Chris

Yeah. New versions almost always break existing save games, unfortunately, as there's usually changes made to the save / load code whenever a new feature goes into the game. You'll need to start a new game, not really much we can do about that I'm afraid.

Glad you like it - we spent quite a lot of time on them. The Praetor will have one, but it'll be an interrogation image rather than a standard analysis image. Out of interest, how are they different to how you imagined them to be?

I will be adding new loading tips overnight. Also, let us know how the 25% reduction in UFOs plays out in the next 12-24 hours if you get a chance. Providing there are no major bugs this version will likely become V20 Stable unless the balance has been screwed over. Still a few things to do in January before release, but we are indeed getting closer! EDIT: OK, so there are three major issues I can reproduce and confirm on my machine so far. The most important is that save games are misbehaving: 1) If you create / load a game, then go back to the main menu screen and create another game, the new game is screwed up. Your starting base is set up as if it was a newly-built secondary base and crash sites etc do not appear correctly on the map. 2) ALL save games loaded in the system will crash if you try to load a ground combat, and will also contain invisible UFOs and various other issues. 3) If you hire new soldiers at the start of the game, while they are en-route to the base you are unable to click the Unassigned category on the Soldier Equip screen. If you are getting crashes in games where you have not loaded the game and have just booted the game up, then those are further issues. However I imagine the save game problems explain most of the CTDs reported in this thread.

Mooton - As Aaron mentions above, Jackal armour gives 35 protection and Wolf gives 65 protection, and a noncom has 60 HP and an elite has 200 HP. They both have the same armour value so it's only 300% of the original figure, not 500% of it. A human plasma weapon does just over twice as much much damage as a ballistic weapon so even if you don't have MAG weapons when you're fighting Elite enemies they've only increased in toughness by 50% relatively. That's not to say your argument doesn't have merit, but every shot does between 50-150% of normal damage. You may just be being unlucky with the RNG. I'd take a look at the stats of the various items if you think it's more than that as it might help us focus in on what the specific issues are. It's a possibility that the weapons are not strong enough compared to the aliens. Maybe the aliens just need to go down faster in all parts of the game?

Bit cheap to be able to open it, see the aliens on the other side, then just shut the door again (to avoid reaction fire) though

At present UFOs are assigned to funding regions totally at random. So a base in just North America isn't currently optimal - it's only one funding block out of 8-9 of them...albeit not one you want to lose.

Clear the UFO of aliens and leave a unit inside it for 5 turns. You should win the mission automatically.

I think your views are coloured, to an extent, by rose-tinted glasses. Once you've played the original game a few times you'll find it has extremely poor balance. You can rush Plasma Cannons for your interceptors and Heavy Plasmas for your soldiers almost immediately, making 90% of the research tree irrelevant...and the national funding is largely irrelevant because you can just manufacture and sell gear from special bases set up to do that. Fundamentally I wouldn't say either were good things. They're exploits or bad design choices more than alternative playstyles, although they allow them, because they are by far and away the best way to play the game. Your point about air combat has been noted, but I'm not sure I see a viable way of changing the game without reverting to X-Com's original system where the invasion involved about 20 UFOs and perhaps three interceptors throughout the entire game. I don't think that's inherently better either. But I'll think about the issue, anyway. It's something that does get raised a lot and the opinions of new posters are always particularly valuable. EDIT - actually, we'll just reduce the number of UFOs in the next build. You still need the same amount of radar coverage, but you don't need as many planes and hangars that way.

This isn't a high priority feature, but I don't see any particular reason why we shouldn't implement it. There's not really any gameplay reason why the player should be obliged to click the airstrike every time (though I don't see any reason to remove the airstrike button on the pop-up either).

Hmm. It shouldn't really be necessary to spam explosives, but Aaron is making new maps for them at the moment and we'll try and rebalance them at the same time. It may be that there's too many aliens with Aggressive settings in the missions.

It's unlocked with the Alien Alloys research.

