A Better Chosen

— A Better Chosen —
— Mod by DerBK —

Requires XCOM2 version: War of the Chosen
Requires DLC: –
Requires other mods: –

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This mod overhauls the Chosen to be more interesting in and out of combat, while still keeping their powerlevel within the spirit of the game.

The changes affect the Chosen AI and their perks. In some cases, they even get new skills to use to make XCOM’s life … more interesting! Especially the Warlock has been changed considerably, both in and out of combat. Truth be told, this mod could’ve easily been called A Better Warlock … or The Elders Better Champion 🙂

Quick overview of the changes:
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ALL CHOSEN

– General touch ups to the AI behaviors of the Chosen
– Chosen will no longer always go for Extract Knowledge. If you fail to un-daze your soldiers, the Chosen will have a 50% chance to kidnap them instead. With the "Collectors" Dark Event active, this chance shoots up to 100%.
– Chosen gain a lot more knowledge from extracting and capturing. They now gain 30 knowledge for an extraction and 40 for a capture (vanilla values are 10 and 20)
– All Chosen gain some means of lowering XCOMs Will. This is supposed to reflect the hardship of facing the Chosen and the attrition this puts on the soldiers.
– New Chosen traits. Some of them are simple, like Evasive which gives a 50 dodge bonus, while others may even change up the AI.
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THE WARLOCK

Out of Combat:
The Warlock is the Chosen that has been changed the most. He still uses his Psi Zombies ability to dump explosive spectral zombies on XCOM’s lap. However, instead of just waiting for the cooldown with a thumb up his ♥♥♥♥ for the following turns, he will use two new minor map abilities to harrass you now:
— Sabotage Weapon: Psionically jams a target soldier’s weapon, disabling it (= removing ammo, requiring a reload). This works just like what the Codex does, except it’s single target and not tied to any damage or bubbles or whatever.
— The Elder’s Champion: Applies a 3 point Energyshield to a random enemy unit on the map, even possibly targeting unrevealed ones. The shield stays for 10 turns.

In Combat:
The Warlock is no longer neutralized by a Ranger with Mindshield. Being a 200IQ super brain, he will easily see through this ruse and will punish you for your feeble attempts of resistance.
— Mindscorch and Mindcontrol will no longer be used against Mindshielded enemies.
— With his new "Overwhelm Mindshield" ability, he can target mindshielded enemies for a chunk of damage, both to health and to will. Damage scales with tier of the Warlock.
— Teleport Ally will only be used on Berserkers and Chryssalids. No more random turret relocations.
— The Warlock does no longer need to be near death to use Spectral Army. He might just do it earlier if he feels like it.
— The Warlock might decide that he wants to summon spectral zombies during combat, something he didn’t do before. The chance for this is fairly small, but it’s an option for him.
— Warlock Mindscorch now drains 15 Will off of all targets.
— Warlock can now teleport. He will only use this if flanked.
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THE ASSASSIN

Out of Combat:
Rushes towards XCOM, just like in vanilla. Unlike in vanilla where she will always swordstrike to open combat, she has three option to engage now:
— Using Harborwave if XCOM is bunched up enough for her to hit many targets.
— Using her shotgun if she has a soldier flanked.
— Attack with the Sword, dealing damage, dazing and triggering Bending Reed like in vanilla.

In Combat:
The Assassin fights in close quarters, using both her sword and her shotgun as she sees fit.
— She will no longer use her Harborwave on single enemies, instead she will try to make better use of that and of her blinding grenade.
— That blinding grenade has an additional effect now, draining affected soldier’s Will score by a whopping 40 points.
— The shotgun will come into play if the Assassin finds opportune flankshots to exploit. (Note that this behavior is intentionally toned down, because with her 25 mobility she could flank every turn if she wanted to…)
— If the Assassin starts her turn while being out of sight of XCOM (for example following a Bending Reed), she will conceal herself again and fall back into her Out of Combat behavior.
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THE HUNTER

Out of combat:
— Tracking Shot now lowers Will and Defense by 7 for the rest of the mission. This is a stacking debuff, so a soldier that gets tracked many times can become severely exposed to enemy fire while also becoming frail of mind and prone to panic.

In Combat:
To contrast with the Assassin, the Hunter is focused on keeping distance from XCOM and hailing shots on them. The changes to the Hunter are mostly AI based, with only minor touch ups to his skillset:
— He will not randomly grapple around, he will keep it in his back pocket until he will need to gain distance from XCOM.
— The movement profiles used by the Hunter have been exchanged with extremely defensive ones. Whenever possible, he will try to stay away from your guys.
— His daze grenade has been buffed. It now has a considerably larger range and radius. Also, the chance to stun has been increased from 67% to 100%.

Note: The early game assassin had her defensive stats nerfed to compensate for the AI increase. She was a bit too deadly for a while.
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COMPATIBILITY

Avoid things that change the AI behavior trees of the Chosen, as that’s something that i do as well and that can not stack up with the changes of something else. This includes mods that give new active perks to the Chosen because those perks would need to be worked into the AI tree.

Pretty much everything else should stack just fine, especially mods that add extra stregths and weaknesses.
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FAQ

– Yes, this is completely standalone. It does not require ABA or ABAI, but it is of course compatible with them.

– Yes, this can be added mid-campaign. Even mid-mission. That should be no problem at all. At this point, it would also be safe to disable it again mid-campaign, but i can not guarantee that part will stay that way.

– No, this is not compatible with my ABAI: Chosen Tweaks mod. Dump that mod, it’s crap.

– No, i can not suggest using this mod with other Chosen overhauls. They will likely conflict a lot.

– No, there will not be a vanilla version. What kind of dumb question is that? Get out of here.

Here’s a little wall of text on what this mod is trying to do – and what it is not trying to do. So read that before you come to me with your ideas of super tracking shots that instagib anything that moves and Chosen that take 5 actions per turn.
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PERMISSIONS

Any modder is allowed to pilfer, re-use or re-upload any of A Better Chosen’s assets, scripts, doodads and thingamajigs in any way or form that he wants to. I don’t care.