Bookshelf11

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.

Just did a Observer and uh...didn't go as well as I hoped, God those machine guns can slaughter and turns out, if a Seb goes berserk, they can fire their machine gun twice with fresh time units and murder my Captain. What a nice mission to endure before Christmas! But alloy and Alenium wise, much more value vs using only the requests since the cost to do a Observer is only 60 points. Requesting Alenium costs 100 points for 20 units while Requesting alloy gives you 40 for the same 100 point cost. Obviously I'm now down a MARS, lost very good people and if I had armour loss on death, that'd bite into the alloy, engineer time and money so I'm vulnerable now to either a terror or base assault when my A Team is really badly maimed. And while I was writing this, terror mission in Africa! Yeah it's pretty bad, compared to the extra funding supporter who pays you back within 2 months, a extra point is so tiny it's basically worthless if not actively bad because of opportunity cost vs another supporter or bonus. Maybe it could reduce infiltration instead? I don't actually know what that does, NA is at 79% but the game hasn't told me anything abut it.

I'm thinking Alenium, rushing the 500k bonus supporter in the US and working on filling out the region bonuses are the top 3 best uses for them. Funds and Alloys seem good but you get both much easier than Alenium and the region supporters are ok. Then again you do take a penalty to op points of per crash you repeat so maybe the resource game has changed, I've only gotten to Destroyers right now. The 5% reduction in engineering time or -1 panic a month seems far less impactful compared to spending 100 to get 500k because you spent most of your cash on new fighters and Domino's pizza or completing a region to get -30% upkeep. Also did/does the game explain infiltrators or not?

Making flashbangs, or rather the electroshock flashbang upgrade remove their cloak would help too. Big struggle I found is in order to shut down them launching hot potato's at people, flashbangs were my best bet since supressing via bursts is too unreliable against their cloak but the flash leaves their cloak still active, meaning that they'd still be a absolute menace to actually put down for good to the degree that sometimes I'd just throw a explosive grenade at them as well if I could to guarantee the cloak dropping. Ironically the best counter to grenades being thrown at you, is grenades being thrown at them.

Just failed a terror mission and lost the game at day 270 because I failed a andron/wraith terror mission. My guys got absolutely slaughtered by wraiths, even taking on cruisers full of fusion gun lizards at worst, only net me 2 dead troops. The sheer amount of grenades around corner and out of sight lines when they get close combined with them being extremely hard to kill at range makes it where there is no safe when it comes to them. My dropship of 10 troops and 2 rovers, all clad in guardian armour with fusion guns never stood a chance, androns I don't think even got a single kill. Every alien has a counter to a degree, Sebillian are tanky but suck at long range combat, Androns are tanky but have low hp and seem to neglect cover like they did in 1 and also EMP damage, Secton/Psyons are dangerous when together but keep em separate and they're easier to deal with, Reapers are extremely dangerous up close but have no ranged ability and take hardly any cover. Wraiths however don't really have a drawback, yeah they only have 90 health but when you can't hit them they can take far more shots to actually down, at close range they use grenades whenever they can even at single troops which also destroys both armour and weapons so that hurts even more, if you get out of grenade range they can still really hurt you with plasma and now you can't actually hit them and even if you get close enough to flashbang them the flashbang doesn't actually break their cloak. Alone they're pretty dangerous but in the numbers they get deployed at, they're easily the most dangerous and most expensive in terms of replacing gear to fight.

Yes there are, in my playthrough a alien base started up around probably within 4/6 months, but was within my radar detection zone so maybe they can only be detected by radars now?

I fell in love with these little robots and bring one every mission but the lack of options with their gear causes them to sometimes be a little lacking sometimes. The rockets and cannon are both very good for their roles but considering they take a troop slot and cost a lot to make/repair, they feel not as good/versatile as they should really be considering you can just take extra grenades of any type and have a rifle by replacing that MARS with a Xenonaut who is cheaper and will get better with missions. The ability to have them with a grenade launcher (maybe instead of the smoke launcher?) to provide smoke and destruction, a heavy machinegun to supress and a heavy short range electrical prod to serve as a shock jock as possible options would make MARS units feel like they're very much robots designed to fulfil a specific niche that you wouldn't or couldn't have a human do. Even giving them more pure support modules/the ability to use MARS exclusive modules alone would go a long way as well, like a stealth field emitter module that provides a defence aura much like the Stalker suit, a medkit module that acts similar to the healing of a servitor or a form of self repair module if you want them to be a bit more selfish. Obviously they shouldn't be as good as a fully trained and geared Xenonaut in a role that Xenonauts can fill but a MARS unit should definitely provide a specific role considering the price and the limit we have on the dropship, be it directly assisting you in taking out enemies by destroying cover and supressing them or indirectly by providing smoke cover while it uses its medkit secondary to heal someone bleeding out.

Aliens can't kill humanity if you do it first taps head. I only really purge innocents as a last resort or if they are too close, i just nuke em both since it's not worth saving one random when one of my troops could get killed if i miss. No damage like collateral damage.

Long story short, my crew got decked. Reapers just destroyed everyone and overwhelmed me and i had to evacuate with 2 people left. Is there a good strategy when dealing with these things aside from going "Suffer not the xeno to live" and fire rockets and throw grenades until i run out or they die. I normally try to overwatch crawl with 2 troops watching each angle and kill civvies if they could be turned. Reapers are my bane of my life so any tips would be great.

You can't disable it sadly but if you crouch and uncrouch with the troop you can drain their TUs until they can't reaction fire.