Kamehamehayes

I just completed the clean base assault mission, and it was really easy. Most of their weapons were just regular ballistic weapons that did little against my soldiers in warden armor and did nothing against my soldiers with guardian armor. The sentry guns and plasma weapon cleaners were not particularly threatening, but I did generally take them out the earliest I was able to, so I did not actually see them shoot a x10 burst from their machineguns or fire plasma weapons more than once or twice. I also saw that there were no cleaners with any sort of armor whatsoever, which I found a little strange. Opinions on the cleaner base mission? auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-120.json

I did get the standing corpses bug. All of the sentry corpses stated standing up after a reloaded a save. output.log auto_groundcombat_turn_10_end-139.json

I remember in the v24 balance thread that you said that there would be a system in place that prevents regular damage from making a soldier fall unconscious. One of my solders fell unconscious to cleaner gunfire after being shot once. (Press end turn and a soldier should fall unconscious to gunfire during the cleaner turn). auto_groundcombat_turn_8_end-135.json output.log

I remember watching previous builds where you had a deployment phase to put soldiers wherever you want in the starting room. Now, the soldiers get placed in the same positions as they do in the dropship, so it looks awkward and unintentional. output.log auto_strategy_before_combat-36.json auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-120.json

I built a plane in engineering, and it came with no plating of any kind. I did the improved alloy plating project a little while back, but alloy plating (or any plating at all) is not included with this plane with this plane. The first save is the save right after the plane was built and the other save is when the plane was around 1 day from being built. user_no_alloy_plating_on_new_aircraft-3.json auto_strategy_after_intercept-29.json output.log

Now that you mention it, I did see psyons and sectons attack my base with plasma weaponry. I don't have a save for it, but I'll look out for it in the future.

I do have another save for another mission with Wraiths. I'll provide that too. Maybe the bug might not appear in this one? Since I also have a save right before the mission, I might as well provide that one too. user_observer_wraith_mission_turn_1_-2.json auto_strategy_before_combat-25.json

I am not playing on ironman mode currently.

-Reducing the number of saves did increase my general performance by quite a bit. Sometimes the game would hang on someone shooting or my MARS moving around, nd the problem got worse as there were more saves. So deleting them decreased the stuttering by a lot. -I did not encounter mind control when I triggered mesmerize during my play session out of the 3-4 missions I played against psyons. I don't know if I'm just lucky or not. Here's the wraith save. For some reason, the game did not autosave at the beginning of the mission, so I'll have to give you a save from the end of that turn instead. auto_groundcombat_turn_1_end-105.json

I'm going to shift a little bit away from the price of good decreasing as you sell them to the topic of alien abilities again. I just got into the playtest and played a few hours all the way until I fought Wraiths in a Observer ufo (although I have not completed the clear base). I've currently fought cleaners, psyons, sectons, servitors, and wraiths. I played on Veteran difficulty and have not completed the cleaner base yet and have access to accelerated weapons and warden armor. Sectons: I really like their alien ability. Each secton individually is pretty weak, but as a group they are super deadly. It feels fair as you can either kill a secton or suppress them. Although, I did see a really weird ai quirk where sectons sometimes prefer to shoot someone from all the way across the map than shot someone 10 tiles away from them. I don't have a good save for that one unfortunately, and I deleted a lot of saves as load times were increasing rapidly and stuttering and freezing became more often because of the uncapped amount of autosaves. I'm kicking myself now for doing that. Psyons: I think their ability is a little excessive. Shooting and missing takes that soldier's turn away completely, which is especially annoying when they miss an overwatch shot and cannot do anything the next turn. I think removing half of the soldier's remain tus with mesmerize is more than enough to get the player to think more strategically and make them go out of their way to guarantee hits. Getting rid of 100% of a soldier's tus is unnecessary and overkill imo. Servitors: From what I can tell, their ability is not bugged and they heal the intended 50% hp. I don't have much to say about them other than that. Wraiths: These guys are extremely strong imo. Their cloaking field makes them insanely hard to hit and they regenerate their cloak after each turn. They also come with both plasma rifles and plasma grenades, so they are extremely deadly as well. They are also really tanky for some reason, they have over 100 hp which I find a little ridiculous since they are already so hard to hit and that is a lot more hp than the many psyons faced previously. I got destroyed by these guys in my encounter, only surviving with 4/9 of my squad left. I think they need to be toned down a little imo. Perhaps their hp need to go down or their shield has a cooldown before regenerating again? I do have a save from this mission though, if that is any help to this discussion. Other smaller notes: -The MARS cannon is really strong. It hits one-shot thresholds on a lot of earlygame enemies and my MARS is consistently more accurate than my snipers are with a cannon + rangefinder (after moving). I didn't test how strong it is compared to the rocket launcher, but it is the mvp of every mission I've done by far. -The cost of missiles and torpedoes for air combat is too demanding imo. I'm not encouraged to experiment with my air combat weapons because the initial cost of $200,000 for each of them produced is too much to justify when I have to do things like build soldier equipment, build a second base, hire more engineers/scientists, build more planes for said second base, etc. If it were $200,000 for an unlimited supply than I think it would be worth it, but $200,000 each is a big ask imo, no matter how strong torpedoes supposedly are. -For the first couple months, I only faced psyons/sectons with the cleaner intelligence hub mission in-between. I was hoping to have a bit more variety of alien species in the first couple months of the game. -I don't really have any particularly big issues with the new economic system, but this may encourage players to hoard, which is a massive pitfall if they continue to hoard their items even when they need to cash at that point. Maybe there can be random events were the price of certain items increases for some time, encouraging the player to sell some of their valuable artifacts instead of hoarding.

