apopov

Not sure if this worth your time, as this play-through is with several mods - though as far as I know they shouldn't be affecting the clipping bullets/LOS. Anyway, just in case it turns out to be helpful: Game version is from GOG Mods Active: PO Mod Name Author Version 1 Dynamic UFOs Kabill 3.0 2 Armoured Assault Kabill 1.2 3 Lore+ Max_Caine 1.1c3 4 Enhanced Crash Sites Kabill 3.0 5 Skitso's Map Pack Skitso 1.5 Basically first save has my machine gunner semi reliably clipping his shots through a wall if asked to fire at an enemy, and the second save has my sniper being told he can fire through 100% cover. I figured that since these saves are by Xenonaut's actions, rather than enemy's turn, they may make these issues easier to debug. Broken LOS fire save: Note enemy soldier standing near Cmd. Valeri Polosky To reproduce bug: 1. Select Cmd.Kseniya Andropova 2. Have her fire at enemy soldier standing close to Valeri Polosky Optionally for same result but easier to see: fire at a spot in the ground on the enemy's and Kseniya's side of the wall, between the Andron and the wall for similar results (more shots will stray across the wall) Result I am getting: Shots from Kseniya burst of fire that stray to the side of Valeri always clip through the stone wall. Initially noticed bug when on first attempt to shoot the enemy soldier, 2 of her bullets hit Valeri. Bug does not happen for me if I intentionally aim her fire at Valeri or any spot on the other side of the wall where the LOS estimate says 100% obstruction - during such attempts her shots correctly hit the wall. Possibly Broken LOS save (this seems like it could be the map pack mod issue rather than game, but just in case): Select Comd. Eva Peters and have her target the only visible alien. Her LOS estimate states that she had direct line of sight, despite it going directly through a tree thicket. The tree thicket 'activates' as a 100% cover if she attempts to target ground to the right of the alien with respect to her - it seems like only half the thicket gives correct estimates. Out of 10 attempts to have her shoot, all shots very stopped by the thicket - so the problem here is only with LOS estimate, not the actual shooting. Broken LOS Fire.sav Possibly Broken LOS.sav Broken LOS Fire.sav Possibly Broken LOS.sav

tried this game as a bit of something different before Witcher 3 comes out. Witcher 3 is still not installed on pc. I keep telling myself I am waiting for it to be patched so as to have better first impression.... but it's a dirty lie, I can't abandon earth to these filthy xenos. I know you guys are all on Pathfinder now, but is Xenonaut 2 even remotely pegged on anyone's long term plans?

to which version of CE was the 1.5 merge?

Have been reading through the change logs and I see some but definitely not all of these things in my game though I definitely didn't launch CE edition when I started playing last month... Was CE edition merged with the official one at some point?

@Max_Caine, is there by any chance a way to set an AI unit to always preserve TUs for an attack when moving anywhere, like you can do when controlling your own soldiers? edit: and/or a condition for high preference of a tile that is adjacent to an enemy?

