ShadowDragon8685

I do, at least the armed ones. That bugged me about XCOM: Enemy Unknown, too. There's three specific missions that bug the living bejeezus out of me. In the "Rescue the VIP" mission, the VIP's bodyguards - ostensibly armed bodyguards who are there to protect him with their lives, stand around like lumps cowering behind a car. FFS, the VIP himself is smart enough to do what we tell him to do, but not his armed bodyguards?! In the "VIP General rescue" mission, it's worse; the aliens attacked a highway, and besides the General you need to rescue, there's an armed and armored soldier carrying and wearing the same kind of kit that XCOM issued at the start of the game. Why won't that jackhole follow my orders? And lastly, in the DLC mission where you recruit that Triad guy at the end, the intro itself has him shooting a sectoid with a pistol. It works, and he says it's not so different from killing a man. The guy is already armed, has violent experience, has in fact just demonstrated his ability to kill aliens, after the mission is over he'll join your XCOM squad for realsies... And he throws the pistol away and cowers like a moron? So, yeah. I'd like to be able to control the armed civilians; get a squaddie next to them, and they presumably give the guy a radio headset and he falls in line. For the unarmed ones, I wish they'd just make a beeline off the map in the direction of safety once a Xenonaut gets next to them, so they'd stop having Hidden Movement turns. [e]Also, I don't think that being able to recruit armed civilians would be very OP, except in the very early game when the equipment they're using is exactly as good as that of the Xenonauts team... You know, when the squad's size is very limited and their equipment is very limited, which is exactly when being able to luckily recruit an armed policeman, soldier, or local civilian who's taken up arms would be the most helpful. I imagine that recruited civilians would have a morale penalty, because, you know, they weren't expecting to fight aliens today, but if they survive they can shake it and join your operation. Later game, I suppose you could use them in place of suicide squaddies to open doors and draw reaction fire, but that could be discouraged by making them more likely to freak out the longer they're in the UFO.

I've done this so many times. I can assure you: kneeling soldiers have no chance whatsoever to shoot the guy they're kneeling behind of, if he is also crouched... As long as he's in an adjacent square. If he's so much as two squares away, he's an interfering obstacle, which means he might well be shot up.

I'm not sure, but somehow I doubt that a -50% AIM penalty, for a civilian shooter, is really worth the extra damage. Now, if they were under your control, that might be different.

If you're having Alien Interceptor woes and have yet to manufacture do-it-all-and-carry-the-kitchen-sink Marauders, you can use this as a way to strip escorts from a larger vessel - give 'em the run around with your fighters, get the fighter which is not being tailed by an escort to wipe out the interceptors, leg it and let the torpedo trucks do their job.

Presumably you could veto taking them back, or just dismiss them/transfer them to a remote base's garrison the moment they get back. I've been in quite a few of those missions where the friendly, armed AI has done something heroic and I've wished to recruit that specific guy into my Xenonaut Squad. There was one middle eastern guy with a Kalashnikov in this huge house (probably his) that we invaded and were looking at the UFO through. He was just lurking in the back while we were setting up our heavy weapons, then all of a sudden, automatic rifle fire. I looked back - some Sebillian was creeping up on my guys and this bearded, turban-wearing hero had gunned the lizard right down. And another time, in a terror mission, Shotgun Cop evaporated a Reaper at point-blank range, saving one of my guys and probably also a civilian who was nearby, and then advanced on the aliens with my squaddies, laying down suppressive fire like a champ despite the copious amounts of hot SCIENCE being flung to and fro. A third time, in the early game on a farm map, the first Hidden Movement turn had a couple of good ol' boys with break-action double-barreled shotguns (just like Grandma used ta own*!) took down a couple of Caseans who were hiding in their barn. *I am not making that up.

If the escorts are giving you trouble, send three planes. The UFOs pick a target and they chase it stupidly until it dies or they do. These aliens have very high technology but tactically they are idiots. This probably has something to do with using Harridans as combat pilots. So what you do is you split your incoming fighters up, and see who goes after who. Split the aliens up, use one fighter to come up behind the aliens chasing the other fighters, and kill them, and then use the others to kill that one's tail. Also, bear in mind that these aliens are kinda stupid. If you kill the center ship and fly away, or even kill the center ship and they get your fighters shot down, the escorts don't go on an air superiority mission, they vanish instantly.

Man, that would be very, very useful stuff, wouldn't it? The art assets would be kind of a pain to change, though not too much of one I'd think since you could borrow one of the .30s from the Hunter scout car's original armament for the coaxial weapon on the other vehicles. The in-game sprites would be worse, of course, and drawing in non-.30 cal coaxial weapons would be a huge PitA. But sometimes, you really, REALLY need that coaxial gun. Like when you want to fire on an alien who's half-hidden behind some railway car which your tank is up next to, and it's 45% blocked. Perfectly acceptable if you're putting machine gun fire on him hoping to suppress or get a lucky shot, but far too high a chance of INSTANT SELF-FRAGGELATION if you fire the WORLD-WRECKER cannon.

