[v26.2 ground combat- no deployment phase for alien base assault]

I got no alien deployment phase when assaulting an alien base. 

auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-209.json auto_strategy_before_combat-63.json output.log

[v26 Balance Feedback (Different enough from v25 to warrant a newer thread imo)]

Just now, Lord Blade said:

Wait... you don't get autopsies on captured aliens? Aren't you killing them after interrogation? Or do they just sit as prisoners forever?

Can't you just choose to kill anything you captured?

Seems like the autopsy option should always be available.

After you interrogate them, they just stay as prisoners until you sell them off for money. Although you never get the autopsy briefing that you normally get that describes alien stats and abilities. It would be nice if once you return to the base, you are given the option to kill off your captured alien so you can get an immediate autopsy. 

[[V26.2 - Ground Combat] Visual issue - the top panel mini-icon for fusion-pistol equipped soldier looks like rifleman]

Just now, Chris said:

Thanks. Looks like that's actually an issue with the Assault Shield rather than the Fusion Pistol, but I'll get it fixed up anyway.

I should've reported this before, but the exact same thing happens if you have a medkit and a pistol. If you have the medkit in the primary and a pistol in the secondary, the rifle icon appears at the top (I experimented with a weird build). 

[v26.2 geoscape- I produced an alienium torpedo, but it does not appear in the aircraft screen]

I produced an alienium torpedo, and the engineering screen says I produced one. However, it does not appear in the aircraft screen or the storage screen. (Save is already building 2 alienium torpedoes, wait until completion and they should not appear). 

auto_strategy_funding_report-46.json

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[v26.2 ground combat- laser machinegun has x3 burst and x10 burst backwards]

As you can see, x10 burst is on the left and x3 burst is on the right for a laser machinegun. I don't have a screenshot for the regular machinegun, but I guarantee that this one is flipped corpared to the regular one. 

[v26 Balance Feedback (Different enough from v25 to warrant a newer thread imo)]

I am thoroughly enjoying playing through v26, but I have noticed a lot of balance issues as I was playing. A few of these issues (like the ones present in the cleaner base and some of the air combat as aircraft weapons are much cheaper) are different enough from v25 to warrant a new v26 balance discussion over the other thread. 

(This feedback is up to after I completed the Cleaner Base Assault on month 3 on Veteran difficulty) 

Ground Combat: 

I feel that the strength and tu stats blow all of the other soldier base stats out of the water for the most part because of the sheer utility both of those stats add to a soldier. This does make soldier customization and their utility in ground combat really fun, but both strength and tus outclass every other base stat so much that I find myself picking soldiers with high stats in both of those options far more than any other stat. It can be a bit of a balance breaker at times, even if it can make the game really fun and opens up neat strategies.

Grenades in general feel really strong at present. With only having weights of 5 and a tu cost of 25 for the crazy amount of utility they bring, these grenades are easily spammed and can single-handedly secure a combat victory with little casualties. There needs to be some small nerf to them to balance them. I would assume that increasing the tu cost of grenades or forcing grenades to use a % of tus instead of a set number will cause them to become less spammable. (This also applies to the grenade-wielding enemies as well). 

I don’t really feel like snipers are very effective in the current game meta. It feels like the machinegun is superior to it in every way. Machineguns have similar issues to sniper rifles in that they require other teammates to blow up cover to make best use of their aim buff while not moving. However, machineguns with their 10-round burst have a lot more potential damage (which can hit other things in the vicinity) and can suppress surrounding aliens, making it better with dealing with multiple aliens and in most situations in general. Machineguns also have a decent short-range option with their 3-round burst, similar to that of rifles, that can make them effective short range weapons as well. Machineguns have so much better reward relative to sniper rifles that I often just switch my snipers to heavies so they can use their massive accuracy stat to effectively use machineguns instead. 

It is quite annoying to capture a mentarch (and other aliens that only show up once per mission) and not get the autopsy report that details all of its abilities and strengths. It makes sense to not get the autopsy on a captured alien, but it feels weird to know less about an alien by capturing it than if you killed it already. 

I don’t know if it is intended or not, but enemies can also reaction fire off of someone using a medkit. This feels very wrong as there are no loud noises/big movements/twitchiness while using a medkit, so there is not that much an alien has to react to in that sense imo. I feel like this one is more debatable and prone to change, but I find it odd. 

