Mods for Endless?

[AdeonHawkwood]

Does anyone have any recommendations for Mods to use for Endless mode?

In particular I don't really like how the armor scaling feels with Endless and was wondering if someone could recommend mods to fix it. I like the idea of difficulty scaling but the problem is that the really high armor by day 20 severely limits options. Stacking enough armor penetration to actually matter basically uses most of your augment slots (except for Sharp) or requires you to use items that ignore armor. So you end up having to spend a lot of time running nano-fabricator missions in hopes of finding the handful of items that are actually useful for this.

So to that end I was wondering if anyone has done mods that rebalance Endless to make this more interesting either by providing more ways to handle high-armor guards or doing something to provide challenge in other ways?

I was looking at some of the mods that provide more augments and items and all I could think of "well that's nice but it'll make it even harder to find penetration scanners".

[Cyberboy2000]

Well, the point is that you're not meant to be able to knock everyone out. The armor means that you have to specialize your agents, having one agent that is able to deal with armor as backup (whether by stacking augments, getting one of the guns with an innate 4 armor piercing, or even Ventricular Lances) and the rest rely entirely on stealth. If that wasn't the case, because your agents are so mobile at that point, they could easily pin down every threat in the mission. That's why Shock Trap 3 and Cloaking Rig 3 (and also Stim 3) are broken, because they let you get out of any situation without any more preparation than getting that one item.

So yeah, New Items and Augments is fantastic for providing more options to build your team, rebalancing old items and providing new ones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=575758597

Programs Extended and/or Advanced Guard Protocol also provide options to add more challenge, but be warned that they are punishing, at times bordering on unfair, so read the generation options and be prepared for anything.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=555765765

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=569390373

And finally if you get bored by regular endless some people like collecting every agent which you can do with this mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1762663619

(By the way, since you're on the forums I'll just say that you shouldn't ever download mods from the forums as they are outdated, use the steam workshop and http://steamworkshopdownloader.com/, and also check the mod's description since many of them depend on other mods)

[AdeonHawkwood]

On 8/6/2019 at 2:44 AM, Cyberboy2000 said:

Well, the point is that you're not meant to be able to knock everyone out. The armor means that you have to specialize your agents, having one agent that is able to deal with armor as backup (whether by stacking augments, getting one of the guns with an innate 4 armor piercing, or even Ventricular Lances) and the rest rely entirely on stealth. If that wasn't the case, because your agents are so mobile at that point, they could easily pin down every threat in the mission.

Yeah, I can get needing to specialize your agents. The problem I have it it seems like the strategy of "give Sharp 4 Penetration Scanners and Torque Injectors" blows any other combat build out of the water. Other fighters like Nikta, Shalem and Rush just suck in comparison since they need to dedicate all of their enhancement slots to armor penetration augs and still come out worse than Sharp (as well as having other negative requirements such as needing power, charge packs or running). I did look through New Items and Augments and while it has some neat ideas it doesn't seem to really address fighter balance in Endless (which I realize is a tricky issue).

I don't feel like the balance is as screwed up with the non-fighter agents. Decker is meh, but the others all feel like they have a nice mix of abilities to build a team with. Central is a bit to powerful

Just as a side note regarding not knocking everyone out. I'm currently up around Day 16 in Endless and for the most part it's pretty easy to knock all the guards out and use paralyzers to keep them down until the mission is done. Sharp gets some and the rest of the team gets the rest with Shock Traps (I've got a couple of Shock Trap 2s and a single Shock Trap 3 for emergencies).

Thanks for the suggestions on mods though.

[Cyberboy2000]

I see, well that makes sense since that's exactly what Sharp is supposed to be good at. The game is not balanced around endless.

[AdeonHawkwood]

6 hours ago, Cyberboy2000 said:

I see, well that makes sense since that's exactly what Sharp is supposed to be good at. The game is not balanced around endless.

Agreed. I was just hoping that maybe someone had made an Endless Balance mod.

[Hekateras]

You could try playing Endless without enabling the midway DLC mission. Legend has it that as of a certain alarm level on non-DLC endless, you start getting the Countermeasures daemon in every mission.

A couple of more suggestions in addition to what CB2000 said:

- Absolutely get New Items and Augments, and not just for the new items. That mod has the option to enable utterly punishing cleanup costs. It's a good way to prevent yourself from swimming in credits after day 10 or so. Also, NIAA rebalances Central's augment, among other things.

- I recommend tinkering with the normal game settings. Decreasing the credit multiplier and/or setting safes to "less" will both slow down your teambuilding. Also, there is an option to both change default room size and room size progression. The latter option (sorry I dont' recall what it's called in the options precisely right now) would be particularly appealing for Endless, I think. It would basically make maps gradually get bigger as the campaign goes on. It would need some experimenting, but it would at least help offset the fact that by day 16 you've definitely maxed out speed on everyone.