In fairness, if you're going to be suppressing someone with LMGs, a shot from the cannon is going to splatter anything that would be in machine gun suppression range. I think you ought to be able to mount a cannon and a co-axial weapon on everything, though. Because you're right: Sometimes taking a shot with a .30 caliber machine gun is preferable to taking a shot with a world-ruining plasma cannon. (Also, you should probably be able to upgrade the coaxial weapon to the equivalent infantry weapon, the heavy laser/plasma/magstorm guns.) Or just bring an interceptor rapid-fire cannon.

I put my first base somewhere in the middle east, on the Mediterranean coastline somewhere, like northern Egypt/Libya/Ageria or maybe Crete, Malta, Tunisia, or Sicily. The second goes somewhere in China, and the third I like to put in the Florida Keys because I don't imagine the U.S. of A tolerating a Xenonauts base in Cuba but none in the U.S. I like to name the bases (and I wish I could REname the bases!) after their locations. Most of them are XRAY {SOMETHING}, except the ones on United States territorial soil, where they're {SOMETHING} AFB because 'Murican Exceptionalism. My fourth base goes down in Africa, on the coast of Lake Victoria, so its radar will cover Madagascar and the southern portions of Africa which my main base radar doesn't cover. The fifth goes in Australia, of course. Then I put one up in Baffin Bay to cover northeastern Canada, Greenland, and the half of Iceland that wasn't being covered by XRAY COMMAND down on the Barbary Coast, and one in Dillingham, AK, to cover Alaska, Northwestern Canada, and Northeastern Russia that wasn't being covered by my Indochina base. The last one went in Leningrad, to cover the small wedge of Siberia that was left unattended. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you cover every last scrap of land on the planet Earth*. Level 3 radars for most, but the Austrailia and Lake Victoria only need level 1. I made them level 3, though, to have better track of those at sea. *Except for the Pacific and Atlantic islands which are not modeled in the Xenonauts geoscape: Bermuda and the Galapagos Islands might be covered by a Florida Keys/Cuba base; the Azores the Canary Islands, and Madeira might be covered by a command center on the Mediterranean coast, and the Ring of Fire islands and Oceana islands are probably covered by your Austrailian base. Hawaii's on its own, though, and so is Antarctica. The poor bastards at McMurdo station were probably some of the first victims.

I was confusing the Scimitar and the Hyperion, that's my bad. And yeah... Though, quite frankly, you ought to have the option to build the scimitar without the heavy laser weapons, defaulting to a standard ordnance gun like a mortar or something.

How did you get a Scimitar without the plasma/mag cannon? But yeah, the laser turret surprised the hell out of me, too. I thought "Meh, so it's going to be good for evaporating Endrons and big drone disks but not much else. Oh look, there's an alien hiding behind cover that is, unfortunately for him, on the wrong side of him and my laser tank. I think I'll drill him with this gun and see what it does." The first shot evaporated the Casean, and everything in his immediate vicinity. I was all "HUMANITY, FUCK YEAH!" The second shot evaporated my Hunter scout car, because Hunters evidently don't fire over low cover in front of them automatically, and the laser shot exited the Hunter's barrel from two meters above the ground, did a hard 90-degree turn and blew up upon striking the half-meter Jersey barrier in front of the Hunter's wheels. Rolling against cover-impact tables with an explosive weapon one square away from you sucks. I was less than thrilled with that outcome. I just wish that the tanks would all carry a .30 cal coaxial machine gun, so they have combat options between "Explosive RUIN" and "Do nothing."

I think, ideally? If you move a Xenonaut next to a civilian, one of two things will happen. One: If they're an unarmed civilian, they will haul ass to the dropship/drop pod landing site and try to get inside to safety. (Or, I suppose, just exit the map from the dropship's general vicinity, given that you presumably landed somewhere you wouldn't be surrounded.) Two: If they're an armed civilian (Policeman, soldier, farmer angry enough to take up arms, middle eastern tribesman with a Kalashnikov, etcetera,) they fall in line and take orders, share Squadsight, etcetera. If you manage to have them survive, and have barracks space remaining, they'll fly back to the base with your xenonaut team as a new recruit, already battle-tested against the aliens and ready to do some real damage with some actual gear.

That does make sense, then. It also explains why it only happens on the Carrier if I make it turn back on itself - if it starts turning right, and I break right, it continues to turn right, and stops moving away from where I launched, but moves instead laterally. If I break left, it swings back around left, going directly away from the launch position. And it very much looks like a bug because the torpedoes definitely reach the displayed UFO's icon, then poof out. Suggestion: Some feedback when torpedoes run out of fuel.