Regarding reapers: I am already playing on Insane, only way to go more difficult is Ironman mode, which I think may be too much for me. As for reapers, I think I would prefer to make them do the ambushes you mentioned - meaning they try to stay out of sight or in heavy cover, and rush Xenonauts only when there are enough TUs to reach target and strike. When I know they are on the map, I have to advance much more slowly - and you are right in that this would be annoying fast if I had to do this on every mission... However since they are so far quite rare (I am getting them ~1 out of 10 mission), I think having to radically shift my tactics on a small percentage of missions wouldn't be a bad thing. Also even if they properly ambushed here are some additional strategies that provide mitigating options available to the player, right now I use these but they are more flavor then necessity due to Reaper's silly behaviour: 1) Alien Communications building becomes high priority to kit out the crew properly for them. Necessary for option 2 and more of the right stuff in option 3 2) When reapers are present, tanks become very important as scouts, and relying on them can greatly mitigate danger from Reaper ambushes. Right now tanks are flavor, due to all their weaknesses (replace 2 soldiers, very low ammo capacity, unwieldy, don't improve) - but them not being Reaper food would potentially overrule all of those if Reapers weren't gimped. 3) Explosions, and lots of them. The strategy of 'shock and awe' becomes necessary rather then just being flavor. Right now every crew member I have is packed to the brim with ammo, explosives, rockets, and everyone except heavy gunners carry 2 sets of weapons to be able to adjust to multiple roles in the field. First turn is spent to drop the spare kit until everyone is mobile. When I see reapers are present, or I just see Sebilians are around, everyone drops their stun grenades, picks up spare explosives and snipers pull out rocket launchers. Than slow advance with plenty of TU for reaction fire is combined with 'better safe than sorry" demolition man approach where buildings and large spots of cover are methodically demolished. This tends to be not all that slow actually. 4) Having to rely on reaction fire to defend vs rushing reapers would mean the team is better off moving as one, vs trying to split to cover the whole map in a net. Right now, Reapers do tend to come at me with Sebillians in tow in groups, but because they are so weak, and position themselves so close, having to dealt with 3 - 4 aliens in a single turn of which 1 or 2 is a reaper remains easy because end result is Reaper can be reliably handled by any 1 Xenonaut, leaving the rest to suppress the Sebillians. At point blank range 2 stun baton hits are certain way to put them down. Or one pistol shot + 1 grenade under their feet is a certain kill. 1 rocket launcher hit is a certain kill. So far, in all cases of such rushes, the Reapers were just handing my soldiers easy kills, rather than presenting any risk or danger. Hell, even if they stopped like 15 steps away from the soldiers, that alone would make a huge difference as they would now tend to need 2 soldiers to reliably put them down due to range making melee-ing them to sleep not an option and shots not being as sure to hit. So at least in a rush with potentially grenade throwing Sebillians, the reapers would become more than nuisance. Also note about length of AI turn - reason I wouldn't mind extra long turns is I tend to play turn-based games with TV shows running in the background, so waiting 5 minutes for game to think wouldn't feel like a wait to me. I realize that makes me an 'outlier' in terms of gaming speed/AI quality balance. That said, as I don't know anything about the xml settings, anything in aiprops.xml you would recommend to change for 'smarter' AI behavior?

thank you. will load this in tonight

From this thread: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/11718-The-AI-is-cheating-but-I-guess-that-s-ok "Fun fact: there are even more advanced AI capabilities that are turned off for performance reasons now, and that are good enough to guess the location of your soldiers really often." I see that there are overhauls like "X - DIVISION - Destiny Denied" and "XNT- INTO DARKNESS V6.0" which state that they made AI behavior improvements, and I plan to play through them next... But for now, I am on my first play-though on Insane (not Ironman though) and anything to make my current play-through more fun would be welcome. Main question: I don't mind waiting a few minutes for AI to decide what to do during it's turn - are there any edits to some configs I could make to improve AI performance? Secondary question about one specific AI behavior: Right now I am playing with Dynamic UFO's and Armoured Assault mods, as far as I know they don't alter this, but one of the most consistent and bewildering behaviors I am seeing are suicidal Reapers. These enemies made somewhat nervous at first when I saw how far they can move during their turn and their one hit kill attack. But during the 4 encounters with them, they have consistently used up their entire turn to run into middle of my formations, sometimes getting into blind spots of my soldiers. That's nice and all, but end result is that when I know a reaper is nearby, all I need to do is hold position, end turn, and if reaction fire doesn't kill it, next turn it will be standing behind one of my guys for easy target practice... Any way to fix this mid game?

Playing 'vanilla' version with mods: map packs, dynamic UFO spawns 1. Major one - game consistently crashes to desktop when attempting to rearrange troops on dropship. Happening on Charlie - when I go into troop placement screen most of them do not appear inside the dropship, though as I mouse-over different empty looking tiles, there are tooltips showing up. This in particular starts to happen after I add a tank to the roster. Left clicking on these 'invisible' soldiers results in CTD. Result of bug is that it is extremely chance to use tanks, as said tank is by default positioning toward rear of the dropship, where it can't get out until all the soldiers.. 2. Really annoying due to immersion breaking - empty weapons keep reloading if placed in backpack. On next turn weapon will usually be loaded. Making use of this seems like cheating, trying to work around it 'fairly' makes me waste a lot of time unloading and dropping these 'phantom' clips and rockets. 3. Several cases of aliens shooting through walls. One time had an alien shoot a plasm cannon round through the front cabin of the Charlie dropship, which passed through 2 walls and killed almost everyone inside. 4. One time had a mission on which all heavy gun ammo that was in backpacks started at 66%. 5. 'Grey' events do not bring up any pop-ups, though they normally indicate that a UFO has shown up. 6. Strength does not grow according to description of manual/config. After a certain point ~mid 70s, loading soldiers to full encumbrance no longer trains them, and only overloaded soldiers are able to rise in strength.

