thothkins

Thanks Chris. Working a lot better for me so far. Have a great Yuletide!

I'm with StellarRat. I keep my rocketeer back a little, but I will splat the alien if I think one of my troops is in any real danger.

When this has come up previously, along with stats for Scientists and Vehicle Drivers, the feeling has been that the game is trying to focus most on the soldiers experience on the Battlescape, and their experience against the invaders, much as the original game did. I really liked the scientist skills in Apocalypse...>sigh<

Great work guys.

the more I play it the more I dislike it, to the point of now finding it worse than the combat in the OG. Alien Passivity I agree here. There's a lack of fire from them generally. They do make better use of cover than previously. But they don't take advantage of situations where my soldiers are exposed. I'm only on light scouts in the new build, but it's a lot easier to take out UFO occupants than before. I've not seen the aliens come out and fight, even when they are being picked off. So, the passive ones don't seem to have a plan and the aggressive ones don;t press advantages (although cover is used far more.) Using Cover I agree, but then I use cover a lot more in Xenonauts to avoid getting shot at, so it's possibly working as intended. I don;t get pinned down much I notice though. Alien passivity as above. Alien Stats I disagree on this one. I like having them this tough to add to the challenge in the earlier part of the game. If their stats ramp up through their ranks, then the challenge should be there later as well. If the AI gets tweaked a little to be less passive, there will some great game moments trying to kill them off. They will be tough and dangerous. Reaction Fire It's not something I use too frequently, due to playing style, but it has been effective in UFO scenarios where the aliens have come out to be faced with a hail of gunfire. Reapers If they are still as tough, and can show up anywhere and have plenty of APs they may be too strong for players. Gong back to earlier points, if the way to beat Reapers is to hang around the Chinook because other aliens won't do anything, then perhaps changing the aggressiveness of the other aliens is the issue. Changing that would negate that player tactic, forcing them to go out and face Reapers on the move. Squad Size My memory cell tells me it got cut from ten to eight as it was felt that the Xenonauts were too strong for the aliens in previous versions. Too many soldiers for the map sizes was also mentioned. The latter at least seem to be no longer an issue as you point out. I don't bother researching the vehicles either, as I prefer focusing on getting an experienced squad. I have found the maps a little longer in this build. With the AI this hasn't caused to many issues, but should the aliens start wandering a bit more, then I could see myself having to be much more cautious and sweep the battlescape more thoroughly as I go. That's something I don;t mind doing. The maps aren't long enough for me to lose much in the way of tension at present. I did like 10 though, especially as the Chinook is used for such a long part of the game. I generally play on normal, just as it's the vanilla setting. Even there it's possible to lose 1 a mission if you're not careful. So I'd be cautious about amplifying the difficulty too much from there. The OG was a more tense experience. This is partly the maps. Claustrophobic Farms, with hedgerows and roofs for aliens to snipe from. More tactically challenging UFO interiors. Closely packed industrial terror sites with long ranging Chrysalids. But there's a map pack there, so variety won't be an issue for long. There's been changes in the maps since the last build I played. So, I'm having fun with that. It's partly the AI, some of which is touched upon as above. You can see that a lot of work has been put in. It's a fine line between aliens not firing quite enough and your soldier's constantly getting mown down by aliens who use cover better than you do. I'll have a clearer picture of all this when I get up to the larger ships to see how well the aliens defend those on this build. I'm not seeing anything that's broken as such.

I thought that equipment soldiers and roles looked much better, and worked more smoothly, in the current build than previously.

I pick pretty much the same troops each play through. Although it's the difference of a few points, some are easily tagged as Sniper, Heavy Weapons, Scouts, Assault and Shield soldiers. Some of those roles change depending on how they do during the missions. I like that the troops are versatile and can go on to excel in other areas, compared to someone who's so clearly a sniper from the start, that there's no other real equipment option for them. So, this isn't something I've had any issues with really. In fact, I'd argue that having to monitor the soldiers early development that bit more, helps to make them stand out. The flag thing came up before the current UI was in place, and didn't make it. Neither did a little player notes field to capture the story of each soldier, while I'm going off on a tangent to the Land of Whine.

Everything in place on a reload and ground mission commenced. However CTD at the end of the mission.

Local forces invite the Xenonauts to a mission. Selected deploy team from North Africa No icon shown for the mission. Chinook goes to the soviet union , where the mission presumably is/was. Chinook sits there with near infinite fuel. There are no other interceptions for the next week and a half and the game finally CTD around 24/9.

Following save issues. Loaded up last combat save. Played mission. Chinook engaged a landed mission before returning to base resulting in a CTD.

Confirm on the LOS - as stated simply selecting a soldier and turning/moving them clears it. Confirm on the CTD following a save after a ground mission + game no longer loads.

In an abstract way - as the Chinook makes it's way more slowly across the globe, the extra soldier is raced across by jet and dropped off at a rendezvous point. The Chinook stops for a few moments to pick them up and it's in it's way again. Not the sort of thing you'd want to bother the player with. Just getting a reason in there, in case it's a "feature" and not a "bug"

In a way it's been nice to have had something to look forward to for such a long time

I do agree that you would want to cover as many options as possible when going to an unknown site, against unknown foes. In practise, I used the extra dropship capacity once in all of the X-Com games I played. I've felt the need for it on a couple of occasions in this game. At least one of those was going through scatter laser ammo faster than I thought I would. On the other occasions it was on builds where starting troops could also get armour, making weight more of an issue. Currently I carry plenty of spare ammo and there's plenty of versatility in the squad. With the additional option of picking up and using alien weapons, it's even less of an issue.

It's a very small ring, you know It's a out of date doughnut being heated for eternity in the world's tackiest fun fare.

There is a separate circle of hades for grammar police mordenkien. The eternal fires are one thing, but enduring it with picky people is just too much

I had a soldier killed in my first mission. The chinook is returning to base. I select the replacement soldier for the one killed on at the base. I then go to a new crash site without returning to base, and my new recruit is part of the team.

That was playing from Steam. When I played direct from PC without Steam I didn't have any issues.

First UFO mission. CTD when over half way through loading mission on first attempt, following successful interception Crashes after a few seconds loading on subsequent attempts.

My starting base in my first game in v20

Oh that's nice. I vanish for six weeks and mordenkien doesn't notice the gaping void in his life. I'm just buring with rage

thanks for the warm welcome guys.

The recent screenies don't do much for me. Maybe I've been waiting so many years my taste has changed. Or perhaps it's the changes behind the scenes when Battle for mercury was unveiled.

Cold out today. If only I knew of a thread where I could go to warm my hands up a bit.

All the very best Gizmo. It's been great having you here. Have a great time and I look forward to hearing all about in in 2015. That's not far away really. You'll have picked up all the hints you need about tactics to get away from anything unsafe, just by playing Xenonauts, so you'll be fine