Steelpoint

Further minor thoughts, from the latest patch Strategic Its a waste of resources to buy the T1 Aircraft weapons (missile, torpedo), its smarter to research the Alenium versions. Its a trap to buy the first version since you can't upgrade them, and are forced to spent your money twice if you want the better version Troops in sickbay keep hogging my good equipment, and I can't get them back. Newest update might have made global terror a bit too hard on Veteran? 55th day and most regions are at 80 to 95 terror, one wrong move and I might lose. I'll report back if this gets worse. Having some small UFOs that are almost impossible to shoot down with Sidewinders means I usually only use Torpedo's and Cannons for my early game interceptors. Or I'm just not good enough. (or I just can't notice the icon diff between small and medium UFOs) Tactical Alien Abduction Missions: Extremely fast paced, maybe too much? I found myself having to perform rush tactics and push hyper aggressively to secure the minimum amount of civilians, difficulty can be enhanced if the map has a lot of places for aliens and civilians to be hiding. I have to wonder if these missions become harder in the later game with stronger aliens? The final turn is too easy to cheese. Since the mission will end the moment you end your turn, and skip the aliens turn, you can afford to take suicidal moves, such as leaving your troops exposed in the open next to an alien, since you know the aliens won't get a chance to react. The nerf to melee weapons feels fair. Stun sticks are still good enough, but you need to be more thoughtful in using them, typically now I have to dedicate more manpower to capture an alien (suppression, slowly moving troops forward, multiple people with stun sticks), instead of prior where I could just rush one guy up and capture someone no issue Shields don't feel good to use, although I still make heavy usage of them since I do know they work. In X1 the shield (if I recall) absorbed all damage from the front before breaking, now it seems to just reduce damage? At times I feel my shields are being ignored when some alien one-taps a shield user from the front. Maybe if there was some stronger visual indicator to tell me the shield is still reducing damage? Civilians are stupid. It'd be nice if I could spend time units to "shove" a civilian out of the way. Had several issues with civs blocking the exits my aircraft on multiple occasions.

Description: I drove a MARS through a closed internal UFO door, the game froze once I did this. What Happened: At the start of my turn, I drove my MARS through the upper, closed, alien door. Upon doing so the game would freeze and present error prompts in the console. I have to terminate the game to exit. I reloaded my save and tried again, performing the same sequence of actions, and the game froze again. It did not matter if I ordered my MARS to drive through the door or have it drive up to the door, then move through it in a second move. Having another solider open the door, then ordering the MARS through, also produced a crash. Save file and output log have been attached. To repeat the bug, take the MARS and order it to drive through the upper most closed UFO door going into the cockpit. auto_groundcombat_turn_12_start-85.json output.log

Minor point, easier said than done but I wish there was some way to better tell if a position your soldier is taking cover in is actually offering any form of cover from a certain angle where enemies are. Classic example of you being in cover but some guy at a 45 degree angle "might" or "might not" have a shot on you. But what if they are at a steeper angle? I had a similar experience on one mission where my landing zone was surrounded by desert construction buildings, all full of Sebillians, all of whom had angles of fire on my landing craft. I think it just comes down to bad RNG but its still annoying.

I guess I never had a aircraft get shot down in X1, lol. I'd have to force myself to play around with the Taser to see how it compares to the Stun Baton. But in-between Shields, Flashbangs and the Baton there's rarely an issue with accruing captures. Nerfing it is likely fair, but I don't want to accidently see it fall off too hard. It falls off against the Sebillians, but most weapons fall off against them to be fair. I had an amusing encounter where I had to spend several turns stun smacking a Sebillian only for him to get back up the next turn, I guess it had to do with me stunning him at low health only for him to regen the health while unconscious and getting back up. Could be a good idea to make it some optional setting in the settings or some kind of setting in the 'new game start', like XCOM's Second Wave options.

