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Overall, I'd like to preface that I liked the game quite a bit, having finished the campaign on Veteran preset with a few changes to Soldier difficulty (no Increased accuracy on aliens, visible health) It took about 50 hours with save scum, recorded campaign time was 41.4 hours The strategy was to start in Europe at 1,250k cost (Closer to Kyiv on Kyiv - Budapest line to capture more of Africa and Soviet Union in radar coverage), get additional lab, training center, living room and go from there. The highlight of Milestone 5 is the addition of Operation Points and Supporters to regions. The system feels really powerful, providing buttons that immediately resolve player's problems, including problems with resources. As resources are now somewhat limited due to 2 UFOs cleared per Type I found myself somewhat constrained in Alloys and Alenium, but barely constrained in money once the full funding kicked in. Overall, I'd say we have too much money coming in, especially with Supporter bonuses and regional perks. Alenium is less of a problem and alloys are the most constraining To continue on the campaign report, third science lab was at start of month 2 and eventually I managed to get a second base in US (750k+200k Hangar+500k radar + Mig for it) before end of 2nd month, but afterwards, the money flow was easy. On Day 91, i had the fourth lab and once the full funding kicked in, I focused on building up bases and planes for them, including a second training center in Month 4. I found myself alloy constrained to build more Phantoms and Geminis, but once all bases had 2 Gemini, the resource constraint was solved. Second workshop was created around month 6, when Gemini became available. For spending OP, i focused on Europe figuring out that improved training rate is rather important to have better soldiers, then focused on US to finish forming the squad around months 4-5 Gameplay-wise, the Cleaners period is definitely too short. It doesn't detract from hunting the aliens, if anything, I'd be quite happy to see an expansion to this and I'm surprised the aliens don't continue using cleaners after the cleaners HQ has fallen. I imagine, aliens would find ways to using humans in their bases in some way, no? Same with Infiltrator advisors, it appears, if the player is too good and intercepts the UFOs effectively, aliens fail to place more infiltrators. I've had one added only once, which feels just too little. I'd be quite happy to see missions to get that infiltrator captured - like we had with Cleaners VIPs. I have to say that currently, gaining and spending OPs feels too gamey - you only get OP from a counter per day and the system is self-contained and gives the players only bonuses For buying supporters with OP, it raises the question of Xenonauts having separate relations trackers with each region and regions giving out requests for specific items? Provide equipment or tech, dead or alive aliens, our VIP is threatened by alien infiltrators > pls save them. That would give OPs points in a better way then just a number of points each day. Lastly, it feels like there should be a base building that would allow focusing on relations strategy as part of the game instead of just getting numbers going up. Taking out computers from cleaners bases doesn't provide OP points, which is strange, we are directly unlocking their activity which is something that feels like OP-related material. Btw, it feels like there is only one edge case when spending 100 OP to get 20 Alenium or 40 Alloys or 500k money is useful, when we can spend 60/80/100 on a UFO mission and get much more of each resource, plus funds from the loot in one go. Maybe the numbers of resources provided should go up as countries around the world get more (based on the number of UFO sites passed to them or just based on time)? Ground combat: Squad build was 2 shielders, 3 assaults, 3 rifleman, 1 sniper on Chinook > 2 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 2 snipers on Dragonfly > 4 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 4 snipers with Pegasus Form 2 or 4 teams and sweep the surroundings, clearing out aliens. Assaults are the most immediately useful and powerful as shotguns can one-shot everything short of Cyberdisks. Not sure if bug, but Androns only started appearing for me once I made the first UOO incursion mission and without them, Wraiths and Psyons feel heavily lacking in tough enemies. 