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I've been playing the Milestone builds, and of course I'd played a fair bit of earlier builds, but the Milestone builds do feel much more mature and are also the first time I've gotten past the early midgame, so it seems like a good time to provide some renewed feedback. I've seen a lot of what others have posted, so I'll omit points that have already been brought up many times unless I have additional insights to share. Mostly staying away from balance, too. All in all, well, I can't stop playing in the evenings and I'm particularly impressed with how much gameplay has improved over X1 thanks to mostly small changes. Cleaners People have said the Cleaner arc is short, and after reading those comments, I understand. They featured more prominently in earlier builds but aren't so visible in the EA build after all. Design-wise, getting rid of the mandatory Cleaner base attack was the right choice, but it can lead to the Cleaners coming out of nowhere seemingly. You attack the Intel Hub without a good background on who they are and then most of their story comes after you eliminate the organisation entirely. I strongly suspect the flow of the Cleaner story can be improved with some fairly minor changes. They should appear in the first mission (the alien research site) alongside aliens. This will create a memorable moment for the player (who are these secret service type guys? why are they attacking me, are they with the aliens?) and provide an opportunity for the appropriate research text to show up early, giving some background. Then the player would be going into the Intel Hub to face a familiar enemy. Especially recovering a Cleaner body from the first mission would make a difference. As things are now, you're almost certain to only get the Cleaner autopsy done after destroying their HQ, because the Intel Hub and the Cells end with you escaping, so you don't recover any bodies unless you drag them yourself. A lot has been said about the difficulty of Cleaner Cells, to the point where it seems a couple negative Steam reviews appeared in frustration at the missions. These two missions aren't unfair to experienced players but they do show up fairly early and can feel unfair to new players. It's pretty undeniable that there is a difficulty spike. The Cells are harder than the Intel Hub or HQ missions, and they're harder than crash sites or even terror missions in that phase of the game. While there's been some focus on the timed reinforcement aspect, I'm not so sure that is the main problem, though of course adjusting reinforcements/timers per difficulty is a good idea. Much of the difficulty of the Cells seems to stem from a high initial enemy count. The Cell Cleaners are tougher than most other enemies in this phase, they have burst weapons and either decent damage or good armour. Removing even one Cleaner from the initial map would go a long way - the Cells don't need radical changes as much as they need fine tuning. The other difficulty component is that you need to locate the VIP. Which is a bit weird with metagaming effects. The first time you play, you need to spread out a bit and look for the VIP. The second time you play, you know where the VIP is so you can follow the optimal tactic of heading straight for the main building, blowing open walls and finishing the VIP off with a MARS rocket salvo or something similarly explosive. In the Cleaner HQ, the objective area should display what boosts you're getting from killing the cells, like "Cleaner Cell destroyed - defender armour weakened". This is as a reminder and as a confirmation to the player of what specifically has been accomplished. Air Combat Since air combat is going to get another pass, I'm not going to go into the actual combat mechanics now but rather some adjacent points. There's a strange metagaming issue with damaged UFOs, which X1 also has. During a UFO wave, as UFOs go in and out of radar range, I can remember if I e.g. destroyed a particular UFO's armour if I remember the ID. I torpedoed UFO-5 so it has no armour any longer? Okay, then the next time I get a contact, I'll know if it's the same one by checking if it's UFO-5 or UFO-6. But it's unclear if I'm supposed to do this. Same issue with UFO types really, if I engaged it and know it's a Destroyer, subsequent clicks will still say Unknown. One fairly straightforward solution could be to remember which UFOs have been engaged by a squadron and, for any such UFO, show its type and perhaps damage status. I can't help but feel that the existence of the Dynamic UFO HP option is weird and suggests an issue. It's very strange for the same UFO to get weaker or tougher depending on how many planes I engage with. No idea what to do with this, but my intuition is that the best balancing tool is fuel. If you're sending three planes where one would do, in theory you should be wasting fuel and thus be in a worse position to respond to a subsequent threat. And related to dynamic HP, I've complained before that the auto-healing of UFOs is very much a black box. Maybe the mechanic has its place but it needs to be more clear. Compared to X1, there's the excellent move of making UFOs occasionally slow down so that it's possible to catch a faster UFO with a slower plane if you get lucky. This makes another mechanic from X1 appear awkward - if your squadron runs out of fuel, they have to go back to base, but they're limited to the lowest-fuel