Even the in-game lore says that the Plasma Cannon can be fired four times without needing to be reloaded, so that's a pretty poor argument for us putting in a feature that (for reasons explained elsewhere) I don't see much reason to implement. Rather, your argument says that you think the TU cost for firing the weapon should be increased so it can only be fired once per turn. Quite possibly, but once again the unlimited ammo of the aliens is of no real relevance to the discussion. Solver is actually correct about the doors in the OG too - to right-click was only added in TFTD, although it's such a natural feature it's difficult to imagine a game without it once you've experienced it. Reaction fire for opening doors probably is a good thing to add. I didn't realise it did not currently trigger it. Your thoughts on the other stuff I've read but are primarily something for Aaron to look at (I've pointed him at it). However, it's quite amusing that you complain about the ramp-up in weapons and armour being too high and therefore upgrades are too important, but also that the key to the game is air superiority. Surely reducing the necessity for battlefield upgrades is just going to make air superiority relatively even more important?

Lightzy - no, sadly there isn't. They're not treated as cover so much as very thin walls that don't block LOS, so it's not really possible. Cover in the game is basically waist high stuff you can crouch behind and fire over, either filling a full tile or one edge of a tile. Trees sit on diagonals and fill 1/9th of a tile, so they're a bit awkward and are a bit of a special case with regards to the cover system (they don't fit well on a grid of square tiles).

C4 was moved to a gas grenade type explosion recently so you couldn't kill units with the blast from underneath or beyond thick walls. Seems it has had some unintended effects. crashed97tsi - the relations boost for ground missions was moved to the initial shooting down of the UFO in the first place. Under the old system, the economics still wouldn't have added up, but you'd have had to grind every single crash site to find that out. So your thoughts on the economic issues may well be completely valid, but I don't think you've identified the root of the problem correctly. If the economics are unsustainable, we just need to provide more of a boost for shooting down UFOs. Glad you like the game!

Yeah, it's likely old maps. Delete the maps folder and update again and the problem will disappear.

OK. I think I know the cause of this actually.

Only the Stables are available on Mac / Linux, so at the moment the latest version you can play is V19 Stable. You'll need to get it from Desura or the Humble Store as they're not on Steam yet - given you have a medal you should have access to one or the other?

Steam screenshot function should work - just press F12!

Yeah, had a chat to Aaron and we didn't realise the accuracy multiplier was not set to 1. We're reducing it down now and hopefully it'll add some differentiation between different zoom levels again.

I must admit I'm not entirely sure those accuracy buffs were intentional. I suspect the coder might have committed the global accuracy boost code with random values in it just before we released the build, and it sneaked into the public build without us noticing. Still, it's good to know that more accuracy is generally better - but I suspect we'd prefer a value closer to a 1.5 multiplier than the current 2 / 2.5 multipliers. We'll have a look though. EDIT - they're just at the top of weapons_gc.xml if you want to tweak them yourselves and experiment, btw. They're intended as a quick way for us to test how different gameplay feels with all the weapons in different "bands" of accuracy.

Pretty sure this is fixed in the Experimental version, so it'll be fixed when the next Stable build comes out in a week or so!

True, but then I don't really see what value has been gained from giving them limited ammo? I understand that people don't like the idea of a system where the aliens don't fight fair...it just kinda feels "wrong" when you find out about it. However, I think people are over-estimating the difference giving the aliens limited ammo would make to the game. I honestly think the difference would be negligible. In any case, it is useful for us to have the discussion and we do appreciate the feedback the community gives us on our product (even if we occasionally appear to disregard it entirely and do what we want instead). It's better than having mindless fanbois and it's certainly better than having no fans at all!

We've had a number of people email us about this problem, but I don't know what to suggest. You've restarted Steam and tried right-click >> validate files too? If you find a solution please let me know.

Out of interest, is that a new save or an old one? Saves from prior to Experimental 8 are likely to have problems in them if loaded in this version.

It's an oft-requested feature, but not one that's an easy thing to implement unfortunately. The OG has equipment assigned to dropships instead of soldiers, which is why they don't have permanent loadouts and you have that 80 item limit for your whole team. When we designed Xenonauts we decided it'd be much smarter to have the equipment assigned to individual soldiers instead. And it is - but it means we don't assign inventory items to dropships like the original game does. Long story short, it is something we'd possibly consider doing but it would be quite a lot more work than you're expecting. Plus also involving new UI elements, which is it bit tricky to do now the "final" UI is in place.