Cleaner Intelligence Hq: 

This mission was played in month 2 with steel plating and warden armor.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people consider the cleaner intelligence mission quite difficult, but I feel the opposite about it. I did the cleaner intelligence mission in the middle of month 2 with access to MARS, more experienced soldiers, and warden armor and managed to juggernaut it pretty easily (with all 25 drives and little casualties). I feel like the cleaner intelligence mission should also get slightly harder over time just like the cleaner base assault does. However, knowing that many people do struggle with this mission, I don’t know if there is a decent compromise here or the mission will just have to remain somewhat easy for players that do it later than others. 

Start of mission save: user_cleaner_inetelligence_hub_mission_-4.json

Cleaner base: 

This mission was played in month 3 with lasers, alloy plating, and warden armor. 

The sentries here feel extremely weird. They seem very stationary and only seem to fire on reaction shots. Players will assume that these guys work the same way your sentries do, but then they will be punished for believing that. Their reflex stat is way too high and they are able to reaction fire on any action imaginable, and they seem to suppress my soldiers more often than not. One can’t even use a flashbang to stop them from firing as they are mechanical. They feel really powerful, the player does not have great ways of taking them out, and the way they function feels really counter-intuitive compared to how your sentries seem to work. 

The issues with grenades also apply here to the enemies. It is incredibly frustrating to suppress and smoke a cleaner officer and then still have a soldier die because the officer can still throw a grenade over cover. The grenade nerf I mentioned earlier will help to make these grenades much more manageable and less frustrating. 

Start of mission save: auto_strategy_before_combat-42.json

Air Combat: 

I noticed that Ablative plating in engineering seems completely useless and redundant. Planes are already built with Ablative plating and you can only build 1 ablative plating at a time, which is very different from how things like alloy plating works currently. 

I don’t feel like the differences between cannons and missiles in air combat are significant enough. It looks like they do the exact same job, so having both of them in the game feels redundant right now. 

In air combat, the jump from fighting scouts, destroyers, and fighters to fighting observers is a huge jump. Fighting the others were pretty easy but the observer has incredible tracking and durability and heavily damages my angels in every encounter while the others don’t do anywhere near as much. I think that Observers should be toned down a smidge. (I had alloy plating, ballistic cannons, and regular missiles/torpedoes a the time).

Observer Interception save: auto_strategy_before_intercept-39.json

General Geoscape: 

Certain Base structures like radar arrays are really expensive. I don't really feel like even considering building extra radar arrays in the earlygame because I have a bunch of other things to spend money on (base structures, mars/sentries, a second base, alloy plating, accelerated/laser weapons, more angels, aircraft weaponry, and potentially the dragonfly and phantom depending on how early I want to rush those). It feels very much like a midgame/lategame option that feels extremely weird to have the option to have at the beginning. 

The game almost guarantees that 1/2 funding regions will have way more panic than every other region in the world as it is very unlikely to have more than 2 working bases by month 3. I would have lost North America in the third month if I was on the highest difficulty. I think the game needs some way of better counteracting some of this panic temporarily to allow time to build another base a month or two later. It would also be kind of nice if there was a one-time way to reacquire contact with a region already under alien control through a very special mission type, but that's just me and I know that can't be implemented for some time. 

 

[v26.2 ground combat- most of the mantids and reapers end up dead in the ufo at start of mission]

1 hour ago, Kamehamehayes said:

I killed a reaper zombie and it do not spawn a new reaper like it was supposed to. I believe I saw some red text flash for a brief moment after killing the zombie (around 35 seconds into the video). 

auto_groundcombat_turn_2_start-108.json 1.64 MB · 0 downloads output.log 7.08 MB · 0 downloads

 

55 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

I am playing an observer mission and this is the end of turn 3 and I only killed a few aliens. Press "end turn" and it will count down the number of turns until xenonaut victory. I never stepped foot in the ufo at this point, and am not able to even see the ufo hull. I think I also saw some red error text while loading the save again. Saves and logs attached. 

auto_groundcombat_turn_3_end-121.json 1.81 MB · 0 downloads output.log 9.85 MB · 0 downloads

 

[v26.2 ground combat- most of the mantids and reapers end up dead in the ufo at start of mission]

This screenshot was from the same mission as my previous bug report. I encountered this a couple times in a destroyer ufo and in an observer ufo. I did not kill those mantids and reapers; they were dead at the start of the mission. I'll include both the logs and saves from my previous couple of bug reports below. 

