Max_Caine

I'd like to take a moment to talk about the weapon I use the very least, the submachinegun. The submachinegun could be a great secondary weapon to compliment pretty much any primary except perhaps the assault rifle. The problem as I see it is that there's nothing the submachinegun does that isn't done already by the primary set. The current statline has't changed pretty much since v1, and all it is at the moment is a cut-down version of an assault rifle. Some of it's biggest failures are it's expensive to use, easy to miss with and doesn't give enough bang for your buck. It's generally better to have a medkit and rely on your primary than get some use out of the secondary. I tried out a lot of different ways the submachine could compliment primary weapons and retain the feel of a submachinegun, and came up with the following: Remove all options except burst, and give the burst 4 shots: Most primary weapons have a single shot mode already, with the exception of the LMG. The submachinegun shouldn't be trying to compete with primary weapons that do a job probably better than the SMG can do. A burst fire of 4 shots slots alongside al primary weapon types, but won't directly compete with the LMG that has a higher ROF. Reduce the damage to 12: This ties directly into the first change. The original damage a submachinegun can do is 20. Improving the burst to 4 would make 20 hella OP. Reducing it to 12 wil give a maximum damage of 48. Testing you generally see damage between 20-30, depending on how many bullets hit the target. Increase accuracy to 65: After lots of tweaking, I found that the current burst accuracy of 45 is too low, but 70 or higher made the SMG too effective compared to primary weapons. An accruacy boost of 65 made the weapon more palatable and in the hands of skilled operators, deadly. Reduce burst cost to 20%: This is the biggie. The biggest change I made was to drastically reduce the cost of firing the weapon. This change is what makes the SMG favourable - it's now a cheap way to put a lot of lead downfield. In theory a solider standing still could empty the magazine and spray 20 shots everywhere. In practice, you're likely to get 2 bursts out in-between moving and using the primary. A soldier with an LMg as primary and SMG as secondary can use the LMG first then blast away with the SMG. The reduced damage makes the cheap shots less effective than it first seems. Verses Sebillians, it's takes a lot of fire from an SMG to put one down. I found that generally, using the primary first then folowing up with the SMG was the preferable option, but I could be proven wrong on this point. Reduce suppression damage to 5: It was importnat to drastically reduce the amount of suppression damage a SMG did, because it ws cheap and fired lots of shots. Dropping it from 20 to 5 seems drastic, but a burst now simulates what suppression damage it did anyway. Reduce range slightly: Primary weapons (with the exception of the shotgun) should have the lead on the SMG with regards to range. The submachinegun is supposed to compliment them after all, so I droped it from 16 to 12. This out it ahead of the shotgun, but ehind every other weapon. Reduce reload cost slightly: This altered SMG is the weapon you are most likely going to change mags for, so it made sense to reduce the cost of reloads slightly to compensate. I dropped it from 25 to 20. The sum total of all these changes makes the submachinegun a rapid, close-quarters assault weapon, lacking the punch of the shotgun or assault rifle but more than capable to tearing up targets with a hail of bullets. It's best paired with the LMG or the Sniper Rifle, but can go with any primary. Below is the modified version of the SMG, if anyone cares to give it try: ballistic_smg.json

This is a Raid with Andron/Gundrones. During the battle the game inexplicably CTD's, which is very annoying because even though I had ballistics my K/D was 3:1 and against Androns that's damn good! Output log detalling the CTD... output.log And savegames closest to the CTD groundcombat-160.json groundcombat-161.json

I would guess that GH wants to differentiate between the number of items is in stock and the amount of space those items take up. EDIT: Yeah, I'm pretty dang sure that QTY * STORAGE = amount of storage space that is taken up by that item line. There seems to be enough space to include the figure, so could that be included?

I've done quite a lot more combat since it was introduced in v9. As we're now on 9.3 would like to give some gaeplay related criticisms. 1) There needs to be some kind of visual trigger why a missile doesn't hit a target. An aircraft doing a flip, or a missile lock signal failing, or something just to show that a missile was evaded, otherwise it looks like a bug. 2) At the moment when I run out of fuel for an aircraft, it crawls towards an edge while the ufo runs rings around it. As the escape boundary is locked to the relative position of the ufo, my aircraft keeps changing direction and can never get closer to the exit. 3) I would suggest upping the top speed of falcons and phantoms - the ufos they can overtake are 5x faster in air combat than they are on the strategy screen, and it makes air combat horrible.

