XCOM: Enemy Unknown came out almost exactly two years ago, in October 2012. Gamers eagerly anticipated the series reboot and welcomed it with open arms. The title received a number of positive reviews, only suffering from minute game glitches and such.
So, here we are. The game has been out for some time and the community is still extremely engaged. While it may be impossible to mod the game’s Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 versions, PC owners have the option to do so. Those operating on Mac OS X or Linux can also experience these player-made game improvements.
One of the biggest updates, which comes in the form of “Long War Mod Beta 14,” has been released. This game modification offers players a whole host of different experiences and opportunities, some of which add a whole new layer of depth to Enemy Unknown.
You can download the mod here.
We’ve brought you the whole list of new features below:
Features:
- Most maps will now have start zones and escape LZs in new places.
- Aliens will now sometimes attack your interceptor bases, using a map previously available only to MP games. Failure to defend your bases will mean destruction of and damage to many of your aircraft.
- Soldier hit points display in tactical UI will differentiate between armor/item HP bonuses and permanent HP
- Added sort in engineering UI. Items will be categorized by size, then alphabetically.
- Reworked soldier sort in barracks menus; will now sort down fatigued status soldiers below active and above wounded soldiers, and sort primarily by XP and secondarily by officer rank within each status.
- Adjusted scrolling behavior in strategy game and savegame menus. Should be a lot easier to use now.
- For non-Ironman games, added "Restart Mission" option to pause menu (thanks Drakous79 for unocovering this). This offers a way to get out of bug-induced mission problems (like script interruption on the base assault) and also a perhaps somewhat more honest savescumming method, in that you take the mulligan on an entire mission rather than a single shot.
- More new inventory art. More unique HUD images from JCLewis. Art for the new techs and foundry projects.
- Added two new options to Interface Options Screen: 1) Default Zoom Level Slider, lets you adjust default zoom level from between 50% and 200% of normal, and 2) A checkbox that lets you activate an alternate set of camera controls, where you can click the middle mouse button to directly control camera yaw and pitch
- You may now recruit soldiers from two new countries: Honduras and Bosnia-Herzegovina! (Please don't ask why those two over other deserving countries like Turkey or Iran.) (Sigh. You asked, didn't you? Look, these are perfectly fine countries who want to fight aliens, so consider them representative of two important world regions: Central America and the Balkans.) (The real answer is technical. From what I understand, Firaxis coded in the Honduran and B-H flags in the texture that supplies flags to the back of soldier pawns, along with the 29 flags you are familiar with. These textures are prohibitively difficult to change, while changing all the other stuff to get these countries in the game was fairly simple.)
- Brazilian soldiers will now get Brazilian names, rather than Spanish-based ones. Combined English and Australian namelist (please don't hate me) and two Spanish namelists to make this and the new countries happen. Added a bunch of names to multiple nationalities for more variety.
- Alien Missions can now take place in a bunch of new cities in council countries
- Premission squads are loaded blank. Your premission squad will now be saved if you leave the dropship room and return.
- Completing the Exalt HQ assault will net three unique items, a really nice scope (an improved illuminator gunsight usable by any soldier; old IG no longer buildable) and items that respectively grant 20% bonus XP and PsiXP whenever carried on missions.
- Added French translation, now available as separate download
- Added Field Surgeon perk, which reduces wound recovery time after missions
- Gauss Weapons will now use Reaper Ammo sound and visual effects to differentiate them better from ballistics. Reaper Ammo will no longer cause special FX.
- Added Hit and Run perk, which allows a free shot against a flanked or exposed target (basically works like Close Encounters, except target status rather than proximity is the trigger). Will be available to scouts, assaults and probably MECs. No, it can't stack with CE (it uses the same resources, for one thing).
- Added Fire in the Hole rocketeer Perk, which grants 10 aim for purposes of reducing rocket scatter if your soldier has not moved. Grants 10 aim worth of additional range for blaster launcher.
- Added two cheap Base Security foundry projects, which will allow base security to automatically equip any spare laser rifles and phalanx armors during an XCOM HQ assault. Note these will only help if you have unequipped instances of these items in storage.
- Geoscape will pause when new recruits arrive.
- In rare cases you will get landed assault carriers. These will use battleship maps (which have fires and damage because we only have shot-down battleship maps available to us).
- Added ini settings to control likelihood of new soldiers coming from a given country
- Added ini settings to set costs (meld, money and days in the tank) for genemods. Also added ini settings to set extra fatigue timeout for individual genemods and psi powers, and fatigue timeout per officer rank.
- Added ini setting to set initial alien bonus research
- Added ini setting to increase/decrease meld from cans (multiplier)
