Similar to the grenades and other vanilla armor suits, I think a second tier of this gear would be cool. Shieldbearer armor is great, but in the lategame 2HP shield is (almost) nothing. I think 4 or perhaps 5 would be a good value on a second tier of Shieldbearer armor. You could also add armor to it like the Shieldbearers have.

I'm not sure what to do with second tiers of the other armors though. Officers increased health is just too similar to XCOM armor. Perhaps innate defense (of say 10)? Stunlancer armor is very similar to Ghost suits (mobility and dodge). Maybe wearing the armor makes you unflankable like some alien types? No idea how to do that though. Or perhaps just immunity to critical hits.

I think for those second tiers of armors, you can make them costly.

I think with higher tier gear, it'd be going more into an adaptation of alien gear since that feels like the logical next step. I'd imagine there'd be both tier 2.5 items and tier 3 sidegrades; the 2.5 stuff would be things like alien rifles that already exist and are usable by humans, while the tier 3 stuff would be things like Andromedon power armor that requires XCOM to make their own designs. I do agree on the increased costs, since that shouldn't be as much of an issue mid-late game.

With ADVENT armors, I think aside from the Shieldbearer or maybe the Stun Lancer (light berzerker armor?), there's not much potential for making 'ADVENT but better' power armor without redundancy. I also feel they'd fit a lot better as tier 3 sidegrades than just making them into a tier 2.5, since it'd be weird to have these ADVENT-inspired power armors that are developed and refined but just stop being worked on after the Warden comes around.

The Total Advent Weaponry guys let anyone use their mod, so long as they get credit. Just add their weapon models to yours. You could even go a step further, and tie your mod in to the 'A Better Advent' mod, and split research and armor into two reasearch projects to make it a little more fair.

Yep, collaboration with other modders has already been very positive, so I'll definitely be continuing to do that going forward.

Could you please add support for grimys loot mod here is a guide

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/650277509/364039531220315576

@The Scout I'll look into doing so at some point, though for now it's not very high on my priority list. Right now I'm focusing on polishing what's already there and providing options for the later phases of the game.

So I think I've figured out what I want to do with higher-tier ADVENT armor. They're definitely going to be made to be tier 3 and will be proving grounds sidegrades unlocked with the Powered Armor tech.

There's the Orion (Officer) armor which I think would have 6HP, 1 armor, and grants both holo-targeting and a passive mini-rupture (prolly just +1 damage), basically making it a death-marking armor.

The Havoc (Lancer) armor would have 6HP, +3 mobility, 15% dodge chance, and the ability to gain temporary crit immunity and bonus melee damage (not yet decided on the numbers for that one, though).

The Aegis (Shieldbearer) armor would have 7HP, 2 armor, and an improved version of the energy shield (5HP, possibly with two charges on a very long cooldown but not yet sure).

Thoughts?

Apart the balancing that may perhaps arise, seems pretty interesting to me.
What are the conditions on the melee gain ?
Also - no tier 3 grunt armor then ?

The melee bonus's condition is just activating the armor's buff as a free action; imagine overdrive serum but reusable. I'm now going with the other part of the effect being an auto-graze since there's no room for an actual critical hit immunity in the system and that's the closest thing.

I'm definitely having the effect last no more than a single round, and right now I'm deciding that it'll have two charges and a 3 turn cooldown between uses. I may have to do something additionally if the auto-graze is still too much.

And yeah, no grunt power armor. There's nothing really about them that can be reverse engineered and improved upon like the others. That, and I'm avoiding tier 2.5 armors because the power armor stat increase is less dramatic as is and thematically doesn't make much sense, at least to me.

Is the Aegis armor going to heavy armor like the E.X.O. and W.A.R suits? As for the stats you're proposing, I suggest you give one more armor to all of them, and two more mobility to the Havoc suit, as it shouldn't have a grapple. My reasoning is that ADVENT cannanocally has much better equipment, even more so if you're playing with the 'A Better Advent' mod. Now, as for the standard trooper armor, I don't think you should throw it away in its way to tier 3, if anything, you should make it a bit more viable along with the others. My suggestion is 7 HP with a 40% reduced detection radius, or an ability that completely removes the detection radius or an in-built Phantom or Conceal with cooldown.

Imagine being able to be able to send a unit out in the middle of an ADVENT group, plant an X4, and evac out. Not a shot was fired in the mission, and you only used one soldier from your roster for the mission.