I would imagine that it's not a stretch that extra munitions are being carried in a military assault dropship and you can fill back up on those between missions in the helo.

Reproducing it is fairly simple. Like I said: Get two planes (Marauders are best, but I suspect Foxtrots or any other torpedo truck will work) to engage a Carrier from right on its six O'clock. Afterburn directly up on the Carrier, drop your torpedoes at maximum range, and then break both planes opposite the direction the carrier was turning. The carrier will swing back in the other direction, its spike will hit the torpedoes and vice versa, and then a disappointing lack of an earth-shattering kaboom will ensue. (Note: if you're doing this on a game you're playing, I strongly suggest having another squadron of interceptors already tailing the bastard.) Workarounds include waiting until you're almost on top of the Carrier for ordnance release, or breaking in the direction it was turning, so it keeps turning in that direction and gets hammered on the broadside.

So they ran out of fuel at less than their actual launch range? It's not like a carrier can bloody well evade. This is, in fact, a problem. It's a specific bug with the carrier's spikes. The missiles are not running out of fuel, they're impacting on the spike and then vanishing without a trace.

I just had it happen again. What happened was I was running two Marauders right down a Carrier's backside, and it started swinging to the right to try and engage. I let loose four plasma torpedoes at maximum range and broke left to evade. The carrier started swinging back left to follow them. The torpedoes on the map hit the carrier's left rear spike at the outermost edge, and they just "poofed," no damage, no impact sound, they were just deleted. It's pretty clearly a wonky hitbox issue. It can be worked around, but it would be better if it were fixed.

This is quite problematic. Twice now, I've sent up two Marauder interceptors to take out Carriers, armed with two plasma torpedoes. Most of the time it works fine, but for some reason, some of the time, the torpedoes simply vanish when they hit the Carrier, failing to do damage. The last time I observed this, it was when the Carrier was turning sharply, and the torpedoes impacted on the projection to the rear of the vessel. This is very perplexing, especially as no mention was made of these warships having point defense weapons - nor, indeed, is there any indication that they are firing upon the torpedoes. The torpedoes simply vanish, failing to do damage. This is a problem, because a Magstorm can't down a Carrier in one magazine, and dogfighting a carrier is impossible with its 315 degree blaster fire arc.

Yes, they are. You know what else that would be true of? Take, oh, I don't know, George Washington. Or better yet, some experienced frontiersman/sharpshooter from his day Hand him an M-16 rifle. It's much more powerful than the conventional weapons of his day! It's much more destructive. It can fire THIRTY bullets in under a SECOND, whereas in his day, the best soldiers could get off maybe three bullets per MINUTE! But you know what? I bet he'd be able to figure out how to fire it if he had to do so. It has a trigger, and so did the firearms he was used to. It has a lot of complicated mechanisms he's unused to, but if his life is on the line and he needs to dispense some death NOW, I'm quite confident he could figure it out. Because, guess what? It's still a weapon of manual operation. It is recognizably a rifle. The trigger's in roughly the right place, the hand-grip is a little weird but it's not as if pistols were completely unknown in his day. Once again, this is the "But it's ALIEN!" weapon in question. It is not activated by a cybernetic smart-gun link, it is not activated by a burst of sound or by giving it a good, solid shake. A soldier, whether he be Caesan, Sebillian, Andron, Praetor, or human, will be able to figure out its operation from the basic principles of rifle use. As would, if we go cross-universal, a Turian, or a Klingon, or a Twi'lek, or a Centauri, or a Draenei, or a Tau, or... Anybody whose species stands upright, with arms which end in hands, has almost unquestionably invented firearms, and invented them in rifle form factors. If they use anything which is shaped like a rifle, and is of manual operation, they will be able to use this weapon! The ergonomics may be weird, the materials may be weird, the operating principles may be completely unknown to them, but at the end of the day, it is a rifle. You grip the hand-grip firmly with your right hand, support the barrel with your left hand (reverse these hand assignments if your dominant hand is your left, if you have more than one set of arms you will probably be wishing to use the upper right hand for the hand grip, and the upper left for the forward grip, etcetera,) you (can) aim it by leaning your head to the right and aiming down the barrel, and you fire it by pulling the trigger! It's not really very alien at all, at least, not in form and function.

You're SO RIGHT! But... By that same token... TO THE CASEANS, WE'RE THE ALIENS! Oh my god, they shouldn't know how to kill humans! We're ALIEN to them!

