Bookshelf11

Did Operation Endgame and was going to take 4 ARES with me but the mission refused to launching listing all four ARES units as unable to be taken with. I remember taking four ARES with me back in Milestone 5 so either a change or a bug. Mission launched fine once I switched them out. When I deployed, I deployed inside of a Dragonfly and at mission start had two of my guys stuck INSIDE the right side landing gears who could not move at all. I had all 16 troops with me, just either crammed into every spot or spilling outside the dropship or otherwise clipping or starting in tiles that are occupied by the dropship, they physically could not move so had to go it essentially with two troops down. I'm guessing the Dragonfly is a placeholder for now and 16 troops were never designed with the Dragonfly in mind? Lucky that 2 more troops didn't get stuck in the left side landing gears, had a pointman and sniper get stuck.

Thanks, saves work, finished the game, did find out two new bugs on the way as well, one that's actually rather a big deal considering it happens in the last mission and could of caused bigger problems so I'll report those as well. I started my campaign around the 12th.

I actually slept on snipers quite a bit until they got buffed. Most of the game is close quarters door kicking aside from terror missions and abductions so I always found a rifle better. Shotguns need much more support though, I run a shield for every shotgun and heavily rely on suppression to get in close. I mostly run a single sniper simply to help take out priority threats. Snipers also have theoretical less max killing ability, you can only really hit one target per turn and it might not be a kill shot or even supress vs a rifle or shotgun who can supress multiple targets or outright kill multiple. Machineguns have a similar problem BUT they get the benefit of being really good at laying into heavy targets or supressing whole groups while being useable by a walking talk. Also the buff to the exo armour is incredible and took it from a skipped research option to instant take, being unable to be suppressed is great for a point man who can breach alongside MARS.

Battleships aren't spawning after UOO destroyed, likely a similar bug like last Milestone, at day 450+ and nothing. Gemini have extremely slow speed and lower range, slower than a Phantom or even a Angel with upgraded engines. Gemini has 3,300 KM/H vs a Phantom with engine retrofit at 4,500 KM/H, Angels with engine retrofit have the same speed. Range wise, Gemini have 5,500 KM range vs a Phantom with engine retrofit range of 6,000 KM. Failed first UOO Bridge Assault and during my second, all of soldiers were invisible, except when one of them died and they became immediately visible and a corpse, but I'm guessing that's because they turned into a item essentially. They still behaved like normal and essentially controlled the same but just they weren't visible. I'm guessing something to do with the cutscene only playing the first time and the teleporting animation not playing. I actually abandoned the mission and tried again and still invisible, then I saved and quit and relaunched the game, still invisible. Didn't think to post save before finishing the mission, sorry. iron_man-974.json

I think Gauss as it is has some genuine use for assaults and snipers, where you have laser pistols and rifles removing armour from targets until you can fire your Gauss cannon and Gauss shotguns at them but generally I don't find it worth making rifles and pistols or even machineguns because you can strip armour away really well with those and regen some ammo between volleys while they cost like 50k per sniper rifle or machinegun and cost a decent amount of both resources. Gauss is competing with all the other gear and upgrades in engineering at that point while Fusion, Vanguard, ARES and more could be more useful. Mag and Laser should almost co exist due to how they are, they should be relatively close in when you are able to research them but should be like side grades where there's reason to run both weapon types in a squad until you hit fusion which is mostly the best of both. Honestly making accelerated just cost money would make them worth using for me. Considering it's just magnets attached to mostly unaltered ballistics, the amount of alloy being used would be very small. Then make it where you can upgrade their damage later, like how Angels can be retrofitted to help bridge the gap until their role in the squad is replaced by Gauss.