It is 2009, but you'd be forgiven for thinking its 1979. Let me guess. We can't use NVG's cause the alien's guns emit some EMP effect? Then why can we use the tank? - Sergeant Goldburg Why the fuck are we using M16's from Vietnam? - Private Coleman's last words Its all the rage to talk about the game, so I believed I'd offer my brief thoughts on the state of the game as it stands on the most current version (V25). This is my first experience playing Xenonauts 2 since the very earlier versions of it, and for reference to my experience with this franchise, I was able to "almost" finish Xenonauts 1 on Ironman/Insane, losing on the final mission. I'm playing on the third highest difficulty. Overall I've very much enjoyed the game so far, I've every intention to keep on playing but I wanted to get my thoughts down for the early game. Gameplay - Cleaners Going to talk about these guys separately. The concept of fighting off a human (ish) shadow organization trying to suppress your efforts for the early game feels very unique, and I felt it was quite enjoyable. However, the game tries to communicate the idea the Xenonauts is starting off as some shadow-Para investigation organization being jumpstarted into a military organization, but this idea is never really aesthetically or practically communicated. The aliens are still showing up (albeit slower) and the cleaners only seem to be a panic annoyance. I was able to go almost 90 days before I finally committed to launching the assault on their headquarters. Seeing the cleaner guards gun down random civilians during the 'raid for intel' mission was highly amusing, if not a tad odd since it feels they are just gunning down their own personal? The guards just standing and waiting for the giant military helicopter to land 20 meters in front of them before reacting is also highly amusing. I have to guess the developers don't want the game to turn into 'Cleanernauts' instead of Xenonauts. But I'd not be against expanding the presence of the cleaners. I believe, in grand total, I only fought the cleaners about three or four times in a 90 day period, including the final HQ assault. Gameplay - Strategic The air war feels far more punishing this time around, I don't know if this can be attributed to the enemy UFO's being stronger or if I am being suboptimal in my research and aircraft development. However it can be a challenge to down some of the more "advance" early game UFOs. I am still using the game-start aircraft by day 90. Aircraft armour might need some explanation in-game. I was caught by surprise when my aircraft lost the ability to dodge when I loaded torpedo's For the first time in Xenonauts history I suffered a base attack. I'm impressed that the aliens committed to a very early game (first 40 to 60 days I think) base assault with a ship I was unable to shoot down. However the mission itself was fairly reasonable for that stage of the game. The ability for your aircraft to be freely repaired instead of lost forever is a good touch, it'll only benefit people on ironman or doing no-scum runs but its a big bonus. The concept of sold items losing value needs to be better communicated. Realising this I felt a strong urge to not sell items until I accumulated a large stockpile to avoid "missing out" on the sales. I've also felt the need to not sell items since I don't know if I will need them in the future. I can see the questions rising on the steam forums of "Can I use these mag rifles later on?", "Do I need all these corpses?". I don't want to be an idea's guy but I felt quite annoyed when I spent a lot of money building Torpedo's and Armour only to unlock the more advance versions (Alenium Torps and the Alloy Armour) only to discover I can't upgrade the older items, and I have to re-build the new items from scratch at the same very expensive price, meaning I've doubled dipped for price. Being able to upgrade the items would be nice? I recall reading that the devs wanted to disincentive farming lower level UFOs over and over, while the money income might decrease, I found the alloy salvage from the UFO's to be very much worth farming for. I'm just not sure when, or if, I should be expanding and how many aircraft I should be fielding. I'm at day 90 and I'm still on two starter-aircraft and I've only just begun building up a second base. I distinctly recall my X1 experience where I felt I had to skip all the aircraft until the end-game Marauder. This is likely informing my decision to hold off on expanding. Gameplay - Tactical Xenonaut infantry generally feel more durable than in X1. I can usually expect my guys to survive at least one shot from an enemy while wearing decent armour. If they aren't wearing armour, all bets are off. I generally lose only 1 soldier per mission, rarely 2 and surprisingly often none. The soldiers that tend to die are typically shield-users being shot through their shield. I did lose the MARS a few times at the start but after treating the MARS like its fragile I stopped losing it usually. Grenades feel very great to use, good range and decent accuracy and they feel strong to use, but not too strong (not like the early versions of X2 where I felt using grenades was the only way to fight). Only area they falter is inside UFOs since you can sometimes find yourself unable to throw a grenade a few tiles, but other times you can throw clear across a room. All the standard firearms feel quite viable to use, and I generally bring a healthy mix. I've ended up skipping the Machinegun, replacing it with the MARS, and I've yet to use the Grenade Launcher. The MARS is an excellent tool. I've only used its Cannon/Rangefinder variant but I find the highly accurate cannon extremely deadly, and accurate, and its ammo is never a concern. The vehicle is surprisingly fragile, it'll tank more hits than a human but not a lot. Seems fair enough. It can be good to attract overwatch fire in a controlled, long range, circumstance. I initially felt the ability to smash through walls was overpowered, but the fact the MARS will instantly attract overwatch fire while doing so does feel like a decent counterweight, as smashing your way into an enemies LOS will get you shot at. Using medkits to repair damage to the MARS feels odd. MARS being affected by a Psion's "lose morale for shooting me" ability feels like a bug. Amusingly, I've found myself using the Stun Baton as the primary weapon for Shield Bearers, they are surprisingly deadly against most early enemies, it can carry the Shield user for the first few months. The arrival of Sebillians did make me fall back to pistols more so. I've never used the tasers since I've secured an excessive amount of captures with the batons. I didn't feel like the Mag guns were a huge improvement over stock ballistics. But to be fair the guns were fairly cheap to build. I have to wonder if I should just rush lasers. The mag guns looks more like something I'd expect in 2009. Enemies with armour are very hard to kill outside of shotguns or cannons. I appreciate the game easily communicating their armoured status to me though. The enemies having displayed health is an interesting change. It might be immersion breaking, but it does significantly inform my tactical decisions and makes tracking a particular enemy easy. Might be too strong? The AI is not great, but I think everyone is saying that. Soldier morale overall felt fine. The only time I had a soldier panic was when they got shot for 95% of their health. The Psions's morale ability on the other hand felt very annoying to deal with, especially since the MARS' are vulnerable to it. But snipers and grenades work well enough. Plot/Atmosphere I get the feeling a lot of the early game 'plot and atmosphere' issues I may proclaim are more to do with some information/content not yet written or in-game yet, but this is just my opinion from the game as it stands. If you told me the game was actually set in 1979, I'd believe you. I feel the setting of 2009 has very little in-game support. Outside of a few civilian cars looking more "modern" and the dead AI soldiers looking somewhat like a circa 2000's US soldier. Using guns and helicopters from the 60s, aircraft from the 70s, armour from the 90s. The god-damn Soviet Union is still around! The British were using NVGs in the 80s, where's my SpecFor NVGs? Did the alien EMP fry it? (game balance trumps lore I guess, would be nice if there was an explanation though) The cold-war aspect of the game is never brought up again. I think I saw one random civilian using an AK-variant gun but that's the extent of international discord I noticed. Feels like the setting is being underutilized. The early game, as I noted above, tries to set things up in a more clandestine way with the cleaners, and your organization seemingly being suppressed. But this never pans out as you are instantly fielding soldiers and fighting off alien UFOs. The 'X-File Men in Black Gas Mask Gooks' get regulated as a side-show. I do appreciate the game explaining why modern fighter jets are useless and why we are being forced to fall-back to WW2 style dogfighting tactics, even if it does mean I don't get to field F-22's or F-35's (until the look-alike appears anyway). On that note, whenever the game does explain a concept in the intel/research logs I do find them well written and quite logically explained. Look forward to seeing what the next 90 days entail.

