TheGrover

The caesans at least got really good at hiding, and generally seemed really accurate, compared to my starting dozen who couldnt hit the larger side of a barn... Though the latter may just be RNG trolling.

I found the ce much harder when i jumped over, it seems the AI learned some devious tricks (ground and air combat), or maybe i just need to learn some more

I had somr thought, is it possible within the game to add a second "periphery" vision cone, in which you can only see a MOVING entity (to trigger reaction fire), which seems a reasonable comprimise. Though i dont know how flexible the game engine is for things like these

Well surely the ship on a base construction mission is carrying the base core anyway? So there could be a chance of it surviving and being recovered from the wreckage during a ground mission. Still prevents the fun missions though, maybe in the late game (when ET has surveyed potential sites from orbit) the ships could head straight to the terror/base site with no window of opportunuty to intercept? Not all of the missions should be done this way and probably only one each month depending on difficulty.

So far, ive found reaction fire quite useful, most notably on a very open desert map where three got plasma-blasts from reaction fire, plus one i only spotted when i turned a soldier to face towards the map boundary and found one had darted down the one-tile corridor between my x-naut's vision and the boundary and was three tiles or so from wreaking havoc. Currently i find snipers more challenging in combat. Now i know how ET feels when he is killed from across the map when only a grunt with a shield can see him