Kamehamehayes

I already posted a couple of these nitpicks in the v25 general balancing thread, but I don't want to derail that thread with nitpicks with this particular mission as it is more nitpicks and slight annoyances more than anything to do with balance. -I think that some aspects of the cleaner intel mission are not crystal clear like the objectives being extremely delicate or stunned enemies/destroyed MARS being left behind. I think they should be put in the left-hand corner somewhere so the player is aware of it completely as they play the mission. -The actual turn count of the mission is not shown anywhere on the screen. This is particularly important when reinforcements start to appear on turn 5 and it is easy to forget what turn you are on currently. The turn count needs to be put up on the ui somewhere imo. Or another solution is to have a popup counting the number of turns until reinforcements arrive, similarly to how capturing ufos work or how abduction missions work. -This doesn't necessarily apply to the Cleaner Intel Mission specifically, but secondary win conditions are not listed in the left-hand corner like that you have the option to capture ufos instead of eliminating all of the enemies (I don't know if alien bases have the same issue or not as I have not gotten there at this point, maybe someone can confirm or deny). I think these should be put in the left-hand corner as well but instead say "Alternate:".

yeah, I agree. I changed my mind a little bit from an hour ago. I think the real issue is that the mission does not make is explicitly clear that the objectives are extremely delicate and the actual objective being delicate is not the issue imo. I think a MARS is still very useful on that mission despite that. It can still do decent work on the middle section while not destroying the objectives. I'm making a more detailed thread nitpicking the lack of clarity of some of the missions objectives though, so I'm not going to derail this thread with that. My opinion on the MARS rockets still stands though, the radius should be decreased but the actual ammo should be increased a tiny bit to compensate (to 7 or 8 compared to the original 6 imo). I don't think you have to buy new armor every time you build a new interceptor. It should automatically come with ablative plating or upgraded versions if you completed the engineering projects for those (unless you are playing on v25.1b or lower, then the bug is not patched yet I think)

There is a pink error texture in an early part of the Cleaner Intel mission. auto_groundcombat_turn_3_start-46.json

Sorry, I posted to the wrong forum. Is it possible to move this to bug-reports? @Chris

2022-12-18 23-06-35.mp4 During the cleaner intel mission, some of the highlights around the objectives continue to persist even after the objective was captured. auto_groundcombat_turn_3_start-63.json output.log

Sorry for the triple post, but my MARS just ran over the objective in the cleaner intel mission. I think that the computers should be not crushable until the objective has been retrieved from them (or maybe making them not crushable is an easier solution in the short term). Also, cleaners can sometimes destroy their own compiters on accident, which is a little annoying. I also think that the MARS rocket launcher needs to have its blast radius needs to be toned down a little bit. It is a little ridiculous to have a blast radius of 4, perhaps having a blast radius of 3 but increase the rocket capacity to 8 might be a decent rebalance.

I play on veteran difdiculty. I agree with this. The panic level of all of the regions outside of you starting bases's radar range start panic very quickly. It is not very practical to have a functional second base until the third month because all of the costs are so high with the coat base base structures and plane (likely with upgraded weapons) is so high. Even in the third month, it is still very difficult to manage two bases because destroyers become more common and observers starting being sent out. I think making radar arrays cost 300k, 600k, and then 900k like I said in my previous post will do a lot to make this more managable imo.

I think the cost of radar is way too expensive imo. 500k is pretty demanding for 1 radar array when someone is building a second base in the earlygame. I think that each radar array you build per base should go up in price compared to the previous one. I think that it should be 300k for the first, 600k for the second, and 900k for the third. Inevitably, the player will have to pay more to have all three of them, but building only 1 is more affordable and allows for the production of more bases. I think there is still the minor issue of Southeastern Europe still being the best location for the starting base because it protects the most amount of funding regions. Logically, this makes sense because that general area has more people and cities than anywhere else on the map and there is very little water compared to putting a base in the Caribbean or Southeastern Asia/Indonesia. However gameplaywise, it means that Southeastern Europe is the optimal choice and picking any other location is chosen just for the novelty as opposed to any extra utility. I think there needs to be some systems implemented in the future that make putting bases in other areas a more viable option, although such a discussion may be out of the bounds of this thread.

2022-12-18 21-26-43.mp4 I think the video speaks for itself imo. It's extremely weird that one angel loses its ammunition almost instantaneously while the other takes awhile to let lose. No, I normally don't play like this, but I accidentally used x3 for a little too long and had it happen, so I reproduced it. auto_strategy_before_intercept-17.json output.log

I've been playing for awhile and I keep having my soldiers falling unconscious to gunfire, to smoke, to explosives, and to a lot of things. It's really annoying that sitting in smoke in the first couple turns of a mission and then falling unconscious near the end because I forgot how much stun damage they took at the beginning. I think there needs to be some sort of metric somewhere that shows each soldier's accumulated stun damage somewhere, because the amount of times my soldiers fell unconscious because I didn't know how much stun damage they took is significant imo.

Bumping this thread because I got the standing corpses bug again in v25.2 after getting saves and logs for the two other bugs I found for this mission (see mantid next to MARS). auto_groundcombat_turn_9_start-58.json output.log

Same mission as the previous bug report. I used rocket salvo on a couple of mantids inside the ufo, they completely exploded and yet I still get their corpses on the mission complete screen. The output log is the exact same as the other bug report. One save is the turn before I blew up the mantids and the other is the same turn where you kill the mentarch and get sent to mission complete screen (see other bug report). output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_8_start-56.json auto_groundcombat_turn_9_start-58.json

Mission ended immediately after killing the mentarch. I did not control the ufo yet for 3 turns yet (or at all) and 1 alien was supposedly still alive. Just kill the mentarch in my save and then it should cut to the mission results screen. output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_9_start-58.json

Exact moves to reproduce are included in this video: 2022-12-18 15-01-42.mp4 auto_groundcombat_turn_4_start-38.json output.log

Right, sorry about that. auto_groundcombat_turn_2_start-15.json

I have a small, but relatively annoying nitpick with the camera during the enemy turn. You can put your cursor onto one of the sides and it moves the camera while the aliens are doing their actions. It is really annoying if you're like me and always put your cursor into one of the corners right before the aliens start their turn. I think it would be better for the camera to stay on the aliens for their turn and make the player have no input on where it goes.

