Wyldefyre_CP

I had another thought when it comes to drop ships investigating crash sites and alien raids ... you know how after, I think, 20 turns or so on an alien city raid, the whole map would be displayed for you along with exactly where all the remaining aliens were / what they were doing? I'm thinking of a smaller scale, less approximate use of such a system of aerial surveillance, the trade-off being that you got results much sooner into the battle itself, but at a reduced value of certainty. Ugh, let me break it down into steps. 1) Drop ship lands in affected area. Cue drop ship some few feet off the ground, stabilizers & landing gear engaged, dust, leaves, sand, grass blowing around the LZ. Cue pilot headset chatter announcing landing, perhaps announcing something along the lines of 'LZ HOT ! or LZ COLD.' depending upon alien presence or lack thereof. 2) Soldiers encounter initial alien response, eventually contain threat, last soldier leaves drop ship or soldiers move a sufficient highlighted distance from drop ship. 3) Start of next turn, drop ship lifts off into the sky, cue pilot headset chatter, 'BIRD BACK IN THE AIR ...' or some such. 4) A turn or 2 later, pilot headset chatter, 'SCOUTING FOR UGLIES !' 5) 5 to 10 turns into mission. Pilot "We May Have Something Here. North Northwestern Grid, Unidentified Heat Signatures in (Forested Area, Open Area, Residential Area)." Or just skip the type of area description and end with 'unidentified heat signatures' and pan camera briefly to a small area unmasked from fog of war, with a red or orange outline of general area aliens may be lurking in. 6) Repeat this process every 5 to 10 turns if helpful / needed.

Some other suggestions. 1) A very brief alarm or flash of colors on the Global Overhead when shifting from 'skies clear' to 'alien ships entering airspace', not just the staccato 'ship appearing' sound. 2) A separate alarm noise for when one of your bases is under attack. 3) Brief action track of inspiring music when drop ship is sent out / hones in on downed enemy aircraft or base. 4) Screaming civilians. Also, kudos on the idea suggested above of civilians making pointing signs to the Xenonauts on where they last saw aliens. Semi-believable attempts at crowd control or retaliatory fire by law enforcement or military personnel on city raids. 5) Obscure alien chatter when inside alien ships / bases ... is it their own version of an intercom? Are you hearing them through the walls or vent shafts above or below? Maybe they're right behind you .... 6) The occasional totally collapsing multi-story structure ... a burning barn that started that way on turn 1 comes crashing down by turn 10, etc. 7) More apparent destruction in the area surrounding a crashed ufo, with the larger ufos showing some truly violent destruction of the surrounding environment. 8) Alien A.I. gets a better sense for when you are massing by a door for a blitz attack the following turn and plans accordingly. 9) Soldiers who have survived 10 missions and / or killed 10 aliens randomly do something that adds a bit of personality (i.e., they name their weapon, scrawl graffiti on their helmet / armor, start smoking, get a tattoo, start wearing an alien finger necklace ... ).

I could be wrong about this, but ... it seems to me from trial and error that if I send my high reaction pt soldiers out of the copter first (and these are usually my assault-style troopers) they seem less likely to be shot by enemy over-watch than my other units. Then, I can engage the initial threats with my higher reaction pt soldiers from a different point than the inside of the copter - even if I don't kill the alien(s) with that soldier, they are now focused on his or her position rather than the open copter. The other thing to do if you are expecting enemy fire into your transport is figure out which units you can have exit w/o triggering over-watch and have them bail before you start engaging in the risky business of opening fire on a waiting alien. Anyone who can't easily leave w/o the prospect of getting shot at should take a knee before the firefight ensues. Back to my first statement, though - if my high reaction pt units can't take out the LZ aliens, I usually follow up next with the Machine Gun. Again, if I recall correctly, Suppression supersedes any Over-watch they might have had. Rifle-toters can then clean up the closer, suppressed aliens and snipers can ping at any other enemy units further away that you assault units may have discovered.

