60mm's Observations

Hi all! I jumped onboard with Xenonauts in 2010 and was active on the original forum, some may remember me. I've been really busy in life and just now made time to try the game. I thought I would keep an active thread detailing things in the game I find to be serious issues. My credentials as inspector include 20 years of X-Com EU, beat EU and TFTD countless times at the highest difficulties and played most of the clones since.

Current observations are made with V21 via steam. I've checked the experimental release notes to make sure no problems I've observed have been dealt with.

One Battle In

Screen scrolling is pretty rough and often won't move in a direction unless I use my keyboard's arrow keys. Quite annoying!

Blew up a hedgerow with C4(?) only to find out my soldiers can't traverse the dirt mound that remains. REALLY needs correcting.

When I used the C4 I blew myself up. Go to use the C4 and am prompted to set the timer. Ok, 1. Then it tells me the TU cost to place it. I didn't have enough TUs so I didn't place it. End my turn and BOOM! The TUs to place it should be displayed before commiting to activating the timer. Especially since the timer runs even while it is held. Also a must fix. If the TUs aren't displayed first, then the timer shouldn't run until it is placed.

My heavy machine gun fire was totally blocked by both a 2 beam fence and a log I was crouched behind. I understand obstacles blocking los, but this is way over the top. A machine gunner shouldn't be blocked by a small obstacle he's crouched behind, and a 2 beam fence should incur a small penalty to accuracy. It definitely shouldn't be soaking up whole bursts from a M60 type weapon. If anything it should break quickly.

Four Battles In

Would be really nice to be able to set soldier's facing in the craft.

You should have the option of clearing/removing soldiers/vehicles from the craft. Only way I found to re-position the Hunter was to un-assign all the soldiers from the craft, move it, then re-assign everyone. Much more tedious than necessary.

In my second battle, I had a soldier's assault rifle unload itself magically. Tried to shoot an alien at the start of a turn only to notice the rifle was unloaded. I reloaded the game to the turn before and the gun was once again loaded.

I've noticed looking through windows (was at night) doesn't properly reveal los past the window. Not good.

Hunter cant cross over dirt "farm patches", and if you drive into these it becomes stuck and unable to move out.

Had a Sebilian(?) walk out of a house, around a corner where one of my soldiers was standing with his back to the corner the Sebilian came around from, walked around my soldier up to his face and ended it's turn there. Why had it not shot me immediately after turning the corner or walking back? Suicidal Ai no bueno.

Grenade range is bizarrely short. 10 feet? Really? A 9 year old can toss a grenade farther.

My Hunter spotted an Alien, giving me the red alien head icon, but I couldn't see any Alien. After moving forward I was able to see it, which incurred reactionary fire. If I can see an Alien, why can't I actually see the alien? Also, the alien had spawned in a huddle with two civilians. Bizarre.

You should be able to split up squadrons after launch. Not going to go into detail how this came up, but they shouldn't be locked together.

Had a guy go upstairs in a house and he was unable to walk through an open doorway into another room, regardless of his TUs. The cursor gave no option to move into the next room at all.

I had a soldier shoot at an alien inside a craft, but then was unable to shoot again despite having available TUs and not having moved.

For the C4, you can always just drop it and run. The usage is just for throwing.

That does brings up a pet peeve of mine, if you target a door with C4, it doesn't show the explosive radius any more; same goes for targeting a door with a missile or pulse laser.

TUs involved for placing/using something should always be displayed before a commitment to the action is required for any game of this nature.

I haven't run into the issue you speak of but, yes, that should be corrected as well.

My opinion: if device have a timer, it must start ticking as soon as (but not before!) your hand release a device's lever.

You set timer at 00:15 and throw a bomb - it will explode after 15 seconds.

You set timer at 00:15 and drop a bomb (voluntary or not) - it will explode after 15 seconds.

You set timer at 00:15 and stupidly put a bomb in your backpack - it will explode after 15 seconds.

But you set timer at 00:15 and walk for hours with bomb in your hand - and it is same 0:15 on timer.

So it is in reallife, so it was in OG.

Moreover, in reallife you can (spending some TUs ) reset timer - before it start ticking.

But alas, I am not sure if this idea is good enough to be implemented

I'm liking the game so far, but in only my first 3 hours I've seen a handful of very noticeable issues that need fixing. :-/ Every battle so far has not failed to showcase problems, hoping it all gets cleaned up!

While I'm sure you're not keen on repeating youself, it's a good idea to put these in the relevant threads on the Work List forum as well, especially anything to do with tiles, as those are the "go-to" threads the devs will check for problems.

Welcome back. It'd actually be more helpful if you gave your impressions from the Experimental build rather than the Stable build though as that's had a month more of development on it.

Has the unpassable destroyed hedgerow thing been changed? I found it very unintuitive when I first encountered it. Same goes for the "can see but can't really see aliens"-issue.

Actually there is a really good point in one of those, would it be possible to put in the option of turning a ground combat squares grid on?

Obviously if this was a lot of coding then its a non starter, but some people may find it preferable to have a grid turned on.

Would also highlight when a shot is "clipping" the edge of a shot blocking square.