Wyldefyre_CP

This didn't bother me much in the original game ... coming back to play this now after about a year of being away, one of the first things that strikes me is how much everything costs, both to build and then to contain ... if I'm going to hark on one thing in particular, it'll be the 125,000 needed to maintain the access lift every month. Now I get that you need the access lift, and I'm sure hydraulics can run some $$$ to maintain, but to put it in perspective, 3 aircraft of the most garden variety you can make only cost 240,000 to maintain ... so this elevator is basically running us 1 1/2 aircraft a month in maintenance. Another 10,000 to keep the lights on and the dust swept in the storage area ... ok, it's storing alien stuff, weapons, elements, bodies, if you don't sell them right back out the door, I guess .... Then there's the cost to hire and then keep your scientists and engineers going .... at 50K per head to hire extras and then $25K a head to keep each happy, there goes another huge chunk of the budget out the door. I built one base in the first month (seemed insane to try starting a 2nd one, considering the costs). I added a 2nd lab, a 2nd workshop, a 2nd generator and a medical facility. Also built the first trio of aircraft and maybe had one suit of armor done. Lost 5 soldiers and hired 4 more. Did not hire any new scientists or engineers (couldn't afford it). Nothing in the first month increased panic levels in any of the countries so I made the standard payoff at the end of the first month. Looking at the paltry 1,330,000 I have to work with in the beginning of month 2, it's apparent I won't be getting a 2nd base started anywhere this month, either. For some reason, it looks like I'll need a third living quarters area just to have a comfortable rotation of soldiers in and out of the medbay and available to keep 10 man missions going throughout the month and also get maybe all my extra scientists and engineers hired if I'm lucky. I'm also noting it costs twice as much to build a storeroom as it does a hangar, and the same amount of time to build, even though the hangar is 4x larger than the storeroom is. And does that one drop ship take up all that hangar space all by itself? If so, I need to fire the genius pilot who decided to triple park the thing right in the middle of the hangar, when it looks like I ought to be able to squeeze two more aircraft in there with it. This looks like a complete gripe-fest, and I want to apologize for that. There are A LOT of things about the game I am thoroughly enjoying. I know if your scientists or engineers aren't busy they will make you back some money every hour, but aside from the early engineers playing the role of Maytag repairmen for the first week or two, that's not much of an early to mid game help. I would like to at least get a 2nd base off the ground before the 2nd month's completely gone, but it looks like I'll be lucky to flesh out the first base. Especially when a 2nd access lift is going to murder my budget.

Closed Beta, Version 13, 11 June 2020. Yes, same here. After the initial shot down ufo, I had just enough time to get back to base (and start fixing my interceptors) before an Aerial Terror Mission popped up, with 5 hrs mentioned to get there. My base is in North Africa and I sent out feelers to get 2 of the African and one of the Southern European uplinks going, but none of them had actually been completed yet, we were still several days away on each. As my two fighters started heading toward that first Aerial Terror Mission (location @ Southern Europe) 2 more Aerial Terror missions popped up, one right after the other. The 2nd Aerial Terror Mission was in Western Africa, with 6 hrs listed and quicker to get to, so I diverted my aircraft to respond to this one. The 3rd mission was down in between Central Africa / South Africa and also listed at 6 hrs. It didn't feel like even 5 hrs had passed and the game had a total conniption and complete Crash To Desktop. I've been staying away from the game for about 1/2 year maybe but I do like to drop in from time to time to see how it's progressing. This is a rather disappointing bug b/c it hits so soon after the game gets off the ground.

It has been a long while, but let me dig in my brain for what seemed like a working strat ... I do remember having the singularity cannon and mag weapons but never used the Hovertank on this .... First orders of business were to get those 2 side missions done ASAP ... it seems to me I used my units with the most APs to gallop over and put an end to those and then race back to their comrades ... can't remember how many I used for each side mission, it's been 2 long, but I used as few as possible on each side, b/c I employed a pile of people to slowly plod up the main hall while they were busy, setting up plenty of opportunities for reaction fire along the way. Once I had my side quest units back I think we had to turn on the jets to get the mission done, and it was a bloodbath on both sides most times I did it, but we always had at least a few survivors to toast the fallen along the way ....