Could you not do both? MG Kelly, 58 TU total Fire MG: 45% (26TU) [or 27TU, if you adhere to a strict 'round-up' policy and bump that 0.1 to another full TU]

Yes, yes, yes, all very interesting, but ... do you see the HEDGES in the picture there?!?! You can now totally DESTROY the hedges ! Not just reduce them to halfway-burnt-brown pitcher's mounds that you still can't traverse over after hitting them with a rocket, a grenade, and applied C4; No, they REALLY ARE DESTRUCTIBLE NOW !!!

All good points about the previous games and their constraints, but who says you have to lay the groundwork for this game to follow lockstep down the same path? Just need to make adjustments to the costs of certain key base structures / personnel etc. to make these things that could 'barely be pulled off' become 'yeah, there's still a trade-off here, but this is feasible, we can actually work with this.'

Apologies - you are correct that I am on Version 5.1 - what's surprising to me is that I thought I was on auto-update (it HAD seemed like a good while since the last update had rolled out, but I thought I had read a few weeks back where you said it might be a few weeks til you put out the next one, lol .... actually, I was grateful for the delay, since it meant I got to try going further with the game this go around then the last few times I've hit the reset. Figuring how that may have happened ... I DID create a 2nd shortcut for the game, linked through Steam, b/c my other Steam-Linked version wasn't allowing a friend of mine to watch me play (yes, I'm trying to slowly win her over to the Dark Side ... umm, get her to want the game, lol ...) So maybe this version did not get the upgrade somehow ...

I did some research on the linear weaponry and got the mag weapon art stuff for the shotgun and the rifle (2 I managed to get built prior to this mission). Looking at the equip screen before the battle, the area where you should collect ammo seems .... odd .... and doesn't interact to drag and drop or click and add, either ... I thought, maybe the weapon is self-sufficient (up to 99 shots?) so my first time out, I simply went with the weapon and extra grenades where my laser rifle clips had been (which, come to think of it, I guess were a waste of space as well ...) but this weapon appears to do nothing at all if you go that route. My next thought was they basically said in the lore that it's more or less a high-powered version of its predecessor, so ... I tried loading a few standard shotgun shells in there ... I still got no targeting reticle but when I did try to self-fire the gun, I did achieve something .... that something was a screen fulla red error looking text shortly before CTD'ing. Guess I'll stick with the laser weaponry for now. This is as far as I've made it through and I'm on your newest version of the game.

That's actually kinda cool just to even think about ... not just in terms of a base assault, but shooting down more than one UFO and then going out to deal with more than one on the battlefield. Or, if the work to fight more than one ufo at a time in the air seems like too much of a mess, your radar could pick up 'more than one landed craft' in an area - presumably, for something like alien base construction, which might be accelerated if more than one ship was left to get it set up. I could see some interesting crossfire scenarios with having to deal with 2 separate alien ships at opposite ends of the battle map, and, as I tend to split my squad into 4 and 4 anyway, perhaps having to continue with those split formations even once the aliens ship(s) have been discovered.

