Thank you for the kind words, glad to hear you enjoyed this litte horror show i put together :)

As for your feedback:

1) Gatling Troopers don't shred. The ADVENT Wrecker gets a cannon in tier 3, and he shreds - maybe that's why you assumed that the Gatling Trooper would. Shredding is pretty much the defining feature of the Wrecker, so i do want to keep it on there. I could maaaaybe see lowering it a bit from its current 1/2/3 progression to 1/2/2, but i am not wild about it.
You can see the stats of the weapons in the ABA_Settings.ini, including the shred values. You can also change them there. Wreckers carry the "Envirorifle", Gatling Troopers the "Advent Cannon". Tier 3 Wreckers carry the "Shred Cannon", formerly used by the Heavy Captain in ABA1. You can also look over the other weapon stats there and find that there's actually not much shredding going on. I think the AI improvements make units use grenades a bit more often which may - together with the heavy shredding from the Wrecker - lead to the impression that it's everywhere.

2) The Gatling Trooper could stand a little nerf, but nothing as drastic as you suggest, imo. His aim is already slightly below vanilla Troopers (i assigned -5 aim to all units with a cannon), but i could see slapping another -5 to -10 aim on there to make that difference more pronounced.

3) The Prime is supposed to be a road block. I am not touching him, he's exactly where i want him to be and there are some very deliberate design choices behind how the Prime reactions work. The other Primes that appear throughout the campaign are supposed to teach you about "making your moves count" because they punish you for relying on what is usually OP in this game: extra activations (Lightning Hands, Reaper, CCS...) and low damage AoE (grenades, Void Rift). The Sectopod is the test at the end of the semester. The Sectopod Prime is also deliberately setup to have a chance at surviving a bluescreen'd Fanfire and wreck your ♥♥♥♥ afterwards with immediate 3 bonus actions so you can't cheese it like vanilla Sectopods.

Bugs:

1) Fixed in upcoming patch.

2) I found some of them already, any specific ones that you remember so i can look for them?

3) Strange setup of things happening and strange outcome. Not sure if i can even replicate that - and if i can, if i can do anything about it. I would assume that the same happens with a vanilla Andromedon.

Also, since you made it to the end, i'd like your opinion on the final mission, Leviathan. How was it? Too hard, Not hard enough? Did my changes to the mission even take? I didn't get there myself so far :D

Ok, here goes.

1. & 2. Yeah, it seems it was the wrecker. The weapon made me think gattling. Though i still think LEU with +1 damage is too much for a standard variant. I have nothing against such a trooper, but not as a stadard garden variety trooper. It's no that he is too much, its that other feel weak by comparison, uneven. I think -10 to aim would be a must, and he would still be the strongest trooper type by a fair margin.

Shrediness is there much more. Grenades are there much more and they shred more. In vanilla, per mission you had maybe 2-3 leader alines out of 20 that would shred up to 2 armor max on endgame (one andromedon, sectopod...) Now even followers have shred en mass going up to 3. Since XCOM can reach very low levels of armor, mostly +1, +2/3 on maybe a soldier or two and +4 theoretically, +2 shred is more than enough to take it away.

Here is the catch with shredder. It REALLY hurts SPARKS. Tier 3 SPARK has 3/4 armor with bulwark. If I go on a mission with 20 enemies where I know that one enemy that shredds i can disable it (kill it first, stun...) and have him tank the rest (even against a rare muton follower squad) and any other. In ABA2 almost every squad you encounter on leader and follower level has multiple eneimies dealing shred damage. Now as I said, for XCOM soldiers +1/2/3 shred is neigh identical. But for a SPARK its HUGE.

Currently SPARKS are whorthless and if balance of classes is generally desired then adjustments should be made on both enemy and XCOM side (buff SPARKS) though if I remember ides from you initial posts this mod is about enemies and for compatibility reasons XCOM (SPARK) modificiations are out if its scope. I agree with that policy, it's clean and elegant, but currently in ABA2 SPARKS are really bad as a direct result of shred mechanic.

To sum it up. Putting a lot of armor shreding doesnt really hurt XCOM soldiers (They will mostly be no armor or +1 armor) but realy hurts SPARKS. We get a big gameplay weaknes for almost no gain.

