Gurbo

It looks awesome!

I loved Crimson Dagger! Good luck on your run... I haven't seen the first video yet, but I hope you put the code to have Kseniya in your team

It's just my personal taste, but could you try a more matte finish on the top instead of that shiny metallic and a barrel a bit darker? Maybe the barrel in the same color than the scope. IMHO a "gritty dark sci-fi" look fits better with the game than "shiny fantasy sci-fi". Great job, looking forward for the complete set.

No, but without communications, the mindless pawns (I.E.: everyone except officers/leaders) will be less effective. Prometheus is right in one thing, tho... the aliens that were in a downed UFO have their hours counted according to the game's lore. That brings me to another suggestion that I doubt it can be coded, but would be cool: UFO crashes never despawn, instead, on the next wave there will be a rescue mission to retrieve them and their equipment and follow the rescued UFO's mission. Also, UFO crashsites damage relations slowly while active.

No, but you can mod it so it will give you materials when you shoot it down (like with fighters and bombers). It's in Aircrafts.xml "onwinagainst" column

Condors: To fight light scouts that can evade the Foxtrot's torpedos Foxtrot: Your basic airplane, takes down anything that can't dodge easily, and is faster and has a longer range than Condor Corsair: You can skip it if you want, it's basically a Condor with better speed and range. I'm actually thinking about trying an entire game using only corsairs and no Marauders, it's really good if you prioritize your weapons research over your explosives. Marauder: The ultimate air superiority fighter. Heavy torpedos for the main crafts plus cannons for the escorts. An overall beast of a plane. Clarifying what I said about the Corsairs, if you micromanage them correctly (I'd point you to Dranak's manual air combat tutorials for a quick start) there's not much Marauders ca do that Corsairs can't except chasing for a bit longer and maybe fighting battleships with escorts (tho I've never seen one).

It looks great, but IMHO the concept is a bit weak. Futuristic Halo weapons on a 70s setting might take out some of the immersion. I'd be much more convinced if they were around the MAG level of technology, it would make more sense as they are so advanced. EDIT: That said, they might be great additions to bigger mods that up the difficulty and could use a greater variety of end-game weapons.

Maybe not so special, but predator lets you go trough walls and gives 100 strenght, and Sentinel has flight. I alwas saw them as making your soldiers into Harridans and Androns, so why not a fear-like aura and teleport to simulate Psionics and Wraiths? It might be hard to code, but meh... I guess it's worth a try if you plan on making the game harder. On the multi ammo subject: Have you tried putting the kind of ammo you want shown next to the gun in the HUD as the first one in the ammo list for the gun? Clarification on the Tyrant: Aliens communicate pseudo-telepathically via radio waves, Tyrant armor carries a radio emitter that basically interrupts every other signal, making the almost mindless and completely obedient to their superior's orders cannon fodder wonder wth to do next (effectively supressing them).

I only used them until I got the upgraded ones. Basic shields are worthless.

Besides, ES works on androns The problem as I see it is that the HUD is unable to give multiple choices of ammo for the same gun, with the exception of rocket launcher that has it's dedicated ammo window, but programming a gun to take different kinds of ammo is easy. One of the workarounds I thought of is to make the ammo clips usable by all of the weapons of the same kind, like seen on laser, plasma and mag, but using those slots to put the different varieties of ammo that work on every gun on the tier. I.E.: Pistol has the tranq dart ammo next to it, shotgun, rifle and machinegun have the explosive ones and sniper has the FAAJ ammo, but all the guns can use any of those ammos. EDIT: I'll add my endgame armor ideas here too Blinker: Able to teleport, need to research Predator and a living Wraith Elite, TP works exactly as Wraiths, it consumes 100% TUs. A bit heavier than Wolf armor. 360º vision. Tyrant: When researching the aliens, your lead scientist said that they communicate by radio signals, and in a controlled lab environment they were able to make them commit suicide. It's impossible to take that into the battlefield, but the Tyrant provides the next best thing: it scrambles the communication signals of the alien pawns, suppressing any nearby AL. Developed after Predator and Quantum Cryptology Center. Weighs the same as Wolf Armor. 180º vision. Both of these would provide less armor than predator, but more than sentinel, as they don't need to control the weight to avoid overloading the antigravity engine. The defense would go Predator>Tyrant>Blinker>Sentinel. Any thoughts?