I tried stunning the same alien as before, but with a lot more hits, like 7 or 8 baton swings, and the psyon is still standing. Maybe the psyon is completely immune to stun damage for some reason?

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but an alien gets stunned when accumulated stun damage surpasses its max hp right? I've encountered a few psyons and sectons which should have been stunned after enough damage but decide not to sometimes. I'll post a save and a video of one encounter of that. 546006977_2022-12-1415-13-07.mp4 auto_groundcombat_turn_3_start-41.json

Oh I see. I figured it out. I for some reason have two "My Games" folders, one in my ssd and one in my hard drive. But for some reason, Xenonauts 2 appears in both of them, and the same logs appear in both of them but not saves or settings. I should have figured this out before, but its working now so I'm not complaining. Perhaps the pinned comment at the top reports needs to be updated so it accounts for people that have a small ssd and hard drive setup as I doubt I'm the only one that will get confused by this.

I managed to find the saves. Strangely, they appeared in the folder that they were supposed to, and I can find all my saves. I was searching for the steam_autocloud.vdf file when the rest of my games decided to pop up into the "my games" folder when it was just Xenonauts 2 by itself whenever checked the first time, and Xenonauts 2 put all of its saves and settings in there too. Also, my Xenonauts 2 folder does not have the steam_autocloud.vdf file at all. I have no clue why that happened. Something probably went wrong on my end and not with the game itself. Edit: I do have a ssd that I use to hold windows and my documents folder while I have an hard drive that has all of my games and other bigger files. That might contribute to the issue.

The game is definitely making saves. I can see and load them just fine in-game. I also have both manual and auto saves. I also verified my game files right before I started playing today, so I think everything downloaded and installed properly.

I currently cannot find my saves in my Xenonauts 2 folder. I can see logs just fine, but no saves.

I just used a flashbang on a cleaner and it shown a value of "NaN". I assuming this isn't intended. I've done this against two cleaners and it happened both times. It seems like my Xenonauts 2 folder does not have savegames for some reason. I'll post a bug report for that as well

@Chris I assume this means the October update right? Currently, this link leads to the September update instead of the October update. We already got one casualty of this as one person already posted to the September update thread instead. @st3fan21 If you are still hanging out in the forums somewhere, you should move your post from the September update thread to the October update thread if you are interested in the open beta. Otherwise, nice update. I hope that you and the team get a nice Christmas vacation and that v25 and open beta will have a lot of useful feedback to give once you return.

A hybrid style might work as well. For the biomes that have little to no issue with randomization, they can be random, while biomes that are more difficult to randomize like cities can have more handcrafted maps to compensate for the lack of randomization. I’m not sure how well that would work in practice, but it might be a potential way of combating the problem.

