Dion-Zeromus

Yeah, but that was short-range refueling. Long-range refueling like we have today needed a lot bigger aircraft than we could put out in the 50's. The C-130 was used as a test bed for it, but it just couldn't carry enough fuel for both itself on extended flights as needed and still fuel other aircraft. Considering the nature of how things are in Xenonauts, either we got a lot of support bases scattered around with the purpose of providing short-range refueling options for Charlies to get along the way, or we have a few long-range refuel aircraft dipping low enough to allow the Charlies to fuel on the go without having to risk ground-effect

Aerial Refueling was a concept just starting to be tested out in the mid-70's, so the idea of the Xenonauts having rushed out methods to improve the process for the pre-Shrike transport era is entirely plausible. Still means those pilots are gonna be dead tired because them Chinooks have ZERO creature comforts. Sleeping in 'em would be a right bitch, and you NEED both pilot and co to fly the sucker just the way it's built.

Anyone else have an issue getting MAG tech to proc on the research screen? I did some digging around in the research.xml file to see if there might have been a tech I missed... Saw I didn't, so I went and activated a couple of the debug tools to let me 'spawn' extras in the idea of maybe having missed one from my Scimitar's Plasma Bolt firing upon enemies, ticking 1 of each Alien tech (I'd checked, I'd gotten all of the technologies BUT the MAG weapons) and still no luck. So at this point, not sure if there's a flag not properly triggering or did one of the alien plasma weapon techs fail to be reach properly?

So happy to finally be off Desura odd install system. Question, how does one opt to enter the experimental builds via Steam?

Thermal Cameras. Your looking at the heat of those rings boys and girls, and boy are they HOT. I've not seen any thermal image shown to have that drastic a change between heat ranges. But still, it's definitely a step in teh right direction to get us off this rock we call Earth.

After almost a half dozen caught UFOs into air combat, I encountered my first three-bird wing of enemy aircraft. Engagement went poorly for my 2 aircraft [1 Mig-32 with 4 Sidewinders | 1 F-17 with standard load]. Upon combat end, game glitched, putting the air engagement overlay upon the geoscape at the same time trying to start the geoscape, resulting in a crash.

Hmmm, I'm looking, and those names seem AWFULLY familiar... but the ranks are just all wrong. It's throwing me off! I mean, wasn't Hicks a Corporal in the USCMC, not a Commander in the Xenonauts?

Win 7 64-bit 1600x900 VLC installed, no issues with launcher animation. Note: While launcher is running, Winamp (v5.63 Pro) did have the occasional issue of having it's standard texture (Bento regular) flicker in and out. Pretty sure not something to worry, just thought I'd see if anyone else has had this happen.

@Imperialus: US Air Force adopted same rifles the US Army was at "roughly" the same time. Army went to M16 (I'm talking the ORIGINAL models as originally issued 1969, none of the updates), Air Force stayed with the M14. When the Army went to M16A1 (which was created DURING Vietnam to fix a lot of the problems the M16 had in Vietnam), the Air Force went to the M16A1. When the M16A2 came out, the Air Force followed the bandwagon onto it. Everyone in the USAF trains on the M16A2 Assault Rifle. If you were to go Security Forces in the Air Force, then you'd train on the M4A1 Assault Carbine. M16A2 is only Semi-Auto or Three-Round Burst. The designation 'A#' is indicative of an updated/altered pattern of the same weapon. M16 had a duck-bill flash suppressor, 'smooth' carry handle with hard to adjust rear iron sight, and was originally only designed to operate with a 20 round STAGNAG magazine, and didn't have a chromed barrel interor (the cause of most of the jams encountered during combat in Vietnam since the barrel interiors were corroding from the humidity). The M16A1 made the sights easier to adjust, the flash suppressor became the more traditional full covering, the barrel was chromed and had a better magazine well lock was implemented to hold 30 round STAGNAG clips. I know this because I qualified an Expert by the USAF on the M16A2 rifle during basic, and we got to watch Security Forces march from and to their barracks with M4A1s.

