SilverFalcon

Since I play mostly XNT I end up with much more outsourcing bases for research end manufacture, but I have one main base with soldiers, and rest of bases are initially just for fighter planes and radars.

Sorry, but you are terribly wrong. I am not sure about SpecNaz, but western SF do have normal rank systems where most men in field are enlisted. For example SEAL platoon is lead by Lieutenant O-3 and assisted by Lieutenant Junior Grade O-2, rest of platoon (14 men) are enlisted, usually Petty Officers E-4 to E-6, but can go up to E-9. Do not get confused by term "Petty Officer", it is equivalent of sergeant. Seals have roughly 500 officers and 2000 enlisted according to: http://navyseals.com/nsw/learn-about-the-us-navy-seals/ There is no fluid advancement from enlisted to officer, its just a little different job. I would expect that SpecNaz is similar in this way, and typical veteran combat operator would be rather 'starshina', not 'polkovnik'. Intelligence and counter-intelligence units may be made of officers though.

Well, Foxtrots cannot intercept battleships on other than collision course. But are useful until then before you get Maraduers. But I always used at least 2 fighters per base as well so I can deal with heavy fighters and UFO interceptors. I ended up with for bases in the end, though I had three for most of the game on Normal.

I fought them with Apollos first. Tricky as there is no room for error but can be done. Since I got Saracens and Corsair it was easy. First switch missiles to manual fire (you need to time it well)! Do not rely on evasion maneuvers, HF can shoot so often you cannot keep rolling. Instead use one fast aircraft as bait, pull afterburner and fly "around" so HF fires behind you and turns around. Even Foxtrot can pull it for some time. With another aircraft get quickly to firing position from side or behind. With Corsair it is quite simple, just kill it with cannons (if you still have just basic cannons use it as bait). If it turns on Corsair, then evasion, change direction, turn it to bait and finish with the other aircraft. If you have Apollo, you have only 2 missiles and sometimes one is not enough (perhaps depends on techs). Surefire method for scoring both hits is to attack from side and fire at half of your rage so that HF cannot roll away from missile max range. It is not always easy to get into such firing position, but I could pull it of many times. If you have third aircraft as reserve, you can kill it even if you cannot get into surfire position. When attacking from behind and 1 hit is enough fire just one missile and when he evades it, immediately shoot the second before he can roll again. It is easier with Saracen as it has 4 missiles or you can use third aircraft to fire third missile with the second.

Just finished final mission and twice it crashed after debriefing... Not sure what went wrong, but i can provide a savegame if it would help.

Sometimes I play with ideas that change the concept of the game a little. I thought what if you didn't have to fight alien invasion, but rather a man's invasion? Being it set in cold war era, the obvious invasion would be third world war. What if you are put into position of commander of NATOs (or Warszaw Pact's) Air Force and Airborne troops having to stop invasion from opposing superpower. This setting would be much more symmetrical. Also should be more about war economy and less about hunting for artifacts. Also it should have more challenging combat with more resources to cover losses. More about accomplishing objectives at costs and less about training one elite squad of soldiers. There are two principal questions: 1. Would it be interesting for you? 2. Would it be possible? What should be easy: - Air combat - just using existing MODs to change ufo's to manmade airplanes, adding a few new for specific purposes. - Tactical combat - instead of aliens use xenonaut sprites in different color, give them AK's, PKs, SVD's RPG's etc. Create BMD-1 to use instead of heavy drones. Obvious problems: - Predefined bases from start, limits on where base could be built - is it possible? - Localization of events, spawn points - Enemy aircraft carrying out missions would have to spawn near enemy bases at enemy territory and need more specific mission targets (on players or neutral land). - Loosing/gaining territories - could it be possible to overcome - once lost -> always lost territory rule? Or setting different ways to win/lose strategic objectives?

That AWACS is really cool idea! Nice graphics BTW.

Thanks for tips, though I used both in 5.1. It first confused me that configs for 6.0 were in MOD folder and I didn't find the need to change it later in game (not loosing that many soldiers). But I think lesser ability variability would be nice default setting. I didn't use ironman for 6.0 for pretty much same reasons + I did not want to into same situation that quite ended me in 5.1 on ironman. I couldn't stop all the Heavy fighters and it downed my Chinook just before reaching safety of base. Though I had one crew in reserve, it just felt I lost the momentum to keep up. But I see ironman as a good standard for difficulty setting - it should be challenging yet possible without excessive amount of luck. I think 5.1 is much more playable with just crash-loading/strange event loading - see my previous comments on Omega viper strange events. It is sure much more demanding emotionally and work-wise (keeping trained reserves, abandon challenging missions yet doing lot of less challenging ones...). This play I used a middle way. Capturing that preator could be very costly. Without load I would use fresh recruits as cannon fodder to deplete its TUs. Also berserking sucks - just cannot defend against, it is based on luck. Though I found a good way to deal with mind control in larger ships - teleport lock. Just leave mindcontroled xenonaut on some deck, move others to next and last two stays on the teleports.

