Belmakor

I would definitely agree with the two commonly cited points in this post. 1. That the aliens don't fire enough. Although they seem to make plenty of reaction fire shot in my missions? 2. That the majority of tier 1 and 2 aliens are too tough at present OR... that ballistic rifles are too weak (taking 3, 4 hits from a rifle is no fun). One way to adjust this might be to make the basic ballistics a little cheaper to fire, so that you can fire 3 rifle shots off, 2 shotgun blasts etc. (everyone apart from pistol totting maniacs are lucky if they fire more than one shot per turn). I'd also like to see the AI use their shotgun equivalents more effectively instead of firing them from 10 tiles away. They should be using half their AP to close the gap before firing.

I love it how around 8 Androns can come through a hangar door on the same turn and lob 3 or 4 grenades onto the exact squares my guys are standing on... Not! It might just be Murphys Law but I swear my grenades never land where they are supposed to and more often that not don't even make it over those bloody sandbags.

Possibly, or possibly not. I would have 3.5 months to get to Alenium missiles. How many projects do I need to complete to get that? Its around 4 right? Would need to check the xml's to find out how many man hours total.

Ok so the first thing I have established is that it is a mistake to have so many Condors around in December. By now its only worth having 3, just enough to take out the escorts of larger ships. It would be far better to have 2 sets of 3 foxtrots to enable the taking out of Cruisers. As it stands I am being overloaded by Large alien vessels every wave and 6 Avalanches are simply not enough. This might be an issue with balancing in general (have others encountered such vessels in December?) or simply because the invasion ticker has advanced to high due to that Alien base. In terms of funding, it is still at a net profit even at the end of December but I can see that at this point I have lost the war. SORRY!!! Caption: Both aircraft actually survived this encounter! My intermediate conclusion is that I really ought to have completed 2 missions before sacking my soldiers. One scout and one corvette. This would have allowed me to research Alenium missiles and allowed my game to continue well into the new year. Regarding the initial hypothesis; this requires further testing. p.s this was Veteran Iron Mode.

Funding as of 2nd December as follows; N.A = $153,571 C.A = $183,333 S.A = $210,000 EU = $260,000 (1 terror strike this month causing -$120,000 at month end) N. Af = $412,500 S. Af = $300,000 M.E = $375,000 Sov = $255,537 Indo = $8,333 (2 terror strikes) Aus = $220,000

I have been playing V20E9 with the intention of not performing any ground combats and with the aim to highlight the following issues. 1. That the relationship bonus being tied exclusively to shooting down aircraft is to the detriment of the game. First thing I did was sell all my soldiers and fire my scientists (after researching Mig's). I have bought hangars at every opportunity to fill all available space and bought aircraft at a ratio of 1 foxtrot for every 2 condors. The first two months, saw me shoot down mainly l.scouts, scouts and the occasional corvette. I would air-strike every downed aircraft. I didn't lose a single aircraft by virtue of the fact that I was able to send 3 aircraft in every wave, and if needed send out two waves to destroy each enemy squadron. This is what my base looks like at the end of 3 months. I also have a Central America base with 2 foxtrots (in progress) and 4 condors (available). My profit each month is $400,000 from funding and I gained a net increase in funding of $120,000 this month. (-$45,000 and -$90,000 in months 1 and 2). I reckon I am making about $400,000 from shooting down aircraft in month 1 and 2 and this is now up to $600,000 in month 3. That is a net profit of $1,000,000 despite doing no missions. A enemy base has showed up and obviously I can't do anything about it. But that's ok because its giving me a steady stream of landing ships to shoot down with a very lucrative $70,000 per strike without any risk to myself. Now I know I am only 3 months in but I wager that at this rate I am going to have complete dominance of the skies by the end of month 5. Probably by then I will have around 4 bases. At this point I will be able to buy some soldiers to do a couple of missions and quickly gain technology and research through sheer numbers. Obviously I haven't come across anything larger than a corvette with 2 heavy fighter escorts but again this isn't an issue. One wave of condors to take out the fighters and then one wave of foxtrots to take out the corvette. I'd imagine any larger aircraft might take 3 waves, but I have enough aircraft for this. more to follow

One other thing I would say about the Ambience is related to one of the music pieces on the Battlescape. It the music track Ground Combat 2 from about the 1:30 mark until about 3:00 minute mark. There is this string bit that sounds like something out of one of the older James Bond films - really out of place in terms of all the other soundtracks. I'd love it if that section was removed!

+1

Let me guess? A hidden side room full of reapers that you accidentally tele-port into?

Fresh install for you maybe? I can confirm that on my V20.8 the shield is still present and correct.