 

[v26.2 ground combat- game counts down for xenonaut victory even though I never stepped foot in the ufo]

I actually played more of the mission and the countdown did not appear again a single time until it was supposed to. Also, I noticed that in my last couple of missions, most of the mantids and reapers inside the ufo ended up dead, which I think is odd and more than weird luck. I'm probably going to post another bug report for that as I think it is definitely not intended for most of the reapers and mantids to end up dead at the start of the mission. 

[v26.2 ground combat- game counts down for xenonaut victory even though I never stepped foot in the ufo]

I am playing an observer mission and this is the end of turn 3 and I only killed a few aliens. Press "end turn" and it will count down the number of turns until xenonaut victory. I never stepped foot in the ufo at this point, and am not able to even see the ufo hull. I think I also saw some red error text while loading the save again. Saves and logs attached. 

auto_groundcombat_turn_3_end-121.json output.log

[v26.2 ground combat- Killing reaper zombie does not spawn new reaper]

I killed a reaper zombie and it do not spawn a new reaper like it was supposed to. I believe I saw some red text flash for a brief moment after killing the zombie (around 35 seconds into the video). 

 

auto_groundcombat_turn_2_start-108.json output.log

[V25 Gameplay / Balance Feedback thread:]

For v26 balance issues, should I continue posting here or will a v26 balance thread be made in the near future? 

[v26.1 ground combat- windows looking in appear completely black and night terror mission]

I'm doing a terror mission during the night, and the windows looking in are completely black. When I change the perspective to see those windows looking outside, they appear fine though. 

user_windows_looking_inside_are_compeltely_black-5.jsonoutput.log

[Minor observations with the Demo]

52 minutes ago, SE_Weed said:

 

• Since we know the angle of fire for the UFOs, it would seem the fighters would/should attack from different angles to try to get to the rear, etc. Having the ability for flight engagement tactics?

Tactical Combat

• Indirect fire - I could not figure out how to get my grenadier or the MARS unit to fire for effect, on an area or wall or whatever. They would only fire on alien targets.

 

-right before the air combat starts, you have the option to choose from a selection of starting positions in the top left. You can easily change tactics before the air combat officially starts by selecting one of them. 
-press ctrl for free aim/indirect fire 

[v26 Ground Combat- Sebillian Melee attack uses Reaper audio]

I don't know if this is placeholder or a bug, but Sebillians currently uses the Reaper audio for their melee attack. (Press end turn and the Sebillian should attack my MARS right next to it with a melee attack and make the Reaper noise) 

auto_groundcombat_turn_5_end-74.json

[v26 Ground combat- Stun Gun looks like it using Electroshock pistol model]

Not sure if this is a bug or just placeholder, but the Stun gun currently uses what looks to be the Electroshock pistol model. (I know it is pretty low res, but the two prongs definitely makes it look more like the Electroshock pistol than the Stun gun)

user_cleaner_inetelligence_hub_mission_-4.json

[v26 ground combat- sectons always landing shots through tons of smoke and does no damage to soldiers]

Press "end turn" and you can see my soldier being hit by two sectons with every shot but receive no damage. They also did it through many tiles of smoke as well, so their accuracy should be 0%. 

auto_groundcombat_turn_6_end-26.json

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[V25 Gameplay / Balance Feedback thread:]

6 hours ago, asdfcyber said:

I feel like the use of snipers is limited because almost all maps have a lot of cover without great elevated positions. I'd say that for defending open areas they would be good, but aliens don't really come to you so you need to go to them. That costs TU's, and sniper rifles are expensive to fire. They have more damage per shot than a rifle, but because firing costs more I think the damage per turn is lower. Sniper rifles feel like slightly more accurate but also more limited rifles to me.

Machineguns are only good if used by a soldier with high-ish accuracy, but especially with upgrades they can be extremely effective. I've been able to kill two aliens in one burst with them if they line up nicely. Also good in other kinds of target-rich environments like UFO's. I don't use them for suppression, because flashbangs are far more reliable.

I can definitely see machineguns being incredibly powerful weapons in the right circumstances. A 10 round burst form someone with decent accuracy sounds pretty awesome. But it feels like a soldier would have to have a strong assets in str, tus, and accuracy in order to make such a strategy more effective. That reminds me a lot of X1 where machineguns were pretty weak in the earlygame, but got increasingly better as soldier stats improved (with it peaking when predator armor was researched). It seems like this game has a very similar progression with machineguns so far. I'll experiment more with machineguns more once v26 comes to the open beta (which I suspect will happen at a similar timeframe to a couple of months ago, so the 1st or 2nd hotfix). 

