Demnevanni

I've noticed that, presumably since a weapon's ammo level only affects that weapon's strength and not the whole interceptor's, you can use the autoresolve to shoot down UFOs without actually carrying any ammo. I've been able to destroy a whole bunch of simultanous scouts with one Foxtrot that way, by scrambling it without waiting for it to rearm. That's another thing that would be fixed by Gauddlike's suggestion.

Are there any plans to mention the Sebillians' smoke immunity in their Xenopedia article? Like, maybe they have something similar to these that let them feel tiny vibrations in the air, or they can detect bioelectric fields or something.

Rifleman is not really a class, it's a role. Which is basically a loadout template. If you right-click the big ol' R symbol, you'll get options to equip the assigned loadout, to change the loadout template to whatever the soldier is equipped with right now or to change the soldier to another role. It makes equipping a whole bunch of soldiers with whatever you want them to carry a lot quicker and more convenient. If, for example, you want all your assaults to carry shields and pistols in their hands and a shotgun in their backpack, you assign one soldier the role "assault", equip him/her with the stuff you want and click "change default loadout". If you then assign another soldier the assault role, they'll immediately equip the same stuff you gave the first soldier.

Definitely liking the idea. Right now, air combat seems to end with one side dead and the other side unharmed very often. This could provide the wiggle room for making air combat more "dangerous" without making it crippling. Also, I'm just gonna throw another option I could imagine out there: repair costs. Could be a kind of upkeep thing while it's being repaired, or a one-time cost that's only necessary if the craft was "destroyed". Or maybe even just an option to shorten repair time.

Yeah, the antimatter think irked me, too, when I first read it. How about changing it to "exotic matter"? That seems like a real enough thing for people to know that it's real, but also weird enough for people to not know what it can do. I know I don't.

Doesn't "LMG" stand for "light machine gun", i.e. "Leichtes Maschinengewehr", though? A Schweres Maschinengewehr would be the thing that's mounted on the armored car. But yeah, Schweres Lasergewehr sounds good to me. Other options that I'm just gonna throw out there: Automatischer Laser, Autolaser. Also, I really like the name Klingenschrecken for some reason. Maybe because it sounds kinda like "Heuschrecke", conjuring up all these insectoid images in my mind. I haven't actually encountered reapers yet, though, so I don't know how accurate that is to the actual creature. Would the singular form of the word be "Klingenschrecke" or "Klingenschrecken"?

Actually, the Thin Men are the redesign of the Snakemen. It's just that they've been redesigned to the point of being near unrecognizable. The basis behind both Snakemen and Thin Men are those conspiracy theories about Reptilian aliens secretly ruling the Earth. Thin Men are infiltration units, they have scales underneath their suits (you can see them poking out under their collars and cuffs), they have very reptilian looking eyes hidden under their sunglasses, they have very long, very flexible spines and they're poisonous. So they fit the "Reptilian" bill very nicely, but are quite a departure from the original, far more literal Snakemen. The thing I'm most curious about right now is the Second Wave stuff. The demo contained files for a whole lot of modifiers that should apparently be selectable after having beaten the game. Fun stuff, too, like causing every flanking shot to crit, making Elerium-115 stores degrade over time, making country funding dependent on panic level or just making the game longer. In the full game, there seems to be not a trace of the stuff. Kind of makes me wonder what that was all about.

I've seen an interview where Jake Solomon was asked about the change from dollars to nonspecific "credits", representing an aggregate of all kinds of resources. The point of the whole thing is apparently to do exactly what you seem to be experiencing. Making you be short on something at every moment in time, and making every money expenditure a non-trivial decision to make. That was the intention, to have players sweating at all times, so to speak. And since the balancing progress for achieving that requires things like a medikit costing half a powerplant, they didn't use a real-world currency because it would just look ridiculous. You could see the whole process as a recurring theme in the game, compared to UFO:Enemy Unknown. In short, it's basically "balance over simulation". That's also why your soldiers can carry only one item and use only specific weapons, or why you can only have one skyranger. Seemingly arbitrary limitations for the sake of balancing the game.

