"XCOM: Long War" editing mini-guide

[Xuncu]

A modification for the 2012 Game XCOM: Enemy Unknown with the 2013 expansion XCOM: Enemy Within.

THE LONG WAR MOD CORE TEAM
JohnnyLump - Chief Designer and Programmer
Amineri - Chief Programmer and Designer
XMarksTheSpot - Chief UI Programmer and Artist
Ellatan - Programmer and Chief Quality Assurance Specialist

• An extended campaign requiring far more missions to complete
• Tactical missions that allow up to twelve XCom soldiers per mission with the right upgrades
• Eight soldier classes: Infantry, Assault, Sniper, Scout, Gunner, Rocketeer, Medic and Engineer, and eight MEC classes: Valkyrie, Marauder, Jaeger, Pathfinder, Goliath, Archer, Guardian and Shogun
• New and modified perks, including Ranger, Sapper, HEAT Warheads, Lock N' Load, Fire in the Hole, Hit and Run, and Javelin Rockets
• New and modified technologies, including Xenopsionics, Alien Biocybernetics, Pulse Lasers, Gauss Weapons and Advanced Aerospace Concepts, and many new foundry projects
• Five tiers of XCOM weaponry, many new armors and small items and S.H.I.V.s that can be equipped with perk-granting small items!
• Earlier access to psionics and vastly expanded psionics tree
• A system of commissioning and promoting XCOM officers who provide bonuses to your entire squad during missions (replaces the Enemy Within medals system)
• Overhauled interception game, with five new UFO classes such as the Fighter, Raider and Harvester, as well as six interceptors per continent, foundry projects to upgrade your aircraft, individualized pilot names and pilot experience, and the Stingray Missile weapon system
• Overhauled strategy game, in which the aliens gather resources and conduct research -- efforts XCOM must interdict if it hopes to save humanity. XCOM can now retake countries by finding and conquering alien bases in those countries. Help council countries defend themselves by fulfilling their requests for alien technology!
• Aliens and EXALT forces grow tougher over time, gaining stats and perks
• New weapons for XCOM soldiers Soldiers rest after each mission, requiring the player to build a much deeper roster of soldiers
• Modified Second Wave options to support longer campaigns

The UFOpaedia is a fan-made wikia for the XCOM franchise, and the official Wikia for the Long War, who's writers include minor contributors to the Long War project.

I am Xuncu, one of the lead writers for the UFOpaedia. Here, I'll post a brief guide to the edit/hack I had 'reverse-engineered' on my own, plus some generic basic editing.

For a larger list, see the UFOpaedia's mod page for the Long War mod, as well as visiting the Long War branch of the Nexus Mods Forums, where you can also give feedback, make suggestions, and ask other contributors for editing and hacking support.

One of the main files that can be edited to change your Long War experience is the DefaultGameCore.ini file. For PCs, this can be edited simply via any text editor. Most commonly, the default location of the folder is in the Steam folder:
Steam\steamapps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\Config
Note that for current versions of the Long War, the modded files are in the Enemy Within subfolder ("XEW"), and not the vanilla XCOM files.

INI Meld editing

Costs in engineering can be edited in the DefaultGameCore.ini file. As you most limited resource will probably be Meld, and the way the data is in the .ini file, this short guide will help your inner engineer's itch for building items. Beginning about halfway down, you will start to see "iElerium=" lines. Comments helpfully point out that these are both the Meld and Elerium entries. You may want to keep an untouched INI file and/or use the UFOPaedia's pages as references. Now for editing:

As you can see in the Armor section, the MEC suits of Warden, Sentinel, and Paladin cost, respectively, 20 meld and 20 Elerium, 40 Meld and 30 Elerium, 60 meld and 50 Elerium for their fabrication costs (on top of credits and alloys). In the .ini file, they are, again respectively, simply labeled "; MEC-1", "; MEC-2", "; MEC-3". Now see that the "IElerium=" values are, once more respectively, 20020, 40030, 60050. As you can see, there is a placeholder 0 in any given iElerium entry-- for any item that has a Meld cost. As this section focuses on just meld editing, this won't be editing the Elerium cost (and will assume you won't, as you don't want to make the Long War _too_ easy). Therefore, you will only be editing the value in front of the placeholder 0.

Ergo: changing 20020, 40030, 60050 to, say, 5020 (note it goes from 5 to 4 intergers), 20030, 30050 would change the meld costs of Warden armor from 20 to 5 units of Meld, Sentinel from 40 to 20, and Paladin from 60 to 30 (while not changing the Elerium costs). Again, note that changing the Warden's "20" to "5" -- and not "05" -- in front of the 'placeholder' 0 will reduce the cost from 20 to 5 units of Meld. This method works on all the "iElerium=" entries under the "; Gear" list.

Near the bottom of the file, you will find "; Gene Mod Configuration". Depending on your choice of editor, the entries may not line up, so be aware that in this section: "iAlloys=" is the variable set for Meld cost for gene mods. As these variables are more simply written, merely edit them to your desired cost. And for reference, "iTime=" entries are for how long each mod requires a soldier to be inside the Gene Lab's tanks, and "iEng=" are the penalty hours added to fatigue.

Flavortext Description Editing
The main two files are XComGame.int and XComStrategyGame.int located (for default English PC users) \Steam\steamapps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW\XComGame\Localization\INT - with INT standing for "International". Other language users would look for the corresponding language in the Localization folder. In these folders, you can edit nearly every line of readable text in the game; from item/artifact/weapon descriptions, the mission name pool list (add "Exploding" and "Face" to the list, tell me how that mission goes!), and the Pilot Name pool list.

Hope this is the right part of the forum for this, and that this bit helps for anyone playing the Long War, anyone interested in trying it out, or anyone who wants a good place to read up on XCOM in general at the UFOpaedia: http://ufopaedia.org

The Long War mod is free to download at the Nexus Mods website: http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/88/?
Be sure to visit the forum for more hacks and strategies.

PRAISE FOR LONG WAR
"Takes XCOM to a new level." - Jake Solomon, XCOM lead designer, via Twitter
"This mod is the absolute best way to play XCOM" - Wired
"This is a collection of profound and suprisingly careful changes ... It's like a free expansion pack ... " - Rock, Paper, Shotgun
"Terrific ..." - Kokatu
"Turns XCOM: Enemy Within into nothing short of a serviceable turn-based military alien invasion strategy wargaming simulator." - Polygon
Named by PC Gamer one of the 15 most brutal mods of all time and in November 2014 was the site's Mod of the Week.

And remember, when something goes horribly wrong: "That's XCOM, baby!"

[Helder]

Wrong section but I'll move it.

[Xuncu]

Ahh, there we go. Excellent