[My detailed critques of the game as of v25.3]

On 2/8/2023 at 9:43 AM, Chris said:

 

• I'm not sure what you mean when you say you can't move the soldiers around in the dropship on the pre-mission screen? You can drag them up and down the list on the Soldier Equip screen to change their hotkey, and the Aircraft screen soldier arrangement panel still works even if the aircraft is airborne.

I know that you can move soldiers up and down the soldier equip screen, but I don’t really find that super useful as I don’t get to see where soldiers a positioned on the dropship itself. 
I didn’t know that you could change the soldier arrangement while the aircraft was airborne though. I don’t think it was in X1, and it does not sound super intuitive for that to work. I still think that the dropship screen should be present somewhere on the pre-mission screen, but it is nice you can change soldier placement even when the dropship is airborne.

On 2/8/2023 at 9:43 AM, Chris said:

 

• The idea of slowing down the air combat speed with speed 1 is an interesting one, actually. Maybe we'd switch to three speeds and have the middle one half speed and the max one double speed. I'll have a think.

I assume you mean that the minimum one would be half speed as opposed to the middle one, right? Unless I’m misinterpreting and you mean the far left node is normal, the middle one is slowest, and the far right one is fastest. I feel having the slowest on the left and the fastest on the right would be the most intuitive imo. 
Both methods sound pretty good though. I think this would add utility for all of the available air combat speeds and would make real-time air combat less about reaction time or pause mashing. 
 

[Document with Xen 2 Shield Data as of Demo v3.03]

Just so I'm reading this correctly, the first table is the chance that any ahot hit will hit a given body part and the second table is damage modfiers for said body part right?

I remember that a soldier injury system was supposed to be tested where taking damage to certain body parts was supposed to hinder a soldier in specific ways. Is this system also original part of that mechanic but got grandfathered when it did not make it in?

[I think the shield system needs to be changed imo]

I'm making another topic on shields, this time describing my grievances with the current system that I now feel after debating with others online and doing some of my own research (see my topic on Demo v3.03 shield data for that research). I said a couple of days ago that I really enjoyed the current shield system and that it mostly buffed the shield compared to how it was in X1. I still agree with that in most regards; however, I feel the new system is inherently flawed and the way shields become their most effective is when you have a lot of armor to begin with. The shield does not inherently allow a soldier to survive x amount of hits, but here, shields seem to become more effective as your soldier gains more and more armor. 

Here's an example. If a soldier with 60 hp is already getting 2 or 3 shot by most weapons, than a shield will not allow that soldier to take that many more hits (1 more probably). However, if that soldier is well armored and can now take 6 or 7 hits, then the shield gets exponentially more effective as each shot is getting more and more negligible. I described this phenomenon back in v25.2b when I stormed the cleaner base with guardian armor. My soldiers in guardian armor were already taking only single digits-20 damage every shot the cleaners took at my soldiers, but my shield soldiers reduced incoming damage by another 20 (as shields were nerfed to 16 armor in another hotfix soon afterwards). This means that they only took negligible damage and could easily juggernaut through the entire mission with no effort. I originally thought this was an issue with shields being too powerful, but now I think it is more of a system issue that affects the whole game. 

A soldier with low level armor at their point in the game does not benefit enough from using a shield to consider using it and a soldier with high level armor at their point in the game will take so little damage with a shield that the game almost becomes laughable easy a certain missions. I feel like this was never the intended purpose of the shield and that the shield should always allow for a soldier to be able to take x amount of extra hits. 

This is why I think the shield system should be changed to a mix between X1 and X2's mechanics. I think that shields should block an incoming attack entirely and have its own hp stat, but the shield has some armor on its own that reduces incoming damage to it (say the shield has 60 hp but has 10 defense for example). This way, the way shields work is more intuitive to the average player, the shield will allow for any soldier to take extra hits- not just ones with excessively high armor already, and the shield can better contend with the rapid upgrading alien weaponry because it has an inherent armor stat as opposed to X1. 

[The new shield system "game feel" and how to potentially improve it]

6 hours ago, Melee said:

Just looked in-game, the tooltip is pretty clear saying 'provides... additional armour in 180-degree frontal arc'.  I've been trying to use shield guys as a tank like in X1 that don't get damaged with shield blocking shots.  I don't think 16 frontal armour is worth 50 weight and lack of firepower; having 10 more smoke in lieu of shield would be more effective.  I now don't see what utility a shield guy has over any other class that has to stay out of sight to avoid getting hit.

