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If the MARS doesn't die due to explosives, you get the wreckage when it's killed and you can rebuild it for half the price and I think half the time, and doesn't require any alien resources to rebuild either so past a certain level of progress it's better to risk a MARS by putting it in danger since it's more tanky and economically better than lose a Guardian wearing elite soldier. They can also use a smoke launcher as well that uses less TUs so they can be used as spearheads that lay down cover for the rest of the squad. Also don't have recovery time at base so you can go back to back on missions with them and never get supressed or mesmerised, mind controlled or panic so they're very useful when things go wrong. My shield and assaults all have multiple flashbangs and smoke grenades, same with the riflemen, with the shields using flashbangs to disable reaction fire when opening doors and going into rooms or alternatively triggering reaction fire using the shield or a MARS instead depending on danger. Actual damaging grenades are worth far less than a flashbang in the right place at the right time, outside of triggering Wraiths decloaking. Just because a enemy is supressed doesn't mean they're completely harmless unless they're a Seb with a heavy weapon, a Wraith who's got 50% TUs but crouched can very easily nail shots at close range, but he can't throw grenades or get a angle on you so either lay down smoke between them and you, kill them or actively remove your troops from its line of sight since if they can't see you they'll spend their TUs moving instead. Also abuse thermal damage, all of my shields and assaults have laser pistols once I get them so they can make sight lines and paths in buildings and UFOs and destroy cover/obstructions for other troops to land their shots while spending very few TUs and the ammo regens.

Having it where shots that are 100% accurate make the damage range start between 1x to 1.5x rather than between .5x to 1.5x, so well aimed shots do a guaranteed amount of damage with a much higher chance to actually do more, would help snipers alongside being able to fire twice, since then they'd feel like a sharpshooter who could take out priority threats effectively when right now they don't provide as much killing power and very little suppressive ability or grenades since they're mostly isolated. Once I get lasers, I sort of ignore a lot of penetration simply because it's just more viable to soften armour with laser pistols and rifles to the degree that penetration isn't necessary to secure a kill, snipers especially since with their one shot I use them in missions to secure kills so most of the time they're firing into injured and armour removed enemies.

I think it's fine if it required almost all of your TUs to fire twice, to reward good sniper positioning, while not encroaching on rifles and their niche of advancing fire and suppression. A good burst fire from a riflemen at the close ranges of a UFO or alien base is always better than a single good shot from a sniper, and advancing in a UFO means they'd only ever get the one shot.

Heavy flashbangs and smokes use honestly, if the enemy is alive then attack until they're dead or supressed, if not dead or supressed then flashbang, then if they're still capable of shooting, throw smoke in the line of sights to targets. I also got lucky with a lot of the enemy spawns, lot of Sebs and Mantids rather than Wraiths and Androns, heavy weapon Sebs can be supressed and rendered mostly harmless. Also managed to keep the panic low enough via focusing on interceptor coverage that I could skip some terror missions fully and tank the panic increase, because those are always the biggest cause of deaths. Landed at a terror mission, saw a entire building that was full of Androns and Wraiths directly out of the ramp and then saw even more on both sides of the dropship and realized that the panic increase wouldn't be big enough to be worth risking a ton of deaths when I don't have the resources to replace the gear, so I just left. I use heavy armoured MARS a lot, end game around 2 ARES clad in heavy plating to provide heavy damage via canons and cover for assaults, canons are vital for taking out Cyberdrones and big threats while the MARS can be used as a cheap and tanky scout that triggers reaction fire. They also can't be supressed so they're great for breaching doors and being able to create paths through walls is so valuable it's unreal. A good MARS shot can 1 shot a Mentarch or nearly outright kill a cyberdrone if you bypass the armour via the rear.