Playing 'vanilla' version with mods: map packs, dynamic UFO spawns 1. Major one - game consistently crashes to desktop when attempting to rearrange troops on dropship. Happening on Charlie - when I go into troop placement screen most of them do not appear inside the dropship, though as I mouseover different empty looking tiles, there are tooltips showing up. Left clicking on these 'invisible' soldiers results in CTD. Result of bug is that it is extremely chance to use tanks, as said tank is by default positioning toward rear of the dropship, where it can't get out until all the soldiers.. 2. Really annoying due to immersion breaking - empty weapons keep reloading if placed in backpack. On next turn weapon will usually be loaded. Making use of this seems like cheating, trying to work around it 'fairly' makes me waste a lot of time unloading and dropping these 'phantom' clips and rockets. 3. Several cases of aliens shooting through walls. One time had an alien shoot a plasm cannon round through the front cabin of the Charlie dropship, which passed through 2 walls and killed almost everyone inside. 4. One time had a mission on which all heavy gun ammo that was in backpacks started at 66%. 5. There is no way to configure the game to go to lowest speed on geo-view when a grey event happens. It's just strange that Xenonaut command understand that when a UFO is picked up on radar, one might want to start dealing with it and gives a choice to go to slowest speed, but when a UFO shoots down an airliner just outside radar range, that only merits a note in the log. 6. Strength does not grow according to description of manual/config. After a certain point ~mid 70s, loading soldiers to full encumbrance no longer trains them, and only overloaded soldiers are able to rise in strength.

@EvilEagles At a measly strength of 51 a soldier can equip 1 precision Rifle in Hand, 1 loaded Rocket Launcher in backpack, Medkit and a spare sniper ammo clip without getting overburdened. So this combo is good to go even with new recruits - they will just need to drop extra rockets in dropship and come back to it to reload. @StellarRat - I play with a few mods, but as far as I know non of them modify alien AI. I tried stacking on door at first, but never has an alien jumped out - they open door (game mechanic is opening door does not provoke RF) and than they shoot someone at point blank range. Yes half my guys respond at that point - but quite often 1 of them is already dead. An even bigger issue is that there is always more than 1 alien inside, and anyone not standing to the side of the door is then shot from inside by the others. At a minimum, standing directly in front is a no-no. The alien who opens will usually not have TU to fire twice since they walked up to door and opened it, so if they target a shieldbearer there is a good chance of them just wounding instead of killing - but having 2-3 aliens fire through the doors at those crouching out of cover directly in front like that, if someone doesn't die that is just extremely lucky. And than later on there are alien soldiers that lob grenades... In my opinion the better way is to always approach from sides, try to take any positions in cover around UFO from which it's possible to fire inside, and spend a few turns with a fast shieldbearer running up, opening, and letting rest of the team snipe inside at any aliens within first rooms. Only when that area is clear, is stacking in front of door before rush safe because remaining aliens won't have TU to run through half the ship, open door and then do anything.

