 1 point, from 2/3/4 to 1/2/3 for basic/advanced/superior Scopes. They do keep their ability to prevent dodges, of course.
I felt like it was just a tad too good. They still might be, to be honest.
- Medkit/Nanomedkit
With ABB, Medkits and Nanomedkits are available in unlimited supply. As a tradeoff, they no longer provide immunity to poison. If you want this immunity, you will need to get yourself a Traumakit... or a Nanoscale Vest.
- Nanoscale Vest
The Nanoscale Vest now provides immunity to poison.

PERKS
- Covert
Increased Covert bonus further, from 40% to 60%. This is now a nice perk to get in position with a shotgun or to create yourself a ghetto Reaper.
- Empowered Stun
The Empowered mode of the Arcthrower Stun ability no longer increases the number of turns that the target is stunned. Instead, using empowered mode will bypass the roll to hit, thus guaranteeing the stun.

RESISTANCE ORDERS
- Tactical Analysis
This Skirmisher resistance order will not spawn anymore. This includes both resistance cards and continent bonuses. Existing campaigns are not affected. Reason: It's overpowered as hell, completely breaking the game in an unfun way. Balancing with numbers isn't really possible, so i am just axing it.
- Information War
This Skirmisher resistance order used to be a tier 1 card that gives -20 hack difficulties everywhere. Mostly, this card was a complete dud and unusable. To replace TacAnal as a high tier resistance card, Information War has been buffed from -20 to -75 difficulty of all hacks and has been upgraded from tier 1 to tier 3. For reference, a vanilla Sectopod has 125 hack defense. An Advanced MEC has 80. Getting this order will reduce those example hacks to 50 and 5. Enjoy, hack the planet.
These numbers will also change for ongoing campaigns where Information War spawned early. Decide for yourself if you want to use it ;)

Upcoming changes

To Do