I started with Rebelstar (one of Julian Gollup's first games for the ZX  Spectrum way back in the mid 80s) which is really where this type of game all started. Loved Lazer Squad and UFO:Enemy Unknown and always will. Xen 1 was terrific too and one of my all-time favourites. I can equally say that MW2 (multiplayer) on the x-box 360 is also tremendous, so I do like a wide style of games (but turn-based strategy is my fav).

I've been playing for a few days now and the only thing I notice so far in relation to X-com is that the only thing missing  is the striking scary/panicky/weird art of Xcom. Nevertheless things are looking great so far, but my fear is that 30-or so missions on a playthrough may just be too short. I'm playing Ironman on second level from the top.

Is there anything anyone else misses from X-com that hasn't been replicated here? 

Early in the game, I had a battle where 5 out of 8 low-stat soldiers were dropped unconscious.  Luckily, none of them had bleeding wounds.  The 3 remaining soldiers fended off Cleaners (excessive numbers) and rescued all 5 unconscious soldiers.  It was a slog, but the battle was eventually won.  One could abuse this enemy behavior.  If a low-health soldier is going to be shot in the next turn, put him in a smoke screen and hope he'll snooze instead of die.

Funny unrelated anecdote: I failed my first attempt at the Cleaner base and aborted with no permanent losses.  I managed not only to retrieve the MARS wreckage, but also three Cleaner sentry gun wrecks!  Reminded me of the old TFTD days where one could repeatedly raid an alien base for loot to sell.  Those sonic cannons paid for my Mars vacation.

Another 3 ive lost trying to tail a ufo when having 1% hp. Maybe Forbid the takeoff if hp is lower than 25%... And maybe add a red frame around the plane so it is very clear that the plane is barely flyable

Original post--
It's too easy to capture the command center of UFOs and alien bases by abusing teleporters.  Aliens don't react to teleporter activity so I just teleport in and out and pick them off one at a time.  I squat on the other end of the teleporter and block the aliens from using teleporting.  Is it possible for to update the game:

• To have reaction fire at incoming teleporters?
• To prevent squatting on teleporters?

1. Free camera panning would be a Godsend.  The cardinal panning often makes it very difficult to see tight corridors and between trucks/barriers.  This alone would be a massive QOL increase.
2. The mission variety early game was a breath of fresh air in this genre which I greatly enjoyed.  Was disappointed to see it go so quickly and be restricted to the norm for virtually the rest of the game.  Bringing in those alternate mission types (escort, save abducted humans, ambushes, etc) for the rest of the phases would add a lot of fun, reduce combat fatigue, and make repeat playthroughs more enticing.
3. In my two playthroughs it was quite rare to encounter landed UFOs.  Due to the plethora of UFOs to shoot down and the generous timeframe to salvage them with troops I never had to do a night mission.  Would be great if night landings played a greater role in the invasion.
4.  Some items have no graphics for ground placement which can be quite annoying in some circumstances.  Even just skewed versions of the inventory images with a mild shadow would solve this.  I'd like to see throwing items as well but it's not a big deal at all and I'm it'd sure quite a bit more work.
5. Would have been nice to get an improved grenade launcher at some point.  Not really because it needed buffs, but because it felt a bit off going from normal tech to high tech while we still had that one bit of old gear tagging along through the end.  Increased TU efficiency in changing grenade types would be very welcome on a higher tech version.  Would also be cool to see the grenade launcher have access to all the grenade types.
6. How training works is quite nebolous.  Would be nice if we had some clarity in game on this important mechanic.
7. There should be an achievement for completing an Iron Man campaign, and there could easily be quite a bit more achievements.

I really hope we see another entry sooner than later this time around as the current engine is perfectly suitable, I'd preorder yesterday!  Cheers to Goldhawk for this solid game!  This is a notoriously difficult genre to succeed in and as an X-Com player since 1995 who's played them all, I can say this is the first release I feel has done it solidly.

I built my base on the western edge of Asia, where it only costs $1,000,000 for some reason, but has lots of land area and is near 4 regions. I also play the extended game, I think it actually makes the game significantly easier especially on commander. (more loot to sell)

I immediately built a training center, power plant, and a hanger. I would time the build of a lab for the start of the next funding month (and time the build of 3rd lab for the start of the one after that) No workshops until you have 3 fully staffed labs. I skip the hospital until midgame. I just hire about 15 soldiers when possible and swap out the wounded. I also fire the weakest TU soldiers and replace them before the training center comes online. I accepted the reduced training rate due to the extra soldiers. 

