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I started a new M2.01 campaign and played up to Day 36 without any real issue (I noticed the Ironman save bug is still present, but no CTD or anything). Research: You finally have time to complete the first research project (vehicles) before you get flooded with other research projects from the first ground missions. However, once the projects start coming in, the early ones still take far too long I think. You can't have more than 5 scientists before Day 20 at the earliest, and the early research projects take 8 days each mostly. I made a very deliberate effort to research accelerated weapons this playthrough since Laser has always become available before I get around to Accelerated in past playthroughs. I think Accelerated research should come earlier, straight off the first Cleaner mission and maybe take a bit less time. But I really like the change from Accelerated weapons being a separate buildable weapon type to now being a Workshop upgrade, that's much much better, I'm actually using them this playthrough. The unlocking of research projects seems chaotic though, I've currently got two new armour systems and two new weapons systems available in the research list at the end of the first month. Soldier Loadout: Heavy Armour checkbox: that's fine, I don't mind this in place of the armour plate system. Module dropdown: Terrible. Only picking one upgrade feels overly limiting. 2/3 starting upgrades are useless (gas mask, morale booster). No visual cue as to whether you have your soldier equipped correctly. I still much prefer the freeform previous system where I can pack as many modules as I want at the expense of other equipment. But if you do really want to go with forcing the player to pick an artificially-limited number of modules, I would suggest making a "module" section in the loadout, possibly tied to the armour. Tactical Suit gets no module slots, Defender Armor gets 1 module slot, Warden get 2, Guardian get 3, etc.

This caught my eye... jetpack would be extremely useful if the maps were just more vertical and being higher grounds provided more buffs. Changing accelerated weapons to being an upgrade to ballistics sounds like a good idea, but I'd like the upgrads to be weapon type specific. Similar upgrade path to armor doesn't sound like an improvement Item upgrades sound sweet. More the better. Regarding the module system, I kinda enjoy the Tetris mini game we have atm, where I need to balance my backpack between modules, weapons, grenades and other items. Changing the abduction missions to be one more "kill all aliens" mission feels a step in a wrong direction. Regarding the cleaner mission chain and progression: Gathering intel for intitial progress is fine and I love the mission (best map so far), but the daily automatic percentage gain after that feels somewhat gamey and boring. You should add more quick and simple cleaner missions where player could earn that progression instead, capture additional intel, capture and interrogate cleaners etc. I also suggested somewhere that cleaners could be added to crash site missions to clean the wreck and alien corpses. This would add a nice new dynamic to those missions where the more player waits before raiding the site, the more there would be cleaners. Avoiding these add-on cleaners could also push people to do these crash site missions at night, before cleaners arrive. Edit: Here's my initial suggestion

I moved the MARS from left and revealed the two wraiths (blue arrows). After that, I moved my soldier into flanking position (yellow arrow) and ended turn. On AI turn, the top wraith threw a grenade to my soldier (red arrow). The wraith could not know my soldier was there, so did it just happen to guess, or did the AI cheat?

Noted this by mistake during a tactical mission - not sure if this is a bug, but if a weapon has certain weight including the ammo when you equip it before mission, then unloading the weapon during tactical mission ADDS the weight of the ammo to the inventory! It should not, as the clip/ammo is already carried one would say... but it does! And it actually applies to all weapons... Example: While in inventory, the HEVY has a weight of 40 during tactical mission it has the same weight loaded - so the weight probably includes the ammo (even if some rounds are already fired).... BUT, as soon as the ammo is unloaded, the ammo weight is ADDED to the overal carried weight of the soldier, resulting in TU penalty, which is totally impossible. Moreover the whole weight of the ammo (16) is added to the inventory, even if half is already "gone." It seems to me as a mistake, the initial clip is likely not included in the calculation of the total weapon weight, therefore if unloaded, its weight is added to the inventory... I would like to suggest therefore, that the weight of the weapons is reduced for the weight of the ammo (empty rifle weight of 16, clip weight of 4, weight of loaded rifle = 20). HEVY weight of 24, loaded weight of 40 (or 32 if loaded with smoke grenades) and/or calculated by each item.