My idea would be to put shred on wrecker, muton (all variants incl prime) and all grenades and rockets +1 (regardles of tier). Andromedon, Sectopod (leaders) can have +2. Against soldiers it would be 90% the same, against SPARKs it would be viability.


For the Secty Prime, don't get me wrong, I love it. I am more concerned with its superiority to other primes. Others feel jsut like stronger enemies, they don't really prepare you for the "roadblock ahead"

I am not sure how many actions it gets after taking hits, but it think I remeber getting two (and will sometime move and flank, dead colonel:) That is bad I think. One action, (move or shoot should be maximum imo). Also dual attacks (chain shot, rapid fire...) do give it 2 actions always. I think this is very bad. If the idea is that you have to be really careful with your turns, using such attacks is actually the smart thing. Going for maximum damage shots. This way a player is punished for thinking strategically and using big enemy killer skills against big enemies.

So my suggestion is keep it at most 1 action per any attack (including double attacks). Also, some end game primes could be even buffed a bit so there isn't such a huge diffference between them and Secty Prime:)

Bugs:

1) Great, no more one shot

2) Only 1 so far, Firestarter Prime. He's fire attack seems like both ability and attack. You have 5 charges (and a nice comment "Burn them all", LOL, I also love trauma lancers "Tase the bro":), but also (unlike regular berserker) he has a "weapon" with missing image icon and 5 ammo. If it takes damage the weapon ammo is depleted and it seems to deplete its fire attack as well. I don't know enough modding to say what it is, but it seems to me it linked the ability with the weapon...sth...

3)I guess it's just XCOM2 being XCOM2


Leviathan opinion:

Very nice and all works as intended. Especially the Secty prime in the second room (hit me once:) Very challenging. Gates in the end fight also spawn ABA2 pods. Seems all right to me.

All in all a really great mod, high polish, no big bugs. Really great man.

Too sum up what I would change.

1. Tone down gattling (just cause hes so better)
2. Tone down shred seriously (just kills SPARKS and not much else)
3. Just that 1 action per attack on Secty Prime.

Cheers

For the patch this weekend, i am going to give a small aim penalty to the Gatling Troopers and a slight reduction to the Wrecker's shred. Aside from that, i don't think it's really necessary to do much balancing.
Let's not forget after all that you made it. On Ironman. On Legendary. With vanilla classes. With vanilla timers. In a cave with a box of scraps. That leaves a lot of room for people to make their own balance choices without me needing to compromise on my own mod.

The Sectopod Prime is definetely staying as he is, i am very happy with his current state and his mechanics.

As for the Firestarter and what's wrong there, it's actually quite simple. Technically, the Firestarter is just a Berserker that carries a flamethrower. Swinka666, the dude who made the animations for the Firestarter just mounted the flamethrower in the Berserkers head and used his roar animation as his fire animation. Brilliant :D
Apparently i forgot to give a proper ingame name to the flamethrower "breath weapon", so i'll have to do that. Will be fixed in the upcoming patch, of course.

Great,

Just remeber that it also had 5 charges and that somehow intercacts with weapon ammo.

As a final note on balance. I am not taking reducing difficulty. It can be done now, and I could even see it go a bit higher. Secty Prime is Though, but it can be beaten, I like the gattling aim to even up.

But I'll just add a final SPARK comment. I dont think you should remove shredder from units, just reduce it to +1 for all (including grenades) but a very few strongest (sectopod, andromedon, alien grenades...) and elite wrecker (of standard enemies) at +2.
Having more really doesn't add at all. 80% of the game XCOM has no armor, and the remaining 20% of the game 80% of the soldier have just 1 armor (or 0 in a wratih suit). One or 2 will have 2-3 armor.
By keeping shred high you just hurt SPARKS (and a very occasional tanky soldier) essentially making them useless for no incease in difficulty or tactical complexity.

This is not about making this mod easier, just keeping the classes balanced and diverse as possible. I would even rather wrecker has +1 damage and 2 armor shred, then as it is now.

Currently, tanky SPARKS are really bad now, and all other classes are relative to each other as vanilla. Also any other calss mods that rely on armor would be broken by current shred values.

My final 2 cents:)

I cant wait to try my new campaign with an updated patch!

Well, i play L / I on your mod. With 6 def squad from 2nd M, ofc. I play almost the same as Djaci just with DAMAGE ROULETTE and RED FOG, so i guess little bit harder.