Abandoned my Milestone 6 vet legacy campaign after a bunch of compounding glitches like Gemini flying slower than Angels making the air game go way harder, Cyberdrones causing crashes on death and the UOO reinforcement crash causing a near total wipe, but got to Fusion weapons before I quit. It feels like by the time you get to Gauss, it's only a short jump until you get a Harvester to be able to make fusion weapons so you can very easily just skip Gauss entirely or use it for small roles. Lasers are just great, and the ammo regen and damage boost combined with the armour and terrain destruction makes them amazing for all troops regardless of role. Plus the accuracy bonus is great for rookies and once you get the ammo regen upgrade you end up with a rifle that will never need to reload which is great for long missions or a lot of burst fire. Accelerated and Gauss don't provide a big enough boost to really warrant the resources over building lasers, I basically only build the MARS cannon, air weapons and the base defence upgrades. At most, might make two Gauss shotguns and a Sniper Rifle/Machinegun just so all the armour destruction of the other lasers in the squad can help soften targets up. I don't really know what can be done to make them a viable choice, I've never picked Accelerated since my first campaign and I've only used Gauss twice until I realised the extra resources could be saved for fusion or just other projects while hardly reducing my tactical ability. Accelerated should be a base upgrade really, just replace ballistics outright and maybe get a damage upgrade later when we get Gauss as to exist as a form of cheap weapon to use for base defence or for when you squad wipe and can't make replacements for gear for a new squad, while Gauss is harder to nail down. Could be anything almost, make Gauss more suppressive per shot, decrease alenium cost while increasing alloy cost for building them, Gauss is at least has more use cases and is otherwise far more viable than building Accelerated so really minor adjustments to it is all that's needed but Accelerated is a instant skip for most people when ideally you would have reason to make them that early in the game.

This is actually the first time I've attempted a full unmodified Commander run, mostly just to see how it is. I mostly go for Vet with some minor changes like showing health and damage and disabling armour loss on death just because it can be a little annoying to rebuild armour each time a rookie eats it.

Either 6.1 or 6.2. Thinking on losing, quite a lot of things stacked together really I lost the Andron/Wraith terror mission in the US which boosted panic up a ton and was broke constantly so I couldn't build a new base there to reduce UFO activity which cost me it as both North and South America were unable to be calmed down 2nd base I had in Asia was essentially worthless because I didn't have enough to make two hangers or two interceptors and by that time most UFOs then were either Observers I couldn't catch unless I upgraded the engines using the resources I couldn't shoot down to get or they had a Defender escort who I couldn't take on alone The 8 infiltrators reduced a lot of cash flow because I had to spend all my points on removing them or any that popped up, when most of the time I'd put those points into getting a starter fund for a new base or aircraft to help bootstrap my panic management, which indirectly led to me losing the air war and probably the campaign Funding was much lower than I anticipated, combined with multiple mission losses and the costs of losing so many people or MARS units, just couldn't afford much so I couldn't hire who I needed or build myself up Had a total loss on a Cleaner Convoy which wiped out my MARS, all my A Team and their gear meaning I lost a huge amount of resources, there were so many cleaners that it made it quite hard to not be overwhelmed even when I had the jump on them and managed to kill or supress quite a few on the first turn I also had a really bad abduction because the map was quite small so the enemies were close together and the landing zone was a kill zone, the artic map where you're surrounded by fencing and there's cargo containers up ahead, you can't really advance without having your sides exposed, I've had bad missions there before but this felt worse since I had less troops and more aliens A couple times where a unlucky dodge or dogfight led to a Angel getting downed due to the 150% UFO damage, leaving me unable to tackle the Phase 2 UFO wave and panic outbreaks, infiltrations or get resources from crashes On average, the amount of troops and missions I lost were way higher than most campaigns due to I feel like having less soldiers and more enemies who have better aim. Losing armour on death, making new weapons, rebuilding MARS units and hiring up new troops really can drain your funding that it makes you unable to put it towards anything else, and when considering funding is lower and the amount of infiltrators is higher, your ability to spend Op points on a emergency reserve of cash is really strongly reduced, especially when you're using them to also reduce panic in countries you can't reach yet.

Just wanted to check out the new milestone, so didn't expect to do a long one but felt very different, both because of the new changes and the difficulty. As almost always, lost due to North and South America getting overwhelmed. Difficulty wise, Commander feels extremely punishing, and potentially not balanced with the new amount of soldiers we get. I had 15 aliens on I think my first or second crashed scout, while only having 7 soldiers and a MARS to bring against them was really quite scary Androns and Wraiths as always felt very strong, lost my first terror mission because I got massacred by them, that 130% accuracy difficulty option is horrifying on them because they can just nail you so easily on those wide open lacking in cover streets while they're in buildings, 15 aliens total on that mission and I only managed to kill 10 of them before getting fully wiped out while again having only 8 units to use myself Was constantly starved for cash and honestly not much for alien resources, got lucky with a landed observer at day 150 but never really needed to dip into OP's to grab alloy or such Smaller maps were almost always bloodbaths because the amount of aliens were concentrated together so you ended up with mission fails within a couple turns or a win with 2 or 3 people surviving after the initial massacre I didn't mind disabling auto resolve at first but it can be slightly tedious with probes and destroyers past a certain point and even though I like the mini game, I can imagine some people finding it slightly disruptive especially with that 150% UFO damage meaning any slip up can take out a Angel very quickly Defender UFOs are very strong, only fought them twice but they absolutely castrated my Angels flying solo so it makes having two interceptors a hard check because you aren't taking it down alone and I just couldn't afford to build them quick enough meaning panic ruled near worldwide Also felt pretty starved for Operational Points constantly as well, especially at the start clearing all 8 infiltrators and the 2 or 3 that popped up along the way, with the rest going into cash or near the end reducing panic The earlier introduction of plasma weapons did feel like quite a step up difficulty wise, along with most of the start of Phase 2 feeling much more oppressive with how many UFOs waves spawn and a Alien base in Asia not long after Honestly didn't enjoy the difficulty as much as I wanted to, felt like Legendary difficulty in Halo where it's really hard and punishing but not that fun because it's just teeth kicking you.