After some issues with stability, performance and crashing, first time I've finished a campaign in both non ironman mode AND on Commander, glad I chose to turn it off since I could of easily had some game ending bugs multiple times without being able to reload. Definitely harder than the prior difficulties, not entirely a fan of all its changes which I'll bring up, also first time I've seen the ending cinematic, a Wraith wearing clothes was far cuter than I expected. Also experimented with some things I ignore usually like the stealth suit and fielded more Colossus than usual to see how their buff ended up. I think I enjoy Veteran difficulty more but I still enjoyed this run a lot, it just felt like it dragged more with more enemies causing longer missions and possible performance issues and no auto resolve air combat meaning every single UFO had to be downed manually. Commander Related: Biggest issue I had was the sheer amount of enemies you have to go against. Some of the maps felt overloaded and even some crashed scouts had clown car amounts of aliens, especially with terror missions where you have a good 6 or 7 enemies crammed in the same building. Excessive did really feel excessive, some missions I didn't really notice the extra 10% accuracy bonus on enemies really, suppression and smoke made it where the accuracy boost wasn't noticeable enough to matter Air combat wise, it was actually quite fun to be able to reload and practice the air game for once when not ironman but the lack of auto resolve got a tad repetitive, I wouldn't mind being able to auto resolve weaker UFOs/UFOs I've downed x number of times or delegated to just reduce it since once you get a Gemini with dual Blasters, you can do almost any ship with 0 damage with almost no difficulty, that teleporting ability is crazy good Focusing on the air game like always is the key, once I got good at doing intercepts, I was able to reliably keep most areas at extremely low panic, speedrun phantoms and missile tech and you're good, I was still using Angels filled with missiles or torpedoes against Cruisers and interceptors because you can use a Phantom or Gemini to bait the rockets to keep the rest safe while they one shot a Interceptor with 4 missiles, the extra 25% UFO damage wasn't really noticeable Tactical Changes Thoughts: Really REALLY liked the changes to Colossus armour, ENDGAME I ran 4 of them because they're that fun, they really are like tanks in that you need to support them with infantry but they fit that sort of door kicker and wall smasher role perfectly, being able to shoot and scoot or even fire multiple times while tanking reaction fire and being unable to be supressed as the first one in really helped it having it work as a end game addition to shields Colossus fists are a neat idea but they feel very lacking in power both in damage done and sound, felt like I was slapping a alien in the face rather than breaking its jaw with a power armoured punch Stalker armour I used for the first time, I like it but honestly snipers as a role are very niche with how close quarters most missions are, I'd probably use it again but it feels weird really, like I don't know where to put it in the progression, I'd like if it could be upgraded to give more ap so snipers can reposition or more movement for better scouting, reduce the cost of sniper rifles or get a 2nd tier that makes it more protective, it just feels like the odd duckling right now Definitely noticing the extra health aliens got, Mantid eating a MARS cannon wasn't expected and made some enemies take a inordinate amount of fire power to bring down considering the amount of them Campaign Thoughts: Definitely wish we more mission types, even variations like wave defence terror missions while civilians evacuate or breaking a assault on a local military base with lots of friendly support, I absolutely adore UUO 1 missions because they're both so different Mantid bio rifles early game really sting, they can overwhelm you so quickly even if they miss, especially on excessive enemy amounts The grenade launcher I never used, not even once, still seems very much not worth it to me Snipers not being able to fire twice feels poor when snipers need good positioning to be worth anything, especially from my experience that sniper rifles aren't that strong and I found that they weren't that useful vs a rifle that can burst or fire and relocate Pleased to see how far it's come nearly 3 years from EA, will be looking forward to post launch content and mod tools, I can see all sorts of cool stuff possible in the future.

Yeah just had this happen to me again after it seemingly was fixed a couple patches ago, also seems the performance has greatly decreased with really long loading times and much more memory usage, still got the 94% loading bug that makes reloading tactical missions impossible so tactical missions at this point are extremely unstable/bordering on unplayable for the moment since a crash/needing to quit or reload a past save means you have to do the entire mission over again or essentially a game over for a Ironman run so very glad I decided against Ironman for once. bug_report_2026-03-15-22h21_gc_7.9.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip

Same here, if you want to bypass it I'm pretty sure letting the crash site expire gives you the cash without the op loss.

Same for me at sitting at 94% exactly, also noticed the performance and loading time into a tactical mission is far slower.

