[WOTC] Mass Effect Weapon Overhaul

When installed, the Mass Effect Weapon Overhaul…

• …adds unique and consistent stats/abilities to most Mass Effect weapons, 78 of them!
• …fixes some issues in the original mods, like missing range tables and bad stats.
• …adjusts weapon categories to ensure most of XCOM’s arsenal is well-represented.
• …adjusts weapon tier upgrades, so weapons upgrade alongside the vanilla categories.

With all supported weapon mods installed, this would give you:

• Two melee weapons and a shield.
• 11 pistols, 10 autopistols and a sawed-off shotgun.
• 14 shotguns, 11 assault rifles, 6 cannons and 11 sniper rifles.
• 5 bullpup rifles (or as close as ME gets anyways), 5 Vektor rifles and 1 SPARK weapon.
• Optional remaps for a few modded categories. (best used on a fresh campaign)

This mod does not…

• …change or fix animations/models/sounds. I don’t know enough about this.
• …fix text issues. Overriding the localization of other mods gets way too messy.

Please note that MEWO is not a weapon pack in itself! This mod is a collection of tweaks and fixes that relies on other Workshop content, as listed below.

• Mass Effect Weapon Pack
• Mass Effect: Cerberus Armory
• Mass Effect N7 Weaponry
• Mass Effect Advanced Weaponry (conflicts with the M-76 Revenant, pick one)
• Mass Effect Geth Pulse Rifle
• M22 Cyclone Heavy Rifle
• M3 Predator Pistol
• M23 Katana Shotgun
• M97 Viper Sniper Rifle
• M96 Mattock Assault Rifle
• M8 Avenger Assault Rifle
• M25 Hornet Submachine Gun (duplicate, unique look)
• M-5 Phalanx Heavy Pistol (ME2 variant, unique stats)
• Mass Effect Omni-Blade (animations not 100% reliable)

Running multiple of these at the same time is fully supported. (and encouraged!)

The following mods are also strongly recommended:

• A Demolition buff to help certain weapons fill their roles better. (and make it less useless)
• Mod Everything Reloaded or robojumper’s Squad Select for upgrading pistols and the like.

Preserving the original character of a given weapon is the goal, though some implementations may get a little more creative than others. Balance roughly follows base WOTC.

Stats are based on a mix of Cyonan’s excellent ME3 sheet and the user notes on the wiki, along with actual testing in ME3’s SP shooting range. Single-player is leading, but most weapons end up taking some cues from MP for balancing/uniqueness purposes.

We use an extensive set of rules to translate ME mechanics into XCOM, way too many to cover here. Here’s some of the big ones:

• Weight matters. Light weapons make you faster/stealthier, heavy weapons bog you down.
• Many weapons receive their own separate range tables, shown through abilities.
• Rupture is added to weapons that cause bleeding or have another good lore reason for it.
• Pierce follows ME (0.5x/50cm = 1 pierce), shred is a mix of shield and barrier damage.
• Weapons with explosive shots gain 1 shred to fit how XCOM handles explosives.

If you’re interested in the full ruleset (or my comments on balance), check out the included spreadsheet! Right-click in AML, click "Show in Explorer" and then open OverhaulStats.ods with something like LibreOffice. Hover over cells with notes in them to get more info.

The meat of this mod lies in the XComWeaponSkinReplacer.ini file in the Config folder. This file has comments throughout, and is fully editable to taste. Please ensure you back up your config if you make any changes, as updates will overwrite it!

MEWO provides a set of stats for Primary Secondaries’ primary variants (swords, pistols and autopistols), but cannot do the same for True Primary Secondaries due to how that mod works. It’ll still work, but primary stats/abilities will be inconsistent.

Prototype Armory and Covert Infiltration are known to be broken (no upgrades past conventional), but may receive a bridge mod eventually. I won’t make any promises (looks like a pretty big project at a glance?), but I’d love to get that implemented at some point.

No settings are provided for LWOTC or Iridar’s Five Tier Weapon Overhaul (or any other weapon overhaul), so compatibility with those may be spotty as well.

• The Cerberus Shield does not show -10 aim like normal shields, but it is still applied.
• The Kishock boltcaster remap is available from the start. Not sure how to tie to research.
• The Adas/Revenant/Spitfire upgrade too early sometimes? Can’t reproduce, info welcome.

Q: All the stats still look the same!
A: Make sure you have the Weapon Skin Replacer Core mod installed.

Q: I don’t see any abilities on weapons!
A: Make sure you have my Abilities and Assets mod installed. Not all weapons get abilities!

Q: This weapon’s balance sucks! Where do I report this?
A: Post it here. Check out the spreadsheet first, it has important notes!

Q: I think I found a bug! Where do I report it?
A: Post it here or in the comments. Please provide a detailed description.

• Bioware and EA, for the Mass Effect franchise itself.
• Lord_Poncho57, Cavily and Scout Trooper for their excellent weapon mods.
• Iridar for the excellent Weapon Skin Replacer, and a ton of help.
• The many other helpful people of the XCOM 2 Modding Discord.
• Tech_Knight_Zero on Twitch, for helping test the mod and providing a ton of feedback.