TheTuninator

That would indeed be a nice feature, hope it makes it in with the air combat update!

Thanks for the advice! I'll try drawing off fire with F-17s and see if that works, as I can't seem to think of a way to keep the MiG out of the engagement envelope.

Oh, most definitely, things will be far more varied in the final version. This game is still in a very early alpha state, which is why there's only one map & tileset, very similar UFOs, and very limited features in general. It's just been made available to pre-orders so the devs can get feedback during development and give the people who have plunked down money already something to fool around with.

Cool, I'll go check the mod out, thanks! If the game's friendly to mod in that regard, which things like the Weapon Mod Editor Quartermaster is making seem to support, then it should be pretty easy for me to find an ideal solution no matter what the vanilla release ends up looking like.

I've been playing a bit more Xenonauts recently, and I've noticed that the MiG-32, when armed with Avalanches, seems rather useless in a head-on fight where the UFOs are charging right at you. As there's no option to slow down and you can't change directions without losing missile lock, you have to fly the MiG right into the UFO's guns, and by the time you can launch the Avalanches due to the 8-second lock time they've got you in their sights, thus ensuring a dead MiG as it doesn't have the dogfighting capability of the F-17. My question is, am I just using the MiG wrong, or is this something other people have encountered? It seems problematic to keep a MiG out of weapons range of a UFO when the UFO is on an attack heading, thus defeating the entire purpose of having Avalanches in the first place. Any advice on how I can better use the MiG and Avalanches would be greatly appreciated!

I was wondering if anyone here knows why the per-shot AP cost has been significantly raised in Xenonauts as compared to X-COM. Was there a specific rationale behind it, or have the weapon stats just not been heavily balanced yet? Just curious, as currently Xenonauts firefights feel less fun than X-COM firefights (though still enjoyable) because there's a whole lot less lead and energy bolts flying around due to the greater AP costs of shots in general, particularly auto fire.

Units look weird partly because they don't have shadows, which they are slated to receive in the next update; that'll make them look more 'right'.

Ground combat autoresolve seems like it might be a bit tricky for the design team to implement; I'd rather see them focus their efforts elsewhere and utilize the aforementioned cruise missile/nuke response for UFO sites you just can't be bothered personally attacking.

Yeah, that's what Chris was referring to, I believe; they're not set on an intercept course at the very end so it's very hard for them to close the gap. I find that if you just jack it up to 4x speed they catch them like half the time anyways, so until it gets fixed that's a great way to save yourself some frustration.

This is a known problem, and one that has been raised with Chris. For whatever reason, it's very difficult for interceptors to close the last few pixels to get into contact with a UFO, resulting in very long and tedious chases. Chris attributes it to the interceptors are following a tailing course instead of an intercept course where they lead the target; as he knows the problem, it will hopefully be addressed soon.

I haven't started naming soldiers yet because we aren't able to save (unless we are, in which case joke's on me) but when I do, I will probably follow my traditional naming convention of character names from my favorite TV shows, so mainly Buffy, Angel, and Community characters until I run out of male names and have to look elsewhere. Spooky Mulder will, naturally, be the leader.

The "faded" or "graduated" FoW a la XCOM should really be done if at all possible, as it added a ton to the eerie atmosphere of the original to have that layer of almost-visible tiles lingering on the edge of your vision. Hope Chris sees this!

I think both should be options; you should be able to just seize the UFO and hold it for five turns to win, but if you reduce the alien force below a certain amount there should be a kamikaze trigger. That's only if it's feasible to implement, of course, but it'd be a good feature to have. Plus, the combination of the two could result in players sometimes being forced to hold a UFO's bridge against a kamikaze rush from all the remaining aliens, which sounds like a damn lot of fun to me.

Looking forward to unit shadows, farms and (hopefully) the new GUI! Will download this and give it a whirl as soon as I'm able.

Upon reflection, while I do think the 4-soldier limit provides interesting opportunities for scaling the game up as time goes on, I'm still pretty iffy on it; I'd much rather jump in with a full squad. It just makes no sense, did they run out of room in the Skyranger or something?

Actually, no. With real-life fighter planes, the ones with beefier engines, that as a result are a bit larger, tend to be faster. For example, the F-15 is faster than the F-16 and F/A-18, and the F-22 is faster than the JSF. Hence, logic dictates that the MiG-32 should be faster than the F-17, as it's larger and has two engines to the F-17's one.

The Interceptor doesn't, but I think the Skyranger is pretty close.

The MIG-32 should remain faster than the F-17, as the MiG-25 Foxbat it's based off of is quite a bit faster than the F-16 Fighting Falcon, which comprises the inspiration for the F-17. If the US warplane was different, than I might not have a problem with the role reversal, but as it is some accuracy should be maintained for the sake of atmosphere. I know it's a minor detail and one that will only really be noticed by military aviation enthusiasts, but as the game clearly seeks to establish a fairly grounded Cold War atmosphere these details are nonetheless important for the sake of internal logic. As Chris notes, I also don't agree that the F-17 looks faster than the MiG. The MiG looks big, brutal, and powerful by comparison; the F-17 looks like it's more agile, but it certainly doesn't look faster. These aren't space fighters, whose own internal logic often dictates smaller and more frail= faster; the fighter with bigger engines and more thrust is often the faster one.

Wait, there's only 4 squad members? Hell, that's how many people I lose on average in a Xenonauts mission in v8.5. How are they going to have the horrific bloodbaths they talked about loving in the interview if there's only 4 soldiers? Hrm. The new Skyranger and Interceptor look pretty rad, though.

I do agree with this; it'd provide for a bit more tactical depth. At the very least, you should be able to blow open a pathway between them.

Agreed on no walking with one click, too much potential for horrifying mistakes there. Far too much possibility for terrible, terrible misclick errors with only one click required to move a soldier; a single accidental click and your whole battle plan is out of whack. Two clicks at least provides a minor umbrella of security against such errors. I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea of the walk path constantly showing as you move your mouse cursor, but I think it might get a bit irritating. For example, if you're scrolling across the map to check enemy positions and your walk path is tied to your mouse cursor, it's going to be needlessly cluttering up your screen. Agreed on the comment that a proposed action should darken a portion of the AP bar; if this would be feasible to implement, that's definitely a feature to add.

I do like the Xenonauts battlescape a lot better; the 3-D layout as presented is a bit messy and confusing. I find the 2-D isometric view to be much more atmospheric and provide far greater clarity. I do hope they're not running with the aliens from the '50s X-COM, as weren't all of those aliens supposed to be totally different? I was never able to play that much of the original X-COM, but if they have access to those aliens it seems like they might as well use them; they're quite well designed and already recognizable to fans of the series. Never did understand why they slapped the X-COM label on a game that shared none of the gameplay or story traits; did they think that fans of the series would actually like that? All they did was earn themselves boatloads of critical ire when they could have easily just made it a new IP.

I think the new UFO shape does add strategy, personally, as you have to plan out your approach from different angles due to its layout.

I think what Chris means by "cutting them off" is that the fighters will still auto-follow, but will adopt a heading which causes them to gradually close on the UFO as opposed to simply following straight behind; thus, you wouldn't be much at risk of losing it on a turn as your fighters will still heel about immediately.

You can approach from the back too, I believe there was a problem where the UFO was getting placed at the edge of the map and the back was therefore inaccessible but that has been fixed AFAIK.