The Fusion era after Cruisers are always much harder when you first start, with the close quarters of harvesters turning into slaughterhouses or the wide open spaces of terror missions with Wraiths making any soldier out of position a dead man being both difficulty spikes of themselves, but far from gamebreaking. Heavy Guardian clad pointmen with shields and armoured MARS are what I used as spearheads for breaching UFOs with snipers instead of shields for terror missions, the MARS has a cannon so it can actually take out Androns pretty consistently and the pointmen can have assaults behind them ready to take out enemies they supress with flashbangs/electroshocks. Plus snipers can take out enemies via squadsight while your spotter is shrouded in smoke and sniper rifles do better against higher health and armour enemies. Abuse smoke grenades, flashbangs and suppression, all enemies are rendered far more safe with smoke grenades to the degree that you should ditch fragmentations for more smokes. Wraiths can be supressed and smoked, Androns cannot be supressed but can be smoked, keep your troops out of visual range of the enemy and only appear to fire and vanish back into the shadows. Each tile of smoke decreases accuracy by 20% I'm pretty sure, so make layers of smoke like a creeping barrage and then supress at close range while in good cover and potentially still in smoke, at close range a Wraith should always be supressed because it stops them from throwing grenades, and they're crack shots. If the MARS had more options for suppression like stun grenade launchers and light machine guns, I'd take those in a heart beat, but it's got a lower TU costing smoke launcher so you can use a MARS as a relatively expendable scout with cheap smoke and stick some rockets on it to destroy cover and force Wraiths out of cloak.

Reporting the same, first abduction mission is stuck on friendly action, impossible to advance further in the mission. Happened in the cleaner base also, but only a single time, the crash on this mission has happened 3 times in a row. bug_report_2026-03-08-21h17_gc_7.6.0_user_f11_0.zip

Potentially might start a Milestone 7 playthrough just to experience the changes fully but just from a read through, some of those I really do not like. The effectiveness of Combat Shields: Not a big fan at all, I do like the idea of shields being less effective but really only with other factors involved like a chance to bypass the shield at extremely close ranges or a chance to bypass that increases as the shield loses durability so a shield at 50% health might depending on difficulty a 10% chance to shot bypass. Obviously even at the harshest penalty a 80% is still a 4/5 chance of avoiding damage which is pretty strong especially early game but it would just feel bad to have my point man eat plasma while holding a full health shield in front of him. Personally I'd be fine with a partial "chip damage" or partial deflection system, where once you hit below a certain % of shield durability the chance of partial deflection that shares the damage between the soldier and the shield rises until it hits the difficulty maximum once below 50% of the shields durability. Base building cost 100 operational points and recruit pool costing 50 operational points: Also not a fan if it's just extra cost with no benefit. The reduction of sources you can generated operational points combined with more expenses like the recruit pool refreshing now costing points and the cost of removing infiltrators increasing half a point per day, having to now spend 100 to build a base alongside the regular cost and spending 50 to get new recruits with no added benefit to either feels very harsh. If the extra 100 point cost for bases also added some infrastructure or reduced the monetary cost, I could live with it and adding back monthly recruit refresh for free and make the 50 point refresh give you a pool of recruits with better stats so you could rebuild a A Team easier from a total wipe instead of depending on potentially a mostly fresh face team, while representing that the Xenonauts have to exert some political pressure to get the cream of the crop vet operatives that other countries are using to assault the UFO's you down. Colossus armour changes: I'm actually a fan of all of these, especially the 20% in TUs from machine guns and allowing them to haul gear for the squad. Colossus should be a walking source of suppression and pointmen who burst through walls and doors who cannot be supressed that enables the rest of the squad to fall in behind, the ability to fire more often makes the suit far better than just regular power armour and solidifies their identity as true walking Infantry Fighting Vehicle while the MARS acts as a tank that deploys heavy firepower against Androns and Cyberdrones. Reflex Modifiers for weapons: Also a big fan of this, I used to run scouts in X1 all the time partially due to the empty off hand made grenades cheap to throw but also because pistols had a 1.5x reflex modifier that kept them from getting minced by overwatch. Most of the tactical changes I can't really comment on since those are best experienced via playing, muddying it by saying what I think about without any experience would be a bad idea, aside from the boost to HP across the board to the aliens and other changes making skipping accelerated weapons harder while also having Sebs getting 50% energy resistance in exchange for no armour making keeping some accelerated weapons around a good idea and same for Androns getting 50% kinetic resistance, although I do still feel accelerated weapons as a class of weapon should get the same treatment that lasers get by having upgrades and side grades in engineering like higher crit chances or higher suppression values you can get so the two class of weapons can specialise into different roles or allow someone to say skip lasers and stick with accelerated for magnetics.

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.