And i must say that i cant pass 2nd mission. :) So for me is really hard challenge, and i was crazy enough to play and beat F.A.I.M. mod on L/I.

Main problem for me with your mod ( and challenge 2) is that i fight against so many enemies in the same time. Also i had timer problem so i had to rush. And im talking about 2nd mission, im affraid what will happen if i beat first 4-5 missions.

So be carefull if you make things even harder, i guess Djaci is good, but he was crazy lucky , at least at the beginning of the game.

Ill write how im doin in couple of days. GL with great mod(s)!!

P.s. I also use Additional Mission Types and Additional Dark Events( RealitiyMachina mods) , do you think thats ok with your mod ? Because i dont like same vanilla missions, i have over 500 hours on xcom 2 and i need something to mix it up.

Off topic, if anyone knows some new mode for strip primary weapons, please help, last patch killed that mod.

Additional Mission Types works, but it's also a mod that adds quite a bit of difficulty. The constant reinforcements from AMT in its special missions coupled with the increased pod size of Better Advent is deadly as hell.
Some people also have no enemies in one of the new mission types from that mod. Not everyone has that bug, but some do ... and it was never quite clear what causes it.

Additional Dark Events requires you to switch some of the extra dark event off because they introduce new pods that conflict with ABAs changes to the mission and pod setup. RealityMachina, who made that mod prepared something so it can be used with ABA. Do this:
* Open the XComDarkEvents.ini from Additional Dark Events. Change the "UsingPods" option from "true" to "false".
* Delete the Missions.ini from Additional Dark Events.

After your advice, I removed both AMT and ADE. Now its not so hard, 2 -3 times less enemies and no deaths in my squad in first 2 missions. Ill see after 10 - 20 missions if is hard enough.

Due to the scaling pod size bonus from ABA, you will find that the game gets harder as it goes on. The first half of the game is just preperation :D
Don't think that just because you flawless'ed a couple of early missions, you now need to ramp up the difficulty with other mods. Once you enter forcelevel 10 (shortly before Archons show up), things start to get out of hand. By forcelevel 15 (when you also get the first Primes), ABA will go into endgame mode and try to kill you.

Ok mod is really hard on L/I, i lost my teams somewhere between 2nd and 3rd month. I really dont understand how Djaci won the game. Because like Djaci i play with FATIGUE and i must rotate my team, really hard to win..

Djaci can you explain how you won early game when muti pods open without your moving ? I mean, i play with RED FOG and it is even harder, but anyway..

Maybe i should move down to Commander level, but i really love longer game at that is only on Legend

Well, it's hard to tell exactly what happened each game, but ill give my best:)

1. I am not sure red fog is harder, I don't play with it, but if I understand, it will effect enemies as well. Since XCOM gets the first move, enemies will get damaged so almost killed enemies will be far less dangerous on next turn.

2. It wasn't easy, i had updated fatigue and I played 2-3 times over first 4 missions (month 1) that is the hardest part before stabilizing a bit for the rest.

Once I managed to get to moth two it was a tight, but playable campaign. Council missions were the hardest. Sometimes (4-5 times) I had to evacuate a mission and let it go (in general, not only council).

So, for the details of 3 month strategy.

Strategic part:
I focus on scientists, not enigs. try to get around 5 till may (some from rewards, some you buy for money or intel) I research modular weapons, then communications and radio and then go for magnetic weapons, basic and gauss. Only then (which will be late May) do I go for hybrid materials and predator armor that finishes around mid June.

I built GTS first, than AWC then power, then res comm by mid June roughly.

When I get predator (and mag weapons mid june) I go for blacksite. Just as the avatar bar fills up. I let it tick a few days if I am still waiting on armor to finish. Blacksite is easy if you have mag and armor.

Tactical part:
Since you use fatigue mod, it is important to take more soldiers on missions. Each one will become a squaddie after each deployment. You have 6+ soliders so make a good offensive squad composition.

Use GTS to add classes u lack. Most important early on, grenadiers. I would recommend 2 for each mission. They remove cover and set up exposed shots.

Also, bring 2-3 flashbangs on others.

If you encounter 2 squads at once (8 enemies) you do the following.
Use 1 grenade. Start killing exposed enemies.
If you can shoot more, use other grenade to remove cover from other group and keep killing, if not use it to finish a 1-2 HP straggler. Otherwise just shoot.