I definitely agree here. Weather effects should be something that is experimented with in the future builds. It does a lot of combating the problem of every air battle feeling the same and it could also be a ways of balancing some of the weapons and making them more unique. I have some other thoughts about other mechanics to add as well. -It might be worth removing rearming times entirely on the geoscape. If the intention is to make each air combat more unique and vary the weapons, planes, and tactics used in each encounter, having a rearming time that prevents the player from doing that seems counterintuitive. If rearming times were removed entirely, then the player could switch weapons on the fly and make air combat more dynamic and interesting. -I find the initial air combat project rather strange. The player has not yet actually fought an air battle at this point, so lore wise it doesn't make that much sense for the head scientist to come up with missiles and torpedoes specifically designed to take out ufos if you haven't fought a ufo in the first place, and it feels wrong to give the player more options for air combat at the very beginning of the game as they have not experienced air combat yet and do know the ins and outs of it. This obviously is not an issue with veteran players, but this will probably be a minor annoyance for first time players that may join in open beta, early access, or even release. I think this project should be pushed back until the player has actually shot down a ufo once and acquired its datacore imo. -I think there needs to be another slot on an airplane for misc upgrades to be placed on it other than just weapons and armor. This slot could add things like bigger aircraft radar, faster thrusters, slightly faster fire rate, esc. It would add a lot more utility, make each plane more unique, and make general air combat more interesting. -Evasive rolls probably need to have another look at too imo. If the intention is to make air combat more strategic, then the current implementation has the same issue as Xen 1 where it rewards better reaction times and/or pause mashing to optimally evade a ufo's shots. This is probably another reason why torpedoes are generally prefered. Since torpedoes lock out evasive rolls in their entirety and outrange everything, then there is no need to worry about evasive rolls and do air combat battles with less effort. I can't think of any great solutions right now, but there needs to be some tweaks to this mechanic. Perhaps having a timer on a ufo's head to show when they are about to fire can ease the problem a tiny bit?

I have not played the game yet, but I have seen some weird stuff secondhand. The "decommission" option feels very strange to me. You apparently get nothing from decommissioning your aircraft and selling it. This feels like it actively punishes building a strong airforce of Angels early on as you get nothing for them once you replace them with Phantoms and beyond. There should be some small benefit for decommissioning aircraft in the short term imo, perhaps just selling an aircraft for half its creation cost is enough. https://youtu.be/Buv-F-XPKYA?t=10167 In this first video, a phantom was easily able to take out an abductor ufo with only autocannons with minimal damage. This feels very wrong for 1 interceptor with day 1 weapons to easily take out an abductor months later. https://youtu.be/9yeLM9E8Cu4?t=11897 In this second video, three phantoms equipped with laser cannons were able to beat a battleship with two escorts with relative ease. This is essentially the endgame air battle, the toughest one possible within the game, and it is able to be beaten with technology that can be acquired in the first few months. It feels very weird to not have to have to use higher tier weapons or the highest tier interceptor to take out a battle ship and two escorts. After the Phantoms escaped after taking out the battleship, the escorts seemed to have disappeared from the geoscape. I found that a bit odd. Summary and Other small thoughts -I think there needs to be a higher tier of ufo escorts to reinforce things like harvesters and battleships. The normal ones are just too weak to handle mid-lategame Xenonauts tech. Also, they need to stay on the geoscape even after the ufo they were escorting was destroyed. -It is very strange that 1 interceptor with autocannons can take out an abductor with ease, perhaps the secondary weapon of the abductor and other ufos needs to be buffed slightly in terms of armor destruction. -Decommissioning aircraft needs to have some slight monetary benefit outside of giving the player nothing in return. Receiving money equal to half the interceptors' construction cost might be enough. -Torpedoes are just too powerful compared to every other weapon because they outrange the majority of ufo, reducing damage taken to minimal levels. Perhaps the range needs to be cut down to mitigate this. -I think that having energy lances is good for the game because there would be way too many tiers for autocannons if every infantry weapon tier was included in them. I don't want to have to deal with ballistic, accelerated, laser, gauss, plasma, fusion, and probably mag cannons all at once. Having ballistic, accelerated, gauss, and mag for autocannons while having laser, plasma, and fusion for energy lances will be a much better balance. -Torpedoes are just too powerful compared to every other weapon because they outrange the majority of ufo, reducing damage taken to minimal levels. Perhaps the range needs to be cut down to mitigate this. -This may be the most controversial discussion point I have, but if one of the weapon tiers needs to go to prevent redundancy and overlap, then I think that Torpedoes would probably be the one to go out of the four. If it is too difficult to balance them while also keeping them distinct from missiles and energy lances, then it would be better to remove them and make autocannons, missiles, and energy lances more distinct from one another imo, and having two aircraft weapons being upgraded with the same research seems really redundant.

