[Should smoke grenades cause fire]

Smoke grenades can cause fires in real life, too, so I don't see the problem.

[Xenonauts: Community Edition 0.30 HotFix 1]

Given that the XCE writers have source access, I'm not convinced that it's impossible. All it would take is a few added attributes to gate shot passage heights. It also doesn't really explain behavioral oddities of this nature that don't even involve terrain obstacles which have to be defined individually...you get oddly impossible angles with just standard-height floor and ceiling obstacles, too. A simple solution might be that the effectiveness of cover is reduced when the cover is within the point-blank distance of a weapon, because right now, you get kind of silly situations where standing shooters are unable to shoot each other because of a knee-high fence between them, a tile away from each, all of the shots repeatedly going at their feet as they strike the fence.

On that note, objects that are standing on or land upon "air" apparently just hang suspended in the air. This is apparent if you toss a flare from off the side of a roof, where, when it lands on an air tile, just hangs in mid-air instead of continuing its trajectory. Also, objects and characters on floor that is destroyed do not fall, and the destroyed floor continues to function as floor forever afterwards despite no longer existing.

[Xenonauts: Community Edition 0.30 HotFix 1]

Just a thought: would it be possible make missed shots always avoid the intended target regardless of where the shot scatters to? That would solve the issue.

That wouldn't seem true to the original X-Com, where it was quite common that a "missed" shot would strike the target anyway, simply because there was nowhere else for the shot to go. Games that don't have an "Eating the Gun Muzzle" effect have misses that go off in wildly impossible angles.

It's the normal interfering chance, 25% and 19% for normal standing and crouching characters. So a point-blank 60% shot is actually 70% for a standing target. It should be even possible to calculate how much to decrease the short range bonus so that it roughly matches the way the chances were before (and similarly it should be possible to adjust shown chances to roughly match reality).

On that subject, I've noticed that shot traces get a little weird and impossible, like a shot fired while standing inside of a building, on a second floor, that must exit a small window at roughly shoulder height, and then strike a target on a floor below. Drawing any logical line of fire should mean this shot is impossible, yet it is possible to hit this. Similarly, a crouching character shouldn't really be subject to being hit by a standing shooter two tiles away, because any shot that was angled far enough down to hit him was never aimed anywhere at the target anyway.

[XCE 0.30HF Assault Shield Sentinel Soldiers Not Linked To Animations]

Add the missing lines:

  	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_w" anim="hover_NY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_e" anim="hover_K"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_n" anim="hover_E"/>   <anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_s" anim="hover_D"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_nw" anim="hover_ENY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_ne" anim="hover_EK"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_sw" anim="hover_DNY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/hover_se" anim="hover_DK"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_w" anim="prehover_NY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_e" anim="prehover_K"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_n" anim="prehover_E"/>   <anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_s" anim="prehover_D"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_nw" anim="prehover_ENY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_ne" anim="prehover_EK"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_sw" anim="prehover_DNY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/prehover_se" anim="prehover_DK"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_w" anim="posthover_NY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_e" anim="posthover_K"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_n" anim="posthover_E"/>   <anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_s" anim="posthover_D"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_nw" anim="posthover_ENY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_ne" anim="posthover_EK"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_sw" anim="posthover_DNY"/> 	<anim src="units/xenonaut/armour.sentinel/none/posthover_se" anim="posthover_DK"/>

Back to all the soldier_spectre.xmls contained within: These lines are there in vanilla, as well as in the others, but are missing here.

[[X:CE 3.0HF1- Aircombat] Escort turn to face attackers is just turn.]

You're welcome to implement more realistic starting positions. Or, more easily, just make up some kind of explanation, such as that the escorts sped up and did a turn in front of the main craft during the time the interceptors were closing in to engage.

Well, my view is that the default starting positions ARE realistic: The escorts DO have the option to turn around while the interceptors are closing to engage, and they do indeed attempt to do this, since the transition to the combat grid already begins with everyone outside of engagement range, and you must then close to engage.

The alternative implementations of the system would be to A: Have the escorts actually actively engage tailing craft, causing a battle on the spot with the "intercepted" response. Realistically, there would be two options: Remain in formation with your escortee, and allow the tailing craft to tail, or break formation and engage them, or B: Start the interceptors further back so that the escorts have more time to properly turn around to engage them. Either of these would be preferrable to simply giving them a cheat.

[[X:CE 3.0HF1- Base management] Medal tips not shown on mouseover]

Works fine for me, no other mods installed here. Medal tooltips and medal rewarding functions normally for me.

[XCE 0.30HF Assault Shield Sentinel Soldiers Not Linked To Animations]

Flying Sentinel Soldiers with the Assault Shield do not have their hover land/takeoff/fly animations correctly linked in their units/xenonauts/armour.sentinel/weapon.assaultshield.*/* files. As a result they will simply float in the air in their latest seen orientation. A simple text fix, however.

[Credibility with Ranks]

Having high ranking officers around in the original game also reduced the morale loss for casualties. A Skyranger full of rookies and your highest ranking dude (Who was preferably armed with a blaster launcher and a psiamp) who sat at the back of the skyranger all mission was a great way to train rookies - as long as your officer didn't die, half the rookies could die and yet everyone would stay pretty cheerful.

That would be *A* high-ranking officer. Not an entire team thereof.

