General impressions on current game

Hello all

I am a veteran of X-com since ages ago and wanted to give a general feedback on current game.

Also just started new game on v22e5 on Veteran Iron Man and my intention is to update as I go on.

I admit I have not even nearly finished the game as it is. Partly due to earlier versions crashing alot and such. I also am not a fanatic player with endless amounts of free time to play.

I've played the versions v19 to v22, mostly with veteran-difficulty and Iron Man.

Early game: Although I've formed pretty steady tactiques from earlier versions, current version seems to keep me on the edge and I can easily imagine new players having to re-start game several times and try out new things to survive the first couple - or even the first - month. Excellent.

Impressions:

- Not actually sure, but did the characters grow bigger? Either I'm imagining or it looks very good.

- Veteran is punishing from the get-go. Im still used to running around "Theres only 2 aliens around so who cares" and first mission introduces quite a challenge. Very much as I would expect.

- Burst fire "3x32%" is nice addition. Burst-fire is supposed to deal only portion of total shots fired and be semi-inaccurate, instead of being inaccurate line of bullets fired.

- Suppression works fine, two soldiers fire on space-lizard and he ducks down just as easily as five soldiers duck down when fired upon. Slows down actions and encourages multiple squads. Although I missed a 90% shot and really not pleased about it. Plz fix my gaem /s

- How come a regular bush goes down with a shotgun blast but prevents Vietnam veteran from jumping across the minimal mound it leaves.

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Be it intentional or bug (seems intentional), removing TU-requirement display and still showing "throw tile" green is quite misleading. Though my opinion on showing technical numbers (stun and damage in numbers after stun grenade for example) is at the same time very nice on immersion (as imagination seems to conform to numbers pretty easily) and quite disturbing. But does the veteran-difficulty really call for less information? (exact information comes in handy though and makes the game on certain players "easier" in one way, but its pretty marginal and I feel I would like to test my strenght against superior opponents with all the information available. And I really like to feel how much my characters and guns are progressing in making damage even in non-exact terms like: "Devastating! Heavy. Shocking. Flinching. Light."

(edit: -...oh, now I just noticed it was a bug when I hovered the mouse over grenade on ground and saw costs and % on throw.)

Insane-difficulty might as well be directed on veteran-veterans who can guesstimate the numbers behind actions. After all, most people will not go through the game on normal-veteran-insane diff one-by-one. Instead someone picks the veteran-diff because it implies they're cool with a new game and hard difficulty, and eventually wont see most of the game mechanics at play (I'm talking about throwing grenades and different costs for example).

- Standing behind a fellow soldier and shooting over his shoulder without penalties is really nice.

- Breaching UFo and throwing in stun grenades (against space-lizards. damn i love that word) is exactly as imagined. They're tough and hardy so a single grenade wont faze them, but second one did the trick finally and I had only one casualty.

Mazka I agree in the part that soldiers miss shots all the time. I think that is in late game the accuracy level of soldier and weapons accuracy has reach high values, shots are more frecuent.

I dislike the accuracy system in general terms.

Later on

- Started a new game due to ufo's not showing up on america as frequently as they should (barely at all)

- "Stiff resistance" on minor damage scout was indeed stiff resistance. Saw first alien on touchdown.

- Soldiers not hitting a brick wall is in accordance to X-com.

- Aliens and their fancy reaction shots through smoke wall just killed two of my lousiest soldiers.

- Underlining the bad eyesight and lousy marksmanship should be other way around. Any half-blind alien is still scoring accurate fire against my men and their only chance to kill any alien is point-blank shotgun blast. Now its simply hilarious when trying to role-play the situation when whole team of trained soldiers is being massacred by two blind aliens and they're sticking with "keep the distance and pick them from afar!"

- Aaaand right on the next mission when I have time to crouch, clear LOS and riflemen are not panicking I get 90-95% shots one after another from quite afar. Seems like its working as intended.

- Smoke grenades are suddenly tuned to harmful, as it feels like aliens can clearly see through them but soldiers get heavy penalties due to it. Previously they were impenetrable wall of darkness and that didnt work too well either.

- Great, two aliens are working really well together and my rookie team is getting slaughtered as they're out in the open

- One alien got killed and the other turned tail and ran for cover. Didnt help him much but it was good thinking

- COMPLETE inability to throw things over even the smallest fence. Its one thing to tune the accuracy, but not being able to lob grenade over a knee-high rock is ridiculous

It's worth noting that Space-Lizards *can* see clearly through smoke; I wonder whether this isn't the problem you're facing.

Yeh, Sebs do see through smoke though I think they still get an accuracy penalty.

I just want to say that I also found the hedgerow mud mound impassability thing really strange.

Hedgerow mud should be passable maybe with +2 TU penalty per tile and doesn't act like chest high wall cover.

Yeah, the hedgerows are a pain. They're two tiles wide, so the game doesn't support vaulting over them. I see quite a few complaints about it but I'm not really sure what we can do about it at this point unfortunately. We don't even have "fully destroyed" tiles for them that would be passable.