10 drop ships would be a rather huge investiture of funds, considering how much other stuff you'd have to ignore spending money on in order to achieve that, but yeah, actually, limited to financial reason and some 'cap' (say, 3 or 4 drop ships, max) this could certainly be done, though I'd expect it would be in response to a larger quantity of aliens, along the lines of 20 to 30, to warrant such a 'joint exercise' between bases and drop ships. Sort of along the lines of near 'endgame scenarios'. Such an exercise would detract from being able to cover other possible hot spots going on at that same time elsewhere, perhaps. There are a lot of ways the game and story could be expanded upon to add some realism / logic w/o detracting from game play. Balance + Play Testing is the key. As for this other comment ... It isn't viable as currently scripted, but It Could Be ! The problem with multiple production sites really is the cost of each and the engineering expenses you'd be incurring at each base. That all adds up fairly quickly. But if a little tweaking went into the costs of workshops and engineers, and the player had to be concerned with events like base attacks causing parts of your base to collapse / needing to be repaired or unearthed before being able to function at 100% again, you've now done two things to the game to help provide incentive to splitting up production sites. The same could be done with scientists and research labs. I mean, heaven help it if the Chief Science Officer were to be, say, buried under 400 ... er ... 800 tons of rubble, but it'd be nice to think you had at least one other scientist with healthy brainwaves that could take charge, and maybe already has been doing just that at Base 2 or Base 3 ... working on secondary or tertiary research objectives while the main unit tackled Priority 1 objectives. These changes to the initial game COULD make for some really fun new choices when deciding what and where to build structures. Making the $ stretch a bit further would reduce some of the feeling of being pigeon-holed into doing things one set way to win as well. Addressing one other issue. I'm not a fan of the teleportation device explanation for items or people. At least, not unless the science had to first be recovered from the aliens and then researched and recreated by the engineers. I never saw the shipping of useful items from Base 1 to other Bases as a chore or heavy micromanaging. If anything, I'd be happy with the occasional, thumbnail-sized cut scene (ex., the Jagged Alliance river burial of dead mercs ...) of your better gear arriving at Base 2 or Base 3 and one of the soldiers fist pumping another that they finally got something worthwhile to fight back with. But maybe that's just me, lol ...

I guess I'm wondering if we go back to top-down view, will we still be plucking scientists and engineers up 2 by 2 by 2 from the global hotspots missions? That'd be fine by me. Actually, either the top down or the side view is also fine by me I don't think you'd need to be limited to 'just one main base' because of the use of side-view, though. You could tab through pages of the bases, with a side-view for each, much like we tabbed through the top down views of each base in X1. As for base invasion feasibility on a side-view base, you could simply leave only the exposed top / surface section available to the aliens for invasion, having the rest of the base go into 'full and automatic lock down' with huge slabs of steel-reinforced concrete dropping down over all the other entrances and exits (animated, if you wanted to get a little crazy about it, lol ...) and then your troops are either already in the top level to defend or they come up through the primary elevator shaft on a turn by turn basis, maybe. If you wanted to get super creative, you could expand this map to include where the alien invasion ship touches down in relation to the Xenonaut base as well. Just to think outside the box a bit. Oh, and on the click box that shows your hangars and radars only, you could add space HERE to include your anti-aircraft batteries, since there won't be any room left on the current topside to do that. Those batteries could also get included (gutted and in need of repairs) in any invasion taking place on topside. As for multiple drop ships - Chris, you're gonna hate me for adding to the clamor, but YES, we seriously could use more than one drop ship in the game. The new XComs really had me holding suspension of disbelief with their explanation that only One ship and One group of soldiers could solve any and all of the world's growing extraterrestrial problems. I would hope X2 doesn't go that same route. I used to make up 3 to 4 bases at least in each X1 game I ever played, with Base 2 getting the 'hand me down' gear from Base 1, and Base 3 getting the 'hand me down gear' from Base 2, whenever Base 1 got a new upgrade again. I'd basically end up with 2 really good, well - defended basis by the time it was all said and done, and ... well .... 2 or 3 red-headed stepchildren for the other bases ... ahem ... but yes, please allow us to build more than one 'main base' - regardless of which view you decide to go with. P.S. I voted for the decision to be left with the designers, b/c the other 2 choices don't accurately reflect my real choice - which is for you to go with EITHER view you guys prefer, but to allow multiple bases either way (this choice was not an option on the poll, lol ...)

Darn ... and here I gave you a 20th 'like' in hopes of boosting your level up and over, but no luck ...