At the end of the calculation, the whole thing is multiplied by a negative number for intervening smoke and still has a positive chance to hit. I tried doing the calculation by multiplying it by (1-intervening smoke) instead and I got the actual hit chance.

In a farm map, a psyon attempts a pretty far shot that should have a 100% chance of being blocked by a hedge, but manages to land it twice in a row. Just select "end turn" and it should be reproducible. output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_1_end-14.json

Oops, didn't mean to double post.

Alright, I have some more things to talk about. -I was wrong about mesmerize affecting reaction shots and then carrying over into the player turn, the soldier gets all of their tus back like intended. -Base defense missions are really, really easy. The aliens always spawn in the hangers (which has the most open space in the whole base), so the optimal strategy is to camp the hangars and jump the aliens on their turn with all of your soldiers. The aliens hardly stand a chance even if they are equiped with strong armor and plasma weapons. You also get sentries (which you get a lot of them from the cleaner base assault), which trivialize the mission with their incredibly cheap production costs and strong options with machineguns, cannons, and rocket launchers. Using sentries also does not risk soldier death, are much more effective than a soldier, and can be rebuilt and redistributed for almost no cost. You only lose your base if all of your soldiers are eliminated, which is an extremely rare occurrence in itself and you likely have sentries which are powerful and risk free anyways. Base defense missions have no pressure to them, no risk of losing, and have no reason to play with purpose, camping or jumping the aliens player phase are all that's required. I think that the aliens should be able to spawn in other places other than the hangars and that they should have a secondary objective of some kind (like damaging base structures that take time to repair on the geoscape, or extracting information for some purpose) to make the player play with a little bit more purpose while not outright punishing them for playing a little slower. (Save at the bottom) -If you don't mind me asking, why doesn't the MARS have the option to use a machinegun? I saw in earlier versions that the MARS definitely had the option to do so, and the sentries continue to have the option to do so, despite their purpose being that of a diet MARS that can only be used on base defense missions. I think it would be kind of nice to give the player the option to choose a machinegun, a cannon, or a rocket launcher depending on their playstyle, and make the MARS a little more versatile than it already is. -The knife in the earlygame is deceptively powerful. I started using it a little bit a couple of hours in and it is quite potent as a weapon. It almost gives me vanilla xcom 2 ranger vibes with how powerful and consistent they are against earlygame enemies. It can easily 1 or 2 shot the vast majority of earlygame enemies with ease and with 100% accuracy. I checked the stats of the knife and I think it has an attack power of 40 compared to base/accelerated pistol's attack power of 28/32. It doesn't make much sense to me for the knife to be that much more potent than a pistol and still a lot more potent than an accelerated pistol. I should also mention that since melee weapons can "overwatch" or "bladestorm" now, they are also extremely effective weapon in close quarters of ufos too. -The shield is also really powerful in v25. Warden armor + shield makes most attacks from ballistic or magnetic weapons tickle a soldier, and you are are almost impervious to damage if you use guardian armor + shield. Even plasma weapons take 3-4 hits to actually kill a tanky soldier with a shield, which is significant as plasma weapons can easily 1 shot soldiers in warden armor if the player isn't careful. -As other people have said, repair times on aircraft are way too long. A lot of times, I can wait a week or two per ufo wave and my damaged angel only recovers 20-40 hp. It's almost worth it to purposefully shoot your own plane down so that it is completely repaired by the time you reacquire it in two weeks. The overhaul idea you mentioned earlier sounds kind of cool; I think it is something worth experimenting with at least. I'm going to take a break and restart my campaign once the alloy plating bug on aircraft is fixed, I'm getting bodied the the increasing number of destroyers and observers that can damage my angels quite considerably per fight, especially with several of my planes lacking alloy plating. auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-156.json

You can put both a rocket launcher and a cannon on a sentry before a base defense mission and it ends up with some weird textures: Also, if you put a rocket launcher or cannon on a sentry and then click "update", then you lose the machinegun forever as there is no option to equip a machinegun anymore. Save is from right before the Base Defense mission when you equip your soldiers. auto_strategy_before_combat-44.json output.log

I think you said before that MARS should not be able to gain medals and eventually patched them so that they would not gain medals, so I assume that the Sentries should not gain medals either. One of my sentries gained the "crimson heart" medal after mission conclusion. The savegame is from the very last turn of the base defense mission. It should be relatively easy to finish it and see the mission conclusion screen. output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_4_start-162.json

I'm not certain if this is a bug or not, but I remember in Xen 1 the missiles laying around in a Xenonauts base defense could be blown up with gunfire and/or explosives. However, those missiles do not explode when they come into contact with explosives or gunfire currently. 2022-12-15 22-04-29.mp4 output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-156.json

I finished an abduction mission where I recovered 9 of the 10 abduction pods and I only received 3 alienium total instead of 3 alienium each pod reached. Save is from end of the mission and ending the turn should go to the geoscape and pull up the results. auto_groundcombat_turn_6_end-155.json output.log

Cleaner interrogation description has outdated text from several updates ago as the player no longer needs to fill up a percentage until 100% to find the cleaner base.