I may have come off insulting rather than just critiquing - didn't mean to. Though I did specify the higher difficulty level to which my advice mainly applied to. Overall though, even for lower difficulties one should strive for tactics that don't get you shot as often - even if those shots are only resulting in wounded, rather than lost soldiers. "Beginner" tactics which work on low but are a complete 'no-no' on next difficulty level tend to lead to players who are new to the genre, who try higher difficulty and get completely curb-stomped by having all their "tricks" now result in mass casualties - which tends to lead to an incorrect impression that something is wrong with the game as a whole. In my opinion, that's would partially true - reaction fire right now is a harsh dose of 'reality' to players. As a game mechanic it's rather unfair though because it is generally useless to players, and only useful to aliens. Also, there is this whole "trap" factor where the game's combat UI is basically suggesting that the player should rely on it - I mean even extra buttons are provided to save TU for it. When actually doing so is a waste of TU and it stays that way until you are half way into the game and have armor that can take a hit, weapons whose shots actually make a difference even if only 1 or 2 hits. I wish they had at least implemented a 'build up' of reaction, so that if a heavy gunner is left to sit in one spot for several turns, he would semi reliably fire first when aliens show up in his field of vision - that way reaction fire would at least be marginally useful at start of the game because a heavily entrenched xenonaut could at least semi-reliably suppress an enemy during enemy's turn. Also In addition to general tactic I described above, I found it very useful to equip my 2 snipers with a rocket launcher and 2-3 missiles rather than having dedicated Rocket Launcher. Why: 1)Regardless of role, all of your soldiers will be gaining strength equally, unless you did something silly like under-equip them and letting them run around without being on verge of overburdened (silly because there absolutely no benefit to ever doing that) So your snipers will be getting strength as you use them, but they have nothing to meaningfully use it on - they need to be mobile and have good field of view, heavy armor isn't something they will be using, and they shouldn't need it either unless you really screw up positioning in battle. All other roles have plenty of other things to carry that are needed - shields/heavy ammo packs/good variety of grenades... snipers don't need any of that. So they are ideally suited for carrying rocket launcher and its ammo. 2) Rocket launcher is long distance weapon and exact same consideration of positioning that applies to sniper, applies to rocket launcher. From defensive point - Rocket launcher is a weapon that requires high TU costs, making the soldier using it less likely to be able to get out of a bad position into a safe spot if he needs to fire or reload on that same turn, so it should be wielded by people in safe zones. From offensive - it's a relatively precise and long range weapon tactical weapon that needs it's viewer to have good overview of the field of battle. Rockets are frequently decisive, especially in early game - for example if you find an alien sentry bot, 1 sniper cannot hope to take it out - even 2 hits from sniper won't kill it. Same sniper can drop rifle, get rocket launcher out of back pack and fire in one turn - at least a small chance of removing threat in that turn. Basically every sniper now turns into an effective suppressor/'quick killer'. When stun weapons are research, stun gas rockets also allow for effective area control if you need to cut off an enemy's approach route - and snipers are most likely to be in position to overwatch most approaches/unexplored directions. Note: the game currently provides you a cheat with weapons stored in backpack - particularly rocket launchers which seem to magically reload with ammo out of nowhere after spending a few turns empty in anyone's backpack, so to those using it I suggest manually keeping track of the rockets your brought to battle and how many were used - I think Rocket Launcher is pretty well balanced when weight and size of ammo, loot destruction are taken into consideration, but with this ammo bug it quickly becomes an exploit for easy mode, particularly in combo with stun rockets. It becomes ridiculously easy to just safely gas half the map from long range with a team of rocketeers, still get most of the loot, and than blow up the other half with endless 'default' explosive rockets that keep magically appear inside backpacked empty rocket launchers.

thank you, was not aware of that.