Have not gotten that far yet but I'm hoping to now. Assuming I can dodge new updates and real life.

I'm performing the first 'cleaner' mission of a campaign, when I end my turn (around turn 5) the screen shows the 'enemy movement', as normally, before it abruptly freezes for a few moments, then CTDs. No visible error message is produced when this occurred. The cleaners made usage of their guns and grenades with no issues in the turns prior. When the crash occurred I did not witness any hostile activity to indicate my soldiers were being attacked, but there were still civilians around. When I selected to start the mission on the Geoscape, a brief 'red text error' message popped up in the lower-left corner when the mission was loading. This only appeared for less than a second and disappeared when the tactical battle loaded. I've attached the two output logs since they both seem similar and I'd rather not miss anything, and the save files for before the combat started on the geoscape, the start of my 1st turn on the battlescape, and the latest auto-save before the crash occurred. When I reloaded my save a second time, the crash did not occur. auto_strategy_before_combat-1.json auto_groundcombat_turn_5_end-10.json output.log output.log_1.aac4d1f036d2582bf08658ebbf093835 user_ms1-2.json

I've already noticed a major improvement in performance, I've only suffered a single crash after completing two missions, whereas in the last patch I never got through a mission without a crash. The new lore text is excellent as well.

Maybe one esoteric solution is to have a separate 'tutorial campaign introduction'. Your designated as the 'second' in command of the Xenonauts and you go through each major aspect of the game one at a time until such point where you take over the organization after your superior dies. So you start off and are told to select where your HQ is going to be, you then get a run through of each major aspect of the Geoscape command, which caps off with you having to take commander of some local national guard air units to try to intercept some UFO/rogue cleaner aircraft, which then introduces you to air combat. Your first Cleaner mission is then announced, at a UN summit/ambushed convoy/etc, you go there and discover the Cleaners have assassinated the Xenonauts commander, you play through a semi-structured ground battle after which you are given full command and the game continues.

