XCOM 2 is a fantastic game. It is also a highly customizable game, which I appreciate immensely. I messed around with the ini files a bunch to tweak the game to my liking. For instance, swords have such low accuracy, that they actually have far lower chance to hit than shotguns do from further out. And for what reason? Because they do less damage than shotguns. Eh... okay? It was the first thing I tweaked. It wasn't too long before I started messing with other stuff and soon after mods came. Mostly because a lot of the mods I have seen surprised me a lot. I was expecting a whole bunch of cheaty-mods, but instead a lot of it is very sensible interface tweaking among other things. These mods have made the game even better for me. Recommending them to you now.

Interface Mods

ShowMeTheSkills

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The less menu's you have to enter, the better. This mod makes all the skills a soldier has, as well as their stats, available on the squad selection screen. It gives a nice overview of the squad you're going to bring. It saves having to find the soldier with the subset of skills you want to bring. It's just all right there onscreen.

Free Reload

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The weapon mods that give a free reload action are fantastic. Except when you think you still have the free reload, but discover you used it already after you reloaded and your turn ends. This is can be a costly mistake you only make once, but the UI is not good at all about telling you clearly if you have a free reload or not. It does say it when you select the option, but this mod makes it far more clear by making the action green and also straight up telling you how many free reloads you have remaining.

Show Enemies on Mission Planning Screen

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This is a pretty descriptive name. It does what it says. It places the prediction of enemy types from the Shadow Chamber on the squad selection screen. Which is fantastic for deciding which ammo types to bring and such. Having to back out to check it again was a hassle and is now resolved.

Flank Preview

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The UI finally surfaces if you have line of sight before you move or not (yaay). The flanking bug is still a thing however (boo). Therefor, being able to see if your position will set up a flank or not is almost equally valuable information, which is exactly what this mod does by changing the LOS icon to yellow if it is a flanking shot.

Accurate Soldier XP

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This mod aims to surface how close a soldier is to a promotion by detailing the number of kills to the number of kills needed for a promotion. It gives you a good idea how close a soldier is to that promotion. From what I gather from the mod itself, it is based on accurate guess work however, so do not flip out if it is not spot on every single time. Useful either way.

Clean Cinematic

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*Click on Fire* 'Promotion Earned'! cinematic follows, to show the enemy you were shooting at indeed dies. Shouldn't that be the other way around? Like not be spoiled up front if something dies before the game shows you? Yes it should. And that is exactly what this mod does. It delays the text log on several messages like earned promotions until after the cinematic ends.

Upgrade Reminder

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This UI mod shows you if a soldier still has an empty slot that can be filled (either PCS or weapon mods) on the squad selection screen. As someone who routinely forgets to equip these mods, especially PCS sims because they drop so infrequently, this is a very nice reminder to have.

Cosmetic Mods

Full Character Customization From Start

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Promote this soldier to unlock more customization options! How about no? Let me customize my soldiers how I want from the start. Why do I need to wait until someone is a Major before I can give him a mohawk? I very much like gamey games, but this particular decision doesn't make any sense. Mod fix, hooray.

Random Appearance Button

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I like to fill up my character pool with my customized characters, but the game also throws random characters at you unless you edit the ini for it to not do that. I like random characters still popping up, but some of them look awful. It doesn't help that 4 out of 5 guys have ponytails. I don't want to take the time to fully customize them, so here we go. One or two pushes of this button and you're all set.

Eurasian Special Forces

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Are you like me and thought there were too few face paint options? This mod adds 5 new face paints to choose from, as well as 4 new armor patterns and finally 9 new tattoos. It looks pretty good.

Capnbubs Accessories Pack

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If you're going to install one cosmetic mod, make this the one. It adds tons of new headgear, face props and other things. What helps is that it all looks really good. It fits right in with the other stuff. Another plus is that the dude updates this mod frequently. Whenever I start a new game, I almost always get rookies with some new headgear I hadn't seen before, which he apparently added into the mod later. Any mod that adds the gear needed to recreate Deadpool is worth getting after all.

Halo Reach Helmets

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Because fielding a full squad of Spartans if pretty cool. This mod adds a whole bunch of helmets to the game in the style of Halo Reach.

