War of the Chosen Mod Recs: Quality of Life Part 2

More mods I've added to my 'core' War of the Chosen mod list since the prior mod rec post.

This is still primarily mods for War of the Chosen, note; it's simply better-supported by the community, and honestly benefits more from the help in the first place given how radically it changed the design.

Alternative Mod Launcher.

This isn't a Steam Workshop mod at all, but rather is a conventional Github download that provides an alternative initial launcher.

The big draw historically was that it is aimed more heavily at mod support, with stuff like the ability to construct separate 'profiles' of mods -this is great if you like to jump between multiple ongoing runs, making it so you don't have to personally memorize however many mods you enabled/disabled, or make notes, or whatever; just load the profile you labeled for the run you intend to load. Simple. It also will inform you of missing dependencies and let you find them easily; no more having to manually double-check Steam Workshop when going back to mods with a lot of dependencies to make sure you didn't miss any of them!

More recently, the other big draw is that XCOM 2's original launcher was disabled, and the 2K Launcher is now the default launcher, and it takes forever to load and as of this writing still does not properly support mod usage with War of the Chosen. This is honestly basically the entire reason I'm linking the AML; it's certainly the entire reason I discovered it existed.

As a bonus, you can use the AML for Chimera Squad as well. (You'll need to set up a separate copy of the AML, to be clear) This is less necessary, as the 2K Launcher doesn't break mod support for Chimera Squad, but it's still less load times, among other issues with the 2K Launcher, so it's still nice, and if Chimera Squad gains more substantial mod support from the community in future it will be very appreciated.

Community Highlander. (Plus Alien Hunters Highlander and Improved Rocket Targeting)

Fixes a wide variety of bugs, and is required for a fair few mods at this point because the Highlander makes modding-friendly changes those mods rely upon.

You'll need the Alien Hunter Highlander as well if you have Alien Hunters. Improved Rocket Targeting is recommended because the Highlander fixes a bug with Rocket targeting, where said bug made Rocket targeting far too general; post-fix, it's now extremely constrictive, to the point that it's almost impossible to hit anything that isn't on a noticeably different elevation or in the open with no intervening objects of any kind. Improved Rocket Targeting adjusts the behavior to something more sensible, where Low Cover can be shot over but freestanding High Cover objects are more substantive obstacles to Rocket targeting.

Anyway, the Highlander is great, and is actively worked on so more bugs will be caught and dealt with as time goes on. You really should default to it if you're not, like, wanting to see pure base behavior of the game or something.

Gotcha Again

This provides a variety of improvements to visual prediction, such as letting you know if a move will trigger Overwatch fire from a visible enemy (Including Suppression), whether a given move will activate a visible inactive pod, whether a given tile is inside an active Psionic Bomb's impact zone, and several other niceties.

The primary reason I run it is because it reduces the tedium of something you can already do -ambushing inactive pods you've spotted with a Concealed unit by moving everyone else to just outside of their awareness and Overwatching, so they're extremely likely to walk into your Overwatch on their turn. Without Gotcha Again, this at times involves carefully checking each individual tile a soldier will be walking through to see if the move preview has any enemy heads appear. With Gotcha Again, you can just move your cursor to an endpoint and there you go you'll get told directly whether -and where- pod activation will occur, and this takes away a lot of the tedium.

That said, it's not perfect at this. I've had a few occasions where there was zero indicator that a pod I could see every member of would be able to see a moving soldier, but where the pod activated anyway. I'm pretty sure this is an issue with the core engine, because I've had this issue even without Gotcha Again, where carefully checking all tiles indicates no line of sight and the pod activates anyway. It's rare and only ever seems to happen when significant height differences are involved, though.