plane. In X1, I didn't mind, but in X2 it really feels like it'd make sense to split squadrons in-flight in such a situation, with e.g. Angels returning to base and Phantoms continuing. Bases and Teching There are a few surprising moments in the tech tree. One example is, if you skip Accelerated Cannon (engineer build) for planes, and go for the much superior Laser Lance, when eventually research Heavy Gauss, you'll see the engineering project to build the Gauss Cannon (whatever it was called) and suddenly discover it needs Accelerated Cannons first. This is surprising because of the inconsistency, normally each weapon tier is independent and also thematically we're building a new type of gun, not upgrading the previous one. Starting a new base, you can assign buildings to be constructed before the access lift is complete. That is a good change but it's not even hinted at anywhere, you have to discover it by accident. The Training Center, along with the whole training mechanic, is too much of a black box. I do see the training capacity but that's all. How fast are my soldiers getting attribute progress? How much has training contributed overall? Which attributes? Are all my soldiers training? I did not find anywhere to see those. Base upgrades (Alenium generators, Quantum labs, etc) may be easy to miss for players who don't expect those. Perhaps a tooltip in the main base view if an upgrade is available? Hover over a generator and it might say "Alenium Generator upgrade available in the Workshop". I find base storage confusing right now. Why are mission items not sold automatically? Not sure if there's still a reason for this. There was in earlier builds but now, unless I'm mistaken, there is no reason ever to hold on to an item you got from a mission. Research unlocks automatically when relevant and items are never used in manufacture. Then the only thing storage adds is confusion potential, exemplified by how "when can I sell Cleaner Data?" is one of the most common progression questions. Combat missions Ground combat, the meat of the game, is of course excellent overall, with significant improvements compared to just a few months ago. I really like the various alien abilities, they feel like a successful return to classic X-Com style, which is probably the main reason combat feels better than earlier this year. A strange thing I noticed is that terror missions feel a lot easier in X2. In X1, I'd always be afraid of them, they were, well, a terror. Just like in the original game. X2 terror missions are easy but I cannot quite figure out why, they're mechanically the same as X1 after all. Some contributing factors could be that aliens always prioritise civilians (making civilians powerful meat shields), that Reaper AI in particular is dumb (they're not sneaky and so are easier to deal with) and that the terror maps have many explosive props (if a gas station shows up, that's almost cheating, a well-placed shot blows the entire area up). Base defence missions are always a highlight for me. Some AI issues clearly present but very good stuff overall, though they could be improved by having a few more interactive props. It's a Xenonaut base, it is the perfect place for that. An explosive gas balloon in the workshop, some equipment in the lab that explodes with EMP damage, a container that starts leaking smoke if damaged in the storage room. The fights would feel more epic plus interactive props are always fun. Also, the Access Lift tile is very uninteresting. Aliens aren't coming from it anyway so ideally I'd give it a complete makeover with a rename to Command Center, but the existing tile could be improved by at adding some sandbags to hide behind. Stun damage is difficult to balance but it's currently not there. I've repeatedly knocked enemies out without meaning to. The general rule that stun bar above HP bar means unconscious is good but some tweaks are needed. One idea is to require an actor to have just received stun damaged to fall unconscious, and disallow unconsciousness on HP damage. This is to prevent a situation where you shoot an alien, not dealing enough damage to kill but enough to knock them out. Being knocked out from a shotgun to the face is weird. Related to stun, stun guns need a clearer role. They're currently fully useless. Miscellany Tutorial tooltips - the overdamage explanation seems to pop up the first time an actor dies via overdamage, which is very likely to be a civilian from alien fire. Should probably be only if you kill via overdamage instead. Yes I tried the tutorial mode. Tutorial tooltips - I cannot figure out what triggers the "adjacent soldiers can open doors" explanation but I got it during the alien turn and that probably shouldn't happen. We need soldier flags back on the UI! Servitors are mostly referred to as gun drones, except the initial research text. Missions with reinforcements could really use a visible timer, like the abduction missions have. Soldiers can path through burning tiles and even kill themselves by doing so. A corner case with laser machine guns. If I fire a 10-round burst and a 3-round burst, that takes my ammo down to 7/30. Then the game won't let me fire a 10-round burst because there's not enough ammo. Makes some sense but I'd prefer to be able to force-fire anyway if I use ctrl. Using a medkit can cause reaction fire, it should probably be exempt. It's highly counterintuitive that winning a terror mission doesn't reduce panic in the region.