If you switch from one secondary type to another, the secondary you switch to does not activate. E.G. Take the sniper loadout, place the medikit into the secondary slot and the submachinegun in the backpack. If you replace the medkit with the submachinegun during combat, it does not activate. Below is a savegame starting a Raid where you can try this out. user-6.json

A few questions regarding classification and obsolescence of armour. As you noted, X1 armour was split up into light or heavy and each generation of armour made the previous generation obsolete. How would you classify armour types now in X2? Does tactical = light, wolf = medium and battlesuit = heavy, or are you hoping that each type of armour is a unique classification based upon the modules it can bring to the party? And regarding obsolescence.Is the plan for each of the three classes of armour remain relevant throughout the whole of the game or will some armours (e,g, tactical) be eventually obsolete?

So, another question regarding modules, this time within an armours' "ecosystem". Are all module combinations permissible within an armours' ecosystem or will there be either forbidden or detrimental combinations? The most obvious example of a potential forbidden/detrimental combination that leaps to mind would be combining jetpack and heavy armour. Either the suit is so heavy the jetpack can't give enough lift, or the suit is sufficiently heavy that the jetpack requires extra TUs to operate. Another possible forbidden/deterimental combination may be rebreather and visor. The nature of a rebreather mask may make a tactical visor either impossible to wear or impaired to fit around the mask.

Talking from a players perspective, I think I'd prefer having to build each item individually, but upgrade items en-masse. Even with relatively small amounts of items - say 20 for an A and B team, it would be fiddly to have to upgrade all of each item in turn and I'd never be sure that I got everything. I'd likely instead sell off all the current item and build a batch of the new stuff.

If I understand correctly, each armour type has X number of modules available to it, but not all module types are available to each armour type. Is that right? So tactical armour might have room for a jetpack, but a battlesuit wouldn't?

Concerning Converted Weapons I would disagree that there's no interestng niche for Converted weapons. I would say that they fill several roles. 1) They satisfy the emotional need for players to be able to use alien weapons. I'm sure you remember during X1 where alien weapons were specifically only intended to be used for a short time on the battlefield, and this caused enless strife as new players would pick up the game and ask, sometime rudely, why they couldn't use alien weapons outside of the battlefield they were picked up on. You're able to say "here you go, you can use them.". 2) They act as gateway weapons to future branches of the tech tree, and define the role of those branches. An alien weapon, whether mag or plasma introduces the player to to what human-research gauss/plasma tech is going to look like and sets the precedents by which such future tech will work. In essence, they act as tier 1 gauss/plasma weapons. As a good example, if you say right at the beginning, that alien plasma weapons have ammo that degenerates over time then when it gets to human plasma weapons there's no comparator which works otherwise. The Chief Scientist might be able to refine plasma tech to mitigate degeneration but he can't make it go away because if the aliens with all their high tech couldn't do it what chance does he stand? 3) They are quick-and-dirty solution for greater firepower. In current builds, when you face Andron (please keep the Andron scary! Please!) is clear you need better gear than ballistics but it could be true of both Pysons and Sebillians, if ballistics were just enough to fight Psyons/Sebillians but alien weapons would help provide an edge.

@Ruggerman. This is your opportunity to discuss the current balance of the game and your gameplay experience. Seeing as Chris will look at this feedback and evaluate it as part of the changes he plans to make during his pass through the game, would you not think that your time would be spent better actually commenting on your experience of the game as I have done rather than making as usual, throwaway comments that have no context or relation to the thread you post them in. I mean, if you want to throw away the opportunity to tell Chris about your experiences of the game and its current balance and then only later, after Chris makes his changes whine and dribble when it's too damn late then be my guest.