I think we're going to add the damage numbers back into Veteran, as you suggest. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks and I think it's a good idea, but to leave them off on Insane (reason being Insane is likely to be a second playthrough when you understand the mechanics better).

Yeah, Sebillians see through smoke and get no accuracy penalty. I should probably add that to Xenopedia entry now tbh.

The "problem" with the numbers is that any person here or at least smart enough to check the game files can just simply trigger it on unless you hardcode it (which is probably out of the question)

Continuing on the tirade:

- Soldiers having a chance to recuperate from deadly shot brings huge tension to game and gains a touch of realism

- Armour works pretty well. Low-end ones boost survivability and weigh alot, in addition to making slower. So its really not a no-brainer to just hunk every soldier with armor and just deal with bit more weight.

- First month just ended and I havent had chance to research stun weapons yet. Have yet to encounter space lizzies despite frequent missions

- Aaaand here we go. Scout downed full of sebillians. AI-problem surfaces when they can no problem take reaction shots against me, on their respective turn the sebillians seem to favor unarmed civilians over my crew. Even turning around and firing to other direction even though I'm laying suppression on them

- Taking down minor damage scout with five space lizards was intense. Mission total death toll was 3 soldiers against 8 seb deaths. Main tactique was rifle fire from distance (no sniper on-board) and at times running to point-blank with shotgun

- Booyeah, I love the Wolf-armor. It almost feels overpowered, damage resistances and whatnot and weaker weapons hitting under 10 damage... until you get shot point-blank twice and the poor sod is fried.

Booyeah, I love the Wolf-armor. It almost feels overpowered, damage resistances and whatnot and weaker weapons hitting under 10 damage... until you get shot point-blank twice and the poor sod is fried.

The armour is a hit and miss for me. Sometimes even wearing wolf I get plenty of crit damage of 60+ (even 110) and with the amount of HP xenos have and their low increase I just feel like the armour wasn't there - of course there are situation where it is a life saver.

On the other hand I see aliens without armour surviving bursts from plasma rifles because they have like 150HP and I am scoring 40 damage per shot

And don't get started on Plasma Cannon....

Have to continue on in the story a bit more to have an opinion, but I would like to feel the armor generally lowers the damage, except in close quarters. That said, nice system IMHO would be to give said armor an ability against low-end weapons to reduce crit chance to minimum and damage below lethal. (this is talking without knowing how the system is implemented)

That is how I see bullet-proof vests work. They are not reducing the damage-points a bullet makes, and high-caliber rifle bullet will still go through it, but it rather stops the critical, pistol bullet from puncturing your vitals and only breaks a few ribs in the process.

Though we are talking about plasma pistols here so...

Currently though, I'm experiencing wolf-armor mitigating almost all the damage shot into it at long range. On close range it seems to only half the damage, and when burst firing... well thats about it.

Feels really logical and works well.

But if it really is all about chance and I've just been lucky, then its whole another thing and brings some good luck and chance into play.

edit: It really is really complex topic. Critical hit always exists and you can get a shot to throat and nobody can save you even if wearing a helmet. If you're wearing a low-end armor (spec-ops vests with helmet and spider-web woven vests are low-end right now), your arm will get incinerated and you'll go in shock and bleed dry in minutes when shot with a plasma pistol, but normal pistol would give you two weeks in hospital. With some bad luck, you'd have a broken arm or artery.

In game terms, you really cant make low-end armor stop 'all' the critical bullets and just fail at short range because... whats the logic?

And high-end, how much damage reduction can you make and whats the chance of crit to keep the game rolling and drama alive?

I'd hate to see classic end-game armor just ignore all plasma-rifle shots just because aliens have antimatter-cannons embedded on their head by this point of story.

There really has to be a chance of insta-death from really scary, advanced guns - and everything in this game is like that - to keep you in your toes and also because it makes sense.

More edit:

One way around going through people feeling like "armour wasnt even there", when the game has been completely balanced to upgrade the xeno weaponry in accordance to player's armor, would be to introduce a point in game when most likely player is feeling pressured by aliens' new weaponry and soldiers are dying left and right. Then one would introduce new and fresh armor.

Implementing this to Xenonauts... its a tough call. You can never even tell how long it'll take to see certain alien for the first time and you'd feel pressured to re-start the whole game on a kind of situation when aliens are shooting through your state-of-art armor like its melted butter.

Armour in Xenonauts also has degradation.

Even if the enemy can barely scratch your armour they will eventually wear it down after enough shots.

The same would apply to alien armour but it is not very apparent as only Androns have any armour at all.

Be it intentional or bug (seems intentional), removing TU-requirement display and still showing "throw tile" green is quite misleading.

This may very well be a bug if your talking about grenade throwing and targeting empty ground tiles, see here;

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9789-e22-5-hf-GC-Grenade-throwing-displays-no-or-Tu-cost

- Captured my first seb just before saw the first Mid-sized ufo -> proceeded to capture the commander (as it seems) -> quest for capturing said commander came after that and was not fulfilled. This might as well be a feature, but I'll call it a bug.

