Haba

I have also crashed on my turn when teleporting... so maybe there is a connection? (Massive UFO, no saves, right at the last floors of the UFO... *sigh*)

This is something I can't agree with. Like said, the ground combat is the meat and bones of the game. No, scratch that. It is THE GAME. There should be feedback from it. Game should recognize when you do well and when you fail spectacularly. I don't agree with this modern definition of "deferred success" where a major fuck-up isn't recognized for what it is. It is exactly for the game to tell the player if they are doing well or not. The player can lie to himself, but the game will tell the truth. Now, would the funding nations care? I don't know, if they see you constantly carrying more than half of the squad out in body bags, what do you think? Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, now does it? By design, the air combat is just a chore and gimmicky mini-game (no offence). There are no real stakes in losing aircraft and fighter pilots. In contrast, the ground combat should be where the stakes are high and failure is not an option. By removing the ratings, you're making it less important. To me, X-Com is not a game where you nuke things from orbit and manage spreadsheets. Airstrike is a great option, but it should be approached with care: even before this patch I found myself just doing terror and base missions. At this rate the ground combat will just become a mandatory training camp for your troops. TL;DR, please don't remove the ratings. If you must, make them just informative.

Civilians in terror missions do not last for very long, so making them more expensive feels cheap imho. Sometimes they all die in the first few turns...

If you start nerfing the condors, you should radically boost the auto resolve. "Fighter-spam" was already inviable strategy for those who don't micromanage every interception.

It really does get a bit absurd. Everyone eats plasma like it is candy. Not to even mention lasers or ballistics... Endgame where every alien is an elite isn't much fun because of that.

On veteran difficulty, an elite team of survivors of 30+ missions... Inside an alien base, covering both ends of a short hallway. A sebillan steps into sight - nine expert marksmen with full AP and plasma weapons at ready open fire at him... ...in the beginning of the next turn, the sebillan is still alive. Only one of the 9 hit him. Once. From 10 tiles away. Everyone 'cept the heavy and the sniper fired at least twice.

Yup. After the eleventh base defence mission I started wondering why the aliens don't simply bomb the base instead of sending crews in... Regarding the base costs, I think it'd be better if satellite bases were also at risk of attack. The costs of having to build defences and maintain several combat teams would do the same job better. Also instead of having a straight increase in costs, maybe have each base raise the maintenance cost progressively? Not being able to afford the second or third base would be pretty fatal for several play styles.

To be completely honest, I never quite bothered with the air combat. If you try auto-resolving all combats, even your end game craft with the plasma tech will get destroyed. Frankly I'd much rather remove the player participation from air combat completely and replace it with pilots whose skill improves (yes, this was discussed and I know it isn't going to happen). I'd have more fun juggling fighter aces and trying to keep them alive (rescue missions for downed aircraft in alien territory anyone?) than bothering with the air combat minigame for every damn UFO (UFO #150 on my current game...). Auto resolve needs a boost, I am pretty certain a lot of people will be doing the same as I did. Player should we able to win in more desperate situations than the auto resolve AI, but the AI shouldn't be losing as much as it does. Though the initial attempts at downing alien aircraft should be pretty desperate deal IMHO, with aliens shredding your fighters apart until you catch up to them in tech. Now, regarding the satellite bases... Maybe there could be some other events that'd force the player to develop other bases as well? Like research accidents suspending your research capability, alien saboteurs killing your researchers etc. In this particular case carrot probably won't be viable.

The current balancing pretty much forces you to research in certain path, at least on higher difficulties. Getting to lasers and upgraded fighter craft took me a long time, which leads into a spiral of doom: you are unable to shoot down most UFOs, you lose funding. Trying to counter the enemy air superiority by spending in additional bases with fighter craft will effectively sabotage your progress as you won't have the money to hire more scientists. Now, the original was also like this to an extent. I'm sure by playing it "smart" the game experience will be radically different. Still wish there wasn't such a huge difference depending on what initial techs your research. Also, the base defences are essentially useless. Two lasers get the landing ships to what, 83%? On the other hand, the aliens never attack your defenceless satellite bases.

