LeftyRighty

I stopped being lazy and redid the images a little, hope this makes it a little more obvious

the very top of the door facing "away" from the camera is a different colour to the wall either side, so you can tell despite the camera angle that that is not a solid door without having to constantly move the camera 360 as you move around the map. You could also just make the doors render from both sides even if the fog of war hasn't been revealed on both sides, but that might be a lot more work?

I find it difficult/annoying to try and figure out where a lot of the doors are without constantly rotating the camera so it is "facing" the wall in question. I think it would be handy to have the top of the door sections show as a different colour to that of normal walls. Perhaps just a lighter colour, or hashed, or just a break in the colour demarking the edges of the door. Just something. In the screenshots there are 3 doors in that wall, I've highlighted one of them with awesome paint abilities so you get the idea I find it the worst in the alien bases and ships, but I think it would be handy in all maps.

Downed Battleship in Port, trying to capture an Ethereal in the top deck. To the best of my knowledge only alien left is the Ethereal. Preceding turn: Ethereal and Psyon Officer (purple) mind control 2 of my troopers. Psyon is killed. Ethereal is hit with electroshock grenades, rifles and pistols but doesn't go down. Alien Turn: Ethereal moves, receives overwatch fire from 2 troopers and collapses. Pop up: Col. "whateverTheyreCalled" is no longer under alien control. Pop up: Ethereal Commander is unconscious. Col. moves, shoots a friendly trooper... Waiting on enemy activity... waiting... waiting... lookup bug forum, look up stickied posts, write all this, recover account because haven't posted since Xeno1... still waiting on enemy activity... bug_report_2026-04-07-01h42_gc_7.18.4_user_f11_0.zip

the articles I've seen say they're not making any particularly big changes to the overall campaign structure, and the final mission is the same, just with the new aliens included etc. ... Like the new troops and weapons, having something that can take on mutons/berzerkers head on would be handy... but i don't think i'm going to pick this up until it's a bargain sale...

oh, btw.... it's out... hit steam today... what's with the stealth release? had a little trawl over the web and unfortunately most of the "reviews" (or random opinions since there aren't any gaming press reviews yet i guess) is that "it's fun, but needs some polish".

and it's gone to kickstarter: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/28/official-satellite-reign-makes-true-syndicate-successor/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/28/synindicate-right-first-satellite-reign-images/

They're randomised based on a template (some sort of field goes here, some sort of building goes here etc.), and there is a map builder included so people can build their own templates. Whilst there might not be a vast amount of levels whilst the game is being made (it's not finished yet!) you can expect there to be quite a lot either included in the final product or available from the community as people use the tools etc.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/01/space-hulk-preview/

Hicks made it out of "Aliens" with an acid splash (from getting to the elevator and nailing an alien in the doorway with his shotgun) and was put into a cryosleep tube for treatment when they got home; at the beginning of "Alien 3" the cryotubes are put into the escape pod and jettisoned at Fury 161. When Ripley goes back to the escape pod the doctor says Hicks was impaled on a support beam in the crash, and there is a very bloody cryotube towards the back... that's where she sees the acid burn. And yeah Hudson gets dragged into the floor during his "gets some! oh you want some too!?" last stand bit...

Snow... I haven't looked at the Artic tiles yet, but maybe snow you can trudge through which also provides some cover gives the opportunity to have bleak open areas without opening them to too much of a sniper's gallery?

I'm very confused by people coming up with the whole "alien spawns don't move" thing... I must be playing a different game because I seem to run into alien patrols all the time on classic. Maybe I'm just good at picking the patrol node locations to setup recoop and ambush spots... re alien free move in general: have you unlocked the Sniper's Battle Scanner yet? it's very handy to see how alien patrols actually work. (we'll skip over the fact that the games shows you this despite you being able to see the non activated aliens is likely a bug...) The game doesn't path them at all, they just "teleport" from one location to the next (hence the patrol teleporting into the middle of the xcom squad bug on a couple of maps it's missing the intersect of the patrol route and the player's view). The teleport solves quite a few AI issues or at least stops hidden aliens working out what cover to use each turn chewing up processing resources and slowing down their turn needlessly; but as you say, it leaves them "open" a fair amount of the time (it looks like the units are just "dropped" around a patrol node). Having the aliens react with their generic AI (ie floaters and chrysallids charge in) when detected is problematic, an across the board "run for the nearest cover" might work... but then does it make sense for a patrolling chrysallid to wander into view, run to some cover, then charge out into the open (they don't use cover anyway)? try a game on impossible... the aliens do pretty much this, the first spawn you see will "call in" the nearest spawns. You're fighting every alien on the map in next to no time unless it's one of the larger ones. Last attempt I made saw my last 4 rookies fighting 15 sectoids through the bar map by the end of turn 3 (last one got nailed dashing for the skyranger... may they rest in peace the world fell soon after).

it's been bug reported a couple of times: it appears to be an issue with the save/reload... there's a workaround posted here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3187-v15-1-Geoscape-time-frozen-after-load not the first threads, but the first one I found

didn't Altar's ufo series handle the ufos in the same way? It worked there, with the exception of only ever having a single entry point and really cramped interiors... If it's a landed ufo would this system support putting a hole somewhere else in the hull giving us another entry point? later in the game when we're toting blasterbomb type weapons it'll be nice to have the option. I really like the idea of having some overlap with an interior room showing at the breach point as the "access point" when you're clearing the outside, and a area of outside as a "escape zone" whilst you're fighting inside, if you can get that to work it'll help with the continuity.