[WOTC] Iridar’s Stormrider Class

Adds a new soldier class: Stormrider. It is a melee-only class, but they also posses some raw psionic powers that take form of crackling red lightning, which they use to augment their strength and speed. The class includes four specializations:

• Berserker – rage, power, intimidation.
• Charger – mobility and tactical flexibility.
• Stalwart – protection and staying power.
• Breaker – disruption and destruction of enemy defenses.
• There is also a custom deck of random XCOM perks as the fifth row. You need to use the scrollbar on the promotion screen in order to see them.

>>> FULL LIST OF PERKS <<<

Primary Weapons – sword, combat knife.
Secondary Weapons – sword, combat knife, ballistic shield, empty secondary.
Armor – standard soldier armor, including light and heavy variants.

Skills from all four specializations will remain functional with any combination of the allowed equipment, though naturally many of the Stalwart’s perks benefit from using a Ballistic Shield.

While designing this class I tried to address the common issues that typically plague melee classes:

• They are limited in their engagement options, because attacking will leave them open to attacks from other enemies, and potentially pull more pods. Stormriders can return to cover after attacking, and they have an option to engage enemies in melee without the risk of revealing more pods.
• Their damage is all over the place. I tried to give Stormriders a reasonable balance, and I’m willing to balance it further based on player feedback. There are certainly some very powerful skills, but I tried to avoid things like Reaper, Bladestorm and Blademaster.

• X2 WOTC Community Highlander is required.
• True Primary Secondaries is required.
• [WOTC] Musashi’s Mods Fixes is required to fix True Primary Secondaries.
• [WOTC] Community Promotion Screen mod is required, unless playing with RPG Overhaul.

These mods are fully supported, but technically not required:

• WotC Ballistic Shields – fully supported.
• Dual Wield Melee – fully supported.
• Permanent Overdrive WOTC
• [WOTC] Unarmed Weapons
• [WOTC] Stormrider Cosmetics Pack
  
• [WOTC] Reliable Ever Vigilant – should use Intercept when available.
• Overwatch All/Others WotC – uses Intercept when available.

Compatible with Musashi’s RPG Overhaul through this plugin: RPG Overhaul Specialization Pack – Stormrider. Make sure to disable Community Promotion Screen when playing with RPGO.

[WOTC] Sword AP changes – incompatible with Stormrider’s Windcaller Legacy squaddie perk. You can run both mods together, but you will not be getting advertised behavior on Stormriders.

LWOTC version of the class is here.

• Black screen when you promote a soldier to Stormrider for the first time – instead of playing class intro. So far us modders have been unable to reproduce this issue, so for now the only solution is to disable the class intro animation by setting +bHasClassMovie=false in this mod’s XComClassData.ini.
• When deflecting an enemy attack with the Guard ability, the game will play purple FX. This is unintentional, but requires a Highlander update to fix.
• When using Intercept, the soldier may fail to return to the original tile for seemingly no reason. This happens very rarely. Having the Conduit ability almost guarantees it will never happen.
• When using Intercept, the soldier selects the path to the enemy more or less at random, and may run through fire and start burning even though they could’ve picked a different path.

The mod is highly configurable through:

Keep in mind that most of this class’ perks are intended to be used only with the standard melee weapons. Giving these perks to classes that do not use melee weapons, or giving perks related to shooting weapons to this class, is not expressly supported.

You are welcome to copy portions of the code to use in your own projects, but I explicitly forbid copying this mod in its entirety. If you’d like to use this mod as a perk pack, without the Stormrider class, all you need to do is wipe this mod’s XComClassData.ini.

Redrumm for commissioning this mod.
Cute Beaver for class intro voice acting.
Huge thanks to MrNice for his invaluable assistance with visualization code, particularly for Riposte and Interception.
NeIVIeSiS has volunteered to make all 2D assets for this class: ability icons, class icon, GTS icons.
Beta testers: Flamngcheesepe, lago508, RustyDios, Saximaphone.
Credit to Aks for Russian translation.

Please support me on Patreon[www.patreon.com] if you require tech support, have a suggestion for a feature, or simply wish to help me create more awesome mods.