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Sectiplave

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Everything posted by Sectiplave

  1. I haven't been able to replicate the situation you describe in my three campaigns of 0.99.X. Past the first 3 weeks of the campaign I have always had more Alloys and funding than I could spend without trying to push for 4+ bases in the first month. So I have to disagree with this and state that the current resource balance is still too easy. My game play feedback based on what you describe and what I know of the mod so far, is that it sounds like the issues you describe stem from low performance in the air game and/or insufficient global detection of UFO's combined with interception abilities. I agree that the air-game is extremely punishing! There is also an expectation that turn based strategy game players will engage in trial and error testing to solve the situations the game throws at them with the tools they have available, this pushes the player to learn the mechanics and test the tools on hand. In my experience with early air game, you are definitely going to get aircraft shot down, this is the expectation, you also will need to completely ignore the auto-resolve button, as manual interception will always net better results. My recommendation is to as fast as possible setup 7 hangars in your first base, and employ 3 interceptor type craft; Cannons and/or Normal hard points and 3 bomber craft the ones with heavy hardpoints. This template should then be replicated as the minimum across each new base you construct. Research and manufacture should put priority on aircraft weapons, once you have aircraft weapons appropriate to the Phase of the game, your combats can be won much easier. Give this approach a try and see how things pan out, you can win many air combats simply via brute force with this method as once you have 3+ bases ready you can send multiple waves of fighters or bombers. There is currently no financial or resource penalty if your craft get shot down, so you will have to accept that your craft will get shot down and may not be ready for the next UFO wave. Yeah the vehicle balance will be really nice, it's currently optimal to pilot your vehicle right next to enemies and then one shot them. This is especially amazing with the mech walkers, I was one shotting my way through the Alien Fortress so yeah maybe some more balance down the line.
  2. @drages "This 4 things will change this mods future." These are all significant game play improvements for the player Also it will fix the biggest battlescape exploit I know of in X-Division; where you can block hallways with your vehicles on Base assaults, making melee aliens invalid. I am really looking forward to this one!
  3. Cool, then yes my feedback is that Normal difficulty economy is definitely too easy, I never struggled with funding and I was far from being optimal in my play style. Yeah I am definitely spoiled now, I tried to play XCOM2 again and I found the game just didn't capture my attention. The only thing that could get me into XCOM2 would be if the Long War team made Long War 2.
  4. Yeah I intentionally didn't shoot the Praetor, just threw about 8 adv. stun grenades and 5 shock grenades until he passed out. I knew something was wrong immediately as he didn't show up in the list of things sent to Research, so I checked what happened to the Praetor and it didn't say corpse, just gave me the $1,000. It maybe related to starting this play through in 0.99.2 and patching to 0.99.3 when I was already in Phase II. I'm thinking once the next patch rolls around I might start a new play through. I've run into another bug at the moment, where I've been using the manual work around on 0 CD bug on terror and base attacks, but now they aren't showing up at all. Also one other thing that would be useful, is the Sebillian and Caesan advanced profiles, it lists Operator Medium base Operator Cruiser, then it lists Operator Terror3, Operator Assault3 and one other one that is similar, it'd be real helpful to list something a bit more specific about where they can be found.