That said, I've also really come to appreciate the Psionic Bomb hazard marking, Overwatch hazard marking, and Gotcha Again keeping track of Security Towers for you once they're spotted. I've had way too many cases where eg I stepped away for a second, forgot an enemy was on Overwatch, and triggered it completely gratuitously. I've similarly repeatedly noticed a Security Tower only once my Specialist is no longer in a position to move to hack it, and always found Psionic Bomb's unclear visuals frustrating: there's very obviously multiple tiles with its visuals passing through them that nonetheless don't actually get hit, making it difficult to judge how close is too close.

Also note that while I've linked the War of the Chosen version, there's also a (less complete) base-game version the mod itself links to, which is arguably even more appreciated given the base game doesn't have built-in enemy preview effects.

Tactical Kill Counter Redux

This mod keeps track of information you already have full access to, but can easily forget if you're not in the habit of taking notes: how many enemies are active, how many enemies you've killed vs how many enemies the Shadow Chamber forewarned you of, and so on.

Among other points, if you don't have the Shadow Chamber it won't tell you the total enemy count at all, aside an exception for Location Scout. (Where you could trivially check that yourself)

Notably, it makes sure to exclude info you should never have: even with the Shadow Chamber up it won't include Alien Rulers until you've spotted them, nor Turrets, nor the Chosen until they've spawned.

I do wish it actually kept track of the types of aliens the Shadow Chamber predicted, but this is still nice, especially if you do have Alien Hunters: an Alien Ruler who escapes ensures that the mission won't skip the enemy turn even if there's actually nothing left to fight. If you've memorized the enemy total  and compared kills to it you'll know you're free to charge to the evac point anyway, but if you didn't memorize that info and don't have this mod you'll end up just... wasting time moving slowly.

It's a much-appreciated little mod all-around.

Community Promotion Screen.

A revised and improved variant on New Promotion Screen By Default, with additional functionality, and perfectly usable alongside any mod that lists New Promotion Screen By Default as a requirement.

It's replaced New Promotion Screen By Default as part of my 'core' mod list, in fact.

Not a lot new to say here.

No Enemy Intro.

Disables the support staff dialogue that triggers when first sighting a given enemy type, and more importantly removes the several-second delay that normally occurs when first spotting a new enemy type. If you're tired of repeatedly having gameplay put on pause in the early missions, No Enemy Intro is there for you.

To be clear, this does not disable the little intro movies that play when a pod is activated. I'm not terribly interested in disabling those, myself, either, given they give you an opportunity to see what's in the pod before it scatters -this usually isn't crucial, but every once in a while a pod member will end up out of sight post-activation, and depending on lighting conditions and all it can be easy to be uncertain what said enemy was.

Show Enemies And Terrain On Mission Planning.

Makes it so that, if you have the Shadow Chamber built, the game will display the info the Shadow Chamber provided while you're at the soldier management screen.

As War of the Chosen's overhauls mean you're a lot more likely to spend a minute or three making sure everybody's equipment is correct and all, it's very easy in War of the Chosen to forget one or more pieces of info from the Shadow Chamber and make sub-optimal decisions as a result. This mod addresses that, with no cheats.

Now I just need a mod that does the same for the Chosen territory control...

Oh, and it also tells you the terrain the mission will be on and all, which is technically sort-of-kind-of-cheating, in that this is normally info you don't have until the loading screen or the actual mission... but if you're familiar with the game, most mission types already have a constricted, predictable range as far as what this tells you about, and for the exceptions you're not being told anything of actual substance. Whether the biome is Arid or Tundra has some mechanical implications, but nothing of serious substance where knowing the distinction gives you some kind of decisive advantage. So mostly it's educational, helping you more quickly connect mission types to their possible range of terrains, and potentially helping you catch what the mission type is if you mixed it up with a different mission type -for example, only Supply Extraction (The crate-marking one) is allowed to use Old World city terrain out of Supply Raid variants, so seeing the plot type of 'Abandoned City' can clue you in that this isn't a regular Supply Raid. (ie info you're supposed to have, but which is easy to overlook due to iffy UI presentation)