Thanks for clarifying - I think in X1, as long as you were topping out each of your characters with right around their max carry weight, nearly each mission they would all get a +1 as far as Strength went (yes, I was guilty as charged of demanding everyone haul as much gear as they could to start getting those bonuses ...) I have a few ideas which, used individually or in some combination, might help prevent just what you mentioned above, yet still make increasing soldier's strength a reasonable thing. 1) Change the TU penalty for gear. Rather than wait for your gear to go 'over' the prescribed limit to incur any penalties, once your character is past the 50% carry capacity, fatigue starts to set in and they start to lose TUs - not as drastically as the 'after max weight' penalty seems to be now, but something like ...... 1) at 51%-65% of max carry, -1 TU 2) at 66%-75% of max carry, -2 TU, 3) at 76%-100%, -3 TU. This means you could still subject all your soldiers to the brutal demands of carrying a full pack to improve Strength, but it would come at a cost some might not see worth subjecting each of their characters to ... for instance, snipers in X1, after a few extra TU pts were picked up, enjoyed the ability, if they were already pointing in the right direction, of being able to fire 2 fairly decently aimed shots at a long distance enemy on their turn ... forcing them to carry a max load would really hamper that ability. I don't think this is a stand-alone solution, but employed with one or the other of further suggestions, I think it might get the job you're looking for done. 2) Have the chance for acquiring a Strength bonus after combat be a low % random chance, perhaps as follows. 1) 5% chance for a soldier under the 51% carry weight and suffering no penalties to still eventually pick up a point or two of Strength along the way. 2) 10% chance for a soldier with TU penalty -1 due to carry weight penalty to receive a a Strength bonus. 3) 20% chance for soldier with a TU -2 penalty, and 4)35% chance for soldier at max carry or + after each combat. 3) Rather than assigning any actual bonuses for training at the training centers for X days, make the X days trained part of the bonus chance applied each time the soldier comes home from a mission. These bonuses would continue to accrue until the soldier actually did get a bonus, then the Days Trained bonus would reset.

That would be highly disappointing, imo. For me, Strength has always been a key attribute in deciding which soldiers would be assigned heavier weapons / heavier armor. If their accuracy was okay but their TUs were crappy, they'd get MG or RL duty (I guess it's GL duty in this version, lol). If their accuracy was horrid but their TUs were good, they'd get assault duty, along with some of the heaviest armor / shielding I could provide them - some of my earlier assault units had to find new jobs as riflemen because they didn't have the Strength to keep up with the new, heavier armor requirements I was assigning in hopes of keeping those squad members alive more often. So Strength actually played a major role in my decision process - also keeping in mind that in X1 your accuracy with weapons classed as 'Heavy' depended at least somewhat on how well you could keep the weapon 'up' in terms of having a decent Strength score, too ... aside from the fact that Predator Armor basically wiped out the need for a good Strength score eventually, I felt Strength was good where it was. I never minded that I might have to make some allowances for soldiers getting by with a little less gear if they were replacing a previous, injured or dead soldier who had been somewhat stronger than the new person was. I DO like how you can now sub-out replacement people and keep the gear settings exactly the same, if you wish, but I don't see the need to nix the Strength stat b/c of what I feel is the very minor 'inconvenience' of checking that your new soldier isn't overloaded ridiculously before setting out on a new mission. I hope the road to improving Strength isn't butchered needlessly going forward. Just my 2 cents.

This is the one attribute that NEVER seems to go up with any of my soldiers - it doesn't matter if I load them down with enough gear to incur a slight -1 or -2 TU penalty or not, no one EVER gets a Strength adjustment. I had one character actually manage to pull off a reward of every other attribute EXCEPT Strength in one mission, lol ... There also isn't a Training option for the Strength attribute, either, although whether Training actually does anything or not at this point in the game I'm kind of questioning, even when I did shell out the big bucks for the little Training Room ... but that's another topic. So what's up with Strength - some of the characters would like to improve in this department so they can get on with wearing better armor and not having to be so limited on what else they can carry as they improve.