  5. I was able to beat the Praetor via stun grenade spam, I'm also in the middle of Phase 3 using Mk.3 Pulse & Mk.2 Gauss weapons along with the OP Spiritwolf mech, it does soo much damage it's crazy! It can one shot Alien Fortress Queen Xeno. BUG#2, capturing the Praetor alive didn't give me any research option, just gave me $1,000 for the live subject. I assume capturing one alive should lead to a research? @sfarrelly Here are my thoughts, my current play through I'm mid Phase 3 (May 1980) my top soldiers have been on over 90 missions, I'm playing on Normal and I am not using Easy Airgame mod as this mod imbalances the whole game heavily in favour of the player. 1. It's currently not worth it to capture specialists when you have already researched them, you can sell their guns for $5,000+ so the current bonus of $1,000 isn't enough incentive, especially considering you are spending $100/$250 per stun/shock grenade thrown at them, when bullets are free. 2. Weapon sell prices for Phase 1 are in a good place, you can make some bonus cash early on, however you sacrifice your potential cores when it comes time to make Mk.2 or Mk.3 weapons so it does present a valid choice to the player. In my experience Phase 2 weapon prices are irrelevant as you can make more than enough money selling downed Alien fighters and excess ship cores. 3. If you sell everything minus the data core I think the value should be close to what you would earn from air-striking the crash site, the incentive especially in X-Division from sending troops to the crash site is capturing alien specialists alive and taking their technology to gain more weapon cores and researches. 4. I would say yes, as non specialists are in my experience harder to stun a lot of the time. However this might need to be balanced with weapon sell prices as you could easily earn too much money from selling all guns and capturing enemies alive. 5. Lots of grenades that after you research one they have no further use. Balance idea = each phase you can mass manufacture Alienium / Plasma grenades but the advanced versions require an alien grenade from that phase to manufacture etc. 6. During the phase transition from 1 to 2 you can run out of alien stun grenades and not yet have shock grenades unlocked, this was a bit of a problem until I was able to research phase 2 stun grenades. Economy balance thoughts; I sent Charon a copy of my save file at the 200 days mark, from memory I had almost 13 million dollars spare and I was running 4 fully equipped bases, my main base had absolutely plenty of supplies, lots of spare alien fighters, heaps of guns, over 1000 alloys and 500 Alenium and I hadn't performed DSB on any alien reactors etc. my thoughts are that the economy is currently far too generous both with starting money and how easily you can make money. If you can perform to an average level in the Air game, the unlimited country funding also leads to you making more money than your bases require in upkeep. During the game I've been able to keep my funding about one million dollars ahead of my upkeep. Suggestions; Reduce starting funds, give the player enough to setup three mid-sized bases before they have depleted all starting funds, this forces the player to make decisions about building up supplies for Mk.3 weapons or selling them to push for base growth or more bases. Set a limit on the funding provided by countries, obviously this needs to be higher than Vanilla due to the maintenance costs on Phase 3 and 4 aircraft being very high. This forces the player to cover more of the globe, and stop the possible exploiting of unlimited funding. Reduction in sale value of downed alien fighters, datacores and base cores. You can build up excess funds at the end of Phase 1 / start of phase 2 by assaulting alien Outposts before they can upgrade to a Base / Fortress and selling the basecore. Increase in manufacture prices of early game equipment, vehicles and aircraft, many of these vehicles / aircraft have cheaper manufacture costs than monthly upkeep costs. My suggestions come from looking at difficulty of this mod comparatively to XCOM Long War, in which playing on Normal difficulty is very very difficult but gives you a decent chance of winning. Then once you know the whole mod well, you can try it on Insane for a challenge that you only have a ~50% chance of winning if you know all mechanics, and use optimal tactics. This is an assumption on my behalf, what sort of difficulty are you guys looking for in this mod? Is Normal balanced around players who have come from Veteran Ironman XCE? That's where I came from myself.
  6. Confirmed this, any reaction fire from a Praetor gives the issue where the game tiles are still animated but the game is otherwise frozen.
  7. This was driving me nuts from my previous post: After digging through researches.xml I have all researches complete to unlock the Shrike since Phase 2, however it never popped up. All the case sensitivity looks correct so dunno whats causing this bug. Save file attached. Dropship upgrade Phase 3 (March 1980) and still using default dropship is rather painful. Make unlock easier? By this stage player has unlocked 7+ fast new fighters but no new dropshop? I have directional thrusters researched X-Division 3.sav
  8. Yes I have found the same issue as Larry, Mag machinegun cannot be equipped on Defender or Saviour. No issues with the Pulse machinegun. If you get Sebillians for your first terror mission that is in my opinion the toughest race for your first terror site, I lost my first playthrough for similar issue. The Reaper+Zombie rush over whelmed and killed my whole starting squad You can have stun grenades by first terror site if your prioritize Caesan Medic, I lost a starting soldier to ensure I had this ready on my third play through as you mention, stun gas is very important. Otherwise suppressing an enemy with stun grenades or LMG's or whatever halfs their TU's for the following turn. This doesn't work on melee units.