Are they gone forever? Will they be added later? Will we be able to mod them in? (If modding will be re-enabled like in Xenonauts 1) I kinda like the new 1x1 Vehicles but getting rid of 3x3 vehicles seems like a huge loss

It's very frustrating how civilians act in a totally random way, getting themselves constantly shot and running always from safety into danger. It would be great if your troops could "Evac" unarmed civilians by interacting at close range with them, at which point instead of their current wandering they'll run towards the dropship and hide next to it (Instead of into alien machineguns)

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Gameplay Changes: The intro cinematic and the game mechanic popups are now enabled at the start of each campaign, regardless of whether the tutorial is enabled or not. Cleaner SMGs and Cleaner Accelerated Rifles are now recoverable and usable (by popular demand). Xenonaut Sentry Guns can now open doors, but are unable to crush objects. TU costs for abilities are now rounded up rather than down. This fixed some odd situations where it was occasionally better to have fewer TU. Reduced the spawn rate of Cleaner anomalies at the start of the game. Key Fixes: Fixed a pathfinding crash that had been introduced in 1.26, which usually crashed during the AI turn but also could affect the player. Fixed a bug that could cause multiple popups to spawn when intercepting UFOs or sending a dropship to a tactical mission. In both cases this could cause crashes. Fixed a crash that could occur on the Soldier Recruitment panel due to a corrupted Kickstarter backer soldier. Fixed a bug where the day 180 "Content Complete" popup was not being shown, and the game loss conditions were not triggering if you lost enough regions. General Fixes: Fixed grenades / aircraft missiles not properly upgrading if you skip the Alenium project and go straight for Fusion. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly charging TU for you to pick an item up and then put it back in the same spot. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly forgetting to charge TU if you moved the same item multiple times. It should no longer be possible to use a jetpack to fly between rooms in the Alien Base, or to jetpack through the roof of the Dragonfly dropship. MARS vehicles now correctly display their names in the tactical combat. Disabled the day 300 Orbital Bombardment research report (which wasn't supposed to be in the game). Psyon VIP on Cleaner Cell missions no longer reports recovering both a Stunned Psyon and a Cleaner VIP if captured alive. Stalker Stealth Armour no longer shows the hair of soldiers floating inside their helmet. Dead Cyberdrones should no longer appear to be alive again after loading a save. Fixed some terrain objects in the Xenonaut base showing a bright pink error texture when destroyed. Fixed the Boreal sawmill building roofs so they correctly disappear if destroyed. Fixed typos in the strategy tutorial, Frag Grenade tooltip, and Ballistic Weapons and Fighter Datacore research text. Fixed the Engineering recruit panel having tooltips referring to scientists instead of engineers.