Is it normal for a Terror Carrier/Ship to carry both a Terror and Assault operator on the same crash site? I just finished my campaigns first Terror Carrier assault and I was able to capture these two. ----- Also, I removed the 'workshop support' mod from the modlist, and started my new NG+2 campaign and I was able to unlock the Wolf armour, so I'd wager that was the reason it was MIA originally.

If I throw a grenade far away it should at least land somewhere near to where I threw it, even if it goes way off course. The worse thing in any game that has a throwing mechanic is when your guy fumbles terrible and tosses the grenade at his feet somehow. I can accept people being terrible throws under pressure (I'm sure someone will post a video of someone accidently tossing a grenade, live or otherwise, too close to themselves) but in theory our soldiers are some of the ""best"" soldiers on Earth and they should have a good enough throwing arm. If I toss a grenade 8 tiles away, assuming my character has the strength to make that throw, the grenade should land somewhere near to that throw, even if it deviates three or so tiles to the side away from it, the only circumstance where a grenade should end up landing very close to the thrower is if the person throwing is doing so when there's some object in their way that could catch the grenade, a person, tank or object.

Just some minor feedback on terror missions. I think these missions are in a good place balance wise (by NG+2 standards), I was barely able to win my first Andron terror mission via some good fortune and the loss of a few soldiers (I was able to occupy a building to the south east of the landing zone and hold em off from there and I barely got mk1 laser weapons out before the mission started). My main issue is that I dislike the removal of the '20 turn free vision' feature, where after 20 turns you get full vision of the map. I feel removing that is akin to removing having full vision of an Alien base when you occupy the command centre. It really helps in clearing out the last remnants of the Aliens and speeds up the last leg of a long mission. If the feature is too open to abuse then I'd be fine extending the min timer to 30 turns, or maybe even setting it that you only get the free vision when less than X enemies remain plus 20 turns have passed.

OG Xcom does the same concept where each transport ship has a limit on the amount of vehicles (HWPs) it can carry. You might want to be wary on having a max limit of MARS's during base defence missions, if there's no cap then there's nothing stopping the player tossing sixteen or more MARS's at each base and steamrolling the aliens. You could also take the X-Division route and make it that you get only one vehicle slot for a transport, but that slot does not decrease the amount of Human soldiers you can take.

I think the game kinda answered my question in that the Chief Scientist does state in one of the weapon reports that its up to the player to determine if the weapons of a specific class are actually viable against the Aliens, he's only giving us options on the weapons he can make and we have to pick the right ones. ---- On a separate note. I got tried of trying to keep track of the Aliens I've captured and not, so I decided to make a spreadsheet to better keep track. I'll link a copy of it to share for anyone else who wants it to help keep track, it has categories for Ceasans and Sebillians for all four phases. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e3FD_S84vprEYlspu4zUlzi6Ax_0Ii-oNsHdT3c-eBE/edit?usp=sharing

I suppose I'll take this as an opportunity to start a new game on a higher difficulty, NG+1 or NG+2, since I've found myself doing very well mid way through Phase 2. I'll remove the workshop mod and see if it makes a difference, I'll try around with GC Editor and see if I can blitz through and see if I can get Wolf with that workshop mod removed. --- Speaking about the game, is there any practicality in taking Ballistic guns over Energy guns? Outside of ballistic Shotguns/Carbines and maybe one Ballistic Minigun, I've found the Energy Guns (Up to Phase 2 at least) far more versatile and effective, especially when it comes to Sebillians and more so Androns who are more resistant to ballistics than energy.

The latest version, I was originally using 1.00.10 before updating to 1.00.11. However I updated the game only a short time ago, long after I should've unlocked the Wolf armour.

That is pretty much my earliest save game as it stands. I've kinda slowed down playing the mod since I don't want to get too far ahead without Wolf armour and the other armours you get from it, I'm already just shy of February 1980 with only Predator armour to show for it.

I have both Andron and Andron Guard disassembly. Even if Wolf is not as good, I checked the research and noticed a some of later game armours require the Wolf to have been researched as a pre-requisite. EDIT: Here's my latest geoscape save game if anyone is curious to check the issue: XD-3.sav

Well, failing finding a solution, is there a way to "cheat" the game and unlock the armour? Even if the tech requires Engineers instead of Technicians, I still would've satisfied that criteria as I've interrogated Ceasen and Sebillian Engineers, and the fact I've unlocked Predator armour I think shows I've exceeded the requirements.

