Kabill’s Tactical Armouries

NOTE: Only compatible with Xenonauts: Community Edition mod.

Tactical Armouries overhauls ground combat with new and tweaked rules, a new weapons tech tree, revised alien stats and weapons, and more!

This mod has undergone a fair amount of testing and should basically be bug-free. However, there may be a few issues and would be greatful for any feedback or bug reports in the comments below.

There are too many changes to highlight in detail so here are the major points:

– Revised weapon tech-trees: Each weapon tier has its own strengths, resulting in asymmetric weapon upgrades. The ballistic tier is basically the same as vanilla with a broad spread of different capabilities. Laser weapons are comparably more accurate and have high damage values but lack automatic fire, making them strong in long-range engagements but less strong in close-quarters. MAG weapons (which now occupy the third tier) have comparable levels of damage to ballistic weapons but an enhanced rate of fire when bursts are used and have good armour penetration making them effective against armoured targets. Finally, plasma weapons have very high damage but low ammunition counts and only limited burst-fire options.

– Armoured aliens: Rather than higher-tier aliens getting large bonuses to HP, they now get only moderate HP buffs but instead gain increasingly more effective armour. Caesans, Sebillians and Wraiths are lightly armoured, Harridans moderately armoured and Androns, Drones and Praetors heavily armoured.

– Revised alien stats: more generally, alien stats have been revised somewhat to factor in armour changes. Overall there have not been large changes to most races but Androns are generally less strong than they used to be as a result of their very high armour values. I’ve also changed some of the AI values to, for example, encourage aliens to use higher ground more often.

– Combat ranges: units have a sight range of 24 tiles rather than the vanilla 18 tiles and weapon ranges have been adjusted accordingly. Furthermore, short range bonuses start to apply at 12 tiles rather than the vanilla 5, gaining +4 to hit for every tile within that distance.

– Suppression: Weapons can now suppress beyond their maximum effective range, although their effectiveness doing so is reduced the further beyond range you are shooting (like accuracy drop-off). Furthermore, armour no longer subtracts its value from suppression damage done but instead reduces it by a proportion. For example, previously Jackal armour reduced suppression damage by 25 points; now it reduces suppression damage by 25% instead. This allows for smoother suppression values and allows heavily armoured soldiers/aliens to actually be suppressed.

– TU costs: TU costs for crouching and for moving items in the inventory screen have all be revised upwards. This has been primarily to discourage weapon-swapping and/or to encourage forward planning with in-hand items.

– Grenade costs: the cost of throwing a grenade when a soldier has a two-handed weapon in hand is a fair amount higher. As much, most soldiers can only move a few tiles and throw a grenade. This is to encourage pistol use as this penalty is not applied when a soldier has a free hand. Dedicated grenadiers are now therefore a thing.

– Smaller pistols: On a related note, pistols are no longer enormous hand-cannons, occupying a 2×1 space in a soldier’s inventory rather than a 3×2 space. It is now therefore possible to carry a sidearm without filling a soldier’s entire belt.

– Revised carrying capacity: Soldier’s max carrying weight is down significantly from vanilla. This is to encourage a greater level of discretion when equipping soldiers and to produce meaningful consequences for loading weaker soldiers with heavy armour and weapons beyond their inability to carry as many grenades. Accordingly, the mod reverts a recent XCE change that applied the overburden penalty after calculating TUs needed to shoot rather than after.

– Heavier shields: Relatedly, combat shields now weight something in the region of what they weigh in real life and therefore will burden most soldiers at least slightly unless they carry very little else. Assault shields, however, have the advantage of being a lot lighter.

– Making ‘unlimited’ items: All items which became unlimited when unlocked in the vanilla game now require a manufacturing project to be completed before doing so. Some (vehicle weapons and aircraft cannons) are manufactured individually, although my feeling on this is that it’s not well balanced and I am thinking of possibly revising it.

– Manufacturing resources: All weapons now require alien power cells to manufacture. Alien power cells are the ammo clips used by aliens during ground combat. To support this change, alien weapons no longer sell for anything: in lore, these weapons are stripped for parts to be used in manufacturing projects and this is represented by the number of power cells in store. You therefore have full control over whether you keep cells for making into weapons or whether you sell them for cash instead. Note that there are other resource costs for weapons as well – generally alloy costs are down (but up on some projects for balance) and some items require alenium as well.

– Manufacturing for profit: weapons can be built and sold for a cash profit. It’s a disputed topic, but so far as I am concerned if you have the resources to waste building things for sale then why not.

– Revised soldier stats: Soldier stats generally start a little higher (between 40 and 70) but are capped as a maximum of 80 (so no more super soldiers). This makes soldier losses less painful and veterans less overwhelming (if you get any – I have yet to see a maxed-out soldier!). Also, TUs only increase 1 point per mission rather than 2; TUs are good and don’t need double-speed progression.

– Revised wounds and healing: Mortal wounds now do only one damage per turn but are more likely to occur. Furthermore, the healing limit of medikits and advanced medikits has been cut to 10 for basic and 25 for advanced. This is to make medikits, especially advanced medikits, more valuable.

– Predator Overhaul: Predator armour no longer uses conventional Xenonaut heavy weapons but has it’s own set of super-heavy weapons at each tier. These super-heavy weapons cannot be reloaded in the field. Accordingly, it is possible to equip a predator weapon on each arm, albeit with a small movement penalty. This also allows you to mix weapon types, for example, by equipping a twin-linked laser cannon as a primary weapon but also equipping a rocket launcher for AoE attacks.

– Armoured Assault: Changes made in my other mod, Armoured Assault, are integrated into this mod with appropriate compatibility changes. In addition, some further balance changes have been included which reduce the sight range of vehicles so they must rely on their greater mobility and armour, or support from other soliders, to work effectively.