Tactics Remix
morpheus562
Member Posts: 277
Introduction
It is with great pleasure I have been given permission from Wes to update his original Tactics mod to be compatible with the Enhanced Editions. Tactics Remix adds quite a few optional, but difficult, encounters to BG2:EE and EET aims to make the game more challenging and rewarding.
Many of these components have been drawn from different mod authors; I did not write everything here. In particular, Wes Weimer, Gebhard Blucher, Kensai Ryu, Xyx and Ishan have made contributions. I have gone through, updated the components for the EE's, and redid most of the AI from the ground up. The goal is for the encounters to feel similar to their oBG counterparts with more challenging enemy AI.
You can download the latest release here.
Compatibility
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of this mod, I recommend uninstalling all mod components and replacing all files with the new ones before doing a fresh install. If you choose to use SCS, parts of this mod should be installed before it while other parts should be installed after. These will be clearly outlined during the install process.
Content
Tactics Remix adds quite a few new components, and all of the components are individually optional: you may install some but not others, your choice. I have also broken up the mods into two groups: 1) Add New Encounters and 2) Update Existing Encounters. New encounters should be installed prior to SCS while updates to existing encounters should be installed after SCS (if you, the player, chooses to use SCS).
All of the enemy scripts have been rewritten from scratch and many of the fight mechanics are improved from the old Tactics days. These fights are aimed at being more challenging than the original encounters while removing much of the cheese that players of old remember. These are meant to be BRUTAL. The difficulty slider will alter the overall challenge (e.g. removing undroppable items from enemies to make them easier, less or different enemy spawns, altered enemy prebuffs, etc.). I aim to have a bit of randomness added to the encounters and the scripts are not optimized to always cast the "best" spell. Prebuffs and contingencies/sequencers will vary. Additionally, casters will randomly choose if they will be casting an offensive or a defensive/disabling spell. From there, the enemy scripts will cycle through available spells in the specific category with yet more randomness. Best spells will pop up first, but it is random if the script will choose to cast or pass. This should add a bit of variance to the encounters from reload to reload and hopefully the player enjoys the spontaneity.
It is with great pleasure I have been given permission from Wes to update his original Tactics mod to be compatible with the Enhanced Editions. Tactics Remix adds quite a few optional, but difficult, encounters to BG2:EE and EET aims to make the game more challenging and rewarding.
Many of these components have been drawn from different mod authors; I did not write everything here. In particular, Wes Weimer, Gebhard Blucher, Kensai Ryu, Xyx and Ishan have made contributions. I have gone through, updated the components for the EE's, and redid most of the AI from the ground up. The goal is for the encounters to feel similar to their oBG counterparts with more challenging enemy AI.
You can download the latest release here.
Compatibility
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of this mod, I recommend uninstalling all mod components and replacing all files with the new ones before doing a fresh install. If you choose to use SCS, parts of this mod should be installed before it while other parts should be installed after. These will be clearly outlined during the install process.
Content
Tactics Remix adds quite a few new components, and all of the components are individually optional: you may install some but not others, your choice. I have also broken up the mods into two groups: 1) Add New Encounters and 2) Update Existing Encounters. New encounters should be installed prior to SCS while updates to existing encounters should be installed after SCS (if you, the player, chooses to use SCS).
All of the enemy scripts have been rewritten from scratch and many of the fight mechanics are improved from the old Tactics days. These fights are aimed at being more challenging than the original encounters while removing much of the cheese that players of old remember. These are meant to be BRUTAL. The difficulty slider will alter the overall challenge (e.g. removing undroppable items from enemies to make them easier, less or different enemy spawns, altered enemy prebuffs, etc.). I aim to have a bit of randomness added to the encounters and the scripts are not optimized to always cast the "best" spell. Prebuffs and contingencies/sequencers will vary. Additionally, casters will randomly choose if they will be casting an offensive or a defensive/disabling spell. From there, the enemy scripts will cycle through available spells in the specific category with yet more randomness. Best spells will pop up first, but it is random if the script will choose to cast or pass. This should add a bit of variance to the encounters from reload to reload and hopefully the player enjoys the spontaneity.
