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I'm back on the newest experimental build, but this likely applies to the other builds I've been on. Shooting at point blank range, with pistols and shotguns particularly, can lead to some devastatingly bad results for your troops, especially when the best hit chance I tend to see with a pistol at point blank range is a few ticks over 50%, and with a shotgun around 70%. Just today I'm on my first mission out with some newbs and we've blasted through all but two pockets of the map, where we figure the last alien(s) are lurking. So my assault troop with the shotgun is the first to discover the last alien ... bonus, it has its back turned to him, and he's got enough AP left to get right behind it and pull the trigger for the better of the two shot options .... well, two out of three of those shots somehow miss, and all he's done is piss off the alien and let it know he's there. No one else is even within grenade distance so I tell him, "well, you dumb bastich, you're dead now, it's not going to miss you, standing there in hand-shaking distance." Sure enough, the alien fires point blank at my stupefied nitwit ... takes two shots, but it's on point with both, and there goes my first casualty of the mission. A full turn goes by before I have the rest lined up ... sniper is next closest ... she misses and earns a ticket for a month eating hospital jello as a result. Rifleman then trots right up alongside the alien and instead of high-fiving it, fires a pistol right at it, which also misses .... About this time, I just say "@#$! it" and have the next closest person lob a grenade in from the other side, which finally seals the deal. If my chances to hit were in the 90% range at point blank and I still missed, I'd at least know to blame RNGeebus for my rotten luck, but at the moment I'm left to puzzle why my chances of hitting were so low .... especially the dummy with the shotgun hitting from behind at point blank range. There shouldn't have been anything left of that alien but enough giblets to fill the gravy boat. Yeah, they're newbs, but still ...

Thanks for the comments everyone. Having done an initial read over what's been posted so far, here's my first set of balance changes and thoughts: V25 already includes significantly reduced refuel / rearm times. UFOs now regenerate health on the Geoscape so while it is possible to take down a UFO by attacking it with torpedoes and then returning to base and re-arming and then repeating, it shouldn't be viable with just one plane. This frees up your interceptors to fight multiple combats in one wave. I'll increase the duration on retreating to 4 or 5 seconds, as I agree that it does feel a bit too effective at the moment. You no longer have to build Armour for aircraft; this is going to become part of a one-off global engineering project that upgrades the armour on all aircraft and vehicles. All aircraft weapons now cost $200k to build. This is a reduction for cannons, and an increase for torpedoes and missiles. Note also that there's a global decrease in engineering times in V25 too, which means they'll be faster to build as well. Torpedoes reduced in range from 8 down to 7, missiles reduced in range from 6 down to 5.5. Cannons still have range 3. The next point of discussion is how to make the UFO battles more varied and the equipment loadouts for your interceptors more potentially interesting, which are two closely related discussions. The first question is what are the different weapons actually good at; right now they're set up as follows. Cannons: these are short range weapons with reliable sustained damage and armour shred. They can't be evaded and have the highest overall damage of any weapon, but it takes a while to unload all the shots and you have to expose yourself to lots of attacks from the UFO to get into range and fire off all the ammo. This makes them good against UFOs that can evade (Fighters), and indeed any UFO if you can position the interceptor to avoid taking too many hits from UFO weapons. Missiles: these are medium range weapons that do high burst damage, but have somewhat weak armour shred. They move fast enough that UFOs generally can't evade them. This makes them good to quickly pick off escort UFOs at long range before they get into cannon range. They're also good finishers against normal UFOs if something can break the armour first, as they deal their damage much more quickly than cannons do. Torpedoes: these are long range weapons that do medium damage, but have good armour penetration and armour destruction. They travel slowly and are easily evaded by UFOs that can roll, and they are so heavy that aircraft carrying them lose the ability to roll. These are designed to soften up big UFOs at the start of a battle, as they still deal full damage against heavily armoured UFOs and also shred the armour so other weapons can more efficiently destroy them. There's a few problems with this in practice. The first is that Torpedoes are just too strong overall; it seems like they deal enough damage to be viable weapons despite being intended primarily as anti-armour weapons. Missiles also overlap a bit too much with Cannons, as Cannons are strong vs escorts but then so are Missiles. I think in most cases Cannons are superior to Missiles, particularly when you have multiple aircraft in a squadron and so can maneuver at least one plane behind the UFO and blast away without taking damage. I'm going to have a think about the different UFO archetypes today, and maybe see what happens if we try to collapse missiles and torpedoes together into a generic "missile" weapon and then add lances in as the the third weapon category.

Hard to pick favoirte but here is a few I jump back to time to time. - XCOM: Defence & TFTD - awesome atmosphere and story. - Transport Tycoon Deluxe - Huge debth and options. There were a lot of attempts to make a similar game but it's still the best. Graphics still work nicely even today. - Original Theme Park - So much fun building the rides and it wasn't focused on rollercosters only. It was much bigger. - Master of Orion 2 - Endless possiblities - Dungeon keeper - Loved that for a change your not the hero. Thinking from a diffrent perspective. Great! - Settlers 2 (Anniversary) I didn't like the direction with Settlers 3 onwards - Settlers 2 built on the success of Settlers and it was pleasure to watch for hours how you build, discover and expand. - Final Fantasy 7 - Do we need a reason? It considered one of the best games ever made and always into top of the rankings even 20 years after.

I've played all official XCOM releases but Terror From the Deep is my all time fave. Games I always have installed on my PC are TFTD, Sudden Strike2, Half Life, Diablo2 and Simcity 4. Funny how I got into TFTD back in '95. Friend of mine had a gaming club back then and every now and then he would supply me with latest game releases. Unfortunately, none of those were originals, they'd all be bundled up on a single CD. That was the period when I'd play anything I could lay my hands on but after a while you get tired of Doom, MK, TV and similar games so you start looking for something else to play. XCOMTFTD was the last file(s) on the CD and I always wondered what it is. I had absolutely no idea how to play it but I was so amused by the atmosphere and everything else that I pressed hard onto it. I still don't remember how I've managed to take down first Alien Sub but I did it. Then again, it also took me some time to learn how to send aquanauts to the crash site. Capturing live alien and discovering how to use mind control was something I've mastered in my 3rd new game. All in all, the thrill, the creepy atmosphere and freedom of play is what always draws me back to it.

X-COM: Terror From the Deep. I've been playing it since it released, and I'm still playing it now. Mostly in OpenXCOM - TFTD though. I can't even count the number of hours I have sunk into that game. It certainly puts my 10 year WoW career to shame though.