mersan

I still remember the finest moment in XCOM...when my dropship landed, my guys stayed in the ship waiting for aliens to come into LOS, because they were overwhelmed by advanced alien weaponry at that time, and were trying to use the dropship hull as a cover. Then suddenly, they saw something flying fast in the air. At first, it seemed flying away. But it suddenly turned 90 degrees and dove right into the dropship. Boom. My best squad was annihilated in the first turn. That was my first encounter with the blaster launcher.

Same here. I just beat the final mission last night, and the game went CTD immediately after the final troop beamed out. But instead of being angry I actually laughed out loud because I felt like zapped by the praetor's final deadly trap. Nevertheless the mod gave me tons of fun, so much so that I can no longer enjoy vanilla anymore. I'm looking forward to playing a next major update.

Reminds me of the Blaster Launcher...

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed by any chance. As I am about to launch the operation endgame, I manufactured the singularity cannon to eradicate alien scums on the dreadnaught. However, I found the cannon to be too heavy even for predator-wearing soldier to effectively deploy. His strength is 100, but when I put the cannon into his hands, TU penalty is so big that he simply becomes an immovable iron statue in the battlefield. He cannot even pull the trigger, let alone walk more than a tile. Is this intentional? If so, could you tell me the reason behind this design decision?

Thanks for your quick response, blackwolf . Here is the screen capture of #### in question:

I've been playing this version since it was released and I see great improvements everywhere! Thanks a lot for your continuous effort. Now, here is my feedback so far: On my PC the game is now quite stable. I experienced freeze-during-hidden-movement only twice. No CTDs. Difficulty balance of ground combat seems to be improved significantly (to my liking). That unfair feeling is almost gone and I'm really having fun in GC now. Tech advancement seems to be much improved, but I still find it to be inconsistent somewhat. The in-game calendar is now March 1980. I have 3 bases. I've been aggressively conducting research by hiring 70 scientists, but my research to-do list is full of untouched projects. My men are armed with plasma weaponry and wolf armor. My primary interceptor is still Foxtrot, while my dropship is Shrike. I feel research takes too long compared to the escalation speed of alien invasion. Perhaps research time should be shortened? Now every UFO wave throws dozen of UFOs at me including many massive vessels. Foxtrots can shoot them down individually, but there are just too many. In addition, those advanced UFOs fly too fast for Foxtrots to catch up. So while my Foxtrots are flying around trying to catch one UFO, tons of others roam freely around the globe wrecking havoc like terror mission and aerial bombardment. Stun gas grenade doesn't seem to provide continuous effect anymore. I mean, it used to give continuous damage to aliens caught in the radius every turn, but now it inflicts damage only when it exploded, so survived aliens can move in the cloud of gas freely without any damage. I'm not sure if this change was introduced by this mod or CE, but this effectively renders the gas grenade almost useless. Bug - sometimes aliens become invisible with only their shadows displayed. This is especially true for those purple cabbages. This issue was seen in previous versions and is still there. Not critical but somewhat annoying. Bug - as several others mentioned, male Jackal armor is missing the required image file. Bug - cruiser disassemble research gives "###" in manufacturing list (it is displayed literally as "###"). I didn't bother trying this item and I think that's the reason why I missed Corsair. Well, that's it so far. Thanks again for your great effort and please keep up the good work!

I've been playing the game with this mod for a considerable amount of time despite some freezing bugs, but now I must say I'm done with it for now. The difficulty curve is too steep for me. I just get frustrated with unfair strength of alien forces while getting little sense of achievement. I admit I am not a good strategist, but I think I'm not a newbie either, because I played through old X-COM series (UFO Defense, TFTD, Apocalypse), less famous UFO series (Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight) and of course the new X-COM EU. IMHO, this absurd difficulty mostly derives from too slow tech advancement on the human side. I restarted this mod five or six times changing my strategy, but to no avail so far. I was always overwhelmed by alien's rapid tech advancement and heavy reinforcement. By the time I produce zephyr and warhawk, the alien force deploys elite androns, wraiths and elite psi ceasans, armed with long range heavy plasma weapons and wearing bomb-proof body armors. They wreck havoc with exprosive bolts, rapid fire bullets and nasty psy attacks, while my cutting edge weapons (lol) scratch surfaces of their body armors. Meanwhile, the air war always goes into hell also. Before I discover advanced aircraft tech, the alien force starts to deploy tons of advanced UFOs, which cannot be dealt with my Cheburashka and Foxtrot squadrons. Eventually the sky is filled with landing ships and heavy bombers escorted with two fighters. Terror attacks are carried out here and there simultaneously. But I can't do anything because my fighters are no match for those advanced UFOs and my ground forces will certainly be annihilated by well-armed space devils. It's really sad because this mod adds so much depth to the vanilla game, and I can see great amount of effort was put into the mod. So I hope the developers look into current unfair difficulty (specifically slow tech advancement of human forces) and make it more scalable, so that inexpert players like me can enjoy the depth and challenge of this otherwise great mod.

Thanks for your response and I'm sorry I overlooked the hotfix posted on the bottom of the thread. I reinstalled everything (XNT V5.31 Final Firebat, XNT V5.31 hotfix LAST, and the map packs) onto the latest vanilla installation. I encountered eggs in UFO interior several times, but they haven't caused freeze so far. But now I'm having another freezing issue; the ground combat often freezes during alien's turn. Specifically, when I click the end turn button, the alien's turn starts. I can hear sounds of aliens' hidden activity for a while, but after that the sound stops and their turn never ends (so I must terminate the game from task manager). Once this happens, reloading a save of the ground combat won't help. That particular combat always freezes during the same alien's turn. I'm not 100% sure but this issue appears to happen more during a mission with larger UFO (corvette, etc), or larger alien ground forces. For me this is another show stopper because once this issue happens, that ground combat is ruined... [Edit on Aug 4] I've been playing the mod and confirmed that the egg freeze is still there. And the alien turn freeze seems to happen only in farm map. I've never experienced the alien turn freeze in urban map so far. If I can prevent eggs from being spawned by editing some config files, could someone please tell me which one to edit? IMO those buggy eggs are ruining this great mod...and I want to get rid of that cheat-ish blue queen alien also...

Thanks very much for the tips, that's encouraging. I will try restarting the game from the beginning with your tips in mind.

I just started playing the game with the latest version of this mod. Overall I am amazed by the level of achievement the developers of this mod have made so far. That said, I am sadly stuck due to this mod's too much difficulty. I feel aliens escalate their arsenal way too fast. I believe I was constantly progressing through the weapon technology, but by the time I obtained the improved ballistic weapons, the enemy deploys androids armed with heavy plasma weaponry, large flying saucers, deadly sniper rabbits, nasty teleporting lizards, and blue Giger aliens all over a map. I can deal with snipers and teleporters with careful tactics, but the improved assault rifles and shotguns are almost useless against bullet-proof aliens (androids, saucers, queen Giger aliens), so a ground combat becomes killing spree; my soldiers are blown by explosive plasma bolts, swiss-cheezed by plasma bullets, and ripped apart by talons of big chaps. I really like the idea of making some enemies bullet proof to some extent for increased challenge, but currently the enemy is unbeatable for me...it's really unfortunate because this mod adds so much fun to vanilla game... BTW, I am also having one bug several others reported; that blue alien eggs laid on UFO floor make the game freeze. When I try to interact with them somewhat (shoot them and so on), the game freezes 100% and only resolution is ctrl+alt+del.