I immediately researched the MARS and built one. I also built a 2nd plane asap as well.

Early on the MARS is just so valuable, heavy armor, ballistic cannon with a range finder seems the best. Early on it is probably your best killer, and it can lure out enemies and survive most attacks in the early missions It is just so valuable to have the enemies run out and try to kill it. It makes them much easier to kill. You should still try to get cover for it and even smoke but just make sure it is the easiest target when you are getting overwhelmed by enemies.

Tactical combat early on I go with 2 shields, an assault, a grendier, a sniper, 2 machines guns, and the MARS.

The grenadier is so useful since the weight of the grenades and smoke is significantly less with the launcher. The range is nice too, and the ability to launch 2 grenades a turn is very nice (one grenader can smoke everyone!) 

My philosophy is to make sure every soldier is making a useful attack without leaving them exposed (or a plan to smoke the group with one of the last soldiers to go if they have to leave cover to make an attack or need to advance quickly). If they can't make a useful attack, then they are blowing up walls or cover that might hide enemies that could be attacked by other soldiers. Everyone uses the rebreather, with the possible exception of the grenader and sniper. 

Reaction fire is only used as an absolute last resort. If I know I can't attack an enemy and my only hope to save someone is reaction fire, is almost the only time I use it. Smoking your attackers is almost always better than letting the enemy attack. Even if there are no visible enemies I will smoke my soldier even if they have cover at the end of the round if there is an unexplored building/area near them. Battles with reapers is a possible exception to this rule, but even then I would rather just be more aggressive at destroying all cover possible from range to expose and kill them rather than waiting for them to jump out. 

You can still kill the aliens through a smoke wall especially with machine guns. Targetting a space beyond the alien through smoke will spray the area and still hit the alien more often than not with a 10 bullet burst. 

I ended up eventually getting to 5 hangers at the main base, and building 4 angel interceptors before timing the building of my 2nd base for the start of the 4th? funding period I believe. I set it up with 2 hangers, a radar, a storage space, and 2 missile batteries. I immediately transferred the 2 interceptors there as well as 4 sentry guns if I got really unlucky on a base attack surviving the missile batteries. 

Early on, you have to capture a cleaner agent, the general and as soon as reasonble a clearner soldier alive to get the bonus operation points. Use the points on supporters to reduce tension or get more Operation points (whoever is cheap) ideally the ones that give you either -2 doomsday tension or +2 operation points. Researching the general's interrogation is top priority after the MARS research. Time it and know that the protection status changes every 10 days. After getting all the operation points you can and enough doomsday tension reduction, then I try to go for the region bonuses. I try to the soldier bonuses if I can at reasonable price, high quality soldiers is just so important. If you are playing extended version of the game, then getting the selling bonus is really good after that if you can. Reduce monthly expenses then maybe reduced scientist and engineer salaries if you really can't get the others cheaply. 

Eventually I found it useful to have 2 sets of 3 interceptors to shoot down UFOs. Full missile loads with 3 interceptors especially with alenium missiles and maybe one torpedo for the right fight can take down almost anything, usually with minimal damage. I ended up using 3 upgraded angels and 3 phantom interceptors. Near the end I did build the gemini interceptors, and more bases just because I had so much money. 

Half of my soldiers killed (I think 10 out of 19) were MARS or ARES vehicles. So much better to sacrifice them than a trained soldier. 

I found my way to the forum in frustration yet again.

Had VIP in the corner, end turn and i would give the final slap. But a reaction with shotgun killed the VIP, and hitting my own guy (with the shield) in between
So here is my rant of things to consider:

- Reaction with chance to hit friendly need pop up box if you want to do so. Or make reaction something you have to 'set'.
This is terrible. Already lost a lot of good soldiers because of this.

- When starting mission, you often see one or two aliens. But I have quite a few missions that I forgot about them.
All the new aliens are spotted and zoomed to, but not the first ones. Ofcourse, you see the alien icon in the interface.
But it took me many missions to learn to check that icon at the first turn. Maybe have a camera zoom to them on map start?

- Consider allowing positioning of squad in the soldier tab. You can only do that while starting mission.