So, I could talk specific numbers but it's likely the dev team has access to more variables than I do, so I'll talk mostly in generailties: 1) Aliens should shoot more Aliens currently spend more time moving from cover to cover than they do shooting back. This is true of Sebillians, and especially true of Brutes. If X2 aliens have a minimum -to-hit like thy did in X1, then it seems like the aliens in X2 spend too much time trying to get to the point where they can hit a target. I don't know quite how you'd address this, as aliens in x2 have the same problem as they did before the minimu to-hit was introduced in x1. When an alien in X2 can hit a target, they stay where they are and spend all their TU shooting. Sometimes this is a good thing, but most of the time it makes them a sitting duck. 2) Brutes needs more dakka Sebillian Brutes are not scary. They don't fire their LMGs, they are too easy to suppress. I would suggest either doubling or tripling their current bravery to make them much harder to suppress, because once you suppress a Brute they sit their sucking their two thumbs. Even warriors have more fight than Brutes! They're supposed to be RAWR, instead they're roar . Also, somehow, force them to fire their LMGs more. This may be not how you picture it, but the Brute has some parallells to the humble Ork. Big, resilient, dumb, always up for a fight. I picture a Brute just blazing away and when it gets up close using its LMG as a club. 3) Human ballistics could stand to be nerfed a little re. damage After some interesting revelations from Solver, I experimented with ballistics a lot. The curent damage output from human weapons is a touch too high to make aliens fearsome. I've experimented with rifles doing 20pts damage per bullet, shotguns do 18 per pellet, LMGs doing 20 (the extra bullets per burst tend to multiply quickly), snipers doing 30. 4) Sub machinguns and pistols could stand some reworking As things stand, I don't currently need either pistols or submachinuns. The basic primary armament does the job, and by the time I get to shields I've usually got access to either laser or converted pistols. istols ad sub machineguns need to up their gam to be more competitie. I would suggest making pistols really cheap with their shots. That's not how actual pistols are, but it's a field they could compete in. Sub machinguns, I'm not certain about. Cheap bursts? 5) Give us a reason to manage ammo with human ballistics Solver is right - you never run through a magazine or belt with the current game. I've tried a couple of things - nerfing ballsitic damage and making it hella cheaper to shoot boolet but I'm inclined to agree that if there's going to be 10 soldiers then the magazine sizes need to drop a little. Perhaps 15 shots for the rifle, and 40 shots for a LMG belt. The two weapons I've come closest or actually had to reload have been the sniper and the shotgun. 5) Give lasers infinite ammo. I talk about this every balance thread, but I sincerely believe that setting the regenerate value the same as the cell size is the most unique thing you could do with lasers. I'd suggest with the laser sniper you give it a unique magazine with 1 shot (I've tried making this myself, but I'm missing something I make it both in the strategy and the ground combat folders, but I can't quite make it work - what am I missing?), making in effect a bolt-action weapon but seeing as it regenerates 1 shot each turn and each shot is very expensive that just makes it in-line with other lasers. I'd also suggest setting the laser LMG cell size to 5 shots. Not having to carry ammo and lightness could be the unique selling point of lasers, just like it was back in the Xcom days. 6) Rework Converted weapons TU usage and introduce other drawbacks The TU usage of converted weapons is currently too high. It makes them severely unattractive compared to ballistics, and you don't really need them until you run across Androns. Converted weapons could be an excellent bridge weapon type towards human equipment, and be the harbinger of gauss and plasma. I'd suggest introducing degeneration with the alien plasma weapon, so the 16-shot cell starts ticking down, and possibly as Solver suggests, make ammo limited and dependent on aliens. It might be an idea to make Cmag weapons heavier, to reflect that they are carried by the burly Sebillians and possibly make the Mag LMG so heavy that it can't be carried by a unassisted human into combat.

Description: On continuing an autosaved game, the game does not change from the intro screen music to the ground combat music, and CTD's during the alien turn: groundcombat-58.json

Possibly. Wherever Steam has put your copy of Xenonauts 2. The reason that I had to delete it root and branch is Steam occasionally does not delete or overwrite files correctly that I have modded, and will preserve the directory and files which then don't work with the latest update. mine is /steamapps/common/Xenonauts 2/ but I believe Steam now lets you access the folder(s) directly from the steam overlay. I think if you go into Library then right-click the game there's a manage option which lets you access the folder directly.

I experienced the same issue. My solution was not just to uninstall from Steam, but to dive into the Steam directory and manually delete the Xenonauts 2 directory, then start from scratch.