[Why We're Not Using Action Points / Time Units]

Chris, one short question, are you going to have the player use all turns for his characters before handing over the baton to the enemy to do the same and vice versa? Or are you going ahead with the initiative system of D&D and allow the highest Initiative character, regardless of player or enemy, to go first?

Initiative systems have their bad implementations, too, like the ones where you are FORCED to move first, simply because you have high initiative, even though you don't want to because there's nothing to do, and the rest of your team isn't ready to go with you, so your choices are to skip the entire turn, essentially making having the best initiative actually the worst initiative, or charge out there alone like a Leeroy and get killed. TOEE addressed this by allowing a high-initiative character to choose to wait for someone later in the roster, but very few games include this, which tends to turn those games into a campfest where you can't move because it will separate you from the herd.

[Alien outpost atack causes crash]

Well, the save at top did not crash for me on arrival, but I have only installed XE0.30HF+Settings, nothing else, and do not use Steam at all. So either it is an interaction with the unused "balance" module, or it is an interaction with some component of Steam.

[Credibility with Ranks]

It's mostly because rank is used as an easy way of telling how experienced the soldier is in Xenonauts. I don't really see what is gained from a gameplay standpoint if you have to hire an additional 20 rookies you're not going to use just so your best soldier can rank up again (a la the original game).

But why would you do that? Rank in X-Com was almost entirely disadvantageous, simply increasing the penalty when the guy bites it. It works much the same way here: If half your team is low-ranking, nobody cares too much when some die...if your team is only Colonels, they'll completely lose their shit the moment one bites it.

[Help with combat roles]

I generally only take a missile launcher as a backup weapon for a strong rifleman, as I don't like to destroy gear. I costs you thousands of dollars each time you unleash a rocket, so I will generally only do it if there is a big advantage, like a bunched up group of androns.

I am not convinced this is true, because I have actually tried to count the gear dropped before, and noticed that the items looted did not match what I had actually retrieved in game. For instance, in one run, it said I had retrieved only 25 plasma batteries. However, I had actually picked up about 40 of them, and that was just the quantity that I was physically carrying as ballast to replace spent ammo. Wondering if it was not counting what I had physically looted personally, I reloaded back to before executing the final enemy, and dropped all the batteries. No change.

Another run I got 115 batteries, although I was not picking up any from the ground...even though a dead enemy has only one battery, and there were definitely not 115 enmies killed.

Weaponwise, I love Heavy Weapons. Even the basic Machine Gun has superior stopping power compared to the puny starter Assault Rifle, seeing as I have to use them until I unlock MAG weapons and can actually begin producing things that I won't simply be pissing my money away on, as unlike X-Com, things produced are only sold at massive loss and money is extremely tight. The regular assault rifle is roughly equivalent to firing spitwads. At least the Machine Gun can hurt something. Therefore, early-game, I have three specialties I use: The Scout Grenadier (Pistol+Shields+Grenades), Bazookaman (Rocket Launcher), and Machine Gunner (MG). Everyone will also carry an extra shield, which, at the start of the mission, they will dump in the Skyranger, so that my grenadiers lose a shield, they can go get another one. My tactic is straightforward: I will probe ahead with my shield scouts, and when I detect an enemy, I will flush him from cover with a barrage of rockets and hose him down in lead should he survive the flushing. The shield allows my scout to survive stray shots unscathed, and when it breaks, I go back and get another one.

Of course, all previously neglected weapon types suddenly come into their own with MAGs that have the stopping power to actually kill something with them. But the machine gun just has so much raw damage potential early on, that no other non-rocket weapon competes (the MAG-Storm has plenty of damage potential...too much, since nothing can survive it, so most of the shots will be wasted).

Rocket is great, too, because not only does it pack sufficient stopping power to bring down an enemy early on, it has excellent accuracy (can hit and kill enemies even at 0% CTH), which no other weapon can manage, and is thus the weapon of choice for both the incompetent rookie who can't shoot for shit, and the 100-Acc Sniper, and on top of that, it is free, all free. No need to waste money on garbage you will throw out at a loss.

The key thing that makes me use a range of weapons is the reflex bonus of the pistol and shotgun. These guys can safely scout out for you without incurring reaction fire for a good half of their move.

Reflex bonus merely so-so. If you're relying on reaction shots to drop an enemy, you're playing dangerously, because they never work and can't hit jack. Meanwhile, incurring reaction shots is often how you scout an enemy, and that's what the shield is for. The shot lets you know where the enemy is, and you can then begin bombarding him with rockets, which will set things on fire and light up the night.

[[X:CE 3.0HF1- Aircombat] Escort turn to face attackers is just turn.]

I'm not really sure this "turn to face attackers" feature makes much sense, anyway. Your fighters could have been following them for who knows how long, tailing them there the entire time: If they turned to face you at any point prior to the start of the fight, the fight would have started before. Since UFOs cannot fly in reverse, they cannot turn to face you without breaking formation with their escortee. If they turn to face you, they should have to immediately engage you.

[Alien outpost atack causes crash]

Not a dev, but I downloaded the save and tried it, no crash. Not using Steam version. CE 0.30HF + Settings, nothing else. Perhaps is a side effect of "balance", or Steam?

[0.30HF1 - TU Bug]

I'm guessing this is the cause of endless alien turns.

[XCE 0.30HF1 Alien Mind Control Weirdness]

The new alien mind control weird out if you bludgeon the afflicted into submission with your stun batons: He will respawn later despite having been stunned, back to normal, while his body is still lying on the ground. This appears to destabilize the game and it crashes shortly later.