Lightzy

1) That the hit % is displaying and possibly calculating incorrectly is surely a bug, no? 2) I find it annoying that the moment an alien sees me, if I let it survive the turn, then all the aliens from all across the map will be shooting at my guy. Most of the damage I take I think (and almost all the damage I dish out to the aliens) is done by units with are well out of sight range. Squad sight is a good thing, but either the ranges for weapons are too long or the maps are too small or something. I think that the sight range should be as long as the normal rifle effective range, and possibly all effective ranges reduced drastically 3) cover is too important. Even a complete rookie sniper with 60 aim score, with the starting sniper rifle, can get 85-95% hit on a target beyond his rifle effective range if it's not in cover. Aliens completely destroy you if a soldier is out of cover too, with their one shot kills which usually hit. But once in cover, hit chances drop to 0-20% and nearly all your shots miss. I know cover is truly that important, but it makes for annoying gameplay. Hit chances against units out of cover should be reduced a bit, at least. 4) ROCKET LAUNCHERS! they're too awesome. They destroy cover (which is uberly important), they kill aliens, they suffocate and cook them the next turn if they haven't killed them this turn, or at least make them run out of the smoke and fire which wastes all their action points, they have infinite range and are totally free of charge, and they serve as lethal flares as well, spotting aliens for your team at night, and also area effect damage! I always got rockets, 3-4 units. I'd take more but it feels a little broken already when I don't have to care about aliens being or not being in cover or in any sort of sensible range. 5) points for ground missions seem a bit off.. I suppose there hasn't been any balancing for this yet. the 100 for securing or not securing the UFO are the only factor that decides the mission really. Everything else is like, 1, 2 points here and there..

Making ammo cost to buy/produce is not necessarily about play-balance and difficulty.. it's more about immersion and the feel of the game, I think. True it's a 'unnecessary chore', but then so is pretty much everything else from research to production to missions even. If you wanted to balance the game out perfectly you could just make all research linear, not need scientists but rather automatic, etc. But because you're given stuff to manage, the game becomes a game to you, a fuller experience.

I d/ld xenonauts for the first time today through desura, and my launcher says "v18 hotfix 1 -4 april 2013", but that makes no sense because since then there's been updates. so.. what version am I playing really? is the text in the launcher not updated? is the version really old? why am i playing an old version then and how to get the new one, etc etc thanks!

This letsplay is why i finally broke and preordered xenonauts well done. MAD MURRAY! RRRARRRRR PS: I have a feeling that watching these letsplays is going to be even more fun than actually playing the game. do continue

Maybe you could have one in 100 soldiers who is psionic, so it is not unbalancing, and makes for an awesomer game Protect xavier!!

8 bases?!?!? I always put my main base in Jerusalem. Towards the end of the game I tended to build another one in the USA if they haven't abandoned me yet, but it was just for show. I was getting so much money from selling heavy plasma guns and orbs that I didn't need any nations helping out really. By then I was just waiting for research and psi-training for the final mission to rack up..

Totally agree with the OP The game should have a narrative to it. A storyline.. At first aliens should be very rare and you'd get nearly no funding, then based on success you get more funding, then slowly the invasion starts becoming more and more serious at which point your in X-Com territory with governments singing deals with the aliens if you fail to score enough points etc For someone who's never played X-Com, it should be an adventure and a story led experience. We who are XCOM veterans don't tend to keep these ppl in mind

Gorlom, I think it's a brilliant idea not to bother with the semantics so much. Call it what you will, What I think would further the enjoyment from ground missions and so make people want to play them more is "Special Missions" that are either part of the story (like, instead of 1 final mission, have ... 5 of those, unique story missions) Or, have missions just like that, only that you don't HAVE to do them. They pop up randomly each playthrough They are extra tough, but they give you special rewards if you complete them (not to mention unique tactical gameplay, because the map is custom-made and so will likely be a lot more interesting and engaging than a random made one) I don't understand what's so wrong with that. If anything was missing for me from the original x-com it's more interesting missions and the jagged alliance 2 combat system A JA2-Xcom hybrid is my ultimate wishlist game PS: As for penalizing the player for events he has no control over, well, as an X-Com veteran I don't mind that at all. It's what life and Xcom are all about. Never had your best 2 soldiers 1-shot killed the moment they stepped out of the avenger? Or one of your crew going berzerk and backshooting 2 squadmates? I went through a lot of soldiers in X-Com. If you mind it so much you can always save-reload

I think you might have been baffled because you're confusing 'scripted mission' with 'non-interactive-movie-film' or perhaps you've never played a scripted mission in a game A scripted mission still gives the player all the freedom to achieve the 'scripted' objectives in various ways. A Call of Duty mission, for example, is *very* scripted, and yet the player has the options of which guns to use, how to use them, where to go when, etc. It is still a game. Also a warcraft mission is scripted. etc etc. It follows a script. A scripted mission basically sets you objectives and various 'scripted events' which occur as you complete of fail certain objectives. This is in order to give you a story to play through I hope that clears up what I meant!

