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Just want to share how research is handled in Rule The Waves. In some ways I don’t see it being applicable to Xenonauts type of game but maybe it will give some ideas. In Rule The Waves some percentage of the yearly navy budget is dedicated to research. You as admiral decide on priority of each research discipline, for example: - torpedos - high - submarines - high - AWS - medium - main guns - medium - ship design - high - armor design - low The game normalizes priorities and distributes chances of getting progress in some area. Chances of progress in each discipline are effected by the nations specialties and research progress of other nations. If you are playing with a setting that disabled historical progression of research then you can get into situation where battleships doesn’t become obsolete all the way into 1960 because aircraft handling just sucks. Submarines can be very inefficient if ASW is going way ahead of submarine research. On top of that you can have some degree of asymmetry with the research of other nations. As a result, every campaign goes a bit differently even if you know what you want to prioritize.

Manged to down one Cruiser at cost of 3 Phatom interceptors 1 Foxhound, in autoresolve.

Hmm, currently have no idea what to do with cruisers. My latest tech is Phantom interceptors. Foxtrots can't chase or run away from cruisers, they have exactly the same speed. I can't deliver any payload without loosing at least one foxtrot as bait.

In Ja2 1.13 at least AI has the same option as you when it comes to off screen artillery, it makes it a bit more fair but you need to take into account that battle on single map can have reinforcements on both sides and lead to immediate counter attack and etc. In a scale of things involved, both mortar and off screen support are much more situational than it might look like.

Personally, already played beta more than I've played first game. Small little changes here and there made it more enjoyable. - Like ability to break UFO walls make ground mission feel much less grindy as exactly the same UFO can now be breached in a different way - New way of management of Scientist/Engineers feels more engaging, previous version was more of "how much money I spend on these guys" type of thing - I'm loving new sounds, weapons sound like they have a good punch behind them - reworked aliens and characters look pretty good in 3D and it's easier to read "specials" There are other things but this is just what jumped immediately to mind.

Pretty sure it's a bug. You can see that visibility cone calculation is done sporadically during the game. It looked to me that if enemy starts a move outside of your vision then you get that "Hidden Movement" graphics and it doesn't go away till visibility cone is recalculated.

Super! No idea how I've missed your playlist Subbed

On my first play through I went heavy with science team and upgrades for ground team. Got stuck at air superiority as you describe. I had too many basic fighters too. For the second play through I went heavy on engineers and focus more research in a general direction of things. More engineers help with getting more interceptors running, which is helping a lot with all the medium and large UFO that start to pop/up. That did help with unlocking more tech for air and I think I’ve got new plane under the research already. Or at least I remember seeing tech in the list related to improving air beyond the first set of upgrades.

Ohh I see. Never got that far myself and seen let’s plays only to like mid phase 2.

Armor system on its own doesn't really function, the rest of the things such a character damage need to follow. Armor system used in JA2 1.13 works well with their new damage mechanics where damage can be artificially split into 4 categories: - light injury, bellow 5% of hp, can be treated by the merc himself most of the time and is more a grazing wound. Can be a result of low caliber penetrating armor, some odd pellet hit or low velocity grenade fragment - medium injury, in a range of about 20-30% hitpoints, typically doesn't incapacitate merc but does debilitating damage to stats and can cause serious bleeding. When you tag enemy with such damage you can de-preoritise them for current turn as most likely they won't have enough TU to do anything serious in response - heavy injury, this can go all the way to 80% of the mercs health, typically incapacitates them for at least few rounds, leads to the bleeding that can kill merc in few turns and you have to use someone else to at least stabilize them. Even if consciousness is regained, without something like regen booster, they won't be able to contribute much to the ongoing fight - instant death, damage higher than characters total HP, headshots or multiple consecutive hits are typical reason for this What armor does is moves damage from one category into another. In heavy suit, you can tank low caliber shots and suffer only loss of TU due to hits/suppression, assuming every shot is absorbed. In case of other weapons you are basically exchanging loss of the character to opportunity of being able to save him or necessity to drag someone from under the fire to them being able to find safety on their own. I liked general approach in X-Division on this, but part where armor can just eat up all damage without any other side effect is a bit weird. I understand that it's a bit sci-fi but regardless of the tech level, if armor makes you invincible towards some type of ammunition, the armor itself probably won't take any damage either. I mean, the 9mm parabellum won't do anything against an armored APC regardless how many shots you can practically take. Something like titanium plates, might not have as high protection as ceramics but they won't degrade after few hits either. It's just felt that in X-Division the whole armor protection side of things becomes a bit linear. I prefer JA2 1.13 feeling to it where damage spread and resulting injuries are more drastic, this way a focused fire on an enemy or using long burst fire becomes effective tactics against group of enemies. Assuming a lizard in a heavy plates of armor, there still will be some parts that are more lightly armored than others, so sustainable fire can lead to their demise.

