Just recently found out about this game, and went ahead with purchasing it. Been enjoying it immensely (when it hasn't been crashing on me, though I hear that will be fixed next patch).
However, I'm running into one really major issue that I haven't quite figured out how to handle...
Breaching into buildings, leap-frogging across open terrain, night missions where the Chinook lands right next to the UFO and I'm surrounded, no problem. I can deal with all of this without having any real casualties, maybe a wound or two, but that's it.
I also don't have too many problems with breaching the 'cockpit' area (the round part between the wings, is I assume the cockpit). However, when it comes to the cargo bay (the back part)... how the heck do you guys deal with the one lone alien that holes up in there? Sometimes I get lucky that they're in a blind-spot that I can grenade spam, sometimes they're in the open and I can take them out. Most of the time... they're looking right at the door, in a spot I can't hit with grenades (unless there is a way to bounce them? ), if I move a Xenonaut through the door, I get reaction fired upon, if I'm lucky I got enough AP for a shot or two (I've tried with shotgun, assault rifle, and pistol) but I don't seem lucky enough that the AP will be enough to kill it before I run out of AP, and next turn my Xenonaut is dead. If I'm particular unlucky, the reaction fire one-shots my Xenonaut in the combat armor.
One particular nasty example that I had. The alien was in that spot where I couldn't grenade it, if I try the grenades impacts on the corner of the door and blows up in the Xenonaut's face. So, I had to retreat the first one. Second one walks in pistol primed (I end turn at the door where the alien can't shoot me, then take one step to give me full APs), I got hit with reaction fire, then unloaded all pistol rounds into the Alien. It survived. Retrospect, I shouldn't have fired the third or fourth time, and retreated instead. Next round, my Xenonaut is dead due to no APs to retreat. So, I figure the alien must be near death after being hit that many times with a pistol. I march up a shotgunner, he gets reaction fired and dies instantly. I facepalm, sigh, and march up an assault rifle Xenonaut at this point (again, noting that I end turn at the door so I only pay 4 APs for a single square more before attacking with each of these Xenonauts), I get reaction fired, Xenonaut survives, but his APs for the turn goes down from the wound, and I barely have enough to full-auto, so I utilize it. Which was a three round burst I believe (First time I had used full auto with the assault rifle), of which, two shots hit and alien is still alive. Naturally, that Xenonaut is killed on the next enemy turn, so I'm down three xenonauts trying to kill one alien now. I think at this point I went "screw this", and set the rocket launcher guy to go in next, somehow the alien doesn't reaction-fire this time, I fire off the rocket-launcher finally killing the alien, and taking a little splash damage, and the combat ends as that was the last alien on the map.
So, what else is there that I can try doing, except throwing the privates I now have at the sole alien in the cargo bay so that I'm not losing my veterans instead? As I understand, while the interceptors can down a UFO, and the buildings are destructible, we can't actually blow open the cargo bay with explosives, can we? After all the grenades I chuck into the cargo bay, I'd think it would have happened by now. I tried a machinegunner out, and did not like the style of that weapon at all for normal play, and it would figure the one time I deployed a machinegunner, the cargo bay was empty. And I can't really think of anything else that I can try.