I had a base that got destroyed and i lost radar coverage there but it reappeared after i unlocked quantum array it happened a few days ago, so the version was different then, not sure which one exactly

CAREFUL SLIGHT SPOILERS I would also love to see variation and think it is absolutely crucial for longevity. Was pretty disappointed when the second cleaner cell was exactly the same layout as the first so I knew exactly where the VIP was going to be. It's really harmful for replayability to have the exact same layouts reappear, but even more so on critical missions like this. No more trying to cover the map to find the target while keeping sufficient concentration of force, from now on I can just beeline to where I have to hit. Same for the intel grab missions.

A couple of points from after 160+ days in game. Some background. I have played A LOT of original X-Com and X-com 2. And even done a full playthrough for Xcom Hardmode Expansion(the best way to play original Xcom BTW). Also, played all Firaxis Xcoms(not a huge fan). And Phoenix Point Game of the year(after developers made game, well, a proper game). And, of course Xenonauts 1(though initial state of the game made sure I did not replay it more then once). I play standard difficulty for now. To get a feel of things. I see a lot of references above for early missions being too difficult. Based on my normal difficulty I find it not the case. I`d say it`s a rather expected early game curve, while your soldiers are inexperienced. But I see how highest difficulty can become a problem. And since I played it, there was a minor nerf to those missions. So more comment on that after second playthough. Regarding accelerated\laser weapons debate, my opinion is that game should skip standard laser research, and make advanced lasers available a little further away. Like a couple month, give or take. I`ve been trying different research options and got my accelerated weapons way before lasers. And can 100% state that accelerated weapons are very good compared to lasers. And in no way those are trap, like many said before. Lasers have only few advantages - an accuracy bonus for low level operatives and very good terrain destruction. In pretty much every other aspect, I proffered accelerated over non advanced lasers. Overall, ground combat feels a bit too easy right now. I play semi iron man. And even with that, I`ve lost only one operative so far. Technically, I`ve lost more. Somewhere around five or six. But every other got "saved" by medical facility bonuses after return to base. What feels very alien and confusing is air combat. Ar first, everything is fine. But once you get to abductors and interceptors, things get very weird. To be fair, I`ve lost one of my bases, so maybe that setback is what makes thing difficult but still. The main problem is right now game states that air combat is "in between state" and we should use auto resolve function. But after a while, I see that if I don`t use manual combat - i`m loosing hard. It takes forever for air crafts to repair damage. Ensuring that I let plenty of UFOs let loose a wreck havoc on geo map resulting in quite significant spike in panic levels. I`ve seen some videos of other people playing. And what seems weird is that I`ve seen UFO fighters only once(I believe) as part of an escort of large ship. And now, all I see is Interceptors. And three of those things just melts three of my Phantoms with Laser Lances. But again, the main problem I see is If you use autoresolve your crafts get too much damage and it takes forever to repair. And if your crafts are damaged, good luck killing subsequent UFOs without abusing manual air combat. I may be very wrong on this, but overall, aerial combat feels like least fun part. And more importantly, least comprehensive. No tutorial, nothing. Just figure out things yourselves by loosing plenty of air crafts.

I think there is an issue with presentation of the information which will confuse players. At the moment the funding screen does not provide any information about why or how the funding from any region is changing. So there is no feedback loop, so players don't know why funding is changing. I'm not aware of anything that clearly states that funding is inversely affected by panic. Players see a tech saying '$240k extra' and they don't see a $240k rise, because panic is rising too, so think there is an issue with presentation of the funding information.

