Sleet01

Hey, all, super late to the party but I'm very excited to hear that Xenonauts 2 is in the works! Re: making air combat more "tactical", have you considered a turn-based maneuver system a la Steambirds or X-wing? Each fighter could have a different set of maneuvers available to it, depending on how its loadout or role. I feel like this would be a nice compromise between the frantic action and high granularity of the X1 air combat interface, and just axing the interception game completely. Looking forward to X2!

This... this was info I needed three months ago

I was struck last night by the thought that I'd like to see "civvies" able to pick up alien weapons from downed invaders, a la (iirc) Syndicate. It would be great if soldiers and cops, at least, had a chance to swap their ballistic weapons for plasmas if they saw a dead alien and, say, had a high enough morale. But that would probably make crash missions a little too easy.

AKA "Red Squadron, Gold Squadron" tactics

Awww, there goes my perfect record of shotgunning Reapers this last game I'm really loving 1.07 and on. Great work!

I can unfortunately confirm that this bug remains in v1.08. It appears that the game will allow you target friendlies or enemies that are beneath one layer of terrain, but not two. I'm trying out the various squares around the affect friendly (in this case, a jughead who hit himself with his own stun grenade) to see if I can find one that magically allows me to target him, but I'm afraid he's going to take a really long nap.

In the original X-Com, you could have your guys carry their fallen / passed-out comrades back to the plane for extraction if things went south. We should bring that back for civvies: if you carry one back to the plane you can make them into a cyborg super-soldier or something!

I'd like to see this added to the game, along with the "civvy-hearding" option a few people suggested way back when. Maybe even a pop-up at the end of a mission where an NPC can ask to be allowed to join up (based on random chance / their morale at the end of the mission / how many aliens they killled ).

Bet Yeager Female, Blond, Caucasian, short hair. Any class, with the max available armor at any time. Start with one held and one stored shield, and a pistol or grenades. Should she survive long enough, Bet Yeager gets power armor and energy weapons.

I started playing Ironman because it was recommended for RC build testing, but no more. With the bugs, UI issues, and occasionally just completely effed-up misses - guys dropping grenades at their own feet being a major one - it's not realistic to try to test the game in Ironman mode... nor is it all that fun. I play in regular mode and only save at the start of missions or when I'm shutting my machine down; this way I know I'll be able to recreate most bugs, and I don't get the urge to throw my laptop off the balcony when the game shits its pants.

Clicking outside the combat zone is the same as using the bug-out button, isn't it? I don't think that's reversible. I wonder if it would be possible to implement mid-air refueling as a research option, and give the commander the option to mid-air refuel planes if they're over friendly nations... that, or just build refueling bases at the edge of your radar range and direct planes there if they run out mid-mission? (apologies if someone else has suggested this stuff already; I haven't read the whole thread yet)

I don't believe IBM ever produced a gasoline-powered digital computer, although stranger things have happened. And I wasn't able to find any information about an IBM 5630, although a storage backplane for another IBM computer carries that part number. Did you perhaps mean a System/36 5360 computer? If this is your grandfather's model, then it is not gas-powered; I believe the key unlocks the control panel for fine control or servicing. If this is not what you are seeing then most likely you are looking at an IBM-branded generator; generators being integral to mainframe and server installations that have always-up requirements, it would not be unusual for IBM to provide their own branded versions (and I have found manuals for IBM generators dating back to the '40s). Can you provide any photos, or more details about the computer? Edit: here's a site discussing the above computer system. I would *not* recommend attempting to power it on without a pro present, as it appears to be quite fiddly.

Oh, I'm not putting it down anytime soon! I just wanted to try to get a little further with the defaults before tweaking anything. That's a good idea, though.

Tech. Info v21 Experimental Build 5 Observed behavior: Civilians are morons. Desired behavior: 1) If a civilian enters a Xenonaut transport while running around screaming, s/he should *stay* there unless an alien follows him or her inside. Weight the interior squares at 110% for pathfinding or something. 2) Similarly, weight the squares *outside* of Xenonaut LOS higher than squares within their 90-degree visibility. Even scared-poopless civvies should be smart enough to not run between Xenonauts and aliens, and Xenonauts are usually pointed at the aliens. 3) Add the ability for a Xenonaut to give a civvy a single order if the Xenonaut is in an adjacent panel and has sufficient TUs (say 15 or so). Make it possible to herd panicked civilians away from danger at the cost of reduced actions that turn. The affected civvy can become a player-controlled unit and be given either a single movement order - e.g. "go as far towards the marked square as you can" - or a single fire order for that turn. This could make for some interesting mission variations - get all the civvies out of a crash zone for extra cash, or round up all the local law enforcement to protect the landing craft - and would sure be nice for keeping dumb farmers out of my fire zones.

Derp >_< Thanks!