5.7.0 change to Wraits, admittedly, made them only easier to deal with Armored enemies are too easily solved by demolition packs, demos completely outclass grenades - should weigh more (8 or 10) and have smaller explosion and throw radius. Each soldier was carrying two concussions grenades and two demos, at least one smoke grenade. Frag grenades, I used only twice across the whole campaign, which feels wrong. Most soldiers were always in heavy armor, with the most useful armoring method being upgrading to Warden, then to Stalker, then to Exo. The penalty for Heavy armor seems a bit on the low side as with increasing accuracy for soldiers from training, it lead to just accepting the minor penalty. I didn't find a use for Colossus armor and MG weapon as both are too limiting I didn't find a use for the Grenade Launcher I didn't find a use for Auto-med, as more grenades are more useful I didn't find a use for Psi-shield as Psionics is not working at the moment. I didn't find a use for Mars/Ares as their stats are too weak, especially Ares, though their armor is super-high, but being alloy constrained forced me to choose soldiers first. Please consider allowing, one/two free Mars/Ares slots on Dragonfly or Pegasus respectively so that players would be incentivized to construct/deploy them? The combat feels to have the following phases: Surrounding sweep where half of aliens are, then UFO entrance with a couple of guards to clean up, then clearing the top room and the last one is what makes least sense to me There is no real urgency, nothing prevents setting up perfect breaches, especially on story missions like UOO assault and final mission. Spawn tables feel a bit mixed with alien scientists being out in the open (too eager to get their claws on on the material so to say?), instead of inside their respective UFO rooms and no Psyon or Wraith Engineers on their respective UFOs. UOO assault (the second UOO mission) is really-really easy in the teleporter phase - 3 soldiers on each side were able to clean each wave, but the big one, then I added one more soldier on each side and the side teleporters weren't used, which would force me to spend some TUs on moving between rooms. It is okay to make the mission more challenging by allowing aliens to portal to either of 7 (yes, including the initial one) rooms and forcing the player to spend one/two soldiers out of 16 at that point to block addition teleports via some sort of consoles. I.e the soldier has to stand there and spend 75% of TUs to activate the console to prevent even more from porting in. The Harvester (third floor) and Battleship (fourth floor) both show a dark floor that can't be accessed, I initially thought it to be a bug, but seems this is by design. The Battleship's layouts are strange and admittedly, I really dislike the top floor - unless there are wall-breaking robots, it is super-easy to breach the command room as i've said. Btw, could you please consider updating Androns to have wall-breaking move as an ability, instead of constant. It is really immersion breaking to see them walk and destroy walls when there is a door one tile next to it. I imagine the aliens are like - it's the xenonauts, break out the Androns and deal with structural walls missing later, but frankly, it's just amusing at first and then immersion-breaking for me. Please consider making end-game aliens a bit more unfair than right now, my soldiers died only to the randomness of the damage roll which feels worse then my own poor judgement. Shouldn't they have launchers, explosives and so on? The damage rolls being reduced to 50-150 is nice, but please consider going to 75%-125%, there is still too much swing to my understanding. I'd be really happy to see Psionics to be greatly expanded, making Sectons/Psyons and Rulers more powerful. No cases of mind-controlling soldiers so far, and Mind-war wasn't that strong (only halved movement) Please consider adding stationary turrets to all alien bases and big UFOs, so that they would be a significant defense and roadblock point around which the aliens could rally and have a defense. Mentarchs are described as having energy shielding, so maybe some sort of regenerating armor that is resistant to explosives is okay to add to tougher alien vehicles and/or soldiers? Air combat: The air combat hasn't changed that much as no techs were added to it, but developing air defense on Veteran+ has changed. As we don't have as much money at the start. we have less bases and Migs, and we still get Phantom and Marauders/Gemini techs rather quickly so there is no time to build-up Mig force. This immediately changes the value of the MIG engine upgrade - the upgrade is less effective when you have at most 2/3 Migs compared to when you have 6+. It's still a good investment, but to make it better, I suggest considering spacing out Phantoms and