XCOM - Patch Tattoos

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This mod sucks because it makes you wish you already had access to gene mod soldiers. It adds a couple of tattoos to the game you're familiar with from Enemy Within.

Senator Armstrong Voicepack

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There are a whole bunch of voicepacks available, but this is easily the most fun one I've seen. Because nanomachines, son.

Gameplay Mods

Max Squad Size Fix

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Want to play with more than 6 soldiers in a squad? It is very easy to edit the ini files to allow more soldiers, but the game removes the additional open slots from the squad selection menu and instead just places the top available soldier of your roster on the mission as the 7th+ soldier. It's a hassle to equip them when it works like this, and even moreso annoying how you can't choose exactly who you want to bring. Therefor, this mod. It fixes this issue and allows you to hand pick the soldier you want to bring and shows them on the squad selection screen as you'd want them to. Be sure to follow the instructions in the mod description to get it to work (requires you to edit 2 ini files).

The Shock Trooper Class

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It's hard to recommend a class since Nexus and Workshop are both overflowing with various new classes. A lot of them are decent, even more of them are broken. I found most to not feel right, however. They often mix and match perks from other classes and it makes the classes feel less unique and worthwhile. This one does not. It creates an entirely new class that uses exclusively SMG's (so yes, you do need the SMG mod as well in order to use this one) and every single skill is a brand new one that wasn't in the game yet. It seems to try pretty hard to not conflict with any other classes for the most part, which is why I found this mod to be worthwhile. It does stray a bit in the Gunslinger territory however, but only slightly. The mod will soon be addressed to make more use of the flame thrower secondary, as it currently only has one skill that makes use of it at Colonel rank. But if I had to choose one modded class, it would definitely be this one. The Shock Trooper is basically a mobility class, able to take advantage of moving further, flanks and dodge mechanics among other things. It feels like its own thing.

Necromancer Class

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As I said, if I were to choose one class to recommend it would be the Shock Trooper class described above. This Necromancer, however, is not too bad. It is still being developed further as not all skills are available yet. But similar to the Shock Trooper, it tries to not conflict with any existing classes. It breaks up in Necromancer and Sorcerer talent trees. The latter pretty much focussing on setting things on fire, applying acid burn, using lightning and such. The former focuses on raising zombies, causing corpses to explode and other cool stuff. You might think the Necromancer doesn't make sense narratively, but beyond that it is a fun class to use.

Ammo as Weapon Mods

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Fair warning up front: this makes the game slightly easier. It changes ammo to be accepted in weapon mod slots instead of as a utility item. It makes perfect sense, but ultimately sacrificing a weapon mod slot for ammo is a much better deal than sacrificing utility slot which can bring powerful items. The reason I use this is because I like it when some things are slightly easier, just like how I would like it if some things were slightly harder. The game is still plenty hard with this mod. At least on Legend.

Leader Pack

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You probably know this one as it was announced before the game even launched. This mod adds the option to train soldiers as Leaders. Leaders get a special perk tree which they can train for, similar to psionic training in the Avenger. They are useful abilities. To mitigate the additional power, only one Leader can be brought on a single mission (so if you have two leaders, they are excluded from both going on a mission) and it requires a Guerrilla Tactics School upgrade to be able to train them. Fun to mess around with.

Muton Centurion Alien Pack

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This mod adds krogans to the game. Seriously, look at that helmet. That was jacked straight out of Mass Effect. Either way, Centurions can use a war cry similar to Blood Lust in EU. They are fun to fight. Good mod if you want a little bit of extra challenge.

Configurable Protect Device

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You know how RNG in general is great, but RNG that makes no sense is really, really bad? For instance, having a device be an equal distance of 4 dashes away, and it being destroyed in 3 turns by late game enemies, effectively making it impossible to ever succeed the mission? This mod circumvents such nonsense by increasing the health of the device in the mid and late game. It changes the missions from easily the hardest, to one of the easiest however. But when RNG hits you and you enter a mission that was otherwise unbeatable, you'll be glad you have it. Additionally, the mod allows you to change the HP to exactly your liking, so you could just set it to slightly higher if you wish (or lower if you like failure).