Post edited by morpheus562 on
0
Comments
Is there a chance that the improved random encounters in the city will be included in the mod? They add some excitement and risk travelling night time from an area to an other in the town and are also a good source of expendable items like potions and ammo in the old school Wes way: more difficult battles, but also more power to the party (he also introduced the Item Upgrade mod that was meant to go side by side with Tactics, even if they was 2 completely different mods and was possible to use only one of them.
Also you did not mention Demogorgon and the Fire Giants in ToB, the original Tactics make them quite more difficult then the vanilla ones, what happens with your EE version?
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/41242/tactics-mod-bg2ee-compatibility-conversion-and-beta-test
Do you think that is possible i.e. to use your mod and install from that other conversion to EE of Tactics the random encounters in the city or other parts that are possibly missing in yours?
I have no idea how it would go installing that other Tactics and how it would play.
Still I perfectly understand your goal that is to give to the modern players, that use SCS as default difficulty mode, a way to play Tactics in that modern environment , it may be not perfect for my needs, but is a GREAT contribution for the community of players.
That EETACT mod breaks/disables some of the EE 2.0 functionality and is a ticking bomb due to that. One shouldn't rely on it.
I would love a difficulty mod that really improves the enemy AI using the vanilla magic system unchanged, possibly it is not possible to have it due to engine limitations, but in some original Tactics encounters like the starting dungeon, the Ritual or the random encounters in the city the enemy spellcasters actually use the vanilla magic system in a very effective way compared to most of the vanilla casters and they do it without cheating, so maybe it could be possible to have such mod. As it does not exist my personal choice is to play with Tactics, with the original game, and vanilla with the EE one, but as I told I see how your work is GREAT for most of the players.
I did not try it as lately I am not playing much, and when I do it is mostly relaxed vanilla runs (I still have a couple of Tactics play troughs going on my original game installation, but they are in stand by, it is maybe an year since I touched them last time). But I really want to try it for the reasons I outlined before: I love Tactics and I don't like (or better I don't want to adapt my game style to) SCS. Can you please explain, here or maybe even better in the EETACT thread which EE functionality is breaks or disables and which are the risks involved? It could save me a lot of time and effort trying to play that mod in EE if it makes the game prone to bugs and not stable so if you are more precise about it i will really appreciate. Thank you in advance.
Also, you can install SCS in a way to not affect the spell system at all, just edit the stratagems.ini file so that all variables under spell system changes are set to 1 prior to installation.
Regardless, the old Tactics has a high chance to disable the script additions of the EE engine, reverting it to the functionality provided by the classic engine. This affects the SoD section of an EET run, might affect some additional EE questlines, prevent some of the argent77 mods to be installed on top of the game if installed after (and prolly threse mods use the EE scripting additions as well). I never did any exact lookups on how many times the reverted functionality is triggered.
It is also for EE - also great!
Question - Is Tactics Remix compatible with the classics, with BGT?
The original Tactics is mostly incompatible with SCS. So, if I want both Tactics and SCS then Tactics Remix is the mod to use. I usually play BGT, hence my question about BGT compatibility.
I'm not familiar with tactics so I don't know if there is more to adapt but that last part got me curious. I imagine is still too early to ask but, do you have any plan or general ideas about the possible new future encounters?
I'm gonna take a look at fire giants to see how the original Tactics altered them in comparison to SCS. Could be room for future tweaks, but no promises. There are other components I have not redone to the EE's like Mae'var, Druid Grove, Torgal, Bodhi, etc. Some of these are because SCS already did the work and I wouldn't be offering anything new and others I need to look at more closely. I'm not sure what the user appetite is for me to do my own unique encounter updates that is not based on anything from the original Tactics. I already updated the BGEE Drizzt encounter, but I don't want to offend tactics purists that prefer it with just what the original provided.
As I told I don't use SCS so I don't know how it addresses the use of traps on known spawn points, but I really appreciate how the original Tactics has some minor helpers spawn a little earlier then the real enemies so they trigger the traps making them not effective, this forces the player to use the traps in a tactical way, is no more possible to set some spike traps and win a battle automatically, you have to plan and to lure the enemies into them. If SCS does not address the thing in other ways I think that this can be a good improvement also for some encounters that you decide to not improve from the SCS regular way.