Now, a balancing factor would be that all of the armor is limited like heavy and light armors, as well as the fact that you could make them pricey; they're ADVENT armors that have been fully restored and improved upon, they're going to leave a hole in your pocket as you enter the late game. So what do you want? One unit in the best gear ADVENT would have to offer? Or would you rather be prudent and save for all of XCOM to have Warden armor? Your call.

Also: any luck on getting permission from the Total Advent Weaponry guys?

Hmm...I guess I could look into making a sort of disguise armor out of the trooper variant (mimics ADVENT network static or something as the idea), but with that it becomes as much a question of game design as of balance. What's important to remember is that concealment is broken by objective completion and that vanilla doesn't really provide much strategy to stealth other than picking a path and praying a patrol doesn't cross or block it.

Since this is going down the path of varying tastes, I want to keep this customizable, with my intended plan for stealth to be risky and require good scouting to be successful. What I intend to do as the default is have a high but not perfect concealment bonus for the armor and possibly a limited-use ability that grants total concealment for a turn (assuming the system allows for that); the armor would otherwise be underwhelming for combat. I feel the ranger stealth abilities ought to complement the armor but not be simply pasted onto it. What I indend to have as options is how much concealment the armor offers as well as, if possible, an option to keep stealth on objective completion (though chances are this option would have to wait until after the armor itself has been released).

If people would like to see a further expansion on stealth mechanics, I'd be up for it but as a separate project from this one.

Just to say, as a general approach to the mod's development, I'm trying to keep with the idea of XCOM's progression starting as scavenging for the superior tools that ADVENT has, then moving on to creating tools of their own design that come to match ADVENT and ultimately surpass them and challenge the aliens' own technology, constantly adopting the tools of their enemies and working to make their own version better.

I regard Tier 2 as being equal in sophistication to ADVENT tech and Tier 3 being on par with alien tech; the reason I say ADVENT is lower in advancement than the aliens is because ADVENT itself is a puppet government whose access to technology is limited to what is provided to them by the aliens themselves.

As such, I consider the Tier 3 ADVENT armors to be inspired by ADVENT's designs but are no longer just being scavenged or copied, but rather they were created by XCOM's own engineers to be more advanced and superior in design.



As for the Total Advent Weaponry mod, I may work on it later, though for now I'm deciding to keep Tier 1.5 and 2.5 primary weapon upgrades as assault rifles only for design reasons. I want the .5 tiers to be smaller, optional steps toward getting stronger weapons with tiers 2 and 3 still being the big, mandatory progression milestones. If I do decide later down the line that I'd like the .5 tiers to be more rounded out and complete like the vanilla ones, I'll definitely add them in.

Guess I know what you mean by ADVENT's stuff being lower tech. Could we at least have the weapons availiability in your mod be optional through the .ini? I kinda don't like how cluttered my research or weapon reserves could become with two things that are essentially the same, and I'm sure others feel that way.

As for the stealth mechanic, perhaps you should look into the mod 'Spec Ops Combat Knives,' or 'Covert Ops Armor' for either code or inspiration in regards to stealth mechanics regarding the grunt armor. (The ADVENT Trooper torso is probably the best looking chest armor in the game, with all them pockets)

As for stealth on objective completion, the standard Phantom actually keeps you in concealment when you complete the objective, and even in hacking/Haywire Protocol, so long as you succeed. Perhaps its the mess of mods that I have that make it possible, but I doubt it.

Finally, could you add something to the Holo-targeter to make it a bit more unique, or different? I use the 'Advanced Ballistics and Materials mod, which adds an improved version of the Tracer Rounds that add Holo-targeting. Perhaps make it also apply the Advent Captain Mark when worn with the more advanced ADVENT armors? Or a small crit chance?

Ah, before I forget, how about a use for all those Codex brains? *nudge, nudge*

Keep up the good work.

The lone ranger X4planting a facility on its own is a vanilla feature as far as I remember.

I think extending stealth mechanics in the game need a dedicated overhaul, the game balance as is - with 4-6 man teams and the size and number of pods - make any stealth added functionnalities pretty overpowered by nature.
A new balance, with bigger teams, enemy reinforcements, in/out stealth switches, chosen missions in a guerilla mindset with useful emergenc extractions and partial goals, and such, is to be done. (all bases are in existing mods)