I think I've found a bug. The game has not unlocked Wolf armour despite that I think I have the pre-reqs for it. I've actually got to the point where I've just unlocked Predator armour. I checked the mods 'research' and found that it states that to unlock the Wolf you need to have done... Alien Alloy Fabrication Ceasen Technician Interrogation Sebillian Technician Interrogation Andron Disassembly I've checked my Xenopedia and I can confirm I've researched all four of these. For what it is worth I'm currently midway through January 1980, I was assuming I needed more research to unlock the Wolf but the fact I just unlocked the Predator caused me to check the files to see what is going on. Maybe I've missed something, but I still think it should be brought up.

The Hunter was still a dubious choice since you were sacrificing two soldier slots for one vehicle that does not earn experience. At the very least the MARS has the advantage you only take one slot. There's a mod for OpenXcom (Hardmode) that adds scout drones to the game, one of their benefits is that if it is destroyed you get back the wreckage and you can rebuild the drone at half the cost it would take to buy a new one, assuming you recovered the wreck. That kind of feature would definitely improve the usability of the MARS, in addition at this stage I feel the MARS is more a proof of concept since it lacks any real upgrade options that I assume it'll get in later game versions as we get better tech. -- Back on the aircraft heavy armour. One thing I was thinking to add some incentive to use heavy armour is that any aircraft that is damaged while using heavy armour can be repaired much faster, and that if a heavy armour aircraft is shot down, then the craft can be recovered faster than an aircraft with light armour. At the end of the day, you'd rather not take damage than take it, but if taking damage or even losing your aircraft did not punish you as hard then I think there might be a reason to have a few heavy armour aircraft to act as the tanks.

I was playing the first raid mission of my campaign, I ended my turn, the aliens played their turn, then the game crashed to desktop when their turn ended. ---- Elaborating. I successfully moved my troops on my first turn, I fired at and killed one Wraith (I assume they are still called Wraiths in X2), I had one of my Snipers, using the improved/upgraded ballistic sniper fire on a second Wraith I had vision on, wounding but not killing it. I ended my turn with two Wraiths in view of my troops, but too far for my riflemen to engage. When I ended my turn, the aliens successfully played their turn. One Andron walked into my line of fire from off screen but took no action, one of the Wraiths dissapeared and the second one charged my closest soldier but did not fire. Seemingly, when the aliens turn ended the normal background music stopped playing for a second, then the game instantly CTD. (Edit: I should note that the absolute last action the game did before it CTD was the closest Wraith charging towards my troops but stopping adjacent to a cargo container, he stopped at the edge of it, then the game would freeze and CTD) I replayed my savestate, which was saved at the end of my first turn, but moved my soldiers around a bit, the result was the same in that the game CTD, the Wraith executed the same move it did in the last save as the final action of the Aliens turn. ---- Included below is the latest output log and ground combat save file. I've had no other performance issues or bugs in the ground combat portion of the game, the only other issues I've had is slowdown when UFO's appear on the Geoscape. output.log groundcombat-58.json

On the Andron issue, I've just encountered Androns on the 30th day of the first month on a 'raid' mission (I assume some kind of mini-terror mission). My best weapons are the improved ballistics. Speaking of guns, the Grenade Launcher seems, at its current state, useless. It has terrible accuracy at any range (at point blank I have a 40% hit chance, past about six or so tiles it drops to 0%) and it seems to fail to destroy cover or terrain. I could rant about some of the issues I have with the ground combat balance, but that's the joy of pre-early access.

You can find the key changes thread here:

My initial thoughts on the 'weekly' alien bombardment mechanic is I feel the reputation/relations loss will outpace our ability to compensate for it. Maybe I've just had bad luck but by the third half of my first month my relations in Europe are down to 40, despite me having conducted extensive operations there. From my initial observation of the new light/heavy armour for interceptors, I just have a feeling that we're going to end up with everyone using light armour over the heavy armour, if it comes to a choice between 100 extra aircraft health versus the ability to dodge, I'd rather be able to dodge and avoid damage instead of tanking more damage. It is early days however, and I do appreciate that, at this stage, it seem swapping between the armours is instant so you could change your aircraft load outs prior to sending them out on a intercept mission, this might be relevant later on. Just my quick thoughts.