Will, having trained in military hangers, the AGE (Aerial Ground Equipment for non-Crew Chiefs) there, though obviously the 1970's styling of the equipment, I can easily tell what's what and the like. Huzzah on you. As to the comments about the Workshop showing 'starting' equipment, it actually makes a bit of sense, due to the fact you still have to maintain all that equipment. Weapons need cleaning, vehicles need tuning and repairs, and where better to show that, than the workshop? The sandbags do feel a little off, especially the number of them plus the neatness of them. If you've got time (say an hour, two), yeah you can get that many to look that neat and tidy. When you've got 30 minutes or less? You'll be lucky to at the least have them in place, screw tidy! Your rushing to put something between you and those bullets coming in!

Good to see another pre-beta patch go out. Personally am ready to see the monster of an update awaiting us when Beta DOES drop. Gonna prove interesting since we'll actually have our first full taste of the game... Anyone else thinking about a Xenonaught Combatant BBQ to celebrate when Beta launches?

I think the new tilesets may be trying to load badly, I had a UFO crash early game over the Sahara, which likely would have resulted in a desert tileset, and it crashed during the loading screen for the ground combat, prior to the briefing. Anyone else get this to happen? I tried three sessions, and each time it landed in a region that wouldn't be grassy, it crashed utterly.

Question... got an english version of the page, for those of us who don't trust google translate to properly detect languages?

Last build, I also noticed that enemy craft seemed to uncannily be able ot outrun anything I sent after them, and when I could catch 'em, I lost entire wings of aircraft to them (2 F-17s and 1 Mig-32) and it was really hurting my account because A) I was having to replace aircraft after every sortie and B) I couldn't bring down a scout at all to get access to one of their engines to continue on the tech tree. I was for all intents and purposes SOL and I had only done a single month of operations (And this was on the Easy difficulty). XCom was vicious to players yes, but it was a steady ramping up of the viciousness that made sense - The longer XCOM was in operation, the hardier the enemy was gonna get because they were getting tired of XCOM showing up. Xenonauts just crushes you with the first two alien craft types early game when your still trying to get your feet under you.

USAFR A1C [seperated] Crew Chief trained on C-130 airframes.

Thanks Gor for that help. As for why I'm willing to suffer through Desura, well, I'm enjoying the latest builds of the game (when I remember to update) and seeing how the game is unfolding into better and bigger scope of game.

BTW, Gor, how de frick do I get my preorder status shown? I got the premium preorder, but I can't figure out how to display it. As for the zip, I went with the service they put forward for Xenonauts when I made my purchase. I'm just hoping to get mine through steam since a majority of my games now run through Valve's service.

On the subject of getting Xenonauts onto Steam, any idea when we can hope/expect to see that occur? Don't get me wrong, I have no qualms about Desura, but in order to play a number of my games now, I have to have several different 'PC Game Management' services. Origin, UPlay, Steam, Windows Live... Having Desura purely to let me play Xenonauts is more program than I'm personally wanting to have clog up my laptop's limited HDD space.

Reaction fire is a script yes, but it's a script which triggers onto the AI to act. As for hidden movement, it would not, but it's triggers would occur during the hidden movement phase because your enemy's do not move during your turn.

@Gorlom: If they have no AI, then explain reactionary fire. That's a very basic AI program code that would be used by all units on the map.

Okay, tried the work around. Worked for one mission, but still locked up on the third crash mission in HM. I'd removed the civilian AI, which according to the work around was the heart of the problem, with no luck. Could it possibly be something in the overall AI coding? I might try a run with no infantry in my Chinook, just the UCGV, see if that works. If it still crashes, then we're looking at either enemy AI issues, or maybe the AI running overall in the ground combat if it still crashes with only 2 units on the ground, my UCGV and the enemy.

Having only just picked up the game, and knowing it was still alpha build, I was expecting game ending bugs and halts. I'll try your workaround, though I'm gonna hafta find where the game go dropped onto my computer so I can work on it.