When it comes to shooting and obstacles, JA2 is very much 3D. Every tile object on the map, comes with a small set of voxels, afaik 3x3x4. Bullets are not traced only on the same grid that is used for moving but are checked against the Voxel representation of the world, which is more granular. Combined with shooting distances relatively large to the distance that one unit can run, you get a rather good cover simulation. I’m mentioning this because developers of Phoenix Point screwed it over in their game. As soldiers don’t lean or stick to obstacles, to minimize profile, some cover like trees is pretty much useless as it’s extremely easy to get an angle to someone behind such cover. Simply because engagement distance is very short compared to how much you can move in a single turn. At the same time, leaning against cover requires directional placement of your troops, so you could choose against which direction you need to get into cover.

I like how armor works in jagged alliance 2 1.13. Of course it’s not directly convertible into Xenonauts setting but core features are following: 1) coverage - just a percentage of the body cover by armor, on each hit the test is done if shot just passes through or not. afaik front/back and sides can have different coverage + you can install plates in some armor 2) condition - the physical state of armor, in a sense of it being worn out or damaged, there is some proportional reduction of its resistance as it gets worn out by elements or damage 3) resistance against specific type of ammunition, like for example glacier rounds deal pretty much no damage if they hit any type of even basic Kevlar vest, so even a simplest vest/helmet/leggings you can get, can save your merc’s life. To my understanding, resistance is just a percentage modifier that changes basic damage, but before damage is applied it passes through a number of other calculations resulting in a system where you don’t get much damage at lower bounds, like you won’t get -5hp Hit for a 100hp base stats if you wear some armor, but if shot passes through it will be significant, just not as significant as without armor. And some shots won’t have any effect on hp, they will hit stamina, armor condition, add to suppression. But this needs to be considered with how projectile work too, as for example AP, generally deals less damage regardless of the armor and HP/Glacier deals about 2x base damage but can be completely negated by armor. overall it creates a nice diversity where you can keep a couple of ied/assault suits for missions where you need breachers and have lighter but more agile armor for your support troops or general operations.

In my experience, bombers and harvesters require multiple intercepts. You can send 3 interceptors with alinium torpedos, use one for distraction and two others to deliver payload. As interceptors refuel so much faster than fighters, you can do multiple intercepts with the same team. the cruiser is a different stOry I think it’s even faster than foxhound so kiting it might lead to losing crafts. But in my second play through I did get research into a much better air tech right before first cruiser appeared. Try restarting and doing more research into air tech.

Encountered first destroyer. My interceptors weren't available so I've sent 3 basic fighters. Did a trick where one fighter is kiting destoyer while two other get on his tail. Both fighters expanded all ammunition. Then all fighters ran out of fuel and I've accepted to evacuate them all. But at the last moment before screen closes, destroyer fires main cannon and shoots down fighter that it was chasing, which already left battlefield. To my understanding this is a bug, or is it some sort of meta-mechanics? Could it be that planes stop moving when they reach the edge of the screen but still can be shot down?

Ohh, silly me, completely missed that. Thank you, Chris!

But when did V7 came out? Like is Steam activated build is already on V7?

Hmm, when did the starting dropship got walls and how did you pack 10 people into it? Maybe I'm somehow on old version but I got my Steam key on 26 September and haven't played for few days since then.

Tactical part of it looks to me like Incubation (really old game, same turn-choose-action based rather than turn-time-units based mechanics as in original Laser Squad), which was ok but gameplay was more of the puzzle solving than tactics and almost zero replayability. And I think they had unlimited ammo for anything except rocket lunchers ) It's great that there are still enought ppl in a world to support funding of such projects as Xenonauts. I'm going to spam Santa with wishes for spiritual remake of Jagged Alliance 2

Soldier have precision rifle equiped as a primary/secondary weapon. If you drag&drop granade into secondary weapon slot, it will replace precision rifle - it will go into backpack. Now, if you drag&drop precision rifle into weapon slot, granade will disapear.

HOORAY! I've fixed it. I've tried setting different resolutions on my laptop, changing color depth, aspect rate corrections and it finaly worked after I've switched off "Enable rotation". So for everybody who has the same issue, try switching off screen rotation support in your videocard/firmware settings.

Tried 8.2, unfortunately bug is still there

Then original resolution of the screen might not be a source of problem. [Waiting patiently for next update ]

I've tried both, same result. My original screen resolution is a bit weird 1440x900 - it's an old laptop with Mobile Intel 965 Express card, maybe it's somehow related.

List of available screen resolutions is empty. I still can start a game but it runs in rediculously small resolution, because of that, UI elements overlapping each other and small text is impossible to read. Is it possible to manually specify a resolution from a shortcut or some config file?

Tryed. Unfortunately it didn't helped. Game starts in some weirdy low resolution, both windowed and fullscreen. Because of this, interface elements on the main strategic screen just roll-over each other... and at the same time it's impossible to read a small text, like base details.