I honestly don't care how the game is balanced at the upper end. If people want to grind it out until they have sixteen Captain Americas dual-wielding plasma gatlings that they tore off of interceptors with their bare hands, that's their prerogative. I *do* want a heavy weapons soldier who has been on ten missions to be able to walk more than two squares and fire in the same turn.

Now that you mention it, I have noticed this as well. Early in my first 21Ev5 game (2nd or 3rd mission I believe) I had one soldier rather unfortunately blow herself up with a poorly-aimed rocket and the entire team panicked, except for one berserker. And their morale wasn't even that low, maybe 10 or 20 points down from max.

Sorry to necro the thread, but I figure it's better than starting a new one on the same topic. 1) If a civilian enters a Xenonaut transport while running around screaming, s/he should stay there unless an alien follows him or her inside. Weight the interior squares at 110% or something. 2) Similarly, weight the squares *outside* of Xenonaut LOS higher than squares within their 90-degree visibility. Even scared-poopless civvies should be smart enough to not run between Xenonauts and aliens. 3) Add the ability for a Xenonaut to give a civvy a single order if the Xenonaut is in an adjacent panel and has sufficient TUs (say 15 or so). Make it possible to heard panicked civilians away from danger at the cost of reduced actions that turn. The affected civvy can become a player-controlled unit and be given either a single movement order - e.g. "go as far towards the marked square as you can" - or a single fire order for that turn. This could make for some interesting mission variations - get all the civvies out of a crash zone for extra cash, or round up all the local law enforcement to protect the landing craft - and would sure be nice for keeping dumb farmers out of my fire zones.

Has anyone noticed a marked rise in friendly-fire incidents in 21Ev5? Before it was an occasional nuisance when firing over friendlies' shoulders; now it seems like any friendly blocking % number at all is a guaranteed bullet to the back of the head. It may be that I'm just seeing a very bad random run, but I swear it's much worse than in the previous build.

I just want to comment on one specific aspect of the 21Ev5 change: it is now impossible to move more than a square or two and fire heavy weapons, no matter how high a soldier's TU level is, so why even bother with the 30% move-and-fire penalty? Is it the developer's desire that heavy weapons be able to move *or* fire, but not both? In 21Ev4 it was possible and useful to level up a heavy weapon gunner to act as a mobile suppression shooter, even if they didn't have enough TUs to move very far or fire twice in a turn. 65 TUs would let a veteran heavy gunner advance alongside a squad that was hopscotching between cover points to provide suppression fire, albeit not very accurately. It was possible to use them in ambusade, popping out from behind cover after aliens showed themselves to fire and then pop back. Now neither is possible. I'd propose a hybrid system where the TUs required to use a weapon were scaled to a soldier's starting TUs, but ignored additional TUs gained through experience. E.G. make heavy weapons take 90% of a soldier's starting TUs. For heavy weapons this would avoid double-firing for all but the most elite soldiers, but support the reported desire of allowing extra movement with gained TUs. Right now I'm not seeing the extra movement, and it's pretty frustrating.

I've used height to good advantage with the Buzzard suit and energy sniper weapons. I've also had UFOs crash in front of multi-story buildings and been able to use the 2nd-story level as an overwatch position to great effect. But it is a bit harder to utilize in the beginning of the game. I don't think the game engine uses height maps for terrain so it probably can't support topology like the OG. I agree that the AI needs to use elevation better; the original had aliens spawn within buildings' upper levels and this led to a lot of tactical diversity.

In a game last night I had an auto-resolve air combat mission involving 2 Foxtrots and 1 Scout UFO resolve with 100% ammo remaining on both interceptors. I can only imagine the Foxtrot pilots pulled a Star Wars-style canyon run and caused the enemy UFO to crash itself into a wall. But it seems, for the sake of realism, that at least one missile should have been fired during this dogfight.

Reproduced in 21Ev4 as well. The soldier sprite will refresh after going through a teleporter, I found, so it looks like the game is forgetting to update the Buzzard suit soldier to the current layer *only* when it lands from an off-screen position.

I've seen this a lot recently as well. Do you need any more save files? The truly weird thing is that I've had files go from non-crashing to always-crashing when using the following approach: 1) Auto-save or manually save upon entering a ground mission (specifically, Alien Base). 2) Game crashes or quit manually. 3) Restart game. 4) Load auto-save or manual save (from step #1) 5) Resume playing. 6) Lose a soldier, do something stupid, etc. and try to re-load the same save game from within ground combat. 7) Game freezes permanently. I've waited 2, 3x longer than the original load time on several occasions. 8) Kill the game via task manager 9) Restart and try to load the same save game directly; game freezes as per #7. I've seen this in 21Ev4.

Former 19K in the US Army Armor Corps. I was on the fast track to NCO but got out after four years, as a Specialist. I used the "latest posts" link to find this thread.