Marauders further and maybe changing Gauss Cannons to be less effective overall, especially against armor. It would also be a nice change if the Engine upgraded increased Mig's Payload by one so that they could carry two lasers Phantoms might be a good idea to appear around Observers/Abductors and giving them techs that put them at current tech level after having downed at least one Fighter Gemini seem like a good tech to appear around Cruiser/Harvesters era, after having downed at least one Interceptor as a pre-requisite. Most likely, Harvesters as those unlock best armor. Gauss cannons reign supreme against anything up to Harvester and it's very easy to get into Cruisers blind spot and down them. Overall, Cruisers don't feel to be a strong air combatant despite their supposed role as such, adding missiles from Interceptors (or equivalents) to them, might make them more challenging and interesting. End-game we still want to have Two Gemini armed with Fusion cannons and best armor plating as end-game pre-set for each squadron. Putting a Gauss cannon + two Fusion torpedoes leads to too much damage taken against single Harvester/Battleship and they can't have one Fusion Lance + Two torpedoes + armor. Without the armor, the plane takes too much damage and usually isn't repaired to 100% before next sortie I'd like to ask for a review of current air superiority missions - it's too easy to snipe the 3 attackers - just position as close as possible to one side and attack from there. Do a barrel roll immediately to evade the initial missile, watch how the alien "superiority" fighters are mowed down by twin cannons on Phantom or Gemini. As a possible solution - positioning the middle UFO to the back would prevent this tactic being as cheap. Please also consider spawning at least double the current Air superiority missions to draw out and exhaust player's air forces, so that having more planes would be of some use. Overall, I'd like very much to have an expanded air war component in the game with pilots being their own characters too, instead of being attached to the plane and would require living space and have their own roster. Right now, air combat is a means to having ground combat, so it's serves its function, but I really wish we had a more developed AC as that's something I'd like to play even more than GC - with AWACS/ECM packages, actual dynamically formed squadrons (Current Air combat window doesn't check if there are allied planes in the vicinity), more powerful UFOs, escorts and missile play, including alien air attacks on our bases. Thank you very much for the game.

Post-script notes on weird things: There is a notification for the plane getting refueled, but no notification for the plane re-armed. It would be most useful as we really want to know if those missiles have been switched to torpedoes or vice-versa. Cannons and Lances are reloaded one ammo at a time, making them the longest to reload. Additional Armor and Fuel disappear if you remove respective items from their slots and add them again, despite no actual changes to the plane. The window for the UFO crash site doesn't show the UFO's occupant type with quantum radars (or maybe even without them as recon drones exist in this timeline) Air Plating progression - 6 > 12 > 20 > 25, last upgrade costs most and adds least armor. Electroshock Rifle needs 35 alloys - more than a Phantom plane Electroshock Pistol needs 20 alloys - same as Colossus armor Electroshock weapons don't have Armor Piercing which results in a lot of enemies ignoring the damage making them worse than the base Stun Gun. There is no Penetration on Cannons for MARS and ARES vehicles. Fusion Cannon Upgrade is hidden until Gauss Cannon upgrade is done, seems counter-intentional to the current method for all other techs. Laser Auto-rifle and Laser Cannon don't benefit from Laser damage and ammo upgrades. Fusion Cannon, Fusion Auto-rifle, grenades and missiles don't benefit from the Advanced Fusion Weapons upgrade unlocked by Singularity Core Fusion Lance, Torpedoes on planes don't benefit from Advanced Fusion Weapons either. Battleships don't show the singularity core device on board (Xenonauts 1 had amazing UFO designs and it was awesome seeing all the devices we got from them, I hope this will be continued in Xenonauts 2) There is no rangefinder upgrade despite the same upgrade to the Tactical module The stats difference between MARS and ARES are: +10 TU +5 Accuracy -50 Strength ?! +15 reflexes +5 Armor Training center takes 25 energy and medical center takes 30 energy, more than Workshop/Laboratory/Defense Cannon at 20. Training center costs the most among all buildings - 750k .