- Decommission aircraft does not give 30% sell bonus. Yes it's called decommission and not sell, but you get the money from selling parts after decommission right?
If you get a bonus for selling stuff, decommissioning should be part of that

- UFO's can require OP to run. Well my first few times that popped up, I pressed mission only to question later where the hell my OP went to.
The OP cost is so steep that it does not make sense to run. How about, just like other UFO's you get alloys after 24h. Why not something similar here, you get money after 24h.
Skip the whole you can do it for OP cost. At first you don't understand it, you fear missing loot or might not see the OP cost.
Make it simple: no choice in the matter

- Bring alloys from downed UFO's to main base, if storage full, go to 2nd base. I often have to transfer alloys from base 2 to base 1 for engineering.

- The button to find new new recruits. The OP cost goes down to 0
Consider making that button change color when at 0 OP.

- I always start in the soldiers tab to fill the ship and select the right roles for each soldier.
Then go into inventory of each unit
When a new mission starts, there is no link to soldier tab.

Well thats it, guess i go to my dropship without a vip this time

What the hell is this, 4 aliens ready to deal total carnage on my squad.

Each tiny action can make 1-2 aliens react and shoot you.

My whole group can get suppressed if one of the cyberdrone shoots.

Atleast make them suprised on first turn with halved TU or the platform a bit covered or further stretched from the rest of the platform.

This is crazy exposed

it just seems strange to me that rebuilding the interceptor takes more than twice as long as it takes my engineers to build a new one. i know a game universe isn't expected to be totally logically consistent but this difference just strikes me as something a bit too far out. in this case a Gemini takes a little over 3 days to build a new one but rebuilding the one that got shot down takes almost 8 days.

it doesn't materially affect the end game but one that seems logically inconsistent is all. at this point in the game all i am doing is building up my 6th base just because i can and not pursuing the final mission just yet. aside from the game running slowly on older machines, more slowly in fact than the final few pre-1.0 builds on the same machine, i haven't had any real problems. on a modern higher end machine none of the slowness is noticeable. reducing Graphics quality to lowest level makes up enough of the difference that the game remains very playable.

Herb...

First, thank again for a great game, that reminded me of the wonderful times of 30 years ago!

Second, since the game's development is nearing completion, I'd like to make three small suggestions for improvement:

1. Please add buttons for reserving the remainder of a soldier's turn for shooting (for example, separate buttons for the allowed shooting modes: snap, aimed, short burst, long burst) and a button for reserving the remainder of a turn for crouching.

2. Please add a speed slider for tactical combat (for viewing the movement of friendly and enemy soldiers on the tactical map) similar to the speed slider on the strategic map (for example, the speed increase factor - x1, x1.5, x2).

3. And third, and most importantly for me personally, please add the ability to select the faces of soldiers from the starting lineup. At least one, two, or three faces. Since choosing suitable faces at the start of the game takes up the lion's share of the time.

P. S. Because I had to use Google Translation, I'll write the above wishes in my native language. Just in case.

With respect and gratitude for the work you've done!

______________________________________________________

P. S. Пожелания в оригинальном виде на родном языке:

1. Сделайте, пожалуйста, кнопки резервирования остатка хода бойца под стрельбу (например, отдельные кнопки под допустимые виды стрельбы: навскидку, прицельный, короткая очередь, длинная очередь) и кнопку резервирования остатка хода под приседание.

2. Сделайте, пожалуйста, ползунок прокрутки скорости тактического боя (просмотра движения своих и чужих бойцов на тактической карте) подобный ползунку прокрутки на стратегической карте (например, кратность увеличения скорости - х1, х1,5, х2).

3. И третье, самое важное лично для меня, сделайте, пожалуйста, возможность выбора лиц бойцов из стартового состава. Хотя бы одного, двух, трех лиц. Так как подбор устраивающих мордашек при начале игры занимает львиную долю времени.

It was a destroyer

Sebilon opens door

Burst: 27 dmg 52 dmg - unit dead

4legger kills another

Another Sebilon burst, another soldier dead

3 full HP dudes dead and another 3 now suppressed. Door closes and its my turn.

The next turn is guarenteed a Sebilon will open the door again during his turn and closing door at end of his.

I have no means to run away with half TU.

Anyone advise on how to do sebilons in UFO's ?

You have no chance to kill them in their turn. Unlike other units, they BURST, and their downside bad eyesight kinda not really a problem on this range.

Another iron man game lost :(( There are 4 Sebilons inside with a metroid and a 4legger - no chance.

But, gave me idea to do smoke + shotgun style on next run.

I would find it fair that if aliens open the door, the door stays open in my turn. Aliens really abuse the door closing mechanic after their turn now.