  9. The batons are a viable stun method in Phase 1, however they require support to be used without sacrificing your troops. My tactic is to suppress the Sebillian, and run upto them with two shield troops with batons, the Sebillian will stay crouched and fire a single volley at the shield troopers if you suppress it each round (LMG / Shotgun can easily suppress) Once your shield + baton troops are in melee range, I've not seen a Phase 1 sebillian survive beyond 2 rounds of melee combat, if you are unlucky your shield may have broken and you will have a wounded soldier, but this is just the price of taking the enemy alive.... good luck Commander! Once you reach shock technology it's honestly a little bit too easy to just spam shock grenades / explosives to stun enemies. The early game should be a good indicator of how difficult the game is going to be otherwise some of the later Phases players will simply rage quit
  10. Whoops! I forgot to add that, The weapon was Mag-Storm Mk3 Ahhh yes, I was playing really late last night and I was soo sure there was another ship that I was missing a DSB for I really need the parts from these DSB's to get a Phase 3 air fleet running, so I might take a small break until the next patch rolls around.
  11. Well I think I've almost put 60 hours into just X-Division now and have doubled my Xenonauts total play time! I'm currently in the middle of Phase 3 and really getting my ass kicked in the air game! It's tough but not impossible, slowly making progress Here is a list of bugs I've noted while playing 0.99.3; BUGS Light Cruiser, Cruiser etc. Top floor doesn't become transperant, landed or crashed versions both have same issue. Enchanted shield blank X-pedia page, shields are buggy in game, sometimes shows 0 durability left at mission start Mag Mini-gun (soldier version) blank X-pedia page Ballistic minigun Research and manufacture showing as ##### predator armor No firing animation while standing, soldier shows standing pose when shooting. Caesan weapon Officer Unable to capture, checked Xpedia not listed, when stunned results screen just gives $1000 Caesan weapon sergeant wrong color shown in xpedia. Alien Dark Weapon Manuf. All Dark weapon DSB are found under Basic tab instead of appropriate Phase Caesan Assault Psion Doesn't appear in Phase 2 or in Alien Base, or Phase 3, ships still come with regular Psion. Assault shield Same issues as Enchanted shield, sometimes shows 0/270 at mission start. Wraith Soldier In victory screen, when captured alive shows ....... ##### Alien Dark Heavy No image in Xpedia Phase 3 Missile Corvette No datacore, so no DSB earned from this ship type. Major! BALANCE Laser Pistol Mk.1 Reload TU cost = 50, TU cost feels too high for the weapon capacity Dropship upgrade Phase 3 (March 1980) and still using default dropship is rather painful. Make unlock easier? By this stage player has unlocked 7+ fast new fighters but no new dropshop? I have directional thrusters researched. These are quick notes I made while playing the game, if they don't make sense, just ask me to explain it better. Also I PM'ed Charon my 200 day save file to review my stores, it would have required something like 5+ screenshots to list.
  12. It's possible the download didn't complete or was corrupted, it should contain the X-division mod folder and something stupid like 80K files, it gives WinRAR a good work out Like Lament said, go to the first page and start from step #1 again, it really does cover everything.
  13. I experienced this bug myself when I installed XCE (via Steam) just 3-4 weeks ago, I wanted to delete the (FR) versions of mods from the mod loader, many of them deleted fine, but as I was getting to the last ones the mod loader froze for about 10 seconds and then closed, when I opened the mod loader again it was empty. Going to my mods folder, all mods had been deleted. I re-installed the steam community edition branch again, attempted to do the same thing and got the same result, it didn't freeze on the same mod, so it is an intermittent fault. I've never played with the mod loader prior to XCE so unsure if it's specific to XCE sorry.