When I started attacking bases I already had some MAG weapons and it was very easy to kill Omega. In beginning stages of the games I sent hunter against it, but is smoked everything an later some (probably bug) caesan appeared and threw C4 grade explosive at me xenonauts. I rather avoided it then. EDIT: Now that I think of MAG weapons, I found MAG precision quite useless. MAG rifle is so good with burst fire, that it outclasses the precision rifle. Magstorm is magnificent with predator armor.

So far I have researched ENDGAME and waiting to get Fury to try it out. Almost finished. First I would like to thank you for your work, I really enjoyed the MOD! Bug report: I agree with following, except I didn't have 5. - After report crashes, though I had quite a few during battles: 7. Singularity cannon weight - even elite xenonaut in predator armor cannot carry it (0TU's) Omega vipers: I had quite a strange events when Omega vipers were present. After few turns, some caesan that changed color from red to blue or vice versa appeared and threw either acid granade or even C4 at incredible range and it immediately exploded. The Omega viper attack is strange, I had some fights Omega vs Hunter vehicle, but it was inconclusive since sometimes I could't see the enemy when just a tile away because of the superstrong smokeskreen. The attack does not affect armored units (including well equiped xenonauts in later game). Economy: I found only one piece of equipment that would make mass manufacture economy strategy worthwhile and is anti-material rifle. Unless you can manufacture it, forget about making money by manufacturing stuff. Most of the stuff doesn't sell for the manufacturing costs and many not even for the material that is put into it (especially advanced armor). Let us calculate costs of labor: Most cost effective is having 1 living quarters + 4x workshop + 40x engineer which produces 1200 manday a month an costs 12500+4*25000+40*5000 = 312500,- This means that manday costs approximately 260,5. If an item is manufactured in 30 mandays, then minimal cost is material+30*260=material + 7815. Another important figure is Return Of Investment (ROI). Other than monthly expenses, you pay (invest) 450000 for the 4 workshops and 1 living quarters. ROI tells you how long it takes before you get your investment back, I will provide 2 examples of Anti-Material Rifle (AMR) and Coyote armor. Coyote: Sell price:46900$ Material costs: 30800$ Work costs: 48md = 12500$ Total costs: 43300$ Profit per piece: 3600$ Profit per month: 25*3600 = 90000$ (1200 md/48md=25 pieces a month) ROI (month): 90000/450000=20% In other words, it will take 5 months before your investment returns and you start to make extra money. Not a great investment, considering game's pace, thought it would be very nice in real life. AMR: Sell price: 200k$ Material costs: 160k$ Work costs: 65md = 16930$ Total costs: 176930$ Profit per piece: 23070$ Profit per month: 18,5*23070 =~ 426800$ ROI (month): 426800/450000=~95% In other words, you will get almost all money in one month and next month you have extra. Now it makes sense if you can spare 751250$ this month (investment + first month expenses) + 160000$ for the first rifle's material. BTW I didn't account for delays as you need to build workshops and hire engineers (another 4days I guess). Difficulty: I played normal difficulty. I did not have problems with vipers. I could kill alpha with just rifles, I used granades for for bigger ones or retreated. Having armored vehicle sure helps. Once having Antimaterial Rifles, the medium vipers were quite easy to kill. Unlike in 5.1 alphas were not much of threat, never killed by reaper or gargoyle. I really enjoyed aliens using weapons that do more stun then direct damage. This means having bleeding unconscious casualties that you must take care of instead of instant kills by stray bullet. What I was challenged with were alien explosive cannons. Sometimes even if I left high reaction xenonaut with advanced shotgun enough TUs, the alien would shoot first in CQB situation and suppress my xenonaut. Neither this nor cover heped much against this. I would give it more TU cost or look if it has enough reaction penalties. There were times of increased difficulty because of research - I do not have the research trees, but I guess I made some wrong research decisions as I got laser tech just a week or two before MAG. I would advice to review the techtrees for "traps for newbies" - eg. ignoring some research that doesn't seem that important but may delay a lot of techs. Maybe some hints would be nice as well in research description. Precision plasma and similar high power weapons meant one shot one kill for less experienced soldier in coyote armor. I got advenced armors later after disassembling something and could research each after another, it was just the gap after coyote. First andron terror was quite a challenge that I loaded a few times, because all I could use was granades, machineguns and thunderhawk (and RPG). I used all my grenades and took alien weapons to win. I think this gave me the AMR which made it more possible to deal with androns and soldier class aliens. Capturing living preator was challenging as it took so many of elmag granades and he can kill elite xenonaut in heaviest armor with just one shot. Shock battons became obsolete soon, those can't deal with armor. In Air combat, only difficulty spike was introduction of multiple Heavy Fighters before heaving advanced crafts. Dealing 3 apollos vs 3 HFs was challenging usually leading to loss of one apollo and often having to repeat attack on last fighter. Playing it on ironman and with having downed aircraft unrecoverable (i decomissioned downed aircrafts) would be challenging but pretty much possible. If I were to play in on ironman, I would prefer to decrease variablility on recruits abilities. This would help in mass recruiting that is needed in such setting.