[WOTC]Never Again!

This mod introduces a new mechanic, where soldiers who participated in“important" missions, can never go on other “important" missions for the rest of the campaign. This is inspired by the well known mechanic of the same name in the celebrated Darkest Dungeon game, by Red Hook.

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In the many the games that the author has either played, or watched others play on YouTube, the following situation often arised: the player would have a well nurtured group of “A-Team" that would be sent on all important missions, and would go kill all the Chosens. The author has started to find this boring. Inspired by the Darkest Dungeon game, the author has started to implement a house rule in his own games where the squads to the Chosen Strongholds have to be mutually exclusive, and must be disjoint from the Leviathan squad. The work presented here is an automation of this house rule.

The way it works is the following: the “important" (a configurable list, see below) missions get the “Never Again" sitrep added to them, informing the player of the outcome. Soldiers that go on this mission, and win, will have the “Never Again" ability added to them. A mission with the “Never Again" sitrep can’t be launched if the squad has members with the “Never Again" ability. Technically, the ability does nothing, its only job is to inform the player. The actual thing being checked is a special Unit Value assigned to units winning such a mission.

However, there’s a good side: if the squad has a soldier with the “Never Again" ability, then the rest of the soldiers in thes quad will get 25% more exp from kills.

Lore Justification
When the Sarcophagus explodes, some psionic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ energy is released, and the soldiers get weird as a result. The Alien Fortress has the same energy, so the soldiers are afraid/can’t go there. The reason MOCX HQ is included is because in this mission the soldiers massacre bunch of other normal human beings, and this obviously takes its toll on them.

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The mod is highly configurable. In XComPTSD.ini you can control the following:

• The list of missions that will have the sitrep. The default configuration includes the three Chosen strongholds, as well as the MOCX HQ mission (from RealityMachina’s celebrated The MOCX Initiative mod). If you do not use this mod, then nothing bad will happen, except that some text will show weirdly since it won’t find the mission.
• The kill exp bonus from having a soldier with “Never Again" in the squad is configurable.
• For the player’s convinience, the config file has another “preset" of missions for quick enabling – the story missions (Blacksite, Forge, Psigate, and Network Tower). Also Facility missions are included there, commented out. In principle, even repeatable mission types can be included here, but this is not recommended. In general, having more then 4-5 missions like that in the entire game will make it very hard to find people for Leviathan. In the author’s own games, one Chosen stronghold was often skipped to preserve the manpower for Leviathan.
• For each mission the reader would like to add to this mod’s configuration, it is necessary to add both its MissionName and sType (as they appear in the MissionDefs config).
• If the reader wishes to include multi-part missions (for example, Shen’s Last Gift, Doom Guy’s recruitment mission), then the player only needs to insert the name of the first part of the mission. The names of the other parts of the mission should not be used.
• Exclusions – it is possible to set exclusions for this mechanic by listing character templates, soldier classes, or abilities, that grant immunity to the Never Again mechanic. So for example, the player may exclude Sparks from being affected by this mechanic. No such exclusion is defined by default.
• By default, Never Again will only applied if the mission is won. This is configurable. The reader may set it so that also failed attempts at the missions will give the soldiers the Never Again ability. As explained above, this is not recommended.

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It was tested in Covert Infiltration, but not tested with actual infiltrations (none of the mission types that have this mechanic are infiltrations by default).
Was tested to be compatible with LWOTC by Dukeblue512. Configs for LWOTC story missions are provided with this mod, commented by default. All complains on this topic should be addressed to Dukeblue512.

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Just the Highlander.

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• When removing a soldier with Never Again from squad select, the "LAUNCH MISSION" button won’t turn green until after the player goes to another screen and back to squad select. Probably not much the author can do about it. Usually it’s not a problem if you anyway only launch a mission with a full squad…
• For your convenience, there are two console commands added to this mod that will help in the event that this mod didn’t work correctly: when viewing a soldier in the armory, ForcePTSDOnSoldier, RemovePTSDOnSoldier will add or remove the Never Again ability from this soldier. If you think this mod does something wrong, then you can turn logging on and describe the problem to me.
• Some potential future plans: here may also a once-per-game Covert Op to remove this status from some soldiers, or perhaps a Chosen Sabotage event that will mark a random soldier with Never Again. These plans are not yet concrete.

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The author is extremely grateful to RustyDios for the GORGEOUS mod preview image, and the Never Again ability icon, as well as his general encouragement and useful comments when developing this mod.
It is also my pleasure to thank Xymanek and h4ilst0rm for enlightening and useful discussions.
Naturally, the author acknowledges the inspiration taken from the Darkest Dungeon game for the idea of this mod.
As usual, the author would like to thank the members of the MEME Discord server for their continued emotional support.
This mod is not an official Red Hook Studios product or product modification, and Red Hook Studios Inc. or the author are not responsible in any way for changes or damages that may result from using the mod. Furthermore, “Darkest Dungeon” and the Darkest Dungeon logo are trademarks of Red Hook Studios Inc. All content in the game is Copyright Red Hook Studios Inc. All rights reserved.