  14. Hahaha no that's good to read! Your explanation makes complete sense, I was under the wrong assumption that you and Charon had both started this mod as a joint project. I was thinking today, after playing as much X-Division as I have, I don't think I could go back to Vanilla Xenonauts it would feel too easy / simple. I see this new race in your avatar, just based on appearence I am assuming they are going to be very difficult! BUG v.0.99.3: Predator armor and Mag weapons, there is no shooting animation, looks like the soldier is standing still and their bullets appear from no-where, this is Predator Armor + Mag Storm Mk3 doesn't matter what direction the soldier is facing also.
  15. Been catching up on these and I've learned a few more tricks on how to improvement my air engagements I'm only a few weeks away from Phase 3 things showing up so I'm sure I'll have some questions on how to deal with this. Assaulted an Alien Outpost last night and was very pleased to see it was all Phase 1 units, for once my team felt like they were on the winning side using Phase 2 armor and weapons and gunning down anything that came to fight them. On that note, alien base AI is hyper aggressive, it seems easily the most optimal choice is to defend the spawn location until no more aliens arrive, then you just need to wipe out the command room.
  16. Just on the subject of Charon's Changes, this is just a general comment from someone who does project management. As a team you should both work together on how you want the game to play. It makes it look like you don't have a shared vision on how this mod should play. I don't say this as a negative i comment, just my observation from an outside point of view. I really love the work you guys have done on this mod, I've already doubled my Xenonauts total playtime and I'm not even at Phase 3! In an ideal world when you start a new game it could be a check box to enable or disable features (like easy air game, Charons ground game etc.) that either make the mod harder or easier (again I'm just stealing ideas from XCOM Long War), but I'm not sure if Xenonauts can handle something like that. BUG: I've not been able to research Casesan Weapon Officer, it just gives me $1000 when I stun one. I have checked Xpedia and I have not interrogated the weapon officer, only the weapon sergeant.
  17. Depends how far you are through the game, but trust me, the aliens will use this in reverse when you need to assault larger UFO's and they have 5+ units standing in the control room with full reaction fire TU's to spend It is something Charon and Drages are working on currently, so it'll probably change back to playing peek a boo with the aliens eventually. I personally really like the Xenomorphs, I can understand your point of view though, it can be a bit strange to see a completely different IP turn up in this mod. From a gameplay stand point the Caesans certainly need some form of melee unit to assist them, it'd be a bit boring to see reapers again. The learning curve can be brutal at times but I actually enjoy the new air game difficulty, tackling the large escorted ships is fun now.
  18. How! I tried the Fortress mission in Phase 2 and I got completely wiped out, first turn I swear at least 7 xenomorphs walked into the starting room
  19. Yeah that's good or the ground combat can become boring. The only bad thing is RNG can be really harsh, in my current play through I'm nearing end of Phase 2 and I haven't been able to develop laser technology due to most crash sites I can make it to rolling Sebillian. And then when I get Caesan the weapons officer has died in the crash bad luck is really gimping my weapon choices as you really need to develop both main weapon lines.
  20. @blackwolf They already greatly increased the med pack weight, it's already very difficult for new soldiers to hold a gun and medkit with any phase 2 armors, increasing medkit even further would be good if there was some incentive to have a medic class, but I'd say increasing the weight without balancing the items and making a need for this role would be a PITA for trying to setup newbie soldiers when you are in phase 2.