So, 100 hours in and hitting the wall. I'll be giving my advise and suggestions about the game so far! Starting off, I loved Xenonauts 1 as it held that simplicity of classic Fallout games with an in depth calculation and effect system to stats. 1. Panic system. It felt a bit difficult to cover other parts of the planet that were having anomalies or abduction reports. not actual missions. And these were adding to the panic level that effects the funding. ... in suggestion, the further away these UFO anomalies and sightings are from a City landmark, the lesser the panic. This will better effect late game when theres upwards of 3+ UFO groups on the map at the same time. 2. Cleaners. These guys are kinda, unexplained. Itd be best to have them maybe as a 3rd party encounter in one of the other missions, rather than the first mission being that you bust into their Regional HQ to grab some flashdrives. They are also very tough, very accurate, and deal lot of damage. they have accelerator rifles. something i dont get till a little later, but they all have them. At the first Clearers mission, i dont have these weapons yet or they are hard to build due to a lack of resources. Even in the easiest mode. In suggestion, itd be best if these guys were better scaled to events. 3. Air combat. I hear is being refined still. 4. Ground Combat. The penalties for blocked shots is too harsh. with a sniper rifle, shooting over a 3 foot box is -40%. this is when nether I nor the enemy is taking cover behind it. Same with guard rails. Point blank is overly harsh. I hear that its being looked into. Bring back overwatch point usage. Before in Xeno 1 it made the remaining of your TU yellow indicating that those points are reserved for overwatch. The chances of shooting things RIGHT infront of you that you dont want to hit is too high. This is more that theres too many thing blocking shots when they shouldnt be. Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1. 5. Prep system/Base/assets. I like the prep system carry over from Xeno 1, but I feel that some things are too heavy. Steel Ballistic plates are between 5 and 10lbs irl. As for the Deploy aircraft, id addon that there should be better different tiers of deploy aircraft. You have the ability to deploy as many as the aircraft can load, rather than having that extra space. I suggest the FIRST deployment aircraft to be something like a UH-1. The UH-1D can carry 10 troops and will deploy out the sides. the UH-60 can carry 12. Theres the CH-46, 47, and 53 to pick from when increasing tier, deploy the back and sides. So forth. just a bit of extra depth before hitting the sci-fi stuff This is really all I have in mind and I look forward to what the endgame of the development will bring! ========Edit addition 6. General pricing. So, the general pricing of everything seems to be placeholder I'm guessing. a Radar Array being 400,000 the 2nd jet aircraft being 500,000, MARS costs 250,000. Some armors costing upwards of 25,000, as the stun gun costs 20,000, the laser turret defense upgrade costing 250,000. Alot of these things dont feel quite right. Specially not with the funding provided.

The opening cinematic and the previous text intro both state it is 2009, the cold war is still on... So we are in an alternate time line or parallel universe (your choice on that) so while stuff looks somewhat familiar not all is based on our technology. IF you read te notes on things like the Interceptors it states that they work because the are old technology, There is a fair amount of "lore" available in your scientist's reports and is available in the Encyclopedia (Xenopedia?) that you can access. IT also stops the clock so no worries about getting ambushed

Thats how the Fire in the Hole mod works in X1 Sometimes the ship even has some of the holes already when it gets shot down

Scientists and engineers are not transfered like soldiers, you can just fire them in one spot and hire them in another without any consequences. Although I am not sure why you would ever want to fire scientists and engineers in any base, generally you always want more of these guys globally unless you are really struggeling with income. The "number of scientists/engineers in transit" box just tells you how many new people are on their way to your bases after you hired them, so you don't wonder why the lab/workshop capacity is maxed out after you hired a bunch but you don't have their extra work-speed yet.

My two cents on the frustration with the cleaners: I have been playing in hard difficulty, so it is a timed mission, where you know you gotta move fast, you're going to be fighting more and more of them if you take "too long" in the mission, but in that difficulty with the extra health a human wearing a tuxedo won't die to a rifle shot, let alone a pistol shot, you need at least 2 shots to kill them. You can't run up to their face and use a shotgun because if you don't hit enough shots to kill them you lose a soldier, so it isn't really a smash and grab mission. After trying it several times with different soldier equipment and strategy I managed to get data from all tables one or two turns after reinforcements got there, and I had to retreat safely. I only got out because I placed one assault with good accuracy by a window right next to one of the points where reinforcements spawn, so that soldier was killing 2 guys before they could do anything. You see, I had to exploit the game mechanics to make it more manageable. The whole thing points to cleaners being strong in numbers, they will overwhelm you because they don't care about their losses, still they're as tough as your own soldiers in armor that early in the game. It is a huge spike because nothing is taken away from them to nearly compensate for the reinforcements and the need to retreat safely to beat the mission. P.S. I don't know if I went through those too early, I had barely played a couple of UFO crash sites, no terrorism missions at all, so I thought that dealing with the cleaners was supposed to be the early game.

