mrsisk

Hmm...I don't think an average would be all that helpful actually. Bravery is the most important stat since it's the hardest to level up. TU might be second. All the others can be leveled up fairly quickly. As this screen stands now, with its shading system, it's easy to spot the best ones to hire. Like: Grab that last one! (And the two with 59 BRV, and the one with 55 BRV.)

I always play by my own internal rule. There is only one rule: Save and reload whenever you like 'cause fuck it, it's a game not a competition. If I don't like how it's going ... I'm not stressed. Sit back, sip coffee, reload. Go ahead, call me a pussy. Do I look bothered? 'Cause I ain't bothered.

Does the UK even allow women in active combat rolls now? I know last year the MOD was told to make it happen. Alternative reality is the answer to many questions in games.

He he ... I've seen missions where my fighters shot up the UFO so badly that before I could gun down the aliens, the local AI controlled cops or military killed them and I never even saw an alien. All in a day's work for ... Xenonauts!

I don't even know what "plays like XCOM" means. I've known a bunch of people who played XCOM and they all had a different style than me. For one thing you practically had to use exploits to get XCOM's economy runniong effectively. Like using engineers to build/sell stuff. Once you had the right tech level you didn't need to worry about monthly income from the nations. And ground combat the least important part of the game? I'm not a hardcore player or anything, but seems to me ground combat is THE most important part of the economy in Xenonauts. You're never going to make it to end game just doing 10 ground missions. Not only will you not have experienced troops, but you'll never have the $$$ and special materials you need to research and build the equipment you need. Air strikes are all well and good when you're sitting on a pile of dough, or simply don't have the troops avialable to do them...but ground combat pays out in multiples of what you earn from air strikes. And the more careful you are in ground combat (not blowing everything up) the more $$$ and special materials you gain. So I can hardly say that ground combats are the least important thing. Air combat and global coverage gain you good relations with the funding nations, but ground combat is the foundation of your funding, experience and rare resource gathering.

2d map is fine by me. The original X-COM was the first game I really fell in love with, but I absolutely hated the globe thing. That was most because by the time I bought the game, my PC's processor was so fast that I could not control the globe. One light tap on the rotate and the globe would spin past my targetted area. It was annoying as hell and actually almost did make the game broken. Was that a developer issue or a technical issue? I don't know but there was nothing I could do to slow it down. The 2D map in Xenonauts has never given me any issue. It's playable. I don't even think about it. A globe is cooler? Maybe, but ascerting the game is broken or that the 2D map is a "mistake" is pretty silly. Do you fail missions because of a 2D map? No. Do you fail to shoot down UFOs because of a 2D map? No. Is it unrealistic? Only if you believe real war rooms in 1979 had holographically projected globes (in which case you need to stop smoking that stuff or maybe see a doctor about your delusional perception of reality). There are elements of Xenonauts I am not 100% happy with. But if you think it's incomplete or somehow lacking compared to the original, you need to go back and replay XCOM with your rose colored glasses off. That game had so many holes in it (even discounting the unresolved bugs) it wasn't funny. Its micromanagement of inventory, excessive exploits available, and the totally OP double punch of psyionic amps and blaster bombs were certainly "mistakes" that could have been corrected but weren't. It was/is a great game, but it wasn't flawless. Same with Xenonauts.

He he...find this thread funny on a lot of levels. I have no advice. But I do feel for the original poster. I remember my first alien base attack back in like V22 or something vs Sebs. I was playing it manual ironman (and very sloppily/recklessly just for the fun of it) and this was only on Normal difficulty. Anyway, by the time I made it to the command room I only had 2 guys left. They took out 2 Seb guards easily enough, but the leader--first Seb leader I'd ever met--just would not die. He finally killed one of my men and it was just one-on-one, mano-a-mano. I threw everything I had at him, even used picked up alien grenades and alien weapons. Finally ran out of everything and had to run back through the base robbing corpses of aliens and Xenonauts alike. Finally managed to overcome his regen using rockets, alien grenades, LMGs and picked up alien weapons. It's good to note, though, that if you don't have lasers or plasma weapons that picking up alien weapons is not a bad thing at close quarters. Especially if you can get right up on them. Close range seems to negate a lot of the accuracy penalty for using alien weapons. Also, it seems that the leaders are fairly resistant to stun (grenades at least), but they're not immune. When you can bottle them up in smaller rooms, Sebs are really underpowered because one gas grenade dropped in a room and left to sit for 4 or 5 turns can wipe out even stubborn resistance. This may not be so effective with the v1.07 fix that stops you from blocking doors. But I'd bet it's still a valid tactic in a lot of situations. Not sure how the stun stuff works and if resistance is beefed up in higher difficulties, though.