If the cleaner arc is extended, cleaners should also have far more negative effects on you, since a lot of those mission rewards sound very powerful, especially anything like extra op points or supporters. Like you clearing the UFO and having to do essentially a wave defence against Elite Cleaners attacking crash sites or even actually Cleaners destroying them on the strategy map soon after they touch down to deny you the mission, infiltrators pushing governments to reduce monthly funding or operation point losses from them messing with logistics. Think UOO 1 type events, because right now you can basically do the cleaner base at your leisure. One way I can think of making accelerated "good" is essentially making lasers simply not have some weapons in laser damage type but I'm not a fan of options being removed. Making it where you can actually upgrade them similar to how lasers and fusions get upgrades would be nice too but then again, gauss weapons are basically just upgraded accelerated. Honestly, having accelerated and laser being a combo research project like "Advanced Warfare" where researching that unlocks both at the same time, and having a natural synergy develop like accelerated having higher suppression values and actual appreciably higher outright damage than lasers so they're better for covering fire or outright killing power while lasers have better accuracy and cover/armour destruction. That's what makes fusion so good, it combines both of those types into one gun type.

I disagree to a degree. I agree that just making a game x amount of hours is harmful because it doesn't take into account how long it SHOULD be, but 20 to 30 hours gives games like this the ability to have plenty of depth to play with without feeling like they need to stretch any of the content out. Xenonauts 1 was roughly a similar length and I've done a lot of campaigns in 1 and still only have around 120 hours in it. I honestly don't feel like Xenonauts 2 would benefit from going over that 30 hours because the amount of content doesn't warrant it, and the thing is, Xenonauts gameplay length can vary pretty big on your experience with the game and how well you perform. Having a weak air game causing a outbreak of alien bases being built, losing a radar base full of Phantoms or maybe even your main base in a retaliation and even losing a squad outfitted in all the gear you could just barely afford can all make the game take far longer because you now need to rebuild and do extra missions to keep the peace and get resources back. Cleaners ideally should have the same level of importance as the UOO 1 missions and should be mid game missions to find and raid their base. But accelerated weapons, I don't think you can really make them a valid choice outside of making it a upgrade for conventional weapons, lasers are good for most of the game and accelerated are hardly comparable when at that part of the game, you'll want to ration out every bit of Alloy you can and not waste it. Lasers right off the bat have amazing cover and armour destruction, a accuracy bonus and they only get better with upgrades like ammo regen and extra damage.

My playthrough took 17 hours and 1 minute according to the ending breakdown and I did overall 30 missions, the game is pretty compact as it is but maybe hours wise the game captures it differently compared to steam so I'm thinking it was actually 25 hours or so. It never felt like it dragged or took too long honestly, didn't feel compressed either aside from maybe the Cleaners, felt too fast and the Cleaners felt weirdly detached because they only have like 4 missions total. I did probably 2 UFOs that cost points but honestly I didn't think that was super necessary, alien bases gave me quite a lot and 2 UFO per type was plenty and I got quite a lot from Fighters and Interceptors as well. I built plenty of Phantoms and Geminis, kitted everyone out in Exo armour, had fusions on every guy including probably 6 pistols and 4 ARES. I think a good game length would be 20 to 30 hours but I don't think there should be a focus on making it longer when it doesn't need to be.

Mantids have good aim but zero armour and low health and they're only pair with Reapers and Sebilians who are both close range fighters. Psyons are annoying due to being able to mesmerise you on a miss or God forbid mind control you if you have low moral, gotta try and kill them with MARS or ARES or stun them/attack them out of their visual cone or range.