Recommended ini file changes

You can mess with the game settings yourself. Before you get discouraged and think it is a hassle of a process, let me encourage you and say that it totally isn't. It is as easy as changing one number to a different number and you're done!

Of course, there is a lot you can change in these files, but there are some things that I would definitely recommend you to change for the sake of balance and enjoyment. At the very least take a look at these recommendations and consider them. Note that I do play on Legend with these tweaks and using them on a lower difficulty might be broken.

To find the ini files go to whereever your XCOM 2 folder is. Traditionally, under C > Program Files > Steam > Common > Steamapps.

Then, go to XcomGame > Config

All the ini files you can mess with are here. Take a look at their names, it tells you which information they hold to be adjusted.

Fix Smoke Grenades

Reason: Simple. Smoke grenades don't work. There is no line of code in the files that gives smoke grenades any benefit at all. They add a visual effect, they add a UI visible buff and description, but they don't actually increase the defense on your soldiers. You can test it if you want, they are supposed to work on aliens as well. Line up a shot and look at the percentage. If it says (for example) 62% to hit, throw a smoke grenade over the enemy and behold you will still have 62% chance to hit.

Suggested Effect: Add a line of code that gives units in smoke fields +30 defense.

How To: Open the DefaultGameData_WeaponData ini file. Search (ctrl + F) for [XComGame.X2Item_DefaultGrenades]. Under this section, add this line SMOKEGRENADE_HITMOD=-30

You can obviously adjust how much defense you want the smoke grenade to yield. I think 30 defense is a fine value. It's more than a Flashbang (inflicts -20 aim) but flashbangs also yield other bonuses, such as reduced mobility and prevention of many abilities.

Fix Swords

Reason: Swords are used by Rangers who can equip shotguns. Swords are literally inferior to shotguns in every way except one which is they do not require reloads. That is not a compelling argument at all for having Hit Chance, Range and Damage all be lower. How often does it happen you are out of ammo, have no free reloads and only one action left to spend? Maybe once in a campaign? And believe me, if you resort to your sword once, it will probably miss anyway. In short: swords are terrible. But I love the idea of them so much. They should be risk reward. You need to be closer and often leave yourself flanked (risk), so the reward should be larger, not smaller.

Suggested Effect: Increase Hit Chance of swords to be more in line with shotguns. 25% for Conventional (was 20), 30% for Magnetic swords (was 20) and 35% for Fusion (was 20) to account for later game enemies with inherent defense. Increase damage on swords to make it a viable option over shooting a shotgun. 6 damage on Magnetic (was 5) and 8 damage on Fusion (was 6). Add piercing to swords to make it the preferred option for dealing with armored enemies over a shotgun and make it viable without shredding, reinforcing the 'lone wolf' role of the Ranger. +2 piercing on Magnetic (was 0) and +6 piercing on Fusion, effectively ignoring all armor (was 0).

How To: Open the DefaultGameData_WeaponData ini file. Search (ctrl + F) for RangerSword_Conventional_BaseDamage. You see three lines of code here for the three different swords. Change the 'Damage=5' under Magnetic to 'Damage=6'. Change the 'Damage=6' under 'Beam' to 'Damage=8'. Change the 'Pierce=0' under Magnetic to 'Pierce=2' and change the 'Pierce=0' under Beam to 'Pierce=6'. Next, search for RangerSword_Conventional_Aim and set that value to '25'. A few lines below it is the Magnetic aim, set that to '30'. Again for Fusion even lower to '35'.

Improve Sub-Optimal Skills

Reason: There are a couple of skills that I never see chosen by anyone. Even myself, as much as I want to rebel against common consensus, never pick them apart from that one time I tried to make it work. It's not that these skills are terrible, it's that they are up against a skill that is almost undeniably better. XCOM 2 is a lot better at making both skills useful than EU was, but a couple still aren't really a choice. You can either make the great skills worse or make these sub-optimal skills better. I went for the latter option.

