General

Q: Can i use something from your mod in my own?
A: I do not care about that sort of thing at all. Feel free to use, re-use, change, upload anything from my mods to your hearts content. Of course, i can not speak for the parts in my mods that i took from other modders myself.

Q: Can i make mod requests or requests for certain features in one of your mods?
A: I do not take requests, i am however very open to suggestions. I will usually only make mods that i plan on using myself, though. So if i don't think that your particular idea is something that i want to use myself, then chances are slim.

Q: Will you upload your mod(s) to Nexus, Dropbox or other third party sites?
A: No. If you own a legitimate version of XCOM2, there is little to no reason for you to not use the Workshop. I don't see why i should spend time and effort just to enable software thieves. However, as noted before, i don't really care if someone else uploads my stuff on those third party sites. But then you should get your tech support from there as well, as i will put you on my ignore list if i notice your lack of a legitimate copy.

Q: Is there a recommended setup for running your mods?
A: Yes, there's a Steam collection here: Click. That mod collection is what i consider to be the core modlist if you want to play with the full set of "A Better X" mods. Add cosmetics and QoL mods to your own taste.

Troubleshooting

I am happy to help you with any problems you may have as a result of my mods. However, there hasn't been a legitimate case of crashes with my mods in months (EDIT: actually it's been almost 2 years (EDITEDIT: 4 years) without a legit crash on any of my mods now), so here are the steps i expect you to go through first:

1 - Clear out your ini files. Link to intructions HERE
Check if the problem persists after restarting the game once you did that. THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT STEP YOU CAN DO, it has proven to fix like 80% of strange modrelated issues. Do this routinely whenever you significantly change your modlist to prevent running into issues in the first place!

2 - Check your log files. Logfiles are located in:
\Documents\my games\XCOM2 War of the Chosen\XComGame\Logs
The game posts logs for every crash in there. Check the most recent one in a text editor, especially look at the end, near the actual crash. Maybe that gives you a hint to what the issue is.

3 - If you want to ask me about a crash, give me a reason why you even believe that one of my mods could be responsible. Give me details. "My game crashed yesterday, why did it?" is not a question i can possibly answer. Uploading the log somewhere is definetely super helpful here.

Known Issues - Gameplay relevant


Known Issues - Visual only

ABA:
- Boa strangle animations are off, the snake and the soldier do not overlap their seperate animations properly. This issue is visual only, everything works correctly otherwise.
- (DLC) The Cryolator ice weapon still shows some ground fire effects when used. Visual only.
- (DLC) The Titan does not show his secondary axe on his back. Visual only.
- (DLC) The Spark is lacking an idle animation. When patrolling, he will appear to walk and shutdown at the end of his turn. Visual only.

ABB:
- There is still some placeholder artwork in the mod, re-used from other perks or items. Longterm these are bound to disappear, but it very much is a work in progress.

ABM:
- The throw animation for plasma grenades doesn't display correctly.

A Better ADVENT: WotC

Q: How do i know that ABA is enabled correctly?
A: Two answers here:
Without running A Better Campaign: All the new enemies introduced by ABA are added to the random pool of enemies. So you could possibly get no Trooper variants in the early missions. Although that is highly unlikely, that happened before. The first almost 100% appearance of a new enemy type is the Sectoid Soldier on the first retaliation mission. If your first retal has no ABA enemies on it, something is certainly wrong.
With running A Better Campaign: ABC puts custom enemies on Gatecrasher. If you are not seeing a Gunslinger, Heavy and a Drone on Gatecrasher, something's wrong.

Q: How is the compatibility of ABA with other mods?
A: ABA is built to be as compatible as possible with as few requirements as necessary. That means, this mod will never require one of the DLC and it is compatible with pretty much every other mod out there. The AI part of ABA needs to not be overwritten by another mod, so if you do want to run another AI mod, have it earlier in the load order than ABA. I highly suggest not running other AI mods. As for other enemies, that shouldn't be a problem at all. Note though, that enemies that are from one mod are likely not going to appear as followers to enemies from another mod, making them unlikely to spawn together in one pod.

Q: Do i need to start a new campaign after subbing to ABA?
A: You don't, you can add ABA mid-campaign without any issues at all. It might take a mission or two for the enemies to show up if the strategic map already generated missions without the ABA enemies, though. Note that the reverse isn't true: You can not unsub from ABA mid-campaign, once the game has added the enemies to the missions on the map, there's no going back.

Q: Does ABA change rulers?
A: It doesn't.