I've seen terror missions with at least 4 Cyberdrones, two of which were right outside the drop ship. I saw the new hotfix for Cyberdrones and Wraiths and I feel like it'll work pretty well. The Sebilian/Mantid/Reaper terror missions are hard but not unfair, but it heavily depends on the map because some terror missions have long sightlines with little cover so 2/3 of the aliens can't cover enough ground to reach you so it can be like shooting fish in a barrel unless they're in buildings. What made Cyberdrones so hard was there was no counter but death. Can't be supressed, their weapon ignored smoke, they could fire it via reaction and the range was huge. Wraiths not having their cloak on by default is great, and I don't mind the increase in defence they get because it encourages you to save them for your sharpshooter to nail in one hit or for you to supress them using your machine gunner and get it close using a shotgun. Wraiths are still scary but they're not untouchable until they take damage, you have to take a surgical approach to them rather than just throwing gunfire and grenades at it.

After playing through 3 different Milestones and finishing the game for the first time, gonna summarise my thoughts on Milestone 5, probably the biggest change in comparison from Milestone 3 and 4 are early and late game.

Finished the game for the first time, nearly lost one guy on the final mission but actually did the final assault without losing anyone. I really enjoyed the final mission, felt rather short but I liked it, Did it on modified recruit Ironman, I didn't touch any of the difficulty settings that effect tactical gameplay or the air game but settings like op points to 15 to experiment with them and stuff like that. Those 2 failed missions were terror missions, 1st was a Wraith Andron mission and the 2nd was a Cyberdrone one, but I actually skipped some terror missions in countries that had low panic because 20 panic I can recover from, losing my squad of vets and getting little to no resources out of it to recover is harder to bounce back from. Gonna do a big write up later, Milestone 5 is very different from 4 though, I think mostly for the better. Op points seem to fundamentally change the balance of the game mostly entirely in your favour, being able to get 500k off the bat or reduce panic constantly is absolutely huge and in retrospect, 15 op points a day is pretty strong. Also end game fusion batteries are hilarious, all my secondary bases had 3/4 batteries and even if a UFO tried to assault it, it got nuked by a single battery most of the time, rarely did it survive to see the second and if it did, had below 10% health.

Aircraft, especially military aircraft use a ungodly amount of fuel per second. For example, the F-16, which the Xenonauts 1 Condor was based on, can consume 3,000 litres a a hour when just flying around, during combat or using afterburners it can double or even triple its consumption. A F-16 using its afterburner constantly will only have enough fuel for less than 10 minutes. Considering our Xenonauts aircraft probably are clad in ceramic or some heavier material to reduce plasma damage and probably have different fuel or maybe oxidiser tanks because engaging UFOs at higher altitude means you need to have that to actually reach them due to lower oxygen. I'm not 100% onboard with the idea of losing your planes after exhausting your fuel supplies, I'd still make it where you have to retrieve it and it has consequences but not as severe, like 25% of the destruction penalty. Yeah the air game isn't perfect but you can still do pretty ok with it, once you learn the power of evasive rolling, sending a pair of Angels to attack UFOs in theory they shouldn't be able to take on can work out pretty well. Only problem I see with it being disabled on higher difficulties is tedium, having to manually attack every UFO would probably get boring after a while. I'd allow auto resolve after you delegate the UFO to reduce tedium since a scout or observer isn't massively fun to fight every time.

Been a long game but I think it's most likely 5.5 since the last two hotfixes have only been less than a week, fixed file works great, instant battleship, thank you.

Keep getting regular missions like terror, abductions and other UFOs like Cruisers and Harvesters but no Battleships. I've never actually gotten this far so I have no idea the timeline of when Battleships arrive but I'm guessing they're meant to arrive after the orbital assault? I really hope I'm just impatient/extremely unlucky on spawn rates, really wanted to do a big post game write up and finishing a game I've been excited for since it went on kickstarter is fun. bug_f11-1.json

Did the orbital siege mission, a wave defence was extremely fun for a change of pace, felt very different and didn't feel unfair since you have time to prepare and put up defensive positions, but I'd wish the mission brief was more clear in that reinforcements only spawn once you start the hack, ended up rushing and losing some people because I didn't want to be overwhelmed. A wave defence terror mission or fighting off cleaners at early crash sites would be pretty neat, if late additions to the game. Now the thing...I didn't capture the leader because he got mowed down by machine gun fire, so how do I get them? I'm on day 405 and I'm waiting for a battleship at this point but none of them are showing up, or do leaders now spawn in regular crash sites and then battleships spawn after? The problem is, I've got every base full of resources and the hangers kitted out and my troops tip top, so I'm just nuking sites now. Endgame hasn't moved from 25%.