As a newcomer to the game, have so far found much of the advice in the titular guide harmful: in particular following sections: 1) Reaction fire - useless for several months. Your soldier's accuracy is awful, chances of reaction shots even hitting the targets are low. More importantly, your weapons are much too weak to impede your enemies. Even in ideal circumstances of having as many as 5 of your soldiers facing the right way to r.fire on a single enemy, the chances of them doing anything to prevent that enemy killing one of them are extremely slim. Rule of thumb is, if your soldiers are in position to reaction fire on enemy, they are likely in position to be fired on first. Even in moderate cover, there is a pretty big chance for aliens to one-shot a xenonaut. So relying on reaction fire is just a recipe for high losses. I am playing on impossible and so far, aliens firing on a unit with 50% cover, have about 1/3 chance of killing it, 1/3 chance of wounding it. Basically giving aliens a very high chance at killing one of yours, in exchange for very low chance to kill them back. So if your soldiers are using reaction fire, that's a sign that you just gambled them on a 50/50 coin toss. 2) Positioning and formations used in the guide - that "perfect" V formation in second screen shot is example of what one should never do. Soldiers are too close together - one burst at any one of them is likely to suppress 2 to 4 other soldiers nearby as well. A drone showing up from expected direction and firing at forward soldier has a decent chance of suppressing all 8 if it fires from far enough for the burst fire to spread. Aliens coming around corners of barn or the hedge to the right will be firing at soldiers in the open, high probability of killing the target and suppressing nearby soldiers. Alien snipers see at very long range and will pick targets not in cover - one firing at this formation from any of the 3 directions will have plenty of choices of soldiers without cover to kill. In that picture, if there is a single alien around any corner of the barn, this 'formation' is likely to have 1 less soldier next turn, and high probability of half the survivors being suppressed and useless in trying to respond. Overall the strategy described - inching forward like that and hoping reaction fire saves the team is going to get lots of soldiers killed, mostly due to mechanics I pointed out in section 1. Alternate general tactic: have 3 'find and suppress' pairs of shield bearer and machine gunner, 2 snipers. Pairs spread out from deployment point in 3 directions, Everyone moves from cover to cover, machine gunners stay at least 8 tiles 'behind' shield bearers. (that way they don't get suppressed along with shield bearer when contact is made). On contact, shield bearer will either take fire on alien's turn, or if player was patient discover alien during player's turn. In both cases, at least one machine gunner is in position to suppress and pin while snipers move into position. Depending on map, one of the other pairs may have gunner in position to fire from a flanking point. Shield bearer, assuming he was in cover when contact was made, should have a decent chance at living through first turn, and have an opportunity to retreat to dropship for a new shield if hit. Key to remember - machine gunners have very long range. Longer then sight range in open daylight - their positioning should be approached with same consideration as snipers. Keep them very far back, unless dealing with an already suppressed enemy. 3) Breach of UFO, picture 3 - positioning before breach: one word suicidal. Also see - "how to lose a mission" Try that in the game, doors open, alien shoots at either shield-bearer from point blank range for a very likely kill shot with either shotgun or rifle burst. Rest of the aliens deeper in the UFO have direct line of sight at the 2 soldiers crouching out of cover directly in front of door. That small distance will not mitigate hit chances at all. Expected casualties when 'End Turn' pressed is at least 3 - get ready to start next turn with 5 panicking soldiers, half of whom will drop their weapons and spread out. Proper positioning in that case would be one soldier with heavy machine gun standing one tile behind rail cart. 2 more soldiers with precise weapons (one preferably a missile launcher) standing to the sides of the doorway inside the warehouse, on each side of the UFO 2 'door openers' standing with 1 behind the green boxes and the other behind blue wagon. Spares can be deeper in warehouse, or behind the red wagon. That way, none of them are likely to die simply because aliens opened UFO door. On next turn, door openers even if newbies, should have enough TU to run up and open door from the side and then retreat out of the way, giving warehouse and those behind wagon LOS to suppress aliens inside, either starting with a rocket strike or machine gun burst to suppress. Machine gunners unless extremely slow/overburdened will have enough TU to take one step out of wagon/door cover, fire and step back into 100% cover. Extras behind the red wagon can throw grenades to either smoke, suppress or wound, right into the doorway. Sequence of who fires when can then depend on what is inside and precisely where.

Current mods I am using: 2 Map packs, Lore, Armored Assault, Dynamic UFO Spawn Playing the standard version (as opposed to CE) Primary group of soldiers: 2 months, consistent gains in every mission of +1 to 3 to 5 stats +2 TU Then I started deploying new guys. Yesterday 2 of my Corporals got promoted to Sergeants, their increase for that mission was +3 in every stat and + 4 TU. Several times in past missions I saw low ranked soldiers gain +2 stats - something that has NEVER happened to any of my 'primary' team. Right now it seems like low ranks get some crazy boosts in growth. not sure if this is relevant - I normally deploy 2-3 rookies out of 8 with my veterans (Commanders to Captains). As far as their activity during missions - the rookies do much less, they have only half the TUs of my veterans and spend much more of their time getting into position to be useful. All soldiers are always loaded at least to 100% of their encumbrance - sometimes with a bit of penalty for particularly weak rookies.