Before using all your soldiers make sure to flashbang the group that you couldn't kill. Flashbanging makes enemies almost useless.

In my games I always use SqS snipers (no gunslingers), both gunner and grenade grenadiers (half/half), medics and scout rangers (very useful), not other archetypes.

In other words, your team needs to be ready for protracted attrition engagements (non timer maps, snipers) and for limited short term dps (timed maps, grenadiers)


General tips:
1. Due to fatigue, don't bring your best squad. Take the minimum of soldiers you need (you'll get a feel for it, it's hard cause you really want to bring the best, but don't:) Make sure you have some of your strong, rested soldiers for your next mission. Always think 2 missions ahead at least.

2. Focus on weapons first, then armor. Armor is nice, but killing quick is important. It not only makes you kill stuff, but dead aliens can't hurt you then. It also deals with timers! If you don't get oneshoted all the time, you are good to go.

3. Low cover is no cover. If you can finish your turn with all soldiers in High cover, do so. If only one soldier (in enemy visual range, so not sniper typically) is in low cover, it as the whole team is. As the enemy will attack him (they go for the easiest to shoot one). If you cant make sure all your soldiers end in high cover. Move everyone (or most) to low cover for maximum damage (as you will have more choice to choose, go for flanks...) Use aid protocol on that one soldier that cant find high cover of need to flank. Use snipers, as they don't "use up" high cover spots with their squadsight.

4. Plan your turn and focus fire.
Think in the terms of how to do the most damage and take as little as possible with all actions you have on your turn. Example, you activate some troopers and with a MEC. You think.

Good thinking:
If I kill a MEC troopers will shoot me, If i kill troopers, MEC will shoot grenade me. I can reliably kill only one (mec or troopers, but not both). Ill choose one, disable the rest. If I have hacker, ill disable mec and focus killing troopers, if I ahve flashbang, ill focus mec and disable troopers making them almost harmless.

Bad thinking:
Lets maximize damage trying to do as much HP damage as possible. You do a lot of damage, MEC remais alive with 2/9 HP with one trooper. MEC uses grenades, damages 2 soldier and exposes them, 1/4 hp trooper shoots, connects and kills one of your soldiers.


I hope I gave some useful pointers, if you guys want to ask more, just ask:)

Happy ADVENT hunting

Allright, I played with ABA for sometime now and wanted t oshare my implressions on the enemies and since there is a thread made already, I guess I ll post it here.
I played on Legend with default 4-6 squad size, LW perk pack (although with personal edits, like completely rebalanced grenadiers and assaults) and alternate missions.ini (one less per pod). it felt doable, however somewhere in the late game it started to feel a bit overwhelming, but mostly because of multiple pod activation (by that I mean they kept coming in into fights), so I constantly had to fight multiple pods. That said I think balance is very good number wise, considering I used vanilla squad size. All of that is just my opinion and I could be wrong here.

Now about the enemies themselves:
I ll put them into three categories - ADVENT, Aliens, Chryssalids (they are aliens aswell I guess, but I feel like putting them into their own category).

ADVENT.
They definetly more dangerous in the mod than they are in vanilla, mostly because they are lot smarter and tactical and pose a threat even in the very late game.

Trooper variants: a cannon fodder of sorts, their main purpose I feel is to draw some of your fire from the officiers and MECS (or sectopods in the late game). That said if left on their own they can deal some damage aswell. To be honest most of them didnt live past initial activation, thats why I rarely saw them use their perks on me, the ones that caused me the most trouble were shoggoth (waste some of your damage and get a new fully healed bulkier unit) and strikers (mostly because I kept forgetting they are close combat specialists now).

Stun lancers: I feel they are a bit on a weak side, they are no longer doing suicide attacks (which is understandable), but they use their melee way too rare I think. Main reason however is they scale too late, they stay in their T1 variants way too long, T2 starts to appear way too long after magnetic weapons and T3 way too past after plasma (at least that happened in my campaign) so they were constantly one shot, to be honest I dont remember them causing me any problem at all, aside shieldlancer weak shield here and there.

Shieldbearers: much like vanilla these guys cause some trouble by mostly existing with their shield and lot of armor, not much can be added here, works as intended.

