Dagar

Known bug for ages, likely never will get fixed. If you put your melee weapon back in your inventory, the second hand slot suddenly has a new one. Just throw it on the ground and it will stop existing when the mission ends. Also the item deletion, you sadly have to put your gun in the inventory or on the ground and then take the melee weapon into hands. You cn the pick the weapon up from the ground into your inventory, it will not cost you more TUs than a quick swap.

gamble: How are they a gamble? They are guaranteed to hit, you do not spend ammo, and they have ridiculous armour ignorance, so the one step more you have to take when compared to firing a weapon makes it worth so much more. Unless the enemy is an explodey type, then of course being close is pretty bad. TU costs: You say that now, but just try an Axe Mk2 in Phase 1 or 2...

I'll try loading them in the next couple of days and report back to you.

Should not be the case. A small minority of the entries still have something like this, but most should have real text. Check the version of X-Division (1.00.11 is the most recent) and check in the mod loader if there is an unchecked entry similar to "Palu's shiny lore".

Congratz Chris! I hope everyone is well, and I can only recommend going easy on yourself in terms of workload and spending as much time as you can with your little wonder. They grow up so quickly! When you find the time, could you explain how the new grenade scatter mechanism works?

If you are that kind of person, I'd recommend looking online for tutorial videos for the X-Div air game. Or watch a Let's Play :wink: I am at the start of Phase 2 now and the only thing that gave me problems in the first wave was actually capturing that damned small scout because it is so freaking fast (even faster than a Firebird? come on!)

1) You are not missing. 95% is actually the highest possible accuracy (at least displayed; within two tiles radius you cannot actually miss). You will have seen Caesans drop Mini Shields from time to time. They function just like your Riot shields in that they soak up the first X damage coming their way from a frontal arc. Moreover, every unit (including your soldiers, look at the stats of the armours) has armour protection from incoming attacks (energy, kinetic, chemical and fire I think are the categories). Kinetic and Energy are ablative armour. They may mitigate the first incoming shots completely, but the armour will degrade in the process, meaning following shots will hit harder. You can also observe that the damage numbers rise against a single enemy over time. 2) I don't think I understand the question. There is no mod that takes the manufacture portion to a lighter level, afaik. 3) The game is divided into tiers (called Phases), but that has little to do with aircraft and their weaponry. The aricraft are rather split into roles. For that you want to look at their equipment slots. You have cannon slots and light and heavy hardpoints. Your F17 is your general purpose fighter with a cannon slot and a light hardpoint for rockets. It is there to take on your medium enemy craft, but it can be used against almost anything to a certain amount of effect. Then there are the dogfighters, the pure anti-fighter craft, of which the Asierus is the first one. It has no hardpoints, but two cannon points. I invite you to try out Mausers on that one. They have less overall damage than the standard Autocannons, but they deliver it much faster, ending the fight quickly. Lastly, there are your Bombers, of which the Foxtrot is one. They have heavy hardpoints for rockets and torpedoes. Equip them with the latter for maximum effect against large craft, but get rid of the escorts first. 4) Dunno, not familiar with altering the mechanisms. But there should be.

It tends to be the case that games that go from 2d sprites to 3d are looking worse afterwards. That said, who was playing Xenonauts for the visuals to begin with? That does not mean that your criticism is not valid, I have some grudges with the presentation as well, but let's face it, this is no FiraXCOM, and that is exactly why we are here.

@Dermophile74Is the vanilla Xenonauts in French? Steam should let you download the english language for the game in the properties afaik.

A bit late to the party as I have fallen from checking the forum daily in the last months. Still, I'd like to welcome you in the rank of fathers, Chris, and hope everything goes well with birth. Yeah, you will get little sleep, but hey, you can now officially always get away with dad jokes, which is nice! (Not the only nice thing about having children by any means)

I think this would be a nice addition for a mod to bring. Does not sound too hard.

Not really, because prior to that you have to calculate whether the grenade should be able to land there in the first place. You cannot use your approach, if the target position is through a wall. But then again, maybe you can throw over the wall? Is there a roof over the thrower or the target? What about windows in the way? Are they aligned well enough that this throw could succeed? And so on and so forth.

Well, in that case they were intentionally throwing very short, risking their own lives. That should still be possible in Xenonauts 2. All I am saying is that it does not come across as believable if 10% of your far throws land short because of wonky mechanisms, and in that case I would not use damage grenades at all, most likely.

I'd advocate calculating a real parabolic arc instead of using a system that is hard to predict. A ballistic trajectory mainly is dependent on the initial movement vector; that would be true for both thrown and launched grenades. You could handle the inaccuracy by altering the throw vector in its strength (length) and direction depending on distance and the thrower's accuracy. You could then project an "forecast" area onto the scene describing where the grenade may actually land, so it is always understandable what risk you are taking by attempting that throw. Finally, you apply the randomness to the vector and calculate the actual parabolic trajectory. The good thing with such a system is that it behaves as we would expect, along with the possibility of deflecting surfaces like ceilings, floors, walls (deduct some strength from the vector at the moment the surface is hit, mirror the direction according to the surface normal and calculate the next arc up to some threshold strength where the grenade is just considered stationary). If not this, then I'd propose a system based on your cover system. Determine the highest obstacle in the way between source and target to see if the throw is actually possible, and if so, how many stories it would arc over (you could limit the height, but the maps are already limited in height and not too high to be totally unplausible). With every necessary height level, the accuracy would drop (maybe halve), reflecting that throwing over a building is not very accurate because since you cannot see and have to expend much strength to even reach the height, it is hard to hit even near the target. Then, for each height level bridged, you would separate a portion of the throw and assign to it the height of objects it can pass over without a chance of interference. This would start at full height obstacles on the thrower's level, as humans are not really capable of hitting cover right in front of them (well, I also had a comrade in the military who managed to hit his own sandbag cover, but... you know... elite troops and all...). Towards the end of the arc, even half height objects on the target level could interfere and stop the grenade short for a bit. Basically, you then have the whole distance separated into smaller ranges where certain height cover has the chance to interfere. I want to have an exception to the area very close to the thrower not just because it is rather unlikely for a throw landing at your feet to really happen, but also because it is really unsatisfying and confusing for the player. Personally, I would not use grenades in any situation where I would risk the thrower's life, so I'd abstain even from throws my experience tells me would be safe.