Yeah, I guess the main talking point here is how much does the 5 shot mag downside actually effect combat on the battlefield. If it is only an inconvenience that is easily dealt with, then I think the current system falls on its head and using accelerated weapons is objectively worse than using laser weapons. How many laser mags are we talking here? 4-5? 6-8? Do you use those extra mags that you bring in or are they just a precaution to guarantee that you do not run out of ammo? We also have to take into account that in the majority of missions, most of the extra mags brought in might not be used at all, so those extra mags could potentially be substituted for something else. I’ve also seen that there is an undersuit available at the start of the game that increases strength by a small margin, that might be enough to bring in an extra mag or 2 and vastly counteract the ammo and armor weight issues. You can potentially hire and train extra soldiers with higher strength as well.

Not necessarily. I’m proposing that the aliens should be tougher on their turn while nerfing their overwatch presence on the player’s turn, or allow the aliens to punish mistakes more easily while not overly punishing things like moving around the map. Essentially, more of the difficulty is being transferred from alien overwatch to the alien turn itself, so, theoretically, the difficulty will remain the same as before.

Since it has been confirmed that the change of accelerated weapons no longer being unlimited is not a bug, but instead an experiment, what do you guys make of it and should it be reverted back to the previous model? I do not have access to the beta, so most of this is secondhand knowledge and speculation, but from what I’ve seen, accelerated weapons have struggled to compete with their laser cousins. Laser weapons are generally considered better than accelerated weapons, so they really struggled to shine. The main benefit the accelerated weapons was that they were unlimited and directly upgraded ballistic weapons to accelerated weapons. In the short term, it upgrades all the weapons of a specific type to the upgraded version immediately. In the long term, a soldier will be able to have a decent weapon if the worst were to happen (side base gets attacked, weapons get blown up, don’t have enough money to build stronger weapons, etc). Since they are not unlimited anymore, all of this utility is void and going straight to laser weapons is more viable than ever. I’ve seen that advanced lasers also do not upgrade the existing lasers to advanced laser either, so we should address that too. You can get laser weapons in the first few weeks of the campaign, the ammo issue is not really an issue for the most part, and they are cheaper to produce than the advanced lasers you acquire later (I think), so there is no reason to use advanced lasers instead of regular lasers outside of fixing minor ammo issues. I have no idea of how plasma weapons/fusion weapons and their upgrades compare, so perhaps someone who experimented with using them can comment on those tiers. Overall, I think that accelerated weapons and advanced lasers should permanently upgrade their respective predecessors as they did in previous builds to make upgrade decisions more interesting and to balance weapons tiers better.

The issue is that reaction fire is extremely unbalanced and unfair as of now. From what these guys are saying, they are dying more often to overwatch fire on the player’s turn than to the aliens on their turn. This results in much slower play because overwatch camping is a much stronger and safer strategy on both sides than actually trying to take out aliens on your turn. There are ways to still make aliens strong and threatening without resorting to excessive overwatch fire from both sides. The game will become much more fun and dynamic if the player is encouraged to use all their resources to take out the aliens on their turn. In order to achieve this, overwatch fire on both sides probably needs to be nerfed somewhat. Perhaps a small nerf to accuracy, damage, or an increase in tus required to overwatch fire is enough to make player turn and alien turn combat more powerful and reliable for either side without killing off overwatch strategies entirely. Base attacks should probably have a small soft pressure as well to encourage the player to move out of the starting area. Perhaps the aliens can have a secondary objective of damaging and destroying base structures, which can stall things like research and engineering projects for a few days if they succeed, so the player can choose to stay and camp at the base’s center at a cost.