Sable Wyvern

Wow, that was quick. Good work and thanks.

Well, nowhere in Africa, Australia, South-East Asia, South America, Central America or Southern Europe. Yes, there could be more use of Arctic maps in parts of Northern America, northern Europe and Russia, but if coding in variable map types for any given location would have involved significant work, I can understand why efforts were directed elsewhere.

Given that the game takes place in both hemispheres ... how do you reach this conclusion? It starts in Autumn/Spring and moves into Winter/Summer although none of those designations mean a great deal in the tropical regions ... and a lot of places in the world dont get snow during winter in any event.

Who are you and what have you done to my internet? This kind of reasonable and level-headed response after being told you can't have what you want is scary.

Minor nitpick almost certainly not worth fixing: that rifle/pistol range is a serious safety hazard and would never be placed where it is.

Do I have to register with Desura to get my Steam key? I have an original pre-order (back from before the two price brackets and the Paypal kerfuffle), as well as two Kickstarter keys. I have yet to try and make use of any of those keys, but it might finally be time to get my copy of the game and pass my other two keys along to the people I've promised them to. Edit - Never mind:

That is the most awesome thing I've read all day.

I certainly would prefer not to have to be restarting the game while developing air combat skills. If I mismanage my resources, or become impatient in ground combat that's one thing. A learning curve for air combat with a hefty and inevitable penalty for failure is another entirely. People are talking about dumbing down the game, but however much some people may like the air combat as it currently stands, I doubt very much that "difficult air combat with significant consequences for failure" is a major selling point for the majority of X-Com veterans.

The sniper in my tabletop X-Com GURPS game believes that dollars per kill is a brilliant stat

This is one thing that really bugged me in the recent EU release. I frequently went into a mission without my preferred equipment because I couldn't be bothered deselecting one guy and then rotating through everyone else to find out who had the piece of equipment I was after. I suspect I will be taking Xenonauts more seriously, and will go through the hassle if I have to, but would prefer a simpler approach.

Want the target suppressed and alive, use a flashbang. Flashbangs are non-lethal munition and that is their role in the real world. That's not poor planning, it's just the way it is. Frags should not be generating meaningful amounts of smoke, and I would definitely not like to see them functioning even as a shoddy substitute for a smoke grenade.

Do we have stun weapons? I haven't been following the development all that closely, but I thought there were no melee weapons. If there are melee or very short range stun weapons, then flashbangs definitely have a role, and there's no reason to try and make them superior to a frag grenade in any respect (although an increase in throwing range, as you suggest, would probably be reasonable). Their advantage is that you don't kill your target but do leave him vulnerable to capture, and if you're upset that a frag grenade is "better", then just use a frag grenade and accept that you may well kill your target.

IRL, there's really no reason to use flashbangs unless you want to avoid inflicting permanent injury. There's certainly no real world justification for them to have a larger suppresion area than a fragmentation grenade. Personally, I don't like flashbangs being included in games unless they're there because their non-lethal property is actually useful. However, since we have them, they do need to provide some utility over normal grenades; it just needs to be accepted that it's not going to be a realistic utility.

Highly concentrated, very hot laser beams that, again, should only have to expend a very small proportion of their energy burning through the particulates in smoke.

If your laser can burn through advanced alien armour, I don't see how it could spend more than a picosecond or so reflecting or refracting before your glass window is an exploded molten mess.

Reserve TUs for kneeling is, IMO, an essential feature.

Since you have stated that you won't be doing this, and everyone else in the thread who doesn't like the idea of farming XP has also said that they won't be doing so, what, exactly, is the problem? Why are you offended by the notion that someone who enjoys farming experience may actually do so in the privacy of their own home, while playing a single-player game? Your argument really does seem to boil down to, "Someone may play this game in a fashion I don't like, and the developers need to prevent this."

Infinitum, if I understand you correctly, your complaint wholly boils down to the fact that the XP system as currently implemented encourages illogical and repetitive/boring behaviour. And that, by extension, if Goldhawk was able to maintain the current system, but somehow identify actions that are exploiting the system and eliminate any XP gain from them, you would have no real problem with the system. This would be a valid complaint if the game required you to compete against other players, and the ones willing to spend hours in pointless grinding were advantaged against you if you didn't do the same grinding. It would be a valid complaint if the difficulty was balanced on the assumption that the player will engage in pointless XP grinding. But as neither of those are true, grinding will only occur if the player feels that doing so will add to his enjoyment. If you somehow feel compelled to grind for XP even though you don't enjoy doing so, that's your call, and if that is the case I can't see how you can blame Goldhawk for your own masochistic compulsions. I sure as hell won't be grinding away for XP. However, I don't believe it would be a useful allocation of resources for Goldhawk to change the game to prevent grinding just to inhibit the enjoyment of people who enjoy doing so, or to protect from themselves the people who for some reason feel compelled to grind in spite of the fact they consider it stupid/boring. If you can propose an XP system that actually increases my enjoyment, I'd be all for it. As it is, you are complaining about a problem that is only a problem if the player chooses to make it one.

Rather than get into a pointless debate, I will simply point out that, even if Delta are the best in the world at the things they specialise in, there are plenty of SF roles that they don't specialise in (long-range reconnaissance, for example).

Ah, nice. I thought that the kickstarter key might be linked to my email or somesuch ... if it's just a generic key, all is well.

As ex-military, I would just like to lend my support to the idea of allowing Chris to come up with whatever system he deems most appropriate, but replacing the real-world ranks with Xenonauts-specific terms that represent experience rather than position in the chain of command.

Related question ... I pre-ordered way back when, and contributed to kickstarter, resulting in three keys. I need to give two of these keys away ... how do I go about this, since I'm not aware of any "gift to a friend" links for my original pre-order or primary kickstarter key.