The "weapon fragment" thing does seem to lead to a certain kind of misunderstanding at times. Here is how it works: If you want to research plasma weapons, you need an intact plasma weapon. Period. You get intact weapons if you stun enemies, weapon fragments if you kill them and nothing if you blow them up. You can use weapon fragments to research some other stuff, like laser weapons, targeting systems etc.

It could also refer to the alien main base, i.e. Cydonia.

I don't think bossfights are confirmed in any way. There are nonstandard missions by the council, but the only example of those I can remember right now is a VIP rescue. Oh and that one trailer kind of looked boss-like in the end, yeah, but that was "just" a Sectopod. And considering that those can be used in multiplayer, I really doubt they're "just your team and this guy in an arena" bossfight material. Also that would be really stupid.

Time for some quasi-unfounded speculation on my part. 1. The Thin Man is the XCOM version of the Snakeman. Weren't the Snakemen in X-COM a nod to those conspiracy theories where Earth is already ruled in secret by a race of Reptilians? Who'd be better suited for setting up a shadow government than aliens disguised as humans? And take a closer look at these pics here. See the green color not quite concealed by his cuffs and collar? Those could very well be scales. 2. We've already seen the Ethereals. They're The "appearing from thin air" thing fits into the name and psychic abilities, and their color and head shape are slight design nods to the original Ethereals (with the head being shaped like an inverted hood).

Is such a feature planned or feasible? I've had a couple situations where splitting a squadron could have been useful. Something like grouping a Mig and a F-17 together to take out a close target, not expending the Mig's missiles and then detecting a far-off target while the squadron is still in the air. Meaning that the Mig still has the fuel to get that target, but the F-17 doesn't. Similarly, it could come in handy to be able to merge squadrons, for example if you launch several single interceptors to take care of a couple of scouts only to detect a fighter squadron or corvette or whatever once they're in the air. Or for attacking a single, very powerful craft with craft from two bases. Interface-wise, I could imagine it working as a menu similar to the interception launch one, with the planes that "stay in base" forming one squadron and the "launched" ones another. Opening that menu could be an option when a squadron reaches a waypoint (for splitting) and when you have one squadron "intercepting" another (for merging).

"Kills the genre"? That really doesn't make much sense at all. Replacing a lack of games with a multitude of bland ones does not kill anything. Nothing is lost, except maybe for a feeling of exclusivity in playing these games. Besides, that scenario seems highly unlikely to me.

Does suppression have a maximum range right now? I seem to recall that was being discussed. Because an easy fix for the "suppressing people standing behind the shooter" thing would be to introduce a minimum range as well and make that range equal to or larger than the suppression radius. And I don't think that close-quarters combat is really the intended scenario for suppressive fire to be used in anyway.

Does the suppression radius calculation take walls and cover into account? There could be some kinds of weird behavior here, like shooting at the impervious outer walls of a small UFO from the side to suppress the aliens inside, then breaching it without having to fear reaction fire. On the other hand, checking walls between the center of the suppression radius and the suppressed unit could end up suppressing an alien standing in the door of a shack, but not the alien standing in front of the shack. It'd probably make most sense to me to suppress only targets in a clear line of fire from the suppressing unit. Meaning that units in cover could still be pinned down, but units behind a wall could not.

A solution to that could be having two modes for grenades. "Throw", which would work like in the original X-COM, and "roll", which would make it move along the ground.

You can find the rockets in the Equipment/Rockets tab. This setup is probably necessary because there are different types of rockets.

When I start transfers from one base to multiple bases "at the same time", i.e. without leaving the menu in-between,a static cargo plane icon will appear over the position of the base I'm transferring from, and on arrival of the first actual cargo plane the game will crash to desktop.

I had the same problem a few times. Dropping a gun with one soldier, then picking it up again fixed it for the whole squad.

When I try to have an interceptor transferred from one base to another, but the cargo plane is shot down en route, the destination hangar of the plane in question seems to remain tagged as "blocked". It doesn't contain anything, visually, but I can't store a plane in it, and I can't demolish it either. Also, those cargo planes are a really cool feature.