Yeah, this is known, but not really published somewhere afaik.

Whatever soulful means. FiraXCOM has its fair share of problems, which were not all adressed form FiraXCOM2, like not being able to lean out from a slightly elevated position (a step up, so to say) or cover destruction being basically the only meaningful tactic in the highest difficulty and Long War, because dashing into the unknown for a flanking manoeuvre leads to coffins full of Assault soldiers. I found FiraXCOMs systems enjoyable at first (it was my entry into the genre after all), but it gets very formulaic fast. In your defense, so does Xenonauts' system. I would call neither "soulful".

Okay, so I am going to ask the really important question here: can we also jump UP levels now? Like with the Parkour perk or some exoskeleton tech?

Saying that again, but while we're at it, please let us replay the alien turn or give us some other info like last seen position of actor X.

I am so far disengaged with my first days of Xenonauts and with the Vanilla game that I can't tell personally, but if you watch some first let's Plays, you'll see people be overwhelmed by the system, because all they know is flying straight at the enemy and getting shot down. The game does not do a good job of explaining anything, really, and the fact that you should pause as often as you can, use manual waypoints, manage your evasive rolls with keys that are not explained and that the speed has influence on your turn rate and that you should attack from the side to land missiles against evasive targets, all that is stuff you have to explore to really be successful. try working without all that and you'll likely find the air game frustrating. Can you point me towards people who do not want to have a fun game or who want the game to play itself, please? Because if I read someone wanting that I must have forgotten that by now. The thing is that what is fun to you and what is easy to you does not have to be the same for everyone else. I am obviously talking solely about the air game, not the strategy (world map) part. Maybe I worded that one a bit misleadingly. Obviously you still need to keep up with research on aircraft and their equipment to make it through the game, but not to be good at the manual part of it. The problem with X1s air game is that it arguably is the least important of the three parts of the game, the least "core" part, and the most special with its pausable real time system that needs quick reactions, while at the same time being, along with the other two parts, a component you have to succeed in in order to win, makes it frustrating for some players who already voiced their concerns. I am not one being frustrated with the air game, but I still would like to see a turn-based system instead, because I feel it would fit better into the game's overall mechanisms. That said, I have no idea how to make a good turn-based air game of two widely different opponents, as I also have said multiple times now.

That's not what @Charon wrote. He meant that the air game should start simple and easy to be manageable by all skill levels and then increase in difficulty gradually. As for the difficulty increase losing campaigns: I could envision that stays simple enough so you can finish a campaign pretty much regardless of what you do. You'd lose some engagements, but some are pretty much guaranteed to win, furthering the narrative and your progress. But there would be optional goals to fulfil there to increase difficulty and/or risk as well as rewards. Speaking of the old X1 system, how about not focusing too much damage on one side of the UFO so components do not get destroyed in-air? Or how about you if could try to concentrate fire only on some areas or use weaker weaponry in order to spare more crew who you then have the chance to capture? Or how about while developing new weaponry you could field some prototype that may speed up your development of the weapon, but be worse/less reliable than what you have right now? With pilots being characters more like ground troops, even experience and achievements could be a thing to bring in there.

I don't agree that the old system is a no-go, though I'd like to see a tactical turn-based one or something like FTL as well. As for your suggestion, @Emily_F: much of that idea leaves something to desire. Now I am no expert in that matter, but afaik real air combat is very, very different to real ground combat. No jet fighter is nimble enough to take cover behind anything on the ground. The engagement distances are rarely below 1km, there usually is no dogfight with MGs like with the piston engine planes of WW1 or 2. Combat relies heavily on long range target seeking missiles and counter measures. If there is a close range engagement, it is highly three dimensional and based on split second decisions and reflexes, nothing that is easily portrayed in a 2D abstraction. The height and velocity dynamics of fighter aircraft are pretty unintuitive to pretty much most of us. I don't know how, with that real world basis, you would make a fun, easy to learn and not totally outlandish "mini" game, and apparently, neither do Goldhawk (or Firaxis, for that matter).

@Emily_F I would like that, too, but I put that hope more on easy to use mod tools and the community now. Which is fine to me. If Goldhawk can give me a solid basis for mods, that is all I really need from them.

@Chris I agree, but at the same point, you could at least store the over-TU-threshold movement for each soldier and have a button that just executes these move orders for single soldiers or everyone in the (new) turn. That would go in the same direction QoL wise and not be hard to implement.

Sure. I get the impression though that Goldhawk do not want to introduce pilots as a separate entity from planes. I'd like to see that, but at the same time, I don't mind too much, that sounds like a very easily implementable concept as a mod (given that GH want to make X2 as moddable as possible).

Have yet to play the beta (though I bought it). But that is also what is my experience with pistols in X1 (X-Division), so how does that compare to X1 in your opinion? To me, it never makes sense to send a soldier with just a pistol. The reflex bonus is too low to risk it, and you don't get more TUs or Reflexes when carrying less than 100% of capacity (which, btw., is something I'd love to see, because then light builds could actually be good). Instead I'd naturally give them shields or longer range/harder hitting weapons like rifles or LMGs.