Max_Caine

So.... anyone else who's had experience of the Skyhawk got anything to say about it? Emily_F? chiroho? Ruggerman? I can't be the only one with a voice?! Or can I?

Double post I know, but...more opinions based on experience of Skyhawk The walls are both a boon and a bane I've used the Skyhawk as a bunker several times now. It's been pretty necessary in raids during the inital melee before I can expand outwards. At the same time, there's no room to manoevure inside the Skyhawk. I've said it several times now but it bears repeating - the way I choose the positioning of troops during setup seems to have an effect on the inital first few turns, because I can't make up easily for bad placement inside the Skyhawk. 10 soldiers seems enough.. then a little too much.. then enough again When starting the game, soldiers are horribly vulnerable. The first few games against Psyons had me loosing 3-4 soldiers per game. All a Psyon had to do is get a lucky hit in and that was it for the soldier, so 10 soldiers seemed enough to make up for losses. I got combat armour and started facing Sebillians, whose weapons are less effective against soldiers in combat armour than Psyons ad 10 soliders seemed to be a bit excessive. Then I faced Androns while I still had ballistic weapons and holy crap 10 soldiers weren't enough for 1 Andron, let alone the 12 in the raid. Bear in mind I've only got as far as probes and scouts - I've yet to face an observer or destroyer so I can't comment yet on wether 10 is enough/not enough for the larger class of ships.

Fiarly simple to reproduce. 1) Before a mission, equip two secondary items - I equipped a medpack and a smg. Place the medpack in the secondary slot and the smg in the backpack 2) During a mission, swap the medpack for the smg (in my case) around so the smg is in the secondary slot. You will find you cannot use the smg, but if you swap back, you can use the medpack.

This happen twice in the first mission I tried with the new update. Each time, the HEVY launcher guy contorted herself and fired a shot at her feet. The second time, she killed herself. Frustratingly, I don't think I have a save as I'm also trying out the Iron Man mode to see how that works - unless it saves anyway?

I do have more opinions, but I'd prefer to hold them back until the disappearing soldiers bug is completely worked out as that is a massive crimp on playing the game beyond the first few missions.

I'm interested to hear what people think of the starting ballistic weapons. I've been doing a little tweaking, especially with the pistol, but overall I'm fairly happy with ballistic weapons at the moment. What do other people think of the v7 ballistic weapons?

Emily, the file below is a modded version of the LMG which has the accuracy pushed up to sniper levels. Would you try a mission (it won't work properly if you use this in a mission) with this modded file? that way you can see if it's a problem with the game or if it's a case of tweaking the accuracy of the LMG to something more respectable. To use it, you have to copy it into the Xenonauts directory which if you're using steam is steam/steamapps/common/Xenonauts2/assets/assets/xenonauts/template/groundcombat/item/weapon/ . Before you copy the file, I would suggest making a backup of the original file so you can switch back easily. ballistic_lmg.json

There's a set of videos that Coffee Potato kindly did here, which focussed on laser weapons. These videos, for me, had the unintended side-effect of showing endgame of flat costs. You'll notice in those videos that while he shows off the laser tweaks, everyone else is armed with LMGs and they are absolutely shredding anything that comes into overwatch range. This is because they can get multiple salvos off in a single turn, as everything has a flat cost. Is that fun for a mission? Possibly. For a whole game? Probably not.

This save should have two grenades set up. One is near a Xenonaut next to a rocky outcropping. The other is near 2 Psyons. The one near the Xenonaut detonates, the other does not: P.S. Ruggerman, please keep comments about weapon features to the appropriate forum. user-6.json

See attached ironman save - just started a game, the start screen does not load on the continue button or when selected from save menu iron_man_black_flare-1.json

Well, it's been a week since I last had a chance to play, and it's still happening in 7.2. The most effective way I've to repoduce the error is: 1) Start game, go straight to equip screen 2) Select an infantryman and switch role to assault. 3) Select belt items from the right-hand equip tab, add a few grenades to the backpack then start randomly moving items back and forth, ensuring that you place an item on another item. (so move a grenade to a grenade). Sooner or later it will happen.

I actually spend quite a bit of time in the equipment screen. Firstly, there's usually some nifty bit of gear that's either researched or produced in between fights that I want to use, secondly I have quite a few soliders either going out or coming back from a strategic assignment and thirdly I don't like taking injured soliders into a fight. I take full advantage of the fact that soliders are classless: a solider that had an infantryman loadout last time might have that stripped out for an assault loadout because the last guy who had a shotgun is now healing his third-degree burns in the infirmary. Loadouts, for me are not static - they tend to evolve to match my tastes and whatever is the new hotness. The proposed design of the Skyhawk means there are far fewer ways to exit the dropship. It's now important what order to you put soliders in on the dropship, because whatever order they go in is what order they come out. I now spend a lot of time on the aircraft screen tweaking the setup. As fights start almost immediately around a dropship, if the wrong person comes out first that could be fatal in the ensuing firefight. As a consequence, I don't find the screen popping up before launchig an annoyance, because I do forget sometimes what order I have put troops in, so I find it helpful to have one last reminder. Perhaps make it an option on the options screen to pop-up, so people have some flexibility in this? My current "workflow" starts on the dropship screen. I choose a solider, flick to the equipment screen to tweak loadouts, then because I can't figure out on the equipment screen who is also on the dropship, I then have to flick back to the dropship screen, before going back to the equipment screen. This is, to my mind, is an inefficent use of my time. I'd like to really and truly to know on the equipment screen if a soldier is assigned to a dropship, and which one if they are. I'd like to know on the equipment screen if there are any multiples of the loadout I have equipped for the current soldier on the dropship they are on. Then when I've done fiddling about with the equipment screen, I'd like to move to the dropship screen and tweak the setup there so I have the soldiers placed as I like them. Knowing the ladout of each soldier would be very helpful.

"I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely his lips, follow me." - Giuseppe Garibaldi "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." - Nathan Hale "Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." - Heraclitus "Live for something rather than die for nothing." - George S. Patton Jr.

I see an issue arising from what has been discussed. Real-time combat requires a certain quickness of thought and responsive controls. X1 did not have responsive controls, so the quickness of thought might be there but you had to pause/unpause because the controls did not, perhaps could not respond in a timely manner to unfolding events. That fundamental issue needs to be addressed for X2 if you want to prevent pause/unpause issues. To help address that issue, I think UFOs might take a leaf from shmups. They could telegraph their more powerful attacks (e.g. plasma cannons powering up), identify which aircraft is currently targetted by the UFO, have attacks which have predictable patterns (e.g. flak cannons producing death clouds in a predictable manner) and even perhaps have a slow time feature where everything runs at 1/4 speed instead of being paused.

I finished the last level quite handily. I took mostly Predators, with as many particle cannons as I could carry and heavy MAG for the rest. After an opening salvo of singularity-powered mass destruction, I carved through the defences like a knife through butter and kept the pace up. You didn't need to be subtle, you just needed to blast through everything as quickly as possible and you could do that quite easily with endgame content. Operation Endgame was for me less a test of skill and more a demonstration of technological brutality. I'd like X2's Op: Endgame to have some level of skill, something that requires a little forethought that I can't just DAKKADAKKADAKKA my way through. EDIT: It helped a lot that the map design was basically a tube. Area-effect weapons love long tubes which cram all the defenders into smaller spaces, especially particle weapons and fusion grenades.