The soldier didn't actually bleed though.  The animation just showed a blood spurt from his chest without any damage.  It looks scary but the soldier is fine.  It is unclear if the shot was a miss that looked like it hit or was a hit that caused no damage.  Maybe x/y/z damage text is needed where x is total, y is absorbed by armour, and z is real damage.

Sometimes shots hit and show the bleeding animation without actually causing bleeding. It's weird. I'm not sure if it is a bug or just an oversight. 

I slightly changed my mind on how powerful shields actually are (through my own research). They are still strong but they a probably too heavy for what they actually offer. I bet reducing the weight from 50 to 40 might be a good way of buffing the shield without accidentally making the shield broken by giving it too much defense. 

[V25 Gameplay / Balance Feedback thread:]

10 hours ago, Melee said:

I understood. I've tried unsuccessfully to move bodies via backpack to prevent them being blown up by flashbangs before, or to stack neatly in the corner out of the way.  I don't think moving is disallowed only on the data mission.

 

Accepting this scenario, then why don't they teleport their dead, stunned, and advanced weapons too to prevent capture by the Xenonauts.  The aliens are flaky.

I haven't tried putting the bodies in the backpack, but assumed you can because you could do it in Xen 1 and the original xcom. But I guess you can't do that anymore. This also means that you are completely locked out of the cleaner interrogation project until after the cleaner base assault, which means the +10% damage to cleaners from that project is completely worthless. Although interestingly, a soldier can die in the cleaner intelligence mission and be left behind, yet still survive after mission conclusion from what I've heard. I don't think it's a bug, but it is very weird that soldiers can come back after lying on the ground but mars wreckages cannot. 

You did kill all of those aliens, and all that equipment and dead bodies probably won't be able to fit into the pods. Also, the aliens do not have enough time or capacity to do so (because the game runs on a tus system and you cannot legally pick up bodies right now).  The devs probably have to better explain what actually happens after the missions. 

I do have something else to talk about though. What are people's opinions on sniper rifles and machineguns right now? This is probably the result of my playstyle, but I really struggle to take advantage of there extra accuracy if a soldier doesn't move. It doesn't feel like most of the maps are open enough to take advantage of it and/or I play too fast for them to be useful. Perhaps implementing something like leaning would alleviate the problem slightly, but what are your guys thoughts? 

[The new shield system "game feel" and how to potentially improve it]

1 hour ago, Melee said:

I don't understand the shield calculations. They seem to block less than X1.  I've had soldiers shot when the shield was positioned perpendicular to the shot.  Text for shield says 180 degree frontal coverage.  There are also non-hits through smoke that cause a soldier blood spurt but no damage - unclear what is happening there. 

The shield works differently from X1. Instead of having hp, it now add armor to a soldier. The shield just adds 16 armor to the front of the soldier, effectively reducing damge by 16. So shield does not block the hit entriely and the soldier ends up getting hit for reduced damage. 

Any soldier has a chance to bleed when hit, even if they end up taking negligible or zero damage. This is true for any high armored soldier and not just for shield users.

This seems like a very common response for some reason. Perhaps the tooptips are really unclear about how they work currently, in which case.

5. Make the tooptip much more explicit about what shields actually do instead of being vague or implied in the current tooltip. 

[V25 Gameplay / Balance Feedback thread:]

1 minute ago, Melee said:

Moving bodies isn't possible anywhere I've tried (alien base, alien favorite cover spot, etc).  Could they in X1?  Maybe that was X-Division thing.

I think she mean picking the bodies off the ground into the soldier backpack. The same way you can pick other items off the ground. 
 

15 minutes ago, Melee said:

Yes, from a roleplay angle, but the normal retreat mechanic isn't used. I think I've had everyone but snipers in the dropship and didn't get asked about leaving. The mission just ends when everyone is in. Abduction missions just end too, but they yield loot(?).  I thought it was to prevent infinite cleaner farming.  I'm always out of money. 

With abduction missions, the aliens teleport the abductees and leave the area, so you technically secure the combat area. Same with ufo crash sites if you hold the ufo for 5 turns. I think its implied that the rest of the aliens escape. Which are both different from the cleaner hq mission where all of your soldiers escape (and don't secure the combat area).
although, it is definitely unclear what happens after mission conclusion. I adding cutscenes that depicts the dropship leaving or have sound effects that clearly show that the abductees are teleporting away and the remaining aliens escaping is probably the simplest way of conveying this visually.