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It is just really hard to progress at the moment. Funding just keeps going backwards, I am stuck with one base, so I can't cover more nations. It is really hard to catch UFOs, then all guns cannot shoot them down. Then you are too slow to run away, so you lose the aircraft. Because of funding problems, you can't have extra aircraft.

Because you have no money to hire extra scientists and engineers, your squad gear is falling behind, while androns start turning up.

Aliens can grenade you from so far away.

Air combat is way too important.

I think I played though three or four months, and still no laser weapons for me.

Mainly, I guess, I really don't like being forced to have only one base.

And forced to put all my research efforts into air combat.

It also looks like not many people are playing at the moment, as about half of the bug reports are mine.

Oh, yeah: and the nothing but negative ground combat is depressing.

Well, I guess I have to dumb it down a bit then . The point is that the AI also uses quite some statistics to determine where you *might* be. Seeing as how an AI is sometimes spread across the entire map (especially with alien base, terror missions and the like), it has quite some information on where your squad *isn't*; and thus, also *is*.

That's pretty much exactly why I found that particular case strange, since...

I fully get that they should be able to deduce unit locations, but only to a point. However, I probably should've been more specific in that the alien in question, or any alien for that matter on that map at that point shouldn't have known that I have that soldier behind that particular container. All it should've seen was that civilian running next to my soldier. How it could've deduced that there's 2 targets there to lob a grenade at is beyond me, even with these fancy algorithms that seems to have worked pretty well so far, aside from these few instances of precognition or omniscience. Similar things happened in alien bases. I'll try and make a demonstration next time I get a save in one.

Probably the easiest way to demonstrate it:

Unopened door in an alien base. Place one soldier behind the door and open it so that the aliens see it = gunfire response.

Place one soldier visibly at the door and another one two tiles adjacent to the door within grenade range but in a spot where the aliens shouldn't know the difference = suddenly grenades!

suddenly grenades!

Happened to me with one soldier past the door visible to them with it closed and a couple around the wall on the other side of it. The grenade killed the two soldiers around the walls.

Interestingly enough despite grenades killing through walls they won't throw it if you just make sure to close the door before your turn ends even if they should 100% know you have 2-3 dudes standing right at it.

I also can't stand the initial base assault because throwing a bunch of smokes and running through them = grenades obliterating 3/4 of my dudes, but if I don't run into the smokes they don't throw them.

Indeed, I always make sure I have someone with enough TUs to close the doors. Now I'm trying to survive a night terror mission with wraiths in it again. I noticed the same rule with doors applies to smoke. As long as they've seen one soldier or a civilian run into the smoke next to another that they haven't seen, they throw grenades. If they haven't seen to soldiers within the smoke, they don't do a thing, nor can I do much.

Edit: wraiths do seem to behave a bit too clever sometimes with smoke, where they or other units see you moving into it. They teleport around the smoke, surrounding it in a way that makes it really hard for my own units to move out from it to shoot, as they react much faster than my own units and get close proximity bonus for instagibs.

It's pretty darned annoying in such open spaces to not be able to utilize the close proximity bonus to morale, so even one of the commander rank soldiers being injured is enough to start a cascade of panic. I guess it's partly because the darkness makes the soldiers more paranoid?

I think you'll run into the fun-as-a-game-balance issue again. As long as manually playing every air-combat is optimal (better than autoresolve), people will do it, even if it isn't fun. The same problem you've illustrated (and solved) with the ground combat airstrike mechanic.

Yeah, what DK said. If you're going to give people a 90%-of-perfect auto-resolve, just give them the perfect auto-resolve. It's a button, right? If people want to fight every combat, they still have the option to do so.

Is ground combat airstrike something introduced in v20, or am I missing it?

Is ground combat airstrike something introduced in v20, or am I missing it?

He means the airstrike option introduced in V20.3 for downed UFOs in geoscape, where the local forces destroy the UFO and you get a set portion in cash as a thanks for the alien tech and get to skip the ground combat without the alien resource benefits. I've been mostly using it when I know I won't have the time to reach multiple downed UFOs with my slow charlie, or when there's smaller UFOs with too little gains for the time it takes to deal with the UFO, but still get monetary benefits.

Commander Chris, you will have to let us know when the final Christmas build is in. This is going to be my Christmas game and I mean to play it to it's end, but waiting for the last build before the holidays.

I am hoping to put a build up tomorrow, and depending on how much new content we get I may do another next week. After that Goldhawk is going into winter hibernation until after Cthulumas.

Well, that was odd... Sebillian leader had the ordinary grunt sprites.

And before I forget, a couple saves via DropBox. First one crashes in geoscape instantly when being loaded, second one crashes during next alien turn in terror mission:

Save 1

Save 2

Shouldn't be relevant, but I did have to cheat a lot more cash to continue and build extra bases, as I almost ran out by start of third month due bad relations with distant nations. At first I thought the geoscape crash may have been related to getting those millions of city under attack notifications even after saving the city, but as I was able to load the subsequent saves up to a point where the next UFO incursion was imminent, I have no idea how to replicate this crash. It just happened and has yet to occur again during this play-through.

Good to hear there's a patch coming up.

I am hoping to put a build up tomorrow, and depending on how much new content we get I may do another next week. After that Goldhawk is going into winter hibernation until after Cthulumas.

A nice stable build please. You wouldn't want to spoil my Christmas with bugs in my present now would you?

I'm looking forward to it.

More oddities: had a soldier with an empty plasma caster and approx 30 TUs do a reaction shot twice in a row. First shot played both the empty magazine "click" and the burst sound, the next one just the burst.