A Better Weaponry

— A Better Weaponry —
— Mod by DerBK —

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

_____________

This mod takes some of the weapon and item changes from A Better Barracks and puts them into its own mod.
I built this so i can have a splash of ABB in my game even when using other class or weapon mods.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Likely this mod is not for many people. Many of these changes were controversial in ABB already, i just like what i like. If you are the type of person that thinks reloading shotguns shell by shell is fun… well, i got you covered. 🙂

— ITEM REBALANCE —
– HE/Flechette grenade: The standard Frag grenade is removed and replaced by two specialized grenades. The Flechette doesn’t destroy cover, but deals 3-5 damage. The HE only deals 1-3, but near guarantees to wreck everything.
– Consumable Mimic: The standard Mimic Beacon is removed and replaced with a consumable version to discourage spamming the thing.
– Rebalanced Tracer Rounds: Instead of a flat aim bonus to the carrier, these now give the Holotargeting perk. So it’s still a good aim enhancement, but there’s more play behind it.
– Rebalanced Bluescreens: Made these less extreme. Reduced the bonus damage from 5 to 2. Increased the hack defense reduction from -5 to -20. Reduced their price from 100 supplies to 50 supplies.

— PRIMARY WEAPON OVERHAUL —
– Assault Rifles are the least changed, the "boring" option. They have the most mod slots of all primary weapons.
– Shotguns only reload a single shell per reload action, but they do devastating damage. Using Shotguns is all about positioning and making every shot count. To help with that, shotguns provide the Deep Cover perk to their carrier.
– Cannons are changed the most. They now take 2 actions to fire and to reload, but they do have a deep magazine with 9 shots. Their Spray ability allows them to shoot for 1 action and even without ending the turn, however Spray inflicts -20 aim to those shots. Cannons also shred armor and deal fantastic environmental damage.
– Snipers pierce armor and have big damage bonuses on crits.
– Rebalanced weapon ranges, making the weapons more different from each other.
– Limited weapon mod slots for cannons and sniper rifles, as a counter balance to all the boni they gain from the rebalance.

— NEW WEAPON TECHS —
– Introduces Laser, Pulse, Prototype Plasma and Coil Weapons. These are single build weapons, unlocked from the Proving Ground.
– Lasers are accurate and pierce armor, but have less damage potential. Pulse are upgraded Laser weapons.
– Prototype Plasma guns have wide damage ranges and shred armor, but their accuracy is lower. They upgrade to coil guns.

— SCAVENGED WEAPONS —
– Introduces special ADVENT weapons. The SMG, Flammenwerfer, Scoutrifle and Smartgun can only be collected from dead ADVENT and are wildly different from the regular rifles, shotguns, snipers and cannons. ADVENT weapons can not be upgraded, not be manufactured and not be modded. You take them as you find them.
– SMGs allow for taking a bonus move after shooting at half movement. Excellent for close quartes situations.
– The Flammenwerfer is a combo of shotgun and flamethrower that can not be reloaded but has a large tank that has to serve for the whole mission.
– Scoutrifles are light sniper rifles that can shoot for one action, but have maluses at squad sight.
– Smartguns enter overwatch after shooting. Also, they automatically Return Fire when the soldier gets shot at.
_____________

COMPATIBILITY

This should be compatible with pretty much everything, but of course makes less sense if you are running other mods that already add lasers and coils.

I did specifically care about keeping it compatible with shiremct’s Weapon and Item Overhaul and with the Strategy Overhaul package. (because that’s what i am playing now and what i made the mod for…) That includes the Prototype Armory.

If you use mods that add completely new weapons to the mix (like MOCX does), then those weapons will not be modified by ABW. There is an ini option though to add some of the ABW rules to those weapons for limited compatibility. Feel free to try an cobble something together.

This mod has a conflict with RPGO. Both mods add an ability called Spray with that exact name. There can only be one ability with the exact same template name in the game at a time, so the game will ignore either the Spray in RPGO or the one in ABW. This will lead to severely (severely!) nerfed cannons when using ABW with RPGO.

Also, because i probably need to say this… don’t use this mod together with the full A Better Barracks mod. Please. Just don’t.

_____________

MOD INTERACTIONS

While this is a standalone mod that can be used in all kinds of contexts, i did build it to be used together with shiremct’s Weapon and Item Overhaul. When using this mod together with his, sub to his mod first and you’ll get a mashup of his changes to the primaries with mine. Find some infos on troubleshooting around this here: <LINK>

_____________

RECOMMENDED MODS

I am using this mod with the Weapon and Item Overhaul, so that’s something i obviously recommend.
If you don’t use that, maybe find at least something to replace the vanilla attachments, because those are questionable at best. Better Attachments would be an example.

_____________

FAQ (Feverishly anticipated questions)

Q: How about other stuff from ABB? Like Advent Weapons, Attachments, Vests, etc?
A: I want to keep this mod lightweight, so those are out. Basically anything that requires making new abilities and thus the integration of XModBase or similar things into the mod are more than i want to do here. So chances are pretty slim for those. (EDIT: So… i just added the ADVENT weapons. I guess take what i said here with a grain of salt lol)

Q: Can i add this mid-campaign?
A: Maybe? I think it should in theory be fine, but i’d really advise against it.

Q: Compatible with LWotC?
A: No idea. Please ask one of them. You should probably look at ABBA for LWotC instead, though.

Q: Compatible with Combat Extended?
A: Wtf.

_____________

PERMISSIONS

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