Don't worry, I've been preparing by equiping everyone with spares and dropping them for their main guns on the first turn. I just thought that when carrying 2 you could put them on a wedge config giving a bit more cover on the sides and increasing the effectivenes against frontal shots by using it as sloped armor in WW2 tanks. Then I have a nice idea of what to write on the Xenopedia entry for the new shield Anyway, I never saw that as an exploit, carrying 2 shields is a very viable strategy on a battle if your only role is to spot enemies and taking the first shot(s). The exploit, IMHO was being able to throw grenades while doing it. That reminds me of a HUGE realization I had about how to slightly improve Transport ships in mods that give too many setup choices. Would it be too dificult to add a couple of weapon crates on the ships so the soldiers can restock or change setups on the go? EDIT: And this is a LONG shot and I guess it's hard coded to make it impossible, but carrying a shield on your back much like Pavise shields on late medieval crossbowmen would be awesome too.

Late game condors are awesome dogfighters if you have fusion rockets and mag storm... They would be my entire air force if it wasn't for their horrible range and speed. If you are having problems killing but not finding, upgrade weapons, if your problem's the oposite, just build more radars or think more about your base placement. Extra tip: Maintenance for every plane is exactly the same, they only differ on building cost (Except transports, that cost 1/2 the maintenance of air superiority).

I want to throw in a couple of ideas before I'm able to jump in and help: I was already thinking about the randomness of damage, 25-30% instead of 50 seems like a good compromise to be able to put more powerful weapons. Keeping the standard 50% value but messing with armor resistance to certain types of damage and tweaking penetration could work too. My pet project that I was eager to show you in case you want to add it was a direct upgrade to starting ballistics, with all the parts exposed to the ingnition made of alien alloys, and FAAJ (Full alien alloy jacket) bullets propelled by a minimal allenium explosion (the reason why the parts had to be reinforced). This would give them insane penetration, basically ignoring most forms of armor, while almost keeping the basic bullets damage. What I was working in was to be able to load different kinds of ammo, especially small propelled ElectroShock projectiles, that suffer severely in range and kinetic energy, and are barely able to break a window, but provide a non-lethat option meant for capture. My idea was to modify them to the point where ES ammo in a sniper rifle get the rangeof an assault rifle or so, and the same kind of reduction for other weapons except maybe pistols. Other ammos could be Small Explosive (mainly for the guns that have burst fire), for supression, etc. No need to say that it's hard to place the ammo, but I've had a nice idea to do it and as soon as I get free from my remaining classes I'll give it a try. To keep the dart gun useful if you decide on the ES bullets, maybe change it to drain 100% TUs from the target and give it decent accuracy, as a gas powered dart gun has barely any recoil. Another one is a great missed opportunity on the OG, ES rockets: Less AoE than gas, much more powerful stunning power and doesn't damage props. P.S.: Once it's done it would be nice to put all this(at least the changes to humans) on a separated wiki, to help players decide their strategy. P.S.2: If you're willing to take the challenge, I have great ideas for an extra 2 end-game armor suits.

It's an awesome idea. Make an extra alien subclass, either Riot or Crowd Control, the name doesn't matter, carrying a shield, a special more powerful pistol and grenades. They can be fought by spreading around it and making them face the first shooter and killing with the second/third, so they would provide a nice strategic challenge. With changes to the AI, they could work even better, imagine one of those, crouched and with another AL shooting from behind the cover they provide. If you make them an item, picking one on the field wuld be very useful, as I assume they would be better than the tier 2 human ones, and that could open the research for a 3rd shield... I'm thinking of a 2-handed shield with an incorporated shotgun/carabine. If the mod you're preparing doesn't have "upgrading" tiers but diversifying ones, you could find a nice fit for the integrated gun. EDIT: @Kabill, because I think you know a lot about the game's coding. When you carry two shields, or in the case of the one I proposed, a 2-handed one, does it cover more degrees than a single shield?

Wait until the aliens start sending UFOs capable of performing terror missions, maybe? Set up battleships so they can be spawned since the beginning of the game and test on a new save. IIRC it was more complicated to change the config on a running save than on a new one.