Ok I feel like Wraith/Andron and Cyberdrone terror missions are a bit overtuned. Failed another terror mission, had 2 Cyberdrones and 5 other aliens right outside the drop ship first turn they killed 4 of my people and a ARES and destroyed all their gear because they both used that green grenade blast. Do they have another attack or is it just mountain dew grenade blast every time? 2nd turn I had to ditch and abandon the mission because I knew there was little to no hope of victory, 2 guys panicked as well so they were left behind. Normally I'd say "it was it is" but these two mission races are massively out of wack with the others. 240 hp Cyberdrones with a lot of armour than can basically fire off a attack that never misses is way harder than a Reaper who has to get into melee range to do anything with zero armour and 70 health. Especially when they're right outside the drop ship, there's simply not enough space to spread out enough in some maps. Sebilions/Mantid/Reapers feel probably the most balanced since they all cover each others weaknesses without one of them being ungodly strong compared to the others, Reapers are horrifying if they're up close and can reproduce in the background, Mantids can harass you from afar while Sebilions are soaking up your gunfire so the 2 other aliens it's with survive for longer and gassing you or slaughtering you with machine gun fire. Also the game takes a massive difficulty hike once Cruisers and UOO 1 is active, 20 panic orbital bombardment every 2 weeks unless you do raids against it hurts bad, not that I'm against it. Fusion users blasting my guardian armoured guys to death in 1 hit, cramped harvesters where the final command centre raid turns into a bloodbath, alien bases where even non combatants with pistols can kill your troops easily. Feels like it's been upended and I'm on the backfoot again, absolutely spamming the reduce panic button, no supporter bonus is worth as much as reducing panic by 10 every 3 days if you can afford it, does that make reducing panic too strong or supporters too weak?

Aaaaaaaaand I lost my first mission of this campaign, Wraith and Androns terror mission. Absolutely massacred by them. Wraiths pop out of buildings, nail one of my guys across the map with pin point accuracy and then either go back inside or just stand there, knowing I have no chance of hitting them while I can't close the gap to make up for their cloak because there's zero cover between the buildings while Androns just walk about in broad daylight and tank lasers while blowing apart my riflemen. I know they're terror missions and you can't win them all but the difficulty spike is immense. In UFO crashes it's not as bad because there's more cover and smaller areas most of the time but maps with long open sightlines with little cover between buildings like streets are just rivers of human blood since Wraiths can just sit in cover and take plasma shots with little to no retaliation and kill your troops in one shot if you're unlucky.

On my 2nd Milestone 5 campaign, realised the power of operational points. Reducing panic and spending them for 500k is vital, easily can set up a new base on the money and can keep underdefended areas happier until you're set up. The Alloy and Alenium uses are lackluster in comparison to even a small UFO raid and a lot of of the supporters aren't good, spending 150 op points for 1 extra a day will practically never pay itself off and the engineering and research supporters aren't much better. The panic reduction and money supporters are decent. This isn't actually related to Milestone 5 but does anyone else entirely skip accelerated weapons? Seems like a trap that can very easily drain you of resources fir hardly any gain. Making it a base upgrade instead would probably be better, because right now I haven't used them since it released on Steam.

Yeah got this too, any workaround to transfer or just wait till a hotfix?

Yeah did a couple Wraith and Andron missions and they're easily the hardest, difficulty spike is huge. Actually so big I considered putting money into the Quantum Array so I can skip any crashes with them. I managed to get advanced lasers and even some gauss before seeing them so I wasn't so outgunned but for a first timer who might be playing not very well or not focusing on research with a goal in mind, yeah they'll absolutely devour you if you're not careful. Grouping up your guys and getting grenaded multiple times, getting sniped by Wraiths while being pinned down by drones, firing multiple shots into Androns and basically doing zero damage while they walk point blank up to your assault and blow his skull apart and not being even able to hit a Wraith because of their cloaking. But honestly, not every battle can be a win. I've had missions where I've been slaughtered and barely managed to leave with 3 of my men left, it's a war against a vastly more advanced foe and we're on the backfoot.