Officers: Feels like they are the core of the xcom problems when it comes to advent, while sectopods or mecs are stronger individually, officers are more smart and numerous (general pods). They can cause lot of grief if not killed asap, however I think sniper was somewhat underperforming, it needs 2 actions to shoot and can be cheesed into moving (and sometimes it moved for no reason at all) and cant shoot after. Otherwise they are probably the most dangerous advent units, aside sectopod prime.

MECS: The most annoying of all advent units, their attacks can be devastating if you allow them to use it, that said they dont usually live to use them after you get bluescreens. Because of that while potentially vanilla MECs and hazmat ones are more dangerous, its Riot and Autodoc that cause the most problems, because they do stuff on activation (my favourite was when autodoc healed Archon king in the fog of war >_<). Riot MEC sometimes doesnt use smoke effectively though, by smoking some other pod you cant even see, thus wasting it.

Sectopod prime: Can wipe squads if not treated properly. Has 4 main counters though - frost bombs, mimics, stasis and EMP. The only way of dealing with it without losses is to disable it basicly, which is intended I suppose.

Aliens:

Its worth noting that due to alien pod all or nothing configuration, they are very rng dependant, some of them may be encountered only once or twice during campaign because they never rolled into pods, so impressions might differ from person to person. Overall though while individually stronger than ADVENT I feel like they are more "stupid" than them, also they are more binary because they donnt have ADVENT scalings, aside mutons.

Sectoids: Can be problematic at the beginning if you dont have melee character, but stop being a threat in the mid game, not much different from the vanilla, though ABA ones slightly more dangerous because of better AI, they dont hesitate to shoot you any longer. AMusingly enough it can pose some additional threat too, because they have plasma guns they do more environmental damage and that can even set your soldiers on fire on your turn even if they miss or destroy roof.

Vipers: not much different from vanilla, they still like to dodge though. Also I cant say much about their variants they are way too rare, I met mamba pod once, adder (hope I spelled it right) leader once and killed on activation so I cant say much about them.

Mutons: Can be extremly dangerous if encountered too many times with conventional weapons, but in the mid game they start to drop as a threat and that is mostly because of AI. For some reason they dont like to throw their grenades anymore, also they too fond of suppression. I mean if you have 5 soldiers and one is suppressed its allmost guaranteed you ll break it immediatly on your turn. Of course supression has its place but they do it way too often I feel. As for Captains, while they shoot now they like to move way too much instead of trying to utilize their Light em Up, so they usually move before shooting or use War cry. Cant say much about champions because I prioritized them when possible, however, again, they were moving way too much instead of trying their shots with Light em Up.

Archons: Archons for aliens are like officers for ADVENT. This is where main threat comes from. Theoretically Andromedons and Gatekeepers are stronger, but they are far less encountered and they arent followers like Archons. 4 archons pod is the most terrifying thing you can meet in a timed council mission and they cant be focused reliably aswell because they dodge all the time. High defense, lot of hp, respectable damage and high dodge, only weak spot is that they like blazing pinions way too much if they arent damaged, oh they also can be cheesed with burn and flashbangs I guess.

Codices: As annoying as in vanilla I cant say much about them, because I was flashbanging them as soon as they were appearing, because of that I couldnt tell them apart, they werent allowed to do their signature moves, only exception being Splitter and ADVENT codex, one because of its extra hp and armor and the other was its own thing which could snowball if left alone. Overall while not being heavy hitters they require certain respect, because of their support abilities.

Gatekeepers and Andromedons wwerent much different from vanilla aside their better AI, although Andromedon was way too rare for my taste.

AS for Chryssalids while being in their own category they mostly the same, early ones allmost harmless while late ones cause lot of problems because of their surprising tankiness - high dodge and high defenses and also you cant really allow them to hit you alot, otherwise your whole team can be poisoned, exception is Chryssalid queen.

I feel like its probably the most dangerous prime out there, because to defeat your basicly require one of the three characters - grenadier with grenades and stronger perk explosion to wipe all her children after your attacks or flame grenade, or well flashbangs, close combat specialist or bladestorm shinobi. If you dont have those your only hope is to pray to RNGgeesus that you ll be hit as little as possible and your medkits can cover all the poison, otherwise you ll just have to evac, at least she is rare, I only met her at gate mission, but that was quite a fight.

Overall I really enjoyed my campaign with this mod, to be honest I cant play vanilla game after that, its a brilliant mod that adds lot of variation, smarter AI that adds more challenge (even if it can be frustrating at times =)).