Problem: 1. Aircraft are pretty useless at patrolling for any length of time due to quick fuel consumption. 2. The wide circling patrol is fine for trying to find enemy bases but not useful at providing close air support to transports when moving out of range of your interceptors. Existing Solution: Correct me if I am wrong but I believe I remember reading that aircraft use slightly less fuel when they are patrolling around a particular area? This was a welcome change but didn't quite go far enough. Solutions: Option 1. Change the options available on the 'waypoint reached' pop-up. Centre on Aircraft Patrol (current wide circle patrol as presently implemented) Remain on Station (very small circular, almost stationary patrol using perhaps 70% of normal fuel) Select New Target Return to Base Cancel Option 2. Reduce fuel consumption for patrols by a further 10-20% and reduce the speed of the patrolling aircraft Option 3. Allow us to send out interceptors with our Dropships and when they run out of fuel, allow us to send back only the interceptors instead of forcing the dropship home. Additionally, allow us to merge squadrons by selecting existing squadrons as the target. Why: Air superiority can only truly be achieved by aircraft already in the air. I know Chris you are not the biggest fan of this (as you already argued against the introduction of waypoints) but we currently have to accept that its really difficult to provide air cover to Dropships operating outside of Interceptor range and this is really defeating the whole point in having such long Dropship range. Allowing for aircraft to remain in the air for at-least as long as it takes a Chinook to fly from base to the edge of the radar range (if they both leave at the same time) should be a minimum goal.

I have noticed a few issues with the visual aspects of the current grenade system (some of which might be bugs.) Issues: 1. When a grenade hits cover, there is no visual indication that it has done so. Particularly if it has landed on a tile where a soldier is already standing, such as the thrower. 2. When a grenade lands on a tile with an existing object, it disappears below it. Problem: Its really easy to get blown up by your own grenades as grenades more often than not hit adjacent cover, but there is no visual indication of where it has gone. Simply that it didn't go where it was supposed to. Solutions: 1. Introduce a visible arc line showing the path of the thrown grenade. The visual system is already in place and used prior to throwing and targeting. The visual indication would remain there until the grenade has detonated. That way its obvious where the grenade has gone, even if it has fallen under an object. I might suggest the line be white. OR 2. Introduce a fumble message to pop up on screen to be given if a grenade falls either on the tile or an adjacent tile to the thrower and providing that the place where the grenade landed is not within 2 tiles of the original target square. "SGT Smit has butterfingers." "CPL Chris has fumbled the grenade" etc.

Firstly, I just want to note that I really like the most recent changes to the cover system in the experimental build. However there is still two jarring problems. 1. Some of the cover heights are set incorrectly relative to their apparent sprites. For example, some rocks offer 100% cover despite appearing to only come up to about half way on a Xenonaut. Yes this means that you can hide behind them effectively, but you can't shoot over them for some reason? Is this a bug? Or are you not supposed to be able to shoot over all types of cover when stood next to it? 2. The distance at which you can shoot over cover and (possibly) even Xenonauts should be changed to two tiles for all long barreled weapons (i.e not pistols or shotguns). Having your rocket guy hit 10% cover from 2 tiles away (while entertaining) can be mission destroying and just doesn't seem natural

Aaron. I've only played V20E8 once but I really liked the alien tele-porter inside the base which allowed them to move alien units quickly around. I have a suggestion/request. Would it be possible to place these in more locations throughout even the small bases. That way Aliens could get behind you if they so choose? Hilarious and Terrifying Optional Mechanic When a Xenonaut uses a tele-porter, they get transported to a random tele-porter elsewhere in the base. If you put two guys through one, chances are they won't be in the same room. Use at your peril! Why is this also a good game mechanic? 1. Only the Aliens can truly use the tele-porter to their immediate advantage. Avoids the need for multiple corridors in every map to avoid repetition as the Alien has a mechanic it can use to spice things up without cheating. 2. Use a tele-porter as a Xenonaut carries a high risk reward. Yes you might get to bypass a horrible chokepoint filled with Aliens, but just as likely you will end up with someone completely separated from his squad in a room full of enemies. This can only lead to fantastic showdowns.