  21. I've played A LOT of X-Division over the weekend, I'll post up the things I found when I get home and can look at my note pad. One thing I do remember is the oddity of shields, I run two shield soldiers at all times, first soldier Enchanted shield shows 150/150 on equip screen, second soldier shows 0/150 on equip screen. Both soldiers have 150/150 when inside the battlescape though. And yeah like Lament said, it's really annoying to deploy your troops to see one of them missing a shield, is it possible to make them require manufacture but not be consumed at the end of the mission? You don't get any pop up like in original XCOM where it would say "insufficient equipment to rearm soldiers" when you got back from a mission and were missing items to resupply the default load outs. BUG?: attempted to attack an Alien Fortress with Phase 2 equipment.... I play Bronzeman myself (self limited loading from old save when things get glitchy or I mistake move my soldiers) but in this case I reloaded the auto save and aborted the mission. I packed some thunder weapons and high level corpses in my backpacks but none of these came with me, does this not work in Xenonauts?
  22. @Charon I am physically writing down which aliens I need to interrogate as there are many to keep track of. My idea would be to add a nice big green X-Division X next to each alien you have captured. The only limitation is the Operator, since you need one from each ship type. Operators are the main reason I need to write it down and keep referring to the X-Pedia to see which ship & race operators I need to capture. Also in regards to the 200 days, I'd recommend obtaining info about Easy Air Game enabled or not. With this enabled in my previous play through, I was able to shoot down 100% of detected UFO's apart from the Terror Ship, my item stock pile was a bit higher than my new play through without Easy Air Game, as you need to live with mistakes and damaged ships. IDEA: Is it possible to make Xenomorphs do chemical damage to all adjacent tiles when they die? To replicate the high pressure acidic blood? It feels wrong that my troops can shoot them point blank without any fear.
  23. X-Division is beautiful, simply beautiful! The attached picture is the result of my first ground terror mission. I've never had such an epic battle playing regular Xenonauts! The increased civilian numbers really bring the battlefield to life, I was actually saved twice by heroic soldiers reaction firing down Reapers before they could infect my troops. I played for a long time last night and I'm now in mid November and dealing with a lot of Aerial Terror Sites, my air fleets are being put to the test.
  24. On my last Ironman Veteran playthrough I have less than $1,000 to spare. I rush to expand bases as fast as possible, the main thing is making sure your income stays above your upkeep, you cannot run with no money if you aren't going to earn some in the next monthly review.
  25. Awesome a new patch! I've started a new play through on v.0.99.2 to make two changes, first change I uninstalled Easy Air Game! It really feels like cheating as you can auto resolve 90% of your fights and take 0 damage to your aircraft as well as having ammo to spare. I decided it was time to properly learn the new air game, and I must say I am really enjoying it so far, it is tough but rewarding when you win! I also changed from playing on Easy to playing on Normal, the game is much more engaging to play now as I need to plan my aircraft and ground combat more precisely. On Easy it looks like aliens have only half their regular HP so it was making capturing live aliens too easy. @Charon Yes the Dev Diaries are helpful, they gave me a good starting point for how to adapt to the new air game combat and what sort of aircraft I should be using and for what purposes. Also interesting to see the ground game looking tough on Veteran due to the increased numbers of enemies, I haven't been able to watch them all as of yet, but I'm sure I'll pick up a few more tricks along the way. I also didn't realize you can use alien stun grenades! because the image is missing in the grenade selection I assumed it didn't work. P.S LOL family guy base names BUG#1: I noticed this on 0.9.11 and all other patches, when a Xenomorph Drone melee attacks my soldiers, no damage numbers appear above my soldiers heads to indicate how much damage was done by the Drones attack, when I select the soldier in my turn I can see that they have taken damage. BUG#2: This is most common in UFO breaches, imagine I have a row of 4 soldiers shoulder to shoulder with a row of 4 soldiers standing behind them. The front row soldier has a LMG and is shooting a UFO door open, sometimes this will cause a soldier standing behind him to become suppressed by this fire. Dunno if this is just part of the game but I don't remember this from XCE play throughs. @sfarrelly Nice work, it is really helpful to have those research comments so we can get a feel of what we might gain from the Researches. I should be doing more to help with this stuff
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