Yep you'd have a few for plot-advancement which are necessary like the final mission And a lot more which are just for fun. And a scripted mission will, unlike what you say, not play the same. when have u ever seen a scripted mission play the same? The final mission in xcom is a 'scripted mission' where you have to go from here to there, then to there, then to find something, then to find something else in a different map and kill it.

What I'm saying is that if the missions were more engaging, you wouldn't be thinking "I can do as few or as many as I wish", because you'd just want to do them! because they're so fun and engaging The fact that they were pretty much the same is what leads to the 'I can do as many as I wish' thing nothing wrong with having more awesomer missions that u'd just want to do, so that it wouldn't even occur to you not to do it, just because it's so good and challenging and interesting. that's all I'm saying!

I personally loved that finally I have an OBJECTIVE to a mission, like capturing a captain/commander as to 350, i was just saying a random number, it doesn't matter, just so long as its there, because unique missions help alleviate the repetitiveness of the ground mission process. In fact I'm sure none of you would have said something like "none of the missions should be game stoppers f you choose not to do it" etc if the original X-COM had a bunch of fun missions. what we all remember is the repetitiveness of the ground missions and so assume this is the future too and so that we should be able to not do any. if it was fun, we'd WANT MORE

Well the original X-COM had 3 mandatory as part of the plotline ---> capture a captain, capture a commander (in a base), final mission Here you COULD expand the plotline to include a couple more interesting and possibly yes, more scripted missions. And also add as many as you want, say 350 unique missions, none of which are mandatory for you to take and not all appearing in one playthrough like any other ground combat mission :> In XCOM I think I'd have about a set number of ground missions I ended up doing per game. It was possibly the base minimum to score enough points for funding and get enough alien equipment to sell so I'd be even richer. I don't recall now an exact number but I don't think I ever went on more than maybe 20-30 ground missions in a single xcom game before the final one

Well you get the point. Missions that come up once in a while to make the game better, less formulaic, more intriguing.. and to stave off the problem which has been complained about before --- how to make missions less repetitive. I bet you guys can think of some awesome "serious" stuff. 1) a special mission to a unique alien research base that grants you a unique piece of powerful equipment that is impossible to reproduce 2) a mission to the north pole, to sanitize a compound where an extraordinarily dangerous alien life-form is found ("The Thing".. seen it???)

Also, to make the game more fun, please post in my thread "more scripted/unique missions"

Like you have the town-terror thing, the base defence, and the final mission.. Well, why not have more types or even absolutely unique missions? For example 1) a mission where you have to escort villagers out of a raided town 2) a mission to explore a hidden cave where ancient human-kind recorded contact with aliens, to search for some information that could help you defeat the aliens 3) a cooking competition (a la pizza tycoon) against various alien race commanders 4) a mission to raid a special type of alien base where humans are experimented on to rescue some ULTRA ELITE, HUGE PSY-RATING humans which the aliens have captured for study 5) a mission inside an egyptian pyramid or aztec .. er.. something 6) a mission to machu-pichu 7) STEALTH MISSIONS! To install a computer virus on an alien ship/base computer, UNDETECTED. 8) A mission to wobbly bobbly boop

Ideally the game should be paced so that there's not much in the way of unnecessary missions for filler which make the whole game 'meh' later on. I liked how in the original it was paced pretty much perfectly; 1)You had the first few missions against weak enemies, gathered artifacts and started researching.. 2)You were limited by the pace of research and the need to do ground missions to heighten your rating (not to lose funding) 3)By the time your research was progressing nicely you were starting to down large ufos, which made missions exciting because you wouldn't get to fight (or at least win against) large ufos on the ground. 4) you were sent especially to get the larger ships, too, by the plotline 5) by the time you were done on research you were ready for the final mission And so the whole process was very nicely paced in order to not become too repetitive, although it DID get a bit repetitive sometimes