DAY 113

Like standing inside of the base doorway right shoulder to the door frame. I cant tell what the field of fire there would give me. But this field of fire would often be unexpected for me. A bit more narrow,

Thank you very much Chris England and team for this incredible reimagining of xcom microprose that I played in my youth. I can now say that this game has been done justice. No longer having to play a utt ugly 320*200 version of 1990s, here's a brand new reimagining of 2026. And without having to rob a bank to buy it. Don't let those ps/5 owners and switch and even those stuck in xbox x/s pacific island be without xenonauts 2.

Hello Goldhawk Interactive development team,

I bought your game a while ago, and I absolutely love it. I used to play the classic X-Com back on the PS1, and your game brings back that exact same feeling of excitement.

I would love to share a few ideas for future updates that could make the game even better:

• Armor Customization: It would be amazing to have visual customization for armor, such as different color palettes and various cosmetic options.

• Deeper Soldier Training: Adding a mechanic where soldiers can be sent to training facilities to improve specific stats or skills.

• Headquarters Officer: Introducing a staff officer role. This character would stay at the base, coordinating operations and providing passive bonuses to squad members on the battlefield.

• Chief Engineer Role: A specialized staff position. For example, a Chief Engineer could provide a +30% bonus to weapon manufacturing speed but increase the production cost by 20%.

• Chief Scientist Role: Another specialized role. For instance, they might have a -10% penalty to autopsy speed but offer a 30% chance to extract additional, bonus data from research projects.

Thank you so much for your time and dedication. I would be thrilled to see any of these features make it into the game!

Best regards, [Александр / Login steam *°•.Шкелет.•°*]

Well. I say the game is very solid. Historically i try to play the games i like on the hard difficulty and try to win from the first run without reading any manuals.

It was hardly possible for the games before 1999 because save reload was popular game mechanic at the time. Also there often were hidden/unclear mechanics. Can you imagine beating xcom Terror From The Deep in from the first run without any expert advice? When underwater weapon does not fire on land and vice versa.

Here i lived until day 120 or so. I've even destroyed cleaners base after invasion started and survived the first base attack.
I think i've lost because i did not realise that planes have 1% hp after being restored. So i've lost too many planes resulting in 500k less money and perhaps ~50 less alloys. But the game is very solid. It is almost possible to win it on commander in the first run without reading spoilers.

P.S.:
For the base defence, it could be good to see some walls being breached by heavy weaponry at the opener. Just for effect. Like the walls should be more breachable than at the alien base.

                _____
             ,-"     "-.
            / o       o \
           /   \     /   \
          /     )-"-(     \
         /     ( 6 6 )     \
        /       \ " /       \
       /         )=(         \
      /   o   .--"-"--.   o   \
     /    I  /  -   -  \  I    \
 .--(    (_}y/\       /\y{_)    )--.
(    ".___l\/__\_____/__\/l___,"    )
 \                                 /
  "-._      o O o O o O o      _,-"
      `--Y--.___________.--Y--'
         |==.___________.==| 
         `==.___________.==' 

Can you see the difference? Same accuracy, range, etc. Is it intended?

I am specifically talking about shooting down harvesters since they're the only UFO that can really do any damage on autoresolve. I did the math, it takes a gauss cannon 20% longer to take down a harvester UFO(maybe a little longer since it gets into range faster) but it has extra weight so you can only use one armour slot.

Reducing armour that much for 20% increased kill speed seems underwhelming considering I got gauss pretty much right at the start of the game and now I am at the end. Perhaps battleships have longer than 3 range on their 360 degree weapons which allows fusion lances to hit while being out of range? That's the only thing I can think of, but I've not seen any battleships yet.

I feel like I am probably just not seeing the benefit because I don't have enough experience in fighting air battles.....what am I not seeing?

I got to the first base assault.

I started in the airlock, I expected the aliens to be everywhere so I thought, lets go to upper corner hangers and then work my way down from there.

I opened the first door and.... ALL ALLIENS WERE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY NOSE

What you see here is turn 2 of the mission

This was an easy clean for me. (though the mission after me broke my campaign again)

Now I appreciate that the weren't all over my base because then I had to search them for hours, and every corner can have you shot so its tedious and dangerous work that way.

But this is the opposite, this is not good.

I think that the aliens have breach spots where they come in, but now it is just 1 spot, maybe 2-4 spots better?

Also, maybe its good that the map is not your entire base, but like random 5-6 facilities and your airlock? and the breached room can never be adjecant to your start position?