Didact04

So...wait, you mean this game is built AROUND taking casualties? Your members of your squad aren't important enough to really value individually? That's...strange. For being a squad-based tactic game you'd think the squad would be important enough to preserve. Or that the "Good," "Bad", "Terrible" ranks would mean anything post-match. Strange. All very strange. This game feels foreign somehow. Probably because I played with Firaxis's XCOM and played with perfection as the goal. I suppose this is more realistic as far as wartime goes. People die on both sides. I don't know, there's a lot I need to fit into and I feel it would help a lot if I had someone hovering over my shoulder critiquing me.

Tried to follow this. Did worse than I ever have on the first two missions. Lost half my squad mission one, then had to airstrike about 3 UFO's after because my squad was half injured and down a man. Half a month later, new recruits arrive and I go in to fight the next batch. Lost 5 men and quit the game, no saving. No point. It's beyond recovery by now anyway. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I mean I am clearly doing something very wrong but I don't know exactly what. This is the sort of thing I'd need someone to watch me play to be able to tell for sure. As it is all I'm doing is dying and I'm not enjoying it. It's not even fair how much I'm dying. Random snipes a screen away...god, at least in XCOM the enemies could see you when you saw them equally. I feel like how the aliens then must have when someone has Mimetic Skin and a Squadsight sniper. From what I can tell there is no way to defend yourself diagonally. There's an effort to "peek" around corners, but all that seems to have done is deleted the corner part of the cover and left that part totally open. So all full cover is basically worthless if it isn't at least 3 tiles wide, and standing on either side of the center is like standing in the open. So there is effectively zero cover on half the maps, only obstructions in the environment to constrict my movement to get out of harm's way (which seems to be absolutely everywhere, no matter where I go). I mean if I survive long enough to shoot back, I win eventually, but that's only because I've been against the squishy grey humanoid things. Don't care what their name is. Don't even want to face the lizards like this. I don't get it and it's frustrating me. At least in XCOM i could exclusively blame the dice rolls.

One thing I've looked around a lot for but found a distinct lack of is some kind of combat guide for people trying to get the hang of this game. X-COM had plenty scattered around, but here I can't seem to locate even the most basic of walkthroughs of the do's and do-not's of Xenonauts. I'm trying to keep in cover, use spotters ect, but everything always ends up coming down to dice rolls and inevitably I will lose those. Aliens require only one hit to kill me in any situation and I need several consecutive ones. Not to mention the fact that they seem to be able to consistently spot me outside of my visual range and open fire from there, and they just are overall better shots. There are times when I'm seriously struggling to put down enemies and end up having to close in to get reliable hits, which inevitably leads to two or three snapshots picking my guys off each. Seriously, Sebilians are stupidly good at double kills. I really dislike having to fight those guys. I suppose I'm looking for some pointers. There has to be some strategy to this besides "spam fire and hope you hit/don't get shot" because I will miss and I will get shot very frequently. At least, I would HOPE that there's some strategy to this strategy game besides praying. A lack of a "hunker down" ability also really bites. Cover is unreliable as hell.

I am currently running a pirated version of the latest Xenonauts. The game itself came as the release and a patch for a mid-release version came with it. I got the latest patch elsewhere. Currently fiddling with the thing to see why the mods don't (appear) to be working. The UI doesn't have a lot of options for this kind of thing. I grew up with games and I've been screwed over before. I've bought games that were garbage cuz they looked cool. I really like XCOM and only recently have I become any good at it (not nearly enough for Impossible; I'm far too impatient, get too sloppy too easily). I heard of Xenonauts a while ago but only noticed it within this last couple of months. It looked interesting. I downloaded this pirated copy to see how it handles. It'd be nice if I could just buy this thing right off the bat but look at the market this thing comes from. Especially now that Steam seems to be letting every piece of software into their place that ever showed up, it seems like every other game you see is either incomplete or a complete joke. What was the name of that one DayZ ripoff that started as WarZ and then changed their name like twice? Purposefully stole the name because of the interest levels at the time and then blatantly halted development when they were content with the free cash. Had no intention of releasing anything. I don't have a job right now. I'm in college and my family pays for most things. In an ideal world I could just buy this thing, but I've been let down before and I don't intend to be let down again at my own expense. I like this game, and while I'm definitely not any good at it (yet), I'm still fiddling with the way the dice rolls and I think I'm going to end up paying for it...eventually. Earliest will be Christmas, when I get my holiday cash. Money is tight and I just have no means of paying for a new game at any price. If it was a crap game you can bet I wouldn't have paid for it. But then again, I wouldn't have played it if I had known ahead of time, either. This is what a demo would be for, but to my knowledge there isn't one for this game or many of the other games I happen to like. But I like it and I intend to pay for it when I'm able. I see Piracy as a utility. I think it's the sort of thing that needs to be there. It's an option for consumers, and particularly in America which is increasingly favoring developers and companies over the buyers, it's an option that is absolutely necessary. It could end up hurting producers, and they might not necessarily deserve it. It's all up to the individual. But I feel that the assumption that piracy is a lost sale is a farse invented by butthurt companies like EA and Microsoft that are so big to be guaranteed business and feel entitled to their own success. People would pay for it if they could, or if they trusted people enough not to screw them over, but they can't and they don't. This is how they protect themselves. Getting access to the game before the price tag can be abused, but so can anything with any positive effects to it. Piracy has the potential to protect consumers and right now I think they need all the protection that they can get. I know that a lot of gamers have a healthy respect for Indies in particular that can make some good games, so I'm not worried about how it affects them too much. So it more or less boils down to the fact that if piracy is really hurting your business, you probably deserve it. ...that's just my opinion anyway. Xenonauts is fun, by the way. I wish it relied a bit less on dice rolls, though, especially when the odds are so consistently against you.