There's a thread in the bug forum on this. They just vanish if you bring them back, but I think you can use them in the mission.

I was able to get it working with the experimental build and adding the command to Steam Launch Options (didn't work by default). Manual and autosave seem to be working as-intended. Thanks for taking the time to work this out.

The whole "can only have 1 research going with all your scientists on it" was a bad move. It forces you to build laboratories in another base, hire scientists there and relocate all needed items just to be able to have 2 research projects going on at the same time. And you better not want a third. It comes with automated reports and way less research projects to pick from which sounds like the opposite of what players usually want in this genre. Xenonauts 1's most famous mods ADDED a lot of research projects, that alone should be a good hint of what players want. How many mods removed research from the tech tree? I don't know, I never checked because.... that's not what the game needs. I truly expect that to be changed during early access, for the sake of the game's longevity.

Not a bug per se, but anyways...

Would it be better to have a lying down stance for eg snipers

Ignore that idiot Alienkiller. Soldiers increase by surviving missions and/or getting kills. Here is the official wiki. https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Xenonauts_2/Xenonauts_2_Official_Wiki There is also the "Archives" you see on the main menu. Goodluck Commander!

Hello, wouldn´t it make sense to be able to sell (or equip) the accelerated weapons of Cleaners after the Cleaner Base mission? I believe I only had bunch of cleaner files and some alien alloys, but no cleaner rifles etc...

I agree with most mentioned above, however: 1. agree fully 2. agree - I never tried totake the accelerated weapons from the cleaners during mission - can they be used or are they blocked the same wa as the alien magnetic guns? 3. looking forward to see improvements, but its "usable" even now 4. agree - burst fire sucks, but the MG is still very useful to supress the enemy in order to move the other soldiers forward. Shields also work well in providing cover and protecting from at least one shot, which is the main purpose really in my eyes. 5. Agree on the intitial dropship - could be smaller, however no UH-1 nor CH46/53 fly at the speed as the Skyhawk does (even if the story introduces it as modified). It would make more sense to have a V-22 or the prototype V-44 as the initial dropship and then go with the Dragonfly and so forth.

Bring back overwatch point usage. Before in Xeno 1 it made the remaining of your TU yellow indicating that those points are reserved for overwatch. This is actually in the game - right click the desired firing mode and it will show the reserved portion in Orange color on the TU bar and give warning that the TU's are reserved when you try moving past the limit Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. Agreed here. MG is unfortunately a useless weapon right now. Too low base accuracy for shots further reduced by Recoil penalty Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1. Disagree - shields save from at least one shot, thus they are highly useful against extreme damage - they are free HP more or less. Pistols are extremely good once your accuracy and TU go up. The damage spread in the game feels too high though, would make sense to reduce a bit

Longest week of you life? The hours you and the team must have put in is incredible and much appreciated.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Gameplay: Using shot preview move (Ctrl+Shift) no longer causes significant performance problems. Various smaller performance updates to both strategy and tactical layer (although these are unlikely to be noticable in an Experimental build due to the extra logging reducing overall performance) Aircraft will now start to immediately repair Armour after being upgraded. Rush replace on aircraft now correctly costs the listed amount of money. Fixed an issue where you could drag any type of ammo onto any weapon on the Soldier Equip screen and it would accept it. MARS now correctly displays its name in the tactical combat. Fixed some Xenopedia / tooltip typos. Crash Fixes: Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to begin a crash site mission when there was a wreckage site also present on the Geoscape. Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur during the alien turn if the aliens were using hovering units like Servitors. Fixed a rare crash that could occur in the Soldier Equip pool. Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you built over 50 planes.