There is one meaningful qualifier here, in that many Guerrilla Ops can randomly pick between 'plot types' that allow for security towers and 'plot types' that forbid security towers, where this is normally invisible until you're actually in the mission and can influence your decision on whether to send a Specialist or not. I don't consider that a very meaningful 'cheat', personally, and even if I did I'd argue it's an improvement to the design -Specialists suffer, in the transition to War of the Chosen, from the intersection of Fatigue and the newly-unpredictable security tower placement. This mod making it actually possible to semi-reliably send Specialists into missions with security towers is less a cheat and more a good patch.

Still, if you feel that constitutes a serious cheat, I guess I can't force you to subscribe...

Colored PCS Icons.

Makes PCSes have different colors when slotted in, matching to the color scheme you'll see when eg considering buying a PCS at the Black Market.

This makes it effortless to tell at a glance what PCS you've got slotted into a given soldier; instead of needing to actually focus your attention on the PCS slot, you just see the bit of color and know what type they've got right there, speeding up decision-making.

It also just looks nicer, let's be honest.

Stun Lancer Graphic Restoration. (Requires this as well)

Normally I don't care that strongly about graphics, but as I covered in the Stun Lancer post Troopers and Stun Lancers are actually pretty easy to mix up with one another in actual play, visually, which is a pretty big problem given Stun Lancers are so much more dangerous than Troopers. This is particularly easy to run into as a problem in War of the Chosen thanks to its introduction of sewer levels, which have very dark sections that make it especially easy to overlook distinguishing details. This pair of mods switches the Stun Lancer at every tier to an unused-but-already-in-the-game white-and-black color scheme, which is immediately visually distinctive from every other enemy -the large dark sections on the front and back even ensure you won't mixe them up with a Priest or Shieldbearer.

I also happen to far prefer this look in the first place, honestly. It looks cooler, and better fits the narrative context of Stun Lancers as comparatively 'nice' riot control troops as opposed to kill-you-dead soldiers.

Remove Rizzo. (Requires Tactical Legacy Pack, because The Rizzo is added by TLP)

If you're not aware, 'The Rizzo' is a voice set with a deliberately flat line reading on everything.

I never liked it, but eventually found myself hating it enough to hunt it down and manually remove it from each individual soldier who rolled it, even though normally I virtually never do anything with customization. It's simply that unpleasant to listen to, especially to hear it when I'm not expecting it.

Then I found this mod; no more manually removing it, no more having to hear it at all!

If you hate The Rizzo too, there you go.

XSkin

A mod that lets you reskin the visuals of weapons without affecting their stats and other behaviors, dynamically in the soldier view screen, no need to mess around with config files or the like.

Normally this isn't a mod I'd put under 'quality of life', but points like 'beam weapons universally slow gameplay down' and 'some weapons are genuinely grating to listen to' mean that it's really nice to be able to do stuff like upgrade your Mag Cannons without having to put up with the noticeable delay of Beam Cannon animations.

One nice aspect to it is the weapon blueprint in the lower-right of tactical screens is not affected by reskinning a weapon, so you'll never be confused mid-combat, even if you take advantage of the ability to do some pretty wacky reskins. The default filtering limits it to 'stuff the soldier can equip that you actually have current access to', but there's four buttons in the lower-right for adjusting the filters. If your goal is to reskin to specific Alien Hunters gear, the 'owned' filter is of particular importance, as you'll need to turn that filter off if you want to eg switch the Powered Shadowkeeper back to the Enhanced Shadowkeeper skin, as you're not actually considered to own an Enhanced Shadowkeeper once you've upgraded it. Same for if you want a full team of Sharpshooters all using Shadowkeeper skins of a type you've upgraded past.

Of course, if you want to have all your soldiers visually killing everything with Magnetic Bolt Casters for the sheer cool factor, I can't exactly stop you...

But that's not why it's in this list.