My Xenonauts 2 strat is the exact same as mine in 1, charge forth, for I can always easily replace the casualties. I never even knew the Aliens would disappear once the time runs out as my rush strat would always grab 10/10 by the time the turn limit hit. So I believe that the issue is the lacking strategies. I also do believe that changing missions to kill everything is also a mistake, perhaps the addition of differing types of missions? To add more variations of 'kill all xenos' and add a new type of mission like 'survive for X turns' Like a defend VIP like a president (linked to increasing funding/decreasing panic or vice versa, get control of bodyguards and the president defend for X turns, and after the threshold, the xenonauts arrive to push back?), Defend critical infrastructure like a highway or a military base (survive but minimize destruction), Help an intelligence agency kill Cleaners (kill em all with friends), Capture Cleaner supply convoy for resources (capture mission within X turns)

Have you considered adding missions with more defend objectives within them? If you are worried that most missions will feel like they have some sort of timer in them, then would it be a decent idea to have mission objectives that intentionally slow the mission down? The problem with terror missions and base defense missions and the like for me is that they still become rout the enemy maps when the missions should feel like defending civilians or your head quarters against the alien forces. Defend objectives in those two maps might be a decent fit and add some variety to those maps. Maybe a story mission or two can also have some kind of defend objective as well. Have you seen the Fire Emblem Fates Conquest Chapter 10 map? The story mission I am thinking of could be similar to that where the objective is to defend the starting area, but the map would actually get easier if the player would go out of their way to play aggressive.

A few thoughts from a guy who has played his share of X-com games (yes, back to the 90s). First, I love this game. Thank you so much for bring back a game with turn-based combat and lots to manage. That said, I have a few questions. 1. Should doors provide cover? If not, can we tweak the graphics so they open all the way up and do not block line-of-sight? 2. I can take two jets to fight a UFO. So, why can’t I take two dropships on a mission? I feel like loads of cheap recruits is a perfectly viable (brutal) tactic. 3. Why don’t base missions start in the living quarters? Or anywhere else? It seems reasonable that some of your soldiers would be off-duty at any given moment, and having to quickly grab your gear and form a defensive line is part of the fun. 4. Where do pilots live? In the plane? It seems odd that they don’t require living space or that they cannot level up the way other recruits can.

I am with Skitso that changing the abduction missions to be another flavor of 'kill everything' is a mistake. The game needs more ways to encourage different strategies and loadouts, this mission was one of the few that overwatch camping while slowly creeping forward wasn't the most effective strategy.

So one of my fondest memory with XCOM UFO Defense and TFTD is that an enemy can sometime chuck a plasma grenade in your Skyranger turn 1 and just cause a panic chain. Then trying to salvage the situation or aborting. Great memory to look back and laugh at. So far in both of my most successful Ironman playthroughs I haven't encountered nothing like that at all. Am I just lucky ?

I went about three play throughs without getting a grenade lobbed at me, and then, on the fourth, had two of my guys wiped out with a grenade! I had grenades thrown at me in the next play through as well. I think they may have tweaked something in one of the updates. I don't think it is just about LOS, I think it has more to do with whether your soldiers are grouped close together. The aliens will kill in the most efficient way possible so one grenade for two or more soldiers is what they will go for.

The developers of Xenonauts-2 have been asked many times to make the size of the tactical team the same as in the classic (original) UFO: 1-2-3. The market is oversaturated with games where the player controls a tactical group of 1-2 squads. Tactics at the platoon (3-4-5) squad level are only available in old UFO games:1-2-3. And these old games are still popular. By adding several tactical missions to the game, in which twice as many soldiers will participate (not 9-10-12, as usual, but 18-20-24 soldiers), this will make the battles more diverse and unlike each other. For example: the final battles; the assault on the alien base, the anti-terrorist battle - all these battles can be made more ambitious. Xenonauts 2 has quite a lot of tactical battles, but they are very similar to each other. There are not enough battles of different scales.

This is definitely the case in this game. Going from the screenshot, I'd say the AI was doing something I wouldn't expect it to do. As in, I don't see any enemy unit having sight on your unit. But I'd need the save game to give more insight. If an AI unit moves and at any point gets LOS onto units of yours, all AI units will know about this unit, and they'll retain LOS according to the game's sight rules (i.e. till end of turn)