Chris

V17.6 (the current version) has a bug where it crashes if you're not connected to the internet. All previous and all future versions will work fine if you're offline.

What the hell, Max Caine? I'm not sure you should be allowed near artists ever again

I think you can raid them now, but I dunno. They'll work in the beta anyway.

"The Forever War" is one of my favourite books ever, certainly worth reading. EDIT: Actually, to avoid derailing the thread, Heldelance - can you create a new thread in Off-Topic if you want recommendations?

Strings.xml contains pretty much all the text strings in the game, aside from research descriptions (xenopedia.xml). Localisation should be fairly possible, but we'll see - it's not our highest priority right now as we've not finished the English version of the game.

We already have an updated transparency radius around soldiers that will be in the next build.

It's not possible to rotate the camera with 2D art, but we are working on ways to make the units more visible as we know it's not ideal at the moment. Grenades aren't functioning properly at the moment, and nor is C4 really - though UFO hulls are indestructible so you won't be able to blast your way in even in the final. The art doesn't work like that I'm afraid.

Hmm, you downloaded it through the Desura client, correct? If so, can you just check that you have V17.6hfix version? Plain old V17.6 was having this problem but the hotfix fixed it up in most cases.

I think we'll be disabling the damage system for this reason, or certainly removing the damage images. It'll be a lot more graphical art otherwise.

The reason why I wouldn't bother with this is that it means Radars and Power Stations aren't interchangeable. If you need to demolish one of your radars to replace it with something as you don't need the range, you can demolish any of them if they are interchangeable. If they are not, you HAVE to demolish the power station as they are useless without the radar. Plus it's more work and art costs, and less intuitive for a newbie.

Not read the whole thread, but the Hidden Movement screen isn't working properly at the moment. It should show everything that occurs within your line of sight when working correctly, and will only hide hidden movement.

Hmmm - Thomas, the level editor included is pretty much the version we're using at our end I think. Don't think there's been many changes to it since V17.6 was released. When is it crashing?

Meh, I might just reduce the capacity of the living quarters and the workshop / labs. I might be able to achieve something similar without sacrificing the extra level of control that comes with hiring / firing individual scientists and engineers. The radar change I'll probably go ahead with. The radars would give diminishing returns and would be capped at 4 per base, but as I don't see much to be gained from increased detection chance I think the only useful reason to build more radars is to extend range. I'm not particularly bothered by the lack of realism in this case.

A few good points here. I guess I can't have it both ways with the scientists / engineers, so if they came with the building they probably would have to work free as otherwise you lose the chance to shut down your labs when they're not being used to reduce maintennce without demolishing them. which means the cost would have to be frontloaded - initially expensive, less so afterwards. This would then lead to the management game being more about unlocking a series of permanent upgrades to your organisation, with money being the limiting factor. Do you want the new dropship that increases troop capacity, or do you want more scientists? You can only afford one, etc. This isn't inherently bad - as Erutan says, the new XCom was criticised not for how the base construction worked, but the fact that it baically WAS the entire strategy layer...

I don't see the appeal of managing living space. In this case you'd be limited by the work space available for the scientists, soldiers and engineers, I don't see why you need two limiting factors on it. What's the point of having the ability to hire scientists and engineers that you can't use?

The scientists / engineers aren't free, as the workshop / laboratories still have maintenance costs. And you can always build defence turrets in the non-military bases. No, you can only build structures in bases. @Gorlom - I can still see deleted messages

Right-click the Quick Grenade slot to choose which grenade you want. The quick reload button uses whatever clip your selected weapon uses.

This thread ties pretty heavily into this debate: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4109-Base-Simplification-Ideas?p=52344#post52344

During my playtesting, one of the things I've been thinking about is the use of the player's base. For a long time in development, the Xenonauts have been very well resourced - they start with enough cash to last several months, enough lab and workshop space to significantly expand their operations without needing new structures, plus a spare tank and three fighter jets. I think it was originally set up this way for realism's sake, but it's not much fun to play through. Now balancing has started, it's become about giving the player choices to make. In V17.6 you don't need to expand to hire more scientists or soldiers, but even if you did, you could easily afford to do both. This isn't interesting - there's no different playstyles or experimentation there. The conclusions I've come to is that we made everything on too large a scale, and now we need to downsize it. There's also needless complexity in some of the systems that doesn't actually add anything - we've just done it because that's how X-Com did it. This is currently what I'm thinking: Bases to be reduced in size from 7x7 to 6x6 Living Quarters to be abolished, replaced with Barracks that can hold 8 soldiers each. Laboratories / Workshops will hold 10 scientists / engineers, hired immediately on construction. Scientists and Engineers no longer have any monthly wages and do not fill living space. Radar buildings will now expand the radar range of a base, rather than improving detection chance. The starting base has 2 radars, so bases with only one radar have a smaller detection range. Garage buildings reduced to two vehicle capacity instead of 1. Player starts with only one Hunter, or perhaps even none. What's the point of this? The idea would be to reduce the scale of everything, so the player is making important decisions immediately. Want more scientists? You need a new lab. Or would you rather spend the money on building that MIG you've just researched? Or maybe you'd like a bit more radar coverage? You get the idea. Removing the scientists and engineers as a separate entity from the Workshop / Labs will simplify the base management, but I actually don't think it'll lose anything along the way. I was wedded to the idea of having individual control over scientists / engineers because X-Com did it, but the more I think about the more it's just more micromanagement. It's not like they can level up or change like the soldiers can, so why not just make it simple? Removing them as individual agents means that you can have more focus on the soldiers, and have a specific Barracks building that houses them (though they are hired / fired manually as before). The benefit I see of this is mostly that with a cap on the number of soldiers you can have (unless you build a second Barracks), you'll really appreciate each soldier. And if one ends up injured, you actually have to choose whether to nurse him back to health or to fire him and replace him with a weaker soldier who can be used immediately. The other large change is reducing the size of the base. This means you're just not going to have enough space for a base with a dropship, three interceptor bays, two labs, two workshops, two barracks and multiple radars. You'll have to specialise your bases - which should stop the single-base syndrome that frequently afflicted X-Com. Oh, and the radars - I think this would be another good change. Currently there's no real reason to build multiple radars, but in this system you'd get the choice between building a second base or expanding the reach of your first one. I think these changes would keep things fast and easy to understand on the Geoscape, but it won't make the game any less deep. If people have thoughts on it, feel free to post them - but if you're going to object to the plans, please give a more compelling reason than "X-Com did it that way"! EDIT - for clarity, these ideas have been put on hold until we've tried balancing the existing system more tightly in beta...except the radar changes, which will probably be implemented.

They've not even got the product on their webpage any more, I don't think they have any interest in it whatsoever. Thankfully I backed up the installer as otherwise it would have been difficult to get at...

In the next build the Invasion / Mig research should happen in about three days, so those guys should be busy building a MiG within 72 hours of the game starting. Hopefully it won't be such as issue then.

I'd suggest re-downloading or validating the files, 1) and 3) don't seem to be affecting anyone else as far as I can see...

Fighters shouldn't glitch in the current build, and the air superiority missions have been set to spawn only once per wave now so they're not such a ridiculous problem as they were before. The only actively aggressive missions are the air superiority ones, but I think that's actually a good thing because they are a pain in the ass and overuse of them is just going to be frustrating for the player.

StellarRat - that's something we'll think about in beta, as it's not actually a bug or a usability issue. Let's get there first and then I'll sit down and think about it. That might be a good solution though, suggest it again when I open the beta forums. Everyone else - I don't know exactly when beta will be. I'm thinking roughly a month, so late March.

Updated, thanks for the info.