And don't be afraid to offend the Tactics purists, I am one of them so I feel entitled to speak for them, as long as the new encounters are optional components of the mod if someone don't like them he is free to skip them, but for other players they can be great new content!
EDIT: Resolution was reached and content was removed.
It is in my "to-do" list. Currently, it is not implemented.
The mod has some components that I think are fun:
- the gnome kensai illusionist
- kuroisan chasing the party down
- improved copper coronet and undead guard crypt thingy
Unfortunately the mod is in many ways also AWFUL. Again, this is not
the fault of morpheus, but of the original author. I understand that it
means the mod will be difficult on purpose (by design), especially on
insane. However had, there is a difference between being difficult
by design - and trolling the player. I think this mod is trolling players,
similar to the extent planar sphere mod. These are the only two mods
I consider troll-mods right now. There are some other mods that are
challenging, but they aren't quite troll-mode material.
Planar sphere mod I already complained about, e. g. re-defining the
whole area, odd bugs such as perpetual deadlock via infinite timestop
or the troll-mage final encounter with billion spells and insta-creeping
doom on startup (what the ...). But anyway that is a separate issue.
I already complained before about the improved irenicus having a
dragon that is stronger than irenicus (and other companions that
are stronger). But now I am facing abigazail or so the dragon, and
of course the usual cold lizard shaman things - and ... another
dragon ON TOP OF THAT. This also breaks story-wise e. g. abigazail
having enslaved a dragon to stand guard, but now he is buddy
with another dragon? What the ...
But of course this isn't enough. The original troll author of this
mod also added two golems (which are stronger due to the
golem mod; this is not the fault of the original author, and
the golem mod is actually a good mod, though it needs tweaking),
and of course two wyverns. So that added dragon is actually
even stronger than abigazail. Perma-haste and I can not chase
him down quickly enough to lock him down via spells and hits;
and meanwhile abigazail beats my character down.
I know how I can work around some of these issues (magical
swords are great), but what actually got me into writing this
complaint, isn't even the totally broken balance mode, but
the fact that the original author is INDEED trolling us.
How so?
Well - I usually would sneak around and kill the cold lizard
shaman first. But nope, this time, in the modded garbage
that is tactics remix, the party is hijacked to RUN UP TOWARDS
ABIGAZAIL and his tons of companions the moment they
go too close (which now is the case when you try to SNEAK
AROUND THE CORNER). So the mod insta-forces you into
a fight once you move forward, whereas in vanilla you
can sneak around.
There are other parts of the mods that are annoying,
such as the various liches in the docks area interfering
with other mods - why do other mod authors have to
endure this piece of utter trash? And, of course, to make
things worse, the mod author typically CLOSES THE EXITS
SO YOU CAN NOT RUN AWAY. So this is troll level - in
vanilla games you can run away. Why not here? I don't
refer this to the issue of abigazail - I think in vanilla
you can not run out until abigazail is dead. But, boy,
so many individual things coming together, to really
award the tactics mod as the biggest troll mod of all
times.
There are numerous other mods which are great. Some
are overpowered still (I think Dusk mod is overpowered,
but I also think Dusk is by far the best NPC overall), some
are underpowered and need a little slight boost (skitia
NPCs or so, like that weak archer). But some mods are
simply total garbage from A to Z. Or, perhaps, let's say
not 100% garbage but 20% garbage. Tactics remix by
far takes the cake, even more so than the extended
planar sphere mod. I'd recommend to simply start anew
and discard most of the original content. It's not the
fault of morpheus of course, and I am not objecting
to having challenging fights (sword coast stratagems
has a similar objective too) but boy ... so many things
coming together in tactics remix that this should really
have to be redone from scratch.
This is probably my last play-through for a long time
or even permanently. In the coming months I'll see
and research every now and then how to create mods
too; let's see how that goes. But if I'll create mods then
I most certainly will follow in style of good mods, such
as Lava's mods, Dusk mod and many other mods -
even if some of them yield fairly powerful items and
have challenging fights, they are not nearly as broken
as mods such as tactics remix.