Suggested Effect: Reduce aim penalty on Deadeye to be only slightly worse. The ability has an inherent cooldown on top of its significant damage penalty which makes it sub-optimal no matter what the other choice is. Increase Blast Padding's inherent explosive damage reduction to 90% (was 66%) to make blast padded grenadiers tactically superior with explosives. Increase armor from Blast Padding from 1 to 2 to align Blast Padding as a defensive role to be as powerful as Shredder is as an offensive role. Increase Guardian's proc chance to be actually useful, 80% chance (was 50%). This will give a Colonel Specialist 20% chance to hit a second reaction shot (was 13%); (80 aim, 30 aim penalty from overwatch = 50% chance to hit first overwatch shot. .5*.8*.5 = .2).

How To: Open DefaultGameCore ini file. Search (ctrl + F) for [XComGame.X2Effect_BlastPadding]. Change ARMOR_MITIGATION=1 to ARMOR_MITIGATION=2.

Open DefaultGameData_SoldierSkills ini file. Search for DEADEYE_AIM_MULTIPLIER. Change DEADEYE_AIM_MULTIPLIER=0.25f to DEADEYE_AIM_MULTIPLIER=0.10f. Search for BLAST_PADDING_DMG_ADJUST. Change BLAST_PADDING_DMG_ADJUST=0.66f to BLAST_PADDING_DMG_ADJUST=0.9f. Search for GUARDIAN_PROC. Change GUARDIAN_PROC=0.50 to GUARDIAN_PROC=0.8.

Rebalance Mimic Beacon

Reason: The idea of the Mimic Beacon is sound, but it is ridiculously overpowered. It has 12HP and the aliens miss it like all the time. It needs to go down in 2 shots at most. Having a group of 6 aliens all waste their actions on it is just nuts.

Suggested Effect: Reduce base HP to 10 (was 12). Reduce base defense to -20 (was 0).

How To: Open DefaultGameData_CharacterStats ini file. Search (ctrl + F) for [MimicBeacon X2CharacterTemplate]. Change CharacterBaseStats[eStat_Defense]=0 to CharacterBaseStats[eStat_Defense]=-20 and change CharacterBaseStats[eStat_HP]=12 to CharacterBaseStats[eStat_HP]=10.

For funsies, you could give it +100 Dodge, 10 armor and 40 HP. Then change the amount of turns it is in the game for from 1 to 20. And I bet it will still be just as useful as the current vanilla version.

Don't have time to go through this all right now (will later), but good post.

I also have to highly recommend the Capnbubs accessory pack. Adds some cool new items for character customization and it keeps getting updated.

I really agree on swords, especially by the end of the game. Plus if you have mods on your shotgun to increase critical chance, plus maybe a few free reloads? A lot of times to hit with a sword you might have to put yourself in danger to be shot by another enemy. Hard to justify bothering to use them. I would just because it was cool but didn't make sense. Of course Bladestorm makes them useful to attract enemies to attack them in melee but swords should be better if you're using them as an attack.

I am not eager to nerf the Mimic Beacon haha. Saved my ass a ton in this game.

I like the proposed ability changes. I think they did a WAY better job with them in this sequel (in the first game they were mostly poorly balanced) but those changes all make sense to me. I really like having that other side to Grenadier being so much more tanky because that would make sense and balance things out. It doesn't make sense to go that way with how good explosives are in this. I think Guardian should be better too so like that as well.

It's SO GOOD! And he updates it so frequently! Just in the time it took me to type this comment he probably added another helmet.

The smoke grenades don't work? They just overlooked finishing that feature, what the fuck firaxis... I haven't used them and it seems like that was a good choice.

Daft question: Does tinkering with the balance in the ini disable achievements? I know that I really shouldn't care about them, especially the ones on Steam... but I kinda do.

i'll post my list of essential mods that i was using week 2 later

mods do not disable achievements

My favorite mod so far is "Uniforms Manager", this mod allows you to make a uniform with whatever armor and apply it regardless of the armor your actually wearing. So now you can have kevlar on late game armor and still have the stats etc of the new armor. It's better than some of the other options IMO as they don't end up randomly generating weird things that don't look right by mixing and matching armor types.

"ignore Missing content" is kind of a must especially if you use the steam workshop as if the modder takes it down steam uninstalls it(which ruins your save) this mod allows you to keep playing(at your own risk of course). I've used it after i took off all my voice mods and so far no glitches.

I'd also recommend against too many mods especially voice mods as it kills memory usage.