If you're playing ironman you're going to lose your higher ranking troops. That's a given. Which means you have to keep bringing noobs in. And in late game if you're only accepting noobs with 50+ bravery, you're likely to end up with soldiers who can wear armor, carry one gun and one clip of ammo and STILL be overburdened because their STR sucks. And likely their TU will be low to begin with so they're going to be slow moving, bad shooting, poorly equipped but moderately brave meat shields...and still get MC'd. So I'm still a bit unconvinced on the Bravery stat as being tops. It's sounding like ultimately you're going to have to "do silly things" anyway, like unequipping your weapons or (as I tend to do in the pre-MC berserk-prone months) just use up all your TUs so that your troops don't shoot each other during the alien's turn. So...hmm. Not really sure about that one.

**thumbs up** That's the coder's creed. Applies to any coding or development work. I'd be willing to bet, though, that all the "it was promised by such-n-such date" complainers would NOT have been complaining if you had released a broken game "on time." **cough**

I can't open a sav file from where I'm accessing the Internet now but... Androns and drones (the little UFOs) are immune to stun and cannot be supressed...they're robots. Harridans and any alien that's wearing gas masks (like alien base commanders) or envirnoment suits cannot be gassed, though a stun baton might work on them...if you could survive standing next to them. I remember chucking a gas grenade at a cluster of Androns before I knew for sure they could not be stunned. They all had the 'RESISTED' flag pop up. Chucking a flashbang at them (I think) will show stun damage but will never actually stun them, nor will it suppress them.

I'm not forgetting all that...I just haven't gotten that far in my play through yet. Later they may be very worthwhile, especially when I've got my teams all leveled up and am carrying larger numbers of crew. Attacking an alien base with them would be good. That's basically the same as having your own base attacked. And in the OG I do remember one mission where I beat the mission soleley because I had flying plasma weapon tanks. Everyone else was either dead or under alien psionic control

Yeah, that one always really frustrates me, especially when it's my guy on the outside of a UFO getting the 100% blocked message, and then the alien he was trying to fire at shoots him without moving during the alien's round and kills him. It doesn't spoil the game, but it is quite frustrating.

Yeah, I was surprised during my first alien base attack mission that pretty much every one of my troopers was at one point affected by a psi attack. Every single one of them was at full morale, and their morale ranged from about 52 to 81. The guy with 81 went berserk and killed 2 of his fellow Xenonauts at close range. This was one of my higher level leaders. And it was only a small alien base. Making medals worth more would be an easy fix, I suppose, though I'd probably prefer a morale boost when in-combat similar to like what happens now if you kill an enemy. So, if you're attacked with psi-powers, and you resist, that soldier gets a morale boost. But it needs to be significant enough, because the door swings both ways (fail a psi-check and you get a morale de-buff). I don't know, just thinking out loud. [i'm playing the current stable build, which I know is has psi-power imbalances that are being addressed.]

Personally I don't use them on ground missions. In earlier builds I tried them, but found that I only used them as scouts and cover destroyers. For which they were fine, but they don't really meet my needs because: 1) It's more important for me to level up my troopers and since vehicles don't level, they actually steal experience if you use them to kill stuff 2) They can't be used effectively for breaching UFOs...more troopers is better Possibly in later game when you've got bigger drop ships...maybe they're OK. Just depends on how bad the mission is and how many grunts you've had to hire because of veterans being lost. So what I'm left with as far as them being useful is this: Base Defense. In case of an alien attack, they make great scouts and can serve to block infiltrator movement. None of that is really a game issue, but more so a playing style/decision.

You also can't regain lost countries in XCOM:EU/XCOM:EW. It's kind of part of the legacy. As for economy, I've realized that you can earn far more $ from ground combat (well, a significant amount anyway) than you do from country income. So when it comes to base placement, I try to cover as much land area as I can, rather than focusing on the number of countries I cover. I don't know if this is a sound strategy or not. My current stable game play through is in mid-December and I've got 3 bases up and running: USSR, USA and N. Africa. I was late to the weapons research game, so I don't have lasers yet and will only have my first Corsair by the end of the current month...but I'm probably going to skip over lasers altogether now as I've got all I need to move on to plasma weapons. Kind of up in the air about that because I'm not sure exactly when I'll start seeing heavy fighters and it would be nice to have gatling lasers before then. Anyway, base placement...My strategy is to be able to shoot down as many UFOs as possible. If your bases are covering too much water (as I think your Option 2 is, Victor), then you have to expend a lot of jet fuel tailing UFOs until they are over land. Which means a lot of times you're going to run out of fuel before you can down them, which is a loss of about $20,000 to $120,000 per UFO (based on the income I'm seeing from small to medium UFO ground missions)...not to mention the resources captured. But so far it's been working for me...mainly because I save spam all the time. I play that way because my main goal is to see all the game content, not to prove I'm a big hairy man. I can tell that by looking in the mirror.