Thanks. Yeah, this is a bug. It shouldn't cost TU if you move it to its original spot (or even within the container itself).

The hit chance is applied both ways - we can increase the block chance of a shield soldier to 100% but then they'll be impossible for your own soldiers to shoot through, which I think people would find annoying. Miss shots can deviate hit the ground but their trajectory is usually pretty flat (or somewhat upwards) so they tend to hit objects or actors instead.

Thanks. Yeah, we'll get this fixed. It should work fine once the plane takes off and lands again.

Yeah, fair point. I'll note this down.

Yeah I've noticed this one too

Depends how you want to view it, in the current state the construction site doesn't need actual power yet, what you are describing would mean the construction site needs as much power as the finished building even it has no functionality yet, so I don't think this is a bug. But I agree with you, having the option to expand the base right away is much better than having to sit around for the generator to finish and then again wait for the thing you actually want, that would be super-tedious and slow down expansion way too much I think.

Yeah, this change has already been implemented as of 1.24 - which is still on the experimental branches at present, but will arrive on the normal branches in the next day or two!

Skylances are the lowest damage weapon, so no surprise you're not winning if that's all you're using (they're not necessarily bad weapons, but they're a debuff, not DPS). The loadout you want for dealing with scouts early is 2xmissile+gun. Manual flying an Angel with day-1 gear can 1v1 a scout using that loadout: I dodged a couple of shots using evasive roll, but other than that I basically just charged straight in from the front and kept shooting till it died. With a squadron of 2 Angels it should be close to impossible to lose against a scout as long as you don't replace the guns. Example: I used 'manual combat' there but literally didn't touch the controls: just press play and let the AI go. The basic loadout your planes have one day one will stat-check scouts quite comfortably.

Missiles seem pretty useless overall, just set up phantoms with best cannons you have access to and they'll do much better. Also better to do the air battles yourself, selecting where your interceptors start from (I find the from sides to be most effective usually) and using the maneuvers. I've been able to take down every UFO in the game, even with escorts with two phantoms with gauss (granted one of them got destroyed when taking down bomber + two interceptors). Eg. If you attack with two interceptors (I1 & I2) from the sides a single UFO the combat for me goes usually like this: 1. The UFO will start to turn towards one of interceptors eg. I1 2. Activate afterburners on I2 to close in faster 3. After a bit the UFO switches target to I2 and starts turning back 4. Turn on afterburner on I1 and turn it off on I2 5. After a bit the UFO should switch direction again 6. Usually the UFO will now stick to I1 as the target so start spamming dodge maneuver away from the front of the UFO 7. Keep dodging on I1 as it engages first 8. As soon as I2 is in range stop afterburners so it starts shooting 9. Keep dodging with I1 Something like that should allow you to take down even the largest UFO's in the game with minimal damage to your interceptors as you can avoid the main front facing weapons almost completely. E: As for auto resolving battles against UFO's with escorts/three interceptors, nope, not even three phantoms with gauss resolves in victory, but they're easily handled manually with said three interceptors. So in that sense yes the auto resolve could probably use a bit more fine tuning for people that'd prefer to skip the air battle (me included, I just do it since the auto resolve results are far inferior to what I can accomplish myself, which surely is part of the point but the gap is just too large).

As a complete newbie to the Xenonauts games, playing today's release version blind, I have a couple of notes: - Accelerated Weapons feels like a trap to me, because I unlocked Laser Weapons research right after. This is very confusing and not knowing which is better (and that the tech tree looks like this) feels pretty bad for a new player. I also didn't have the money to make any mag weapons because, - It's very unclear whether it is safe to sell corpses. In XCOM 2 WOTC, a game many people are likely to come from into Xenonauts 2, alien corpses are important resources to build items and structures (even more so in Long War), but from the posts in this thread it seems like they exist to be sold in this game (like in OG XCOM UFO Defense). This could probably be made explicit. Xenonauts 2 is of course not XCOM 2, it is its own separate game - but I think the context in which these games exist is important.