I understand this expansion is for sadistic players and I am not its target audience. This feedback is based on my experience to try, learn, save scum, mod to my liking and cheat through it, which probably not worth much attention (at least read bug section).
[AIR COMBAT]
I tried hard and still can’t appreciate the new air combat. Seeing not that rewarding in saving repair time or squadron size, I turn on Easy Airgame.
The learning curve is so steep that new player has no idea what went wrong. Is it player skill? craft loadout? tech level? not a clue. There aren’t enough advice in xpedia for aircraft and loadout choices. Player was gambling in research and loadout that may be too late to revise (against construction/terror/base assault). How about revealing the minimum requirements of every encounter? Then player can work their skill up there.
Even if I imagine myself mastering the cumbersome UI, I will still need to spend 10+ minutes on every encounter. Let alone the supposed time saving auto-resolve didn’t fair, my best equipped firebird can’t score 50% against the lowest light scout. There is nearly no strategic auto-resolve win for sending the right crafts with right loadout to the right ufos.
[GROUND COMBAT]
What’s wrong with the nauts' kneels? Crouching cost as much time as moving two tiles, which discourage usage of the crouch mechanics, make game dull and not xcom-ish. I would rather nerfing the benefits of crouch than increasing its cost. Seriously, what’s wrong with the nauts' kneels? What’s the point of doubling crouch facing TU? I used to crouch facing to cut animation.
There is too much capturing, list checking, spawning, similar skins, wandering into overwatch and fruitless researches. Would it be much easier to follow if changing tech tree into OfficerInterrogation1, 2, 3 instead?
Lack of inventory space. Soldiers need their backpack for alternative damage type and ammo clips for the ever inflating enemy hp/resistance. There isn’t much room left for situational equipment and interesting tactic. Interestingly, despite antimatter weapon remove the resistance mechanics, the game feel more vivid with more toys to play with.
In theory caesan shield rewards flanking, in practice caesan just turn his face to the flanker make me save no damage either case. I could better off forget about the mechanic and attack him head on, unless I could sandwish him or able to one hit kill which never happen.
Andron doesn’t feature unique tactic to fight against. They have no clear weakness and require tedious peeling. That tactic has already been taken by tank/hvydrone. Fighting against andron isn’t fun or rewarding, they doesn’t feature specialists to capture, will destroy loots on transform, and require a high ammo loadout.
[BALANCE]
The accuracy of division sniper is too low comparing to laser equivalent or division rifle.
Antimatter is too good in accuracy and too good in saving space.
Shotgun's position is weird. With melee being the choice of close range, shotgun becomes a supplement stun rod which can’t function on its own. I would rather see using shotgun to tear down resistance/suppression/preliminary stunning from mid-range then using high risk stun rod to do the finishing. Besides, there is no place for the weaker of ballistic/energy variation.
EMP branch is not practical for now. EMPs are not scalable, have low acc and reflex, deal less damage than the universal applicable energy weapon or explosive.
Is it really necessary to have so many type of ammo clip? What should my mule carry?
What’s the position of predator armor? It has no TU reduction for firing, no singularity cannon to equip and has reflex penalty. Shield unit would tank better, wolf armor would shot faster, and heavy weapon already come with reaction penalty.
The endgame dragged too long and nothing interesting happened. In xce, I used to having endgame mission in place and waiting singularity at leisure. In x-div, even with am.mk4 in hand, cyclone&archelon at bay and researcher on leave, the endgame still took months to come. Please consider any 2 of terrordreadnought/dreadnought/mothership/infiltrator and any 2 of praetor base/terror/fleet/overmind and a shorter final research.
[MISC/WHINING]
DataHack## Function.Chance. I understand those are to fill tech tree holes but it still doesn’t justify adding unleverageable RNG on top of spawning RNG.
Please add some usage tips and comparative info to item xpedia. e.g. smg: suppression alterative of pistol, mech: designated weapons only, f17: not replaceable with foxtrot, katana: not as good as axe, shotgun: not what used to be in xce.
Please add some enemy stats to interrogation/vivisection xpedia such as TU, HP, resistance and AddDamageBonus.
Lore wise, some enemy resistance doesn’t make sense. Drones/RoboReapers/Cyberdiscs are weak to kinetic, despite being as robotic as andron. Aren’t sebillians blind to fire in xce? They are comfortably wielding flamethrower now. Why am I harvesting toxin glands from reaper instead of xenomorphs? Xenos are those spreading acid all over the place, reaper just want to hug and share love.
The protector of humanity will never ever let pass a single terror ship, unless for antimatter...
999turns to reveal terror/base map... xenonauts are tasked to save city from terror not checking every street corner for pest. Rules like holding ufo for turns to win, capturing alien base headquarter to reveal are to cut boring play time.
DSB is busy work. Instead of having hundreds of unique dsb items, is it possible to aggregate into some universal unprocessed items? The storage screen took me 10+ seconds for every open/sort/transfer.
Too much grinding for components. I would prefer dsb some lower tier equipment for components instead of holding up on spending.
Raiding alien base reward is not good enough after the first. And there is little reason to let base growth.
Infiltrator has no ground battle
Reaction melee didn’t work
Is it possible to add some custom rocket launchers loaded with various rockets on default? (as a workaround to the default rocket launcher loadout reset)
[LIKE]
Aggressive grenade AI
Heavy weapon has low reaction
Xenomorph, those suicidal xeno bomber, setting up overwatch outside a xenomorph ufo before turn4, and executing xeno host in a crown of normal citizen.
Unlock new equipments/aircrafts for taking optional challenging missions. Sadly those are pretty much mandatory in tackling limited backpack space (am.weapon) and harsh airgame (firebird&cyclone).
[BUG]
You will never unlock singular weapons. There is a typo in researches.xml weapon.AlienEx(t)Grenade
Vehicles cannot equip singularity rocket because of missing (VV.)SINGULARROCKET in vehicles.xml
Still can't figure why can’t I unlock Researches.AV.PARTICLECANNON
Cyclone can’t evade in EasyAirgame
Two-hand melee weapon is equipped as two single-hand weapon on main-hand and off-hand (dual-wielding please? :D). Each item on hands can be removed separately (duplicating items). Placing another item to main-hand while off-hand holding such melee weapon will cause both to disappear.
Some variation of two-story ufo will have persistence roof blocking interior view in roof/normal mode view setting.
Xenogueen may not spawn when her host killed.
Despite wearing armor highly resistant to fire/emp cloud, pathfinding will still try to avoid fire/emp which I don’t recall happened in xce.
The sort button in soldier screen is missing.