There's no problem with using flat maps. There's a problem when the gameplay acts as if world is a cylinder. This is the top of the planet Earth, as seen from ~8,200 miles directly above the north pole. Think about this - an interceptor base stationed on Svalbard island, or the northern coast of Greenland, would easily cover the entire north of Russia, Canada, Europe, and the United States. Instead of having to use three or even four bases to do that, because of Cylinder World, you could just use one. I'm not saying you HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO use a globe. What I am saying is that, globe or not, it would be nice if the world behaved like a world. One does not HAVE to give up one's precious cylindrical projection in order to model the fact that a plane can swoop over the pole, launched from Svalbard or Greenland, or even northern continental Norway* or Russia, and come down like the wrath of an angry god (Thor, if it was launched from Norway,) on UFOs giving trouble to pretty much anywhere in Canada or even the northern United States. *Svalbard is a Norwegian island. This geography shaped the Cold War. The Soviets didn't fear the people of, say, The Congo, because no matter which way you looked at it, the Congo was far away from every Soviet socialist territory. But look at that beautiful north pole. You don't have to fly very far at supersonic speeds to get from the northern United States to the U.S.S.R or vice-versa. That should, I think, be reflected. Again, though, one does not have to give up a cylindrical map projection to reflect this fact! It would be possible to distort the speed of things closer to the north (or south) poles, to reflect the fact that the map itself is distorted, and if something flies off the map to the north or south, it would reappear going south or north on the other part of the map. Really, it's just a matter of mathematically projecting radar circles onto the map, having them extend off the north edge at once place and extend down again from it in another place, and Bob's your uncle. This does not have to be an either/or situation; you can have your cake and eat it too in this scenario! And for people who get confused? Just have it spelled out in a tutorial panel and the xenopedia. Use a nice graphic showing an arrow coming across the top of the planet from Russia to the United States and vice versa.

Look, it's a rifle. It's designed to be used by something of broadly similar body plan to humans - two arms, two shoulders, one head. Given that it is of mechanical operation - pull trigger, dispense death - there are only so many possible ways it can work. Take a trained United States Marine into a firing range and hand him a Steyr AUG. Radically different in design from anything he's been trained on, but I guarantee you that he'll have that puppy dispensing death in under five seconds if it was already loaded, charged, and the safety was off. Call it a minute, at most, if he's grabbing it off someone else's rack. This is the weapon we're talking about. It has a barrel, and it's obvious which end you hold, and which end dispenses death. The trigger is clearly that gigantic thing in front of the grip. Would it be awkward for a human to hold? Absolutely; there's no buttstock to speak of. Would it be impossible for a human to use? Absolutely not. I'm quite sure that a trained soldier can figure out "point the end with the big hole in it at the enemy and squeeze this thing on the front." In fact, in the novella, that is exactly what happens, and it's what your soldiers can do quite easily. And frankly, I agree with doing it the way XCOM: Enemy Unknown did it. If you don't sell the alien plasma stuff, after you're done researching them, you can mount them in human-ergonomic cases and have done with it. All the stuff about it being too heavy for our piddly human frames has to be bollocks, because Sectoids and Thin Men wield the damn things - and in Xenonauts, Caesans, who are specifically noted to be frailer and weaker than humans - wield these very weapons without difficulty.

Steave: it wouldn't be too hard, though. There is already code in place for when you click an item in-hand to put a little menu in the other hand - IE, the C4 bricks. Two simple buttons: "Throw now" and "Cook." Actually, make that three buttons: "Throw now," "Cook," and "Throw unprimed." "Throw Now" works as it does now, and also the same as using the quick grenade button to do it - it throws the grenade and uses the current default frag behavior. "Cook" makes it go off on impact, as with any other grenade, and "Throw Unprimed" throws the grenade with the pin still in, which you might use to make aliens take cover (if they're grenade-using enemies, at least,) priming them for a rush by your troops, or to pass the cold potato to someone further alone who desperately needs to skin a potato right now and doesn't have one. I may have taken that metaphor too far, but it should be intuitable.

Using the alien guns shouldn't be terribly hard to figure out the basics of "this end toward enemy" and "pull trigger to dispense death." Also, it's very unlikely the alien weapons even have a safety catch. Researching the alien guns should reduce the firep enalty from 50% or like, 25% or so, because it will disseminate the information gained to all of your soldiers. Along with that, I think, selling alien guns should be a manually-required choice, not an automatic one, and the player should have the option to send squaddies into battle wielding captured alien guns - a trade of accuracy for plasmatic killing power in the early game, one that leaves you exposed to heavy incoming fire but gives you more options.

Yeah, I found this out to my great disappointment. Also with the flying drones - you can whale on them, but it doesn't do diddly. I had four guys break cover in wolf armor in the middle of a terror mission to try and capture one of the little flying drones. Amazingly, they all survived 2+ of those shennanigans, with no less than four Caesans shooting in their general vicinity.