O.K., this is a bit annoying... my game has started to have a really nasty habit of systematically freezing up in Geoscape. As far as I can see, this happens when UFOs are about to spawn. I managed to work around this problem by making a copy of the problematic save and loading that instead. If I load the copy of the save, the UFOs spawn as normal and I am able to proceed. I am thinking this *may* be related to another issue that I have, with base combat freezing up when I end turn on deployment phase. I always have to close Xenonauts and load the autosave at the start of the turn. I.e. there may be a pattern where I do a base mission, then fast forward to the next UFO invasion and the game freezes up. I will try debugging this further once I have the time, but meanwhile it'd be helpful to hear if anyone else has had the same issue (and if there is a way around it...)

Another case of access lift spawning outside of the base. Here is the autosave: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61842432/Autosave3.sav

Like mentioned, X-Com had a couple of radical game changers with blaster launcher and psionics. Xenonauts is a bit lacking on that side. Wraiths are a step in the right direction, but the current implementation is a bit funky. (Frankly, I think I could live with ultra-late game aliens coming with blaster launchers. Or something equally unfair. Just don't put them in bases or insides of UFOs, please!) Objectively (as much as it is possible), I think I still have more fun with the original X-Com. The aliens being more human-like with their panic states and the sheer fun of using the explosives being the probable reasons. Xenonauts isn't too far away though, which is quite an achievement.

Then it'd have to cost 3-4 times the current AP cost... This was a direly needed fix, the "crouching tiger, hidden hit" -feature led into wonderful game-play where a crouching alien behind a trash can was shooting at a crouching civilian five tiles away for 10 turns... Though it'll probably mean that my poor Xenonauts will survive even fewer missions.

Yeah, definitely no need to do massive changes (which some of my proposals probably require). Sometimes even small things can make a huge difference. My first encounter with Androns was quite memorable as they all seemed to descend upon me at once. That sort of intensity wasn't expected. Future encounters with them were quite lacklustre as they started taking cover and crouching for some odd reason... Basic AI patterns will help a lot, as long as they maintain that element of surprise. BTW, one thing that I miss from the original X-Com are the enemy morale events. Mindless clones are not as much fun to defeat as aliens who sometimes do... human-like things.

Like I said earlier, Xenonauts is shaping up really well. There is however, one niggling annoyance that becomes more pronounced as time goes on: the ground combat starts repeating itself. The basic pattern is always the same: dig in and survive the first enemy wave, then clear the UFO at your own leisure. The same problem existed in the original X-Com too to a degree, so it'd be high time a game tried tackling this. I know it is late in the production, but I maintain that those minor tweaks would really lift up the game! Breaking the Monotony and Keeping the Players Awake The key word here is variety. I wouldn't want all aliens doing any of those consistently, but still there should be an exception in the pattern often enough to force players stay awake and adapt to changing situations. General combat behaviours: - Utilizing the buildings. Alien snipers could decide to climb to the ceiling/second floor of the building and set up there. Currently you don't need to enter the buildings at all. - Setting up ambushes instead of rushing the enemy. ATM you just go for the UFO once aliens stop coming. Smaller squads could set up an ambush somewhere, then head back for the UFO if it is breached (aliens sneaking up on your breach team... FUN!). UFO breaching: This is my biggest annoyance. Breaching the UFO/alien base becomes repetitive and boring. - Time limits. Why does the player have infinite time to breach the UFO? There should be a sense of urgency. For example, the aliens could: a.) Repair the UFO and take off b.) Rig up the UFO to explode c.) Roll out some heavy duty death machines - Make breaching the door risky business. Maybe aliens could throw some grenades at you? Or maybe there could be an explosive booby trap on the door itself. Make it a concussion bomb if you're feeling generous. - Aliens rushing out from the UFO as you approach it. Possibly in bigger numbers than you expected. Etc etc. I'm sure there are plenty more. Doesn't need to be a major change, but something small and unexpected. We'll be doing a lot of ground combat, so small surprises like this will definitely make it more memorable.