PS: What I also forgot ... I originally did not know how much
of a troll-mod this is. When I installed improved Irenicus,
I was not aware that a dragon would emerge. That fight
was too difficult for me after failing a dozen times or so
and I just abandoned that run back then a few months
ago. Now I hit the same issue with another "improved
xyz" crap again. And my characters have about 8 million
XP as-is and it's still difficult to no ends. Again, I can adjust
my own tactics, but I did not expect a DRAGON to be there.
This is simply troll material, of an author who just wanted to
make it more difficult than it needs to be. The "insta-rush to
the main bad guy" force in the code is an example of this,
as well as preventing leaving an area (and there is no good
in-game explanation for that - why is the area suddenly
closed? He did not even bother to add a NOTIFICATION as
to why that happened.)
Edited to add: I did rewrite these from scratch and personally increased/altered much of the difficulty.
Regarding Dusk, both Tactics and Back to Brynnlaw were using the area first. I've posted the compatability issue in the owner's forum thread, but it is on the owner of Dusk to resolve.
P.S. I beat the Ascension/SCS Abazigal you're referencing on insane double damage using my scripts and next to no human input (outside of movement). That is a cakewalk fight already and shouldn't have the difficulty lessened in the slightest.
I agree that it's not designed to troll players. It's just designed to provide an extra (seemingly insane) challenge to particular players.
I did change it up a little bit, and I hope you can appreciate the differences between original Tactics and Tactics Remix. I did remove some of the "Trolling" with the item removals the original had, and I made the different phases for Irenicus more distinct.
And surely Tactics is not for everyone and it has to maybe be modernized, but preserving its nature not only because some players like that kind of trolling super difficult mods, but also because it is a big part of BG2 history, back in the old days, before SCS was born, it was The Mod, the one all the players that wanted a more challenging experience after mastering the vanilla game was playing.
Thank you for giving to the users of the Enhanced Edition the possibility to play it preserving it true to its original nature, some players will love it, some others hate it, exactly as it was in the old days.
I haven't tested against SCS v35 (though I'm guessing it is compatible), but tactics remix is guaranteed compatible with v34.3 and ascension. Look at the readme (and installer) to tell you which components of tactics remix to install before SCS and which to install after scs.
Some things got solved in between, even if only indirectly. For instance, the Dusk NPC now has another hideout place (which looks nicer, too), and thus does not conflict with Brynnlaw or Tactics remix anymore.
Let's say we would do a complete re-do-over.
I would add two major themes to it, a bit more like a quest:
- The Bountyhunter Guild.
- Kangaxx' rise to power.
So what is the idea here?
For the first, the bountyhunter, we can say that Kuroisan, the gnome-kensai in the Docks area and the red badge encounter
all come from a bountyhunter guild that tries to kill the bhaalspawn.
To keep the old history alive, we add a new area where there is a guildhall for bounty hunters and not all of them hunt only the bhaalspawn. It's a guild where others can hire people to kill something; or in the case of Kuroisan be a free agent that sometimes comes to the guild.
We may need a few more enemies here. The idea is, though, to connect that bounty hunter theme together, so that rather than decoupled events, it becomes more of a theme and a storyline. And when the player has completed, say, 6, they may meet the final boss and fight him at the bountyhunter guild place. Something like that.
The other idea, Kangaxx rise to power, explains the variety of liches. Perhaps the lichdom mod could be of help here too. Kangaxx defeated the other mages and turned them into slave liches. That would explain why there are so many of them.
Perhaps also add a few fighters with runed tattoos that protect liches in melee. Perhaps the lichdom mod has some ideas how to connect all the liches. Or Kangaxx may not be completely destroyed yet and instead fled to his container, which then lateron gets truly destroyed. With some dungeon type where even more liches are. (Perhaps just a ToB component or something).
Anyway these are just some rough ideas to make tactics remix a bit more storyline focused while still being PRIMARILY focused on challenging encounters.
HOLY FUCKING HELLL!!
MORE !!!!!!!!!!