No they do not disable achievements. Which is another reason to not care about them. You can change the files so all your shots have 100% chance to hit and do 80 damage, ignoring all armor. And then change all the aliens to have 0% chance to hit. And you still unlock achievements for everything. So...

Great post. Didn't know about most of these. Thanks for sharing!

Perfect Information is one I consider essential. It shows hit chances and much more, including when aliens shoot at your soldiers. It's nice to know what percentage change something had of hitting you behind elevated full cover.

A mod that I've always wanted is something that shows how your hit percentage changes depending on what tile you want to move to, before you actually move. Too many times I've moved to a new spot to try and get a better shot on an enemy and then I move and it turns out its actually a worse shot. Does this exist?

@mechakirby: I haven't seen a mod do that just yet, but you could ask the guy who made this mod. Seems like it would fit in to what he's going for.

@zevvion: Nice writeup, thanks! Still need to get around to playing this.

Wait, you were always a huge proponent of Blast Padding in the first place and dissin Shredder contrary to myself and others, why the change of heart?

:P

Modders do what Friaxdon't.

Great stuff. I wish I could find more in-depth collaborated mod write ups like this. Shifting through them all and understanding their impact can get pretty tiresome when they are all a separate write-up.

Stop remembering who I am, it makes me look bad.

I did say Blast Padding was quite decent. With my playstyle, Shredder wasn't as useful because the units that made armor matter such as Sectopods and Gatekeepers, I mind controlled or hacked. I have moved away from that a bit because a failed hack on Legend is kind of bad. So even in the late game Shredder is a great ability for me. But looking at Blast Padding, I felt like Shredder was a very strong offensive ability and BP was only a 'decent' defensive ability. So I thought buffing BP to be a very strong ability too made sense.

@kindnivore I'm going to update this thread whenever I find something I think is worthwhile. So maybe just check back here from time to time.

@rorie You're not playing XCOM 2? What are you doing with your life man? Either way, I just updated this with more mods I like. Check it out after you finished the game once or something.

Hey, nice list of mods, I'm using most of these myself. Here's a couple of mods that fix bugs.

Here's one that stops your grenadiers setting themselves on fire:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=627325499

and here's another that fixes the Hazmat vest (so that it actually protects from acid):
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=623629830

This on isn't a bug, but I'm of the opinion that grenades are way to good. Here's a mod that adds damage falloff to explosives:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626050983

Nice edit suggestions. I'll also throw in True Concealment and Free Camera Rotation as mods that I'm really enjoying.

Awesome, love posts like this. Here are some mods I've played around with a little bit:

Tech Tree: "This mod adds a Tech Tree button located at the bottom left of the game window that displays a detailed, yet compact technology tree diagram. The width of the diagram fits within the game window and needs only be scrolled up and down with the mouse wheel or scroll bar. The button both shows and hides the diagram and is available from any screen except tactical combat."

Experimental Item Unlock: Once you've discovered/unlocked an item in the Proving Grounds it can be built on demand in Engineering.

Numeric Health Display: This changes the health, armor, and shields of enemies so that they're displayed numerically instead of the standard bar format.

Oh, also heads up, there's a technical issue affecting mods at the moment. They take up way more memory than they should, so loading a bunch of mods at once could adversely affect performance. As far as I understand it the modders can update their mods to fix the issue, but it is something to be aware of. Here's a reddit thread talking about the problem.

Okay, I'm installing this tonight.

Also thanks for the awesome writeup even if the other suggestions are all inferior to the Armstrong voice pack!

I strongly recommend the sombrero mod for obvious reasons. Having Duke Nukem and Arnold Schwartznegger voices is pretty great too. It's extra silly and that's what I want.

@supermulletman: this helped me a ton, i re-downloaded my voice mods and now get decent memory usage. I still have 4 cosmetic mods that need to fix this glitch though, im getting about 2-3.5gb ram usage now down from 4-6gb

Thanks for sharing what you've found, duders!

You missed a great one the Evac all mod, so instead of having to evac each squadmate individually it is just 1 button.

You can download the first ever mod I published here. It's a simple mod that rebalances swords to be more in line with shotguns while reinforcing the lone wolf role of the Ranger when using a sword.

Will have to come back to this thread once I get Xcom 2. Nice write up.