Q: Does ABA change the Chosen?
A: Only very minimal changes were made to the Chosen, they are mostly left intact so that ABA stays compatible with other mods that deal with the Chosen. If you want only subtle changes to the Chosen, then i have this mod for you. If you want to make the Chosen more dangerous, there are other mods around on the Workshop that you can use instead.

Q: Does ABA change the Lost?
A: Aside from the new Lost Boomer unit now being a thing that exists, the vanilla Dasher enemies can now climb walls to get to your guys on roofs.

Q: What is the difficulty like?
A: Most enemy variants are an upgrade to the vanilla versions. This together with the AI improvements makes the game significantly harder than the vanilla game. Also, the difficulty doesn't fall off as much in the end game, there's even a little upwards spike when the "Prime" enemies are introduced. I suggest starting a difficulty step lower than what you are used to.

Q: What are the "Primes"?
A: The Prime enemies are ABA's solution to the stale endgame of vanilla XCOM2. A Prime gets an immediate bonus action whenever it is damaged, no matter the source. This, among other things, entices the player to make his shots count, not rely on Overwatch all the time and think about his AoE effects. There is at least one Prime version of every alien base unit.

Q: Does ABA:WotC make changes to pod size or count?
A: No, unlike with old versions of ABA that is not the case. For pod size increase, look at my "A Better Campaign PLUS" mod.

Q: Can i disable single enemies from your mod?
A: Not in a convenient way. What you have to do is reduce their spawnweight to zero in the appropriate EncounterLists.ini. Enemies will likely have multiple entries in their ini file. Note that, as with all ini edits, your changes will be overwritten whenever i update, so keep backups of your edited files around.

A Better Barracks

Q: What are concerns regarding compatibility?
A: ABB extensively changes how the weapons, classes and items work. Loot tables are edited a lot. As a general rule of thumb, i suggest staying away from any other mods that add classes or large numbers of items, especially when they are added to the loot tables. While class mods will likely work on a technical level, the difference between how ABB classes and vanilla style classes rank up is noticable and the changes to primary weapons might have unintended consequences for the classes of other mods.
To name a few mods that are often asked about:
These work without issues: Augmentations, MEC Troopers
These don't: Grimy's Loot, LW2 Lasers and/or Coils

Q: Can i sub mid-campaign?
A: That is very, very discouraged. The sheer number of changes to things on the strat layer are pretty much guaranteed to have unintended side effects.

Q: Can the psi system be disabled?
A: Tygan will offer two instant speed research options right from the start, one to confirm the use of ABB psi and one to use vanilla psi instead. If you use the vanilla psi option, this will put the mod into a state where you can use other psi overhauls instead. Note that once you chose one of these options, the choice will be fused to your savegame and can not be reverted.

A Better Campaign

Q: What are concerns regarding compatibility?
A: ABC is fairly lightweight and focused in what it does, so unless you run other mods that change pod size, pod count or pod composition, you should be fine.

Q: What is the difference between ABC and ABC PLUS?
A: The PLUS includes pod size increases while the non-PLUS version doesn't. Run the non-PLUS version if you want to play with vanilla squad sizes. If you use the PLUS version, i suggest giving yourself an extra 2 soldiers, for example with the Squad Select mod.

A Better AI

Q: What are concerns regarding compatibility?
A: ABAI is limited to changes in a single ini file, so it will be compatible with everything that doesn't touch the AI.ini. It is compatible with other AI mods as well, at least there likely won't be any crashes. The AI mod you subscribed to last will get to push through its changes when you have multiples.

Q: Does ABAI change the Chosen AI?
A: It doesn't, at least not significantly. Feel free to use one of the existing Chosen AI mods from the Workshop in addition to ABAI. If you want only subtle changes to the Chosen, then i have this mod for you.

Q: Do the changes to AI apply to custom enemies?
A: That depends heavily on the enemy. If they got completely new and custom AI trees, then ABAI will likely do only little there. If they mostly use an AI that is built from vanilla pieces, then ABAI will apply its changes to those as well. The global parameters will apply in any case.

A Better Militia

Q: What are concerns regarding compatibility?
A: ABM edits the militia pods on retal missions. To create a conflict, another mod would have to overwrite those same pods, something that isn't really a common thing. The AI changes are selfcontained and unlikely to conflict with anything as well.

Q: How do the militia soldiers progress through tiers?
A: Like in vanilla, there is no special mechanic behind it, time is all that is needed for better militia guys to appear on missions. Unlike in vanilla, this is not a hard break, though. You will generally see a mix of different resistance fighters, with tier 2 and 3 soldiers getting more common as the campaign continues.