Leonatus

Could there not be other effects of armour on soldiers besides vision range? How about a hit on timeunits (say 5-10%) to show its bulkiness or not being able to kneel. Both are maybe somewhat less crippling than reduced vision range in a game with universal squad size. Leo

Huh, yeah, we are talking game engine here, are we not? I hope we are, otherwise it's going to be hard to talk if we can't agree over explosives bringing more destruction than 9mm bullets and fists. That's why in mining people use dynamite instead of kicking the rock to gravel. If we are talking game engine then I already agreed to let it fly. So the engine doesn't support different damage types to let stuff withstand bullets (even lots of them) but give way to higher tier weapons. That's an ok reason to give. Leo

While i can understand UFOs being indestructable because of some game engine/balance issue or plain laziness/lack of ressources the background explanation is just dumb. It's not like anti air weapons are all that strong to begin with. Certainly the real world stuff like Sidewinders and the basic machine guns are nothing to write home about and UFOs are being shot down with these all the time. So if they can (obviously) damage UFOs a pack of C4 or a rocket launcher with armour piercing warheads would abolutely be able to affect the alien hulls in a meaningful way. Games like these often require suspension of disbelief in many ways. We can take one more. Although it was quite fun in the old game to create backdoors with fusion bombs. Leo

not any kind of desert though. Chris specifically mentioned US and middle east deserts. African and East Asians deserts are out of luck, apparently. There be dragons, I guess. I'm really excited about the map designer. I wonder if he will be worth the extra money that was needed to 'unlock' him and how we will be able to tell the difference. It should be interesting to see if he designs a bunch of fixed maps of if he will create some kind of randomizer to automatically change the maps on its own.

Yeah, that would be nice. Alas this has already been discussed here and was basically denied. I usually build the second base not that far away from the first so I get some support and the Chinook would sometimes be able to reach UFO wrecks that were crashed by the other base. That way the second base can contribute before it reaches full strength.

I seem to remember reading somewhere, that the ground combat save feature has been removed from game and that this is intentional. Wether it will return in the future or not is anyones guess. My money is on 'no'. Leo

Agreed. The same goes for sniper teams who are just to unwieldy for the basic mission. If the OP is familiar with sniper teams as he claims he knows that usually a sniper fires once, then gets the hell out. He also is as far off as his weapon allows where Xenonauts missions are pretty much close quarter from one house to the next and keep pushing until the aliens are dead. Well, you shot that argument down yourself. Pun intended. The Barret is an anti material rifle. Much too large and cumbersome for Xenonaut mission. It's being used against mines and hazardous stuff that patiently waits for people to drag along the rifle and work it into firing position. Hardly the right tool for Xenonaut teams.

I think he gets that. The problem is that the crashes are so severe right now that we can't really play at all which prevents us from testing those brand new features.

That's not the impression I got from the reaction in these forums. In a quite similar thread we discussed monetary issues with producing stuff with the intent to sell them for profit in mind and most people got foam mouthed and called it an evil exploit because it wasn't a documented way of making money. In fact it went so far that the mere possibility of making this an option was shouted down because it would ruin this game for everyone. And their dogs. It would probably cause global warming, too. Incindentally the man in charge seemed to agree with this sentiment so we are looking at having our hands held quite a lot.

hm, one possibility would be a special ammo made from alien alloys that would up power and range of the guns. The need to manufacture them first and their continuous drain on limited resources would then keep them from pushing laser weapons aside. Also it would be very easy to put the special ammo into the game as there is no requirement of new models. Only a picture and some text.

yeah, what he said. * According to Chris, terror missions are supposed to be hard, but we do not know, just how hard they will be in the end. Right now you spend most of your turns watching your guys panicking (like picknicking, but with people dying) around. I hope that this will be adjusted some time down the road. Until then, don't get too attached to your soldiers, or your campaign. (* Written when stone drunk, so when in doubt, disregard) Leo

Well, another option to go about this is to make sure that at least the first terror mission is somehow within reach of your team. Due to the heavy penalty of not showing up it's otherwise a serious coinflip effect that can severely hamper the campaign when one or two terror missions just so happen to be out of range for fledgling organization. Or maybe just lighten the repercussions for the first lost terror missions. Leo

Ah yes, the t-word. Why of course, people not agreeing with you must be trolling. So, you're not a numbers cruncher and thus the game should be tailored to your preferences while all the others can mod it to their needs. You do this quite a lot, don't you? Slamming down your opinion as fact and claiming that it's the way that everyone would like best? Surely they wouldn't know, what's best for them. Therefore everyone not agreeing with you is also going against the good of the entire game and all the players. Just like you did in the 'fog of war' thread. Not surprising really, I guess it's kind of hard to score a four digit postcount without being severely opinionated. How will postponing do any good? We're not argueing the finer points of adjusting monetary rewards for missions or looting. We're debating about the entirety of the 'production for profit' concept. Sure it's quite early to do so but it would be good to know if it's an option at all before trying to balance the other ways of money makeing. Leo

We'd have to see how the difficulty with the terror sites pan out first. Right now terror missions are suicide either way because of the funny way the morale system works. Maybe terror mission will be doable with a small crack team that has been honed since day one.

Hi there (I'll send ahead that until beta testing the weapons tweaking isn't yet an issue and considering this I think the balance we have is pretty good.) Now. Very nice thread. I do disagree with your assessment of the shotguns, however. A very major difference to sniper weapons is that shotguns are light on the time units. So you can be very mobile with them, emphasizing their close quarter role much unlike the sniper rifle. And they put many aliens down with the first shot which is something the asault rifle does not do. One factor that makes the machine gun so very useful and one that will hopefully disappear soon, is that right now most aliens are playing turret defence during the whole mission. This produces scenarios were you turn around a corner and have to put the alien down with this very shot so as not to receive hot plasma love to the face. Once aliens start moving on their own and now put everything into reaction fire with eyes in the backs of their heads, smaller damage portions with increased mobility might get more effective. We shall see. Otherwise full agreement to most of your points. The assault rifle could indeed have a faster rapid fire option (or maybe another spray option with more bullets?) but I would also vote for an increase in accuracy for the aimed shot because that one is lacking, too. The small stopping power will keep it from replacing the sniper rifle. I stole this suggestion form someone, I think because I remember reading it somewhere else. Leo