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[WoTC] Pathfinders

This mod adds 2 new Advent aliens with 4 variants each, the Advent Pathfinders and Pathfinder Hunters. Kill them and use their corpses to get fancy new weapons and items for your dudes.

• Advent Pathfinders using Advent SMGs.
  
• Advent Pathfinder Hunters using new "Hunter Rifles".
  
• New Plasma Tech weapons for Advent, Advent Plasma SMG and Advent Plasma Hunter Rifle.
  
• New Hunter Rifle weapon for Xcom, Conventional, Magnetic and Plasma tier.
  
• Proximity Stun Mine Grenade.
  
• "Smart Scanner" item, confers flanking bonuses when activated.
  
• Ultralight vest that confers 3 mobility.
  
• Terror rounds that cause panic, you will need to kill the highest tier of Pathfinder Hunters to obtain them.
  
• New Chosen Summon Strength to summon Pathfinders
  
• 2 New Sitreps
  
• Pathfinders and Pathfinder Hunters can show up as Double Agents if you have the Double Agent Resistance Order(configurable in XcomGameData.ini, you cannot get Exalted Pathfinders unless you enable them manually in the .ini, i have those disabled as default)

Hunter Rifles

Hunter rifles are a new weapon type, they "mark" targets when they hit with a debuff that increases crit damage, crit chance when flanking, and aim when flanking the marked target. Their damage covers the range between Assault Rifle to Sniper Rifle, 4 to 6 damage for the conventional tier and they are medium range weapons, they have negative aim at short range and at long range, but possitive aim bonuses at medium range, on top of that they confer higher aim by default.

They are set up as "assault rifles" which means that any soldier that can use assault rifles can use them, so perhaps they could help rookies be more than grenade throwers.

How to obtain them:

You start with the conventional hunter rifle, in order to upgrade to the magnetic variant you require the Pathfinder Hunter Autopsy and the Gauss Weapons Research, and the Plasma Variant requires the Plasma Sniper Research. As for the rest of the items they will require an assorted number of research obtained from Pathfinder and Hunter corpses.

Pathfinders and Pathfinder Hunters:

The Pathfinder is blazing fast and mobile, has a healthy amount of armor but relatively low health, so abilities that bypass armor are your friend. They don't deal much damage on their own given that they carry SMGs, but if combined with their Hunter big brother and flanking they can deal surprising amounts of damage. They will try to flank and be on your face.

The Pathfinder Hunter will try to stay away from you, they have high aim but they also have low damage. Their danger comes from their Hunter rifles, just like yours their rifles will mark you with a debuff making it easier for you to get hit and crit when flanked.

As the game advances both will become more dangerous, the Pathfinder obtains their smart scanner which makes them dangerous on their own as it will buff their flanking abilities, the Hunter will obtain the Proximity Stun Mine which means if he uses it, he will be able to disable multiple soldiers on his own.

Exalted Advent:

And finally the 4th tier of Advent, the "Exalted" Advent use very powerful weapons, Advent Plasma, a tier higher than standard plasma weapons which makes them dangerous even without their items and support, however they also get new items, the Exalted Pathfinder obtains a better version of the Smart Scanner, and the Pathfinder Hunter obtains "Terror Rounds" which cause panic on anyone they hit, on top of debuffing them with their standard mark. Exalted Advent will show up at the same force level as Gatekeepers, so at the very very tail end of the game.

Of course, you can kill Exalted Advent and get their items, not their weapons however, scroll down to the FAQ section for more info on that.

SitReps

The first Sitrep, "Pathfinder Search Teams" will pit you against entire maps filled with pods of Pathfinder Captains leading Pathfinders, but it will not have Exalted Advent.
The second SitRep, "Exalted Hunter Party" will throw you against a high number of Exalted Hunters, often backed by a smaller number of Exalted Pathfinders, and they might bring a big gun with them like a Sectopod or Gatekeeper.


The plasma hunter rifle could cause the game to hang when it destroys an object(alien relay, explosives, etc), not a clue why it happens.
While not an "issue" as far as i am aware, i was not able to debug the new Chosen Strength as there doesn't seem to be a way to do it other than play the game normally and hope it shows up on a Chosen, which would've taken an eternity to do. So if you get it and it works let know.


Usually i say "it should be compatible with everything", but then it turns out it isn't, however i can tell you that it definitivelly isn't compatible with:

• [WoTC]Hunter Rifles
  
• [WoTC]Pathfinder Items
  
• [WoTC]Pathfinder Standalone
  
• [WoTC]Pathfinder Hunter Standalone

I don't know what would happen if you launch the game with any of those, best case scenario is a lot of lag, worst case scenario the game will just crash, so i don't recommend launching this mod with any of those.


Do i need to start a new campaign for this?
Preferably yes, things should work for the most part on an existing campaign but i myself had issues where the conventional hunter rifle would refuse to show up on an existing save, although you could still get Hunter Rifles once you researched and upgraded them to the magnetic variant(or the plasma one), no idea why though. Other than that everything else should work just fine on an existing save though.

"Advent" Plasma for Xcom when?
My plan is to make a variety of individual alien mods for Advent, each one adding a weapon for them, like the shotgun, cannon, sniper and so on. Each one of those mods will then have their own T4 Plasma version, once all of them are done, i plan to make an "Alien pack" mod with all of them, that mod will then come with an "Advanced Plasma" tech tier for Xcom, so, T4 Plasma. Of course, this will take a long time so don't expect it any time soon.

Compatibility with ABA2/Alien mods?
Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: The worst that can happen is that you wont see aliens from different mods intermingle in the same pod, for example, you might not see Pathfinders and ABA2 Aliens in the same pod, but you could see both in the same mission.

Can i edit X in the .inis?
Yes, i tried to make every possible thing imaginable configurable in the .inis. There are a lot of .ini files, but you'll probably want to look at XcomPathfinderXcom for stats on Xcom weapons, items and abilities, XcomPathfinderAdvent for stats on the aliens, and XcomGameData_CharacterStats for the stats on the aliens themselves. There are other configurable things on the other .inis but those are the most "important" ones i suppose.


You are free to use anything and everything in this mod for your own mods and/or purposes, in fact not only are you allowed, i encourage you to do it.


If you wish to keep up with early previews, updates or simply wish to support me in some way i have set up a Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/Claus

Thanks, and hope you enjoy.