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.

This also happened to me during a raid that aliens were conducting in South America. I had just gotten the combat shield technology done and had the engineers craft 2 of them for my assault troops. Clicking on either caused a pile of red text to immediately flare up on the screen (which I could not take a screen shot of) and then shortly afterwards the game CTD'ed. Alternatively, I tried using the TAB function to go from soldier to soldier instead of Mouse Click Select, but the same problem occurred when I would cycle to one of the shielded assault units.

Nice ... I read some of what was mentioned on that other post and it sounds pretty good - I would prefer attempting to 'sway' or 'recruit' engineers and scientists away from whatever government or business they were currently working for, rather than 'kidnap' them ... I can't imagine productivity being optimal when all the scientists / engineers learn that each of them working on the product is a burlap sack concussion case Any mission involving sending any of them out in the field afterwards might likely lead to escape attempts if this were the case. Or various 'accidents' among the overseers there at the base .... ahem ...

@wulf 21 Thanks for covering several of my questions there - I'll have to check out the extra post link you provided as well !

The little box things that show up at various parts of the world, give you an option to assign up to 3 of your soldiers to them, end up when time runs out with choice of 2 Scientists, 2 Engineers, or $500,000. A few things I'm really not following as far as these go ... 1) You can assign up to 3 soldiers to these, but you can still use the same soldiers to go on missions with you. That seems a bit odd. 2) Whether you assign 1, 2 or 3 soldiers to a resource mission, it doesn't seem to have any impact on how long the mission will take to finish. Three heads apparently not better than 1? 3) The missions are completely non-descriptive (this is probably just b/c there hasn't been a rush to flesh them out any yet, I'm betting). 4) That you get to pick each time between 2 SCI, 2 ENG or $500,000 seems a bit odd ... like all 3 of these things are waiting on standby with baited breath just to see what you will pick and what you will leave. 5) Some of these missions take a lot longer to do than others (assuming proximity to your base factors in here, but I put an air strip near one before deploying troops for it once and that didn't help cut the time down a bit, which also seems a bit odd. 6) There never seems any real reason WHY you need soldiers for these, or why you would ever need to assign more than just one, at any rate, since more does not bring down the time required to complete. Anyone else been puzzling over these?

In this newest Xeno2 version, it appears the laser pistols weigh 9 more than their Terran counterparts, whereas a laser rifle appears to weigh the exact same amount as a standard earthman's rifle.

VERSION V4.1 19 APRIL 2019 Post: I had just come off a previous run to kill 8 Psyons (and taking care of funeral arrangements for one poor guy) when we got the call for a Dockyard Incursion back on our primary base continent. The description said 6 Sebilians and 2 Sebilian Brutes, I think. Low & Behold, there was one Sebilian conveniently waiting there at the landing site to greet us. Killed him and spread out accordingly, leaving some TUs for opportunity fire. Hit end of turn and ... Crash to Desktop. It might've done one eyeblink worth of thinking before it went straight off to Desktop Land, but then again, that might've just been me eye-blinking as this game's been eating into my sleep! No Mods Were Used Gameplay Suggestions I don't recall our soldiers doing anything particularly odd or unusual during that first turn of play before the CTD.

Loving the new artwork and the exchange of gunfire when you first step off the chopper. Kudos for that, truly! My current quibble with the game is the doorway leading into that tiny alien ship you first encounter. Positioning on either side of the doorway doesn't help to get angular shots in at the defending enemy, the frame gets in the way. It also gets in the way if you'd like to lob a grenade from around the doorway from either side. It further gets in the way for people further back trying to take sniper shots through what would appear to be good LOS to the aliens inside. Short of positioning someone dead in front of the door and those a few squares back directly on the same path, there's very, very little chance of any angular interaction on the humans' side of things. Hoping this is just something you guys haven't had a lot of time to work on yet, and not a 'functioning as intended' thing. I'll try posting some pics later as 'for instances', once I can figure out why my Steam Screenshots doesn't want to let me do the standard 'copy-one-pic-link' that it usually lets me do ....