Doing a ground combat mission does not deny you anything unless you make even a small mess of it. If you do make a mistake, then you have lost a guaranteed income that comes from nuking a site. In the second and third months on Veteran I am finding it difficult not to lose 1-2 soldiers per mission (usually due to reaction fire). Yes I can avoid these deaths by using more rockets and such like but then I am destroying the very equipment that makes ground combat even mildly profitable. That's a significant cost in personnel alone, never mind replacing the armour (I am assuming that it still gets destroyed?). I think the normal takings from such missions are usually in the $40,000 region which barely covers the expenditure. So though you only get $20,000 or something to nuke a light scout or $30,000 for a scout. This can still be potentially $20-$30,000 more than you would get doing a mission anything less than perfect. It seems to me that it might be a viable play style to actually just build 9 hangars in your first base and just send 3 waves against the larger ships and nuking the crash sites. Yes you will be behind in tech, but that doesn't matter as long as you can keep throwing renewable aircraft at them! This should in theory result in a steadily increasing funding which means when you do have to you can support more bases which means faster research etc. I am not saying that the devs have got the wrong idea. But I do think that you probably don't have time to play the campaign through with every iteration in the same way the community does to gauge changes such as those currently implemented. In short, I am strongly in favour or splitting funding increases to some degree. Maybe 60:40 in favour of air combat, but still with potential in ground combat. The caveat being that there is no funding decrease from not doing ground combat. But just that the 'perfect' game will involve tackling every one.

Oh great, that was one of my pet peeves in my most recent play-through (and first since V18)

It looks to me like wages are too high. Maybe reduce them down to 75% of their value and that would give you another 80k a month to play with? I've always been of the opinion that in the Cold War people should be cheap as chips as back then you would have had such a large choice of Scientists, Engineers, Soliders from all the militaries that kept up large standing armies on the back of WW2 and Vietnam/Korean wars. Its the high tech and keeping them soldiers alive that should be expensive.

Remove sight penalty on Jackal, up the protection very slightly. Keep Wolf armour as it is though as its only a marginal upgrade and looks like it should have a sight penalty.

I'm getting this bug on both scout and light scout in version 19.4.

Dear Chris Any thoughts on whether we might get different difficulty sliders for geoscape (e.g Air combat) and then one for ground combat? I am sure you can see the advantage that this would have in terms of making balance easier. I.e you can make air combat really easy (with free replacements) at easy and normal, and make it like it was in v19-3 for hard. Then again if you want to play old-school on the aircraft but like your ground battles to not be too punishing then you can select a different level for them too. Maybe this would be too much work, but seeing as your at balancing stage anyway it might make some sense if you introduced it as the balancing can just continue as is but ultimately it gives players more ways to tailor their experience. Disclaimer: Not sure how viable this is, though on paper it sounds like it would just be a case of splitting up the modifiers into two files.

I have a slight alteration to your suggestion. Make recoverable air-frames a research project I would balance it by making it quite a man-hour intensive project. I.e. 10 scientists for 2 weeks. 20 scientists for 1 week etc. Scale this according to difficulty level. That means in the early game, if your rubbish at aerial combat you have the option of assigning your scientists to this project for 2 weeks of the invasion so that you have your get out of jail free card up and running by the time things get really hairy. For those of us more skilled at the job, we will likely put off the project indefinitely as we would rather have our MiGs, laser rifles and wolf armour 2 weeks earlier and don't count on losing more than 2-3 aircraft in the initial months. This is better than some sort of toggle in the options as it means its a viable strategy for some players, not a cop out in balance terms. OR Make the first airframe you buy of a particular aircraft cost, say $100k for numbers sake. Make replacements for that aircraft $20k. This could even be the perk from the research project! You lose an aircraft, yes you have to shell out a little but your not going to be breaking the bank and not getting magic aircraft in your hangar.

I am not an authority on this issue. But I would say that based on where the game is now. I would expect release end of August or mid September. Main issues still to resolve; Implement new GUI (and then bug fix). General bug fixing Balancing. Addition of more maps/props (might be more community related).

The original poster was shot down with that reply ThunderGr.

Problem A lot of people are mentioning about not being able to advance due to lack of Alien Alloys and other consumables collected from ships that appear in the battlescape. I had one suggestion that would help alleviate this effect but without changing any of the alien fleet progression. Solution Allow shot down fighters and other non boardable ships to yield a small value of consumables that are automatically collected. For example, a fighter might yield 10-30 alien alloys (depending on over-kill damage level in combat). Lore Any crashed ship would of course yield some resources. It makes sense that the Xenonauts would send in some sort of recovery team of Engineers to strip the crashed UFO of use-able parts. Why? This solution avoids the need for limiting the number of fighters etc that appear during waves and forcing every wave to contain downable ships. At the same time it avoids the player from losing through lack of resources no fault of their own (even if they are shooting down every UFO in the skies). Implementation A small pop-up that appears after you shoot down one of these type of UFOs that tells you that x-amount of resources have been recovered for the wreck and are available at y-base.

Yeh I noticed this too. Pretty much pointless having them now. Makes me wonder why item weight is not factored into throw distance. Then you could just set flare weight to 0.25kg and a grenade to 0.5kg and allow grenades to be thrown twice the distance or something.