Leave them in. They are pretty fun to fight, and add alot of variety to all stages of the game. As for balance issues, the Chryssalid autopsy being available in the early game isnt game breaking, as the hellweave isnt that useful. The only problem that I can think of is the Infestation issue. Maybe you can lock down that dark event until Hunters or the vanilla Chryssalids start appearing? But besides that issue, I would be sad if you took them out.

Same as above. I like the baby chryssalids, they introduce a situation that must be dealt with, which is the whole point of new units. But taking on normal chryssalids without magnetic weapons or even experienced soliders? That's suicide.

The mini lids provide a good replacement for the boa, and until the boa is reworked and reimplemented, Lids can freely roam the enviorment and provide early game challenge. The mini lids provide an early introduction to the concept of alien melee units, and are an immediate threat due to their mobility and dodging. They lack poison, which if you rush predator armor makes them completely useless, and if you rush mag weps, they are oneshottable with most mag weapons. The drones that accompany them are only a bit more of a threat. I do like the whole "civilians become lid reproduction stock" idea, and overall they should PROBABLY stay. Unless a better candidate for a quantity over quality melee unit appears, they are the best.

While I haven't been able to play with them yet, it seems wrong from an immersion standpoint. If they could only appear in the non-advent cities I'd be alright with it, but they're like 100% not what Advent is going for with the whole benevolent overlords thing so seeing them rampaging around the pristine city centers feels wrong to me.

I do understand the desire for an early game melee unit that's not a stunlancer though. Someone needs to make some melee primary weapon animations for the human model.

@Makko On the other hand you see sectoids and Archons in Advent cities in vanilla. Isn't that against what Advent is going for?

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@Makko On the other hand you see sectoids and Archons in Advent cities in vanilla. Isn't that against what Advent is going for?

Just wondering why the chrysalids are killing random people with no reason in the city centers that doesnt make any sense chrysalids targeted civilians rather than my soldiers

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@Makko On the other hand you see sectoids and Archons in Advent cities in vanilla. Isn't that against what Advent is going for?

One of the things to consider though is their intelligence. Sectoids and Archons seem to be intelligent enough to be trusted around civillians but I doubt that chrysallids are.

At best I would say chrysallids have the intelligence of a dog, enough to know who their masters are and to be ordered to attack but not much else. Certainly not enough to be around civillians and be trusted not to attack them.

As far as gameplay goes though I do like the change of pace they offer and would be sad to see them banished to terror missions only.

Well, they are Chryssalids. Mindless bugs bent on killing whatever they see, included Advent loyal citizens :D
All they see are new hosts to spin into a cocoon.
I could make them stop, but decided to let them keep that behaviour, i thought it was kinda cool.


The way i see it, there are multiple ways i could go:

- Send Chryssalids back to Terror missions. At the same time, make them more prominent there to make Terror missions a bit more terrifying from the beginning and to bring back some of that EW/EU flair ;) Keep the Beastmaster around as a non-Terror unit that brings a few creepy-crawlies to regular missions.

- Let it stay as it is. The extra variation on regular missions is welcome. By banishing them to Terror missions some of the variants might actually never appear, leaving you with a playthrough where you'd never get to see a Queen.

- Compromise. What if they would only appear in Terror missions at first, but spread to regular missions as forcelevel heightens. Let's say at forcelevel 10 the aliens decide that they had enough of XCOM messing up their ♥♥♥♥ and start being more obvious. That would make the Chryssalid Hunter and King be the first new Chryssalids to feature out of Terror missions.

@Scythe96 I think that what makko said was basically from a lore point of view. That you can't have aliens/monsters raoming around the cities of the advent considering all the effort they went through to make the advent look human. And while I generally agree my reply was what I was thinking.

I don't think that it's a matter of intelligence but more of a matter of disguise. But even the main game doesn't support that (the scientist guy even mentions that they're not even bothering to hide anymore when you first meet a viper)

@DerBK to be completely honest from a lore point I prefer the third option. It makes more sense this way. Altho' the player might be too high forcelevel when they get the first terror mission so they completely miss the lower tier 'lids. Unless you find a way to use them at greater numbers than the pod allows. Let's say 4 of the small ones and one mid tier one at the same pod. That would be terrifying because while the small ones are not a big threat and they can be one shotted the player would have to lose a whle round to take them out. Or focus on the mid tier and have the small ones swarm his soldiers and chip away at their life slowly. I think that's an interesting mechanic to add but not so sure if it's possible.

Isn't the first retaliation mission right at the end of the first month or something? That should still be early enough to have Crawlers and Spitters.

Sadly the pod generation won't let me have bigger pods of small enemies, the number is fixed unless i start editing the Mission.ini and start risking conflicts with some high profile mods that i want to stay compatible with.
I could do a workaround by putting cocoons in the pod and let those start spawning crawlers as soon as possible (=on scatter). But i really don't want to, that has all kinds of other issues down the line.

I think that the defense bonus for crawlers is too strong. Even if I stand next to them it's about 70 percent chance to hit.

I guess i can bring it down a bit.
Although i do have to say that the +20 bonus is only there in Legendary (+10 in Commander, +0 in Veteran and Rookie). Remember that Veteran and Commander are my baseline for balancing, not Legendary. Legendary is supposed to be really freaking hard and i really don't have much trouble making Legend difficulty a hell.

I'll change the defense of Crawlers to +10 in Commander and +10 in Legendary for now.

I like the idea of lids spreading from terror missions later in the game, as advent grows desperate to counter xcom and runs out of options.

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@Makko On the other hand you see sectoids and Archons in Advent cities in vanilla. Isn't that against what Advent is going for?

No it's not, the whole point of Archons is to appeal to humans, they're all majestic demigod like for that reason.

Sectoids are kind of neutral, the thing about lids is they run around murdering everyone. Neither of those two do that.

This is largely from a lore/story perspective.

The big thing about Advent is how they try and appeal to humans, murderous bug monsters running amok is kind of the opposite of that.

Appearing later out of desperation, or only in non-city center areas (if such a thing is possible) both avoid that problem.

okay, how about this. as you suggested, keep the lids in later missions as an act of desperation, but keep the mini-lids in. If they can create those little cocoon things, remove their ability to do that. Lower their damage, and give them a chance to disorient your soldiers. It works from a lore perspective, because they aren't deadly bug-monsters, they're more along the lines of rats, or some other pest. They're unpleasant, and getting bit by one will probably make you sick, but they're nothing too bad to handle.