- Proceeded to get my ass handed to me during first terror mission. Time to start a new game and plan ahead a little more. I like it.

Don't worry, the game does advance through progressive stages. If you're feeling like your wolf armor is OP right now, you won't when you start encountering heavy drones, alien plasma cannons, elite androns, etc.. There are several periods in the game when you'll feel like you've reached parity, maybe even an edge, with the ETs, and then they'll start coming with tougher troops and tougher ships. Like Stellar Rat said, enjoy any feeling of security while you can, cuz it's not gonna last

Don't worry, the game does advance through progressive stages. If you're feeling like your wolf armor is OP right now, you won't when you start encountering heavy drones, alien plasma cannons, elite androns, etc.. There are several periods in the game when you'll feel like you've reached parity, maybe even an edge, with the ETs, and then they'll start coming with tougher troops and tougher ships. Like Stellar Rat said, enjoy any feeling of security while you can, cuz it's not gonna last

I like this dynamic

Exactly, I kind of expected something like this and during the first terror mission, I really had a feeling "Shit, I guess I should have equipped every sod in wolf and arm with lazor beams.". During missions before that, it felt like overkill. But those missions - where I lost 1 soldier against 3 xenos - were just a training camp to flesh out real killing machines.

Oh and about the grenade throwing thing: Grenade throwing bug is exactly as Dead Dread explained

And armor degradation is really not obvious at first. Shields do reduce durability and vanish once in a while (really well balanced really) but I wouldnt have been able to deduce general armor degrade without anyone saying it aloud. Feels like every other game makes these kind of things way too obvious to warn the player, when Xenonauts only gives hints about it.

Kind of feels right, kind of feels stupid when most likely place to learn about such thing is from the forums. (or, well, I'm just daft about hints and things like that)

The game has ingame tips during the loading screen and will also include a manual to explain the mechanics hopefully. I assume that will be enough to explain how the armors work.

...

edit: It really is really complex topic. Critical hit always exists and you can get a shot to throat and nobody can save you even if wearing a helmet. I...

Just so you know... a lvl 3 rated throat protector do exist.

http://www.velsyst.com/store/245/4/STOP-Vest-Throat-and-Collar-Protector,-NIJ-III-A.html

You can always wear bomb disposal armour... and the Predator armour actually resembles one.

Also, the thing about burn wounds are that they cauterise the wound... so yes, you get shock but you wouldn't bleed dry...

And armor degradation is really not obvious at first. Shields do reduce durability and vanish once in a while (really well balanced really) but I wouldnt have been able to deduce general armor degrade without anyone saying it aloud

That's true, you can tell the status of your health and your shield at a glance. Can't do that with armor. It'd be nice if there was an armor bar (just like the morale, AP and health bars) like most other games have. Or at least if a different-colored number flashed (say, green) when you get hit to give you an idea of how much damage your armor just took

Armor degradation IMHO is absolutely great feature. And not showing it in exact numbers like the modern way, is even better. Though a knowledge about such a thing would be essential for players who already know their way around.

And now, again, I realize this has been already discussed and added to xenopedia and startup-tips.

It is quite rare feature in games these days, when health is often regenerative and armor is either treated as non-degrading or regenerates even faster than HP and always displayed in clear numbers.

I'm against displaying exact numbers about body-armour, but giving more hints about degradation existing and having bit of hands-on knowledge about the state of it.

Anyhow, once more to the breach!

Veteran difficulty, iron man mode activated. V22 e5.

Starting in Middle-East, if anyone's interested. It seems very strategical position and I've had good results in capturing UFO's around big land masses and protecting several countries at once.

Also I'm building lab, living quarters, workshop, hangar, med center and missile battery right at start. Formerly I did two labs, but its not worthwhile in the long run.

Hiring new soldiers according to base-TU and going with whatever I have currently. If a soldier has base-TU of atleast 60, he's good to go for now, STR and other stats come into play when I think about team formation, but basically soldier is needed to act fast and precisely.

Arming said lads is all about simplicity. Riflemen usually get to fight from mid-range and are lightly equipped, but wear stun-grenades and -baton along with med-kit and other grenades. Assault team is with shotguns and load of grenades too, but generally go on with heavy armor with the price of side-arms.

Then we have one or two snipers, but no heavies. Maybe later on in the game I'll introduce heavy weapons, but currently they're just a bunch of tit-suckers who cant hit a shit and wont hurt much when they do.

And then I have couple shields at hand for breaching the UFO. Usually. Now, forgotten.

First happened a while ago on mid-sized UFO in autoresolve: Foxtrot downed the UFO on Auto-resolve but was left with 0% health. Now it also happened right on the very first days of invasion. UFO was downed but so was the plane. I can figure this out with plane crashing against UFO or the last shots go in and they both go down at the same time. But usually there's not even a question who's going to win against very small scout, and I cant fathom a situation in real-time battle where I would go down with UFO at the same time. Seems like its programmed to win 100% of fights even though the human plane is downed.