Elydo

Hmm. I get what you mean, Corsairs aren't overly distinct from Condors as it is, though I figured the next craft up from Corsairs wouldn't be too distinct from them. I haven't gone beyond Corsairs yet. If there starts to be more differentiation, and as such the Corsair is an oddity, then the trick will be to give it something unique without breaking either it or the other aircraft. The only thing that springs to mind might be to give it more fuel. I mean substantially more, making it perfect for long-range patrolling, intercepting of the hordes of light aircraft it can deal with easily in succession, skirmishing as other aircraft refuel etc. Edit: Would it be an idea (or possible) to add a short timer to ufos that would ake them unable to escape to space for a short time after an engagement? What I'm thinking is what I mentioned above, skirmishing. Using these interceptors to harass and hold up larger ufos while to missile boats RTB and rearm/refuel. The xenonauts craft would continuously attack, damage if possible but primarily avoid being shot down whilst forcing the alien craft to engage. We'd need some method of preventing abuse by the player, starting a battle then immediately retreating for example. Engaging then trying to get away should be more difficult, requiring a risk of the skirmishers actually being shot down.

And were the most accurate tier all round. Perfect rook weapons.

Damn you both I'm not looking!

I think the research could stand to be jiggered a bit actually. I'm finding I can get to plasmas too soon after lasers, and so lasers are all too skippable. I'd maybe tie plasma cannons into the plasma research requirements as well, and require some ufo plasma weapons, possibly a reactor in order to get heavy plasmas. It'll shift being able to start the research to roughly when corvettes turn up (the last weapon of the main four I typically encounter is the precision plasma) and you'd need a landing ship (at least) in order to research the heavy/vehicle tier. Edit: What's key to remember about the OG is that lasers didn't require ammunition, whereas all other weapons needed ammunition to be recovered or manufactured. So by keeping enough lasers for your team you always had a fallback option for equipping soldiers. Here, we have infinite ammo per standard so lasers aren't so distinct. They're just another damage tier.

It'll be more worth the time they take when the rewards are properly activated and you get a nice amount of loot.

Trying to go to the main forum site (ie. the white button up above) gets me redirected to a hacker splash. Team R00t apparently, with sadly unimaginative politics. Don't know if there are any other effects, and the rest of the forums are accessible through different avenues of approach, thus how I'm posting this. Amateurs are depressing. If no-one else if affected then I'll have more to look into personally, heh. Edit: Yeah, seems to be tied to the top page of the forum itself. Any further down the tree seems unaffected.

Delete this one.

Could always state that each Terror attack involves Reapers, even if they aren't part of the engaging force. Maybe the hordes have yet to be awakened and unleashed.

I like it. Let's keep it! We can call it Fluffy.

Hmm, you could have terror missions being auto-reachable somehow. Like, when clicking it it'll state that your team will be flown to within range of the site before inserting through the usual vector (Chinook), or even just taken to the site, if there's a way of having a mission without a dropship on map. Or, Terror missions are so important that the host nation gives you situational carte blanche access to mid-air refueling, allowing the Chinook to go to the site and back, though you can't re-target it. The idea of a continental Chinook is fun, but you can't have terror missions automatically out of range. They're too significant.

The descriptions of your playstyle make me feel woefully inadequate E4D. What's that? "At the game?" Yeah, let's go with that.

It is difficult to source at the moment, but not impossible. Though with the sheer number of ufos I get hit with I'm revising my estimate for the number of necessary interceptors upwards, and eventually a good portion of those need to be the advanced models. I'd simply offer a bit more alenium per crash. Though if other products, such as weapons, also need alenium to build then it becomes a bottleneck that would need to be very carefully calibrated. Currently I'm not sure if they do though, I haven't seen my count decrease after production but the research suggests they should.

I have not had the fortune to cackle maniacally as it spreads towards hapless foes yet. I feel vaguely cheated. Edit upon highlighting of 'burning need' joke: Well shite. I'm going to retreat to my previously prepared fallback of tiredness, claiming "It's past two am here."

I haven't seen a 'burning need' joke either.

Squad size is determined by the transport craft. Larger transports can be researched later in the game. There is no mechanic to train soldiers outside of combat. Currently stat increases are gained through missions via the associate action, this may change in the future. Reaction shots are taken if an enemy takes an action before a soldier and the soldiers reflex score is high enough.

Yeah, the more people try and fail, with larger teams, higher budgets and better technology, to match the original, the more visionary the Gollop brothers become. I think they've reached the point now that they're on my list of people I just want to shake the hand of, and hope that indicates my respect because doing anything else seems paltry. Chris has done a great job, Jake Solomon has done a great job, but nothing yet has managed to do everything the original did, even if they manage to do some things better. I choose to interpret that E4D hates Steam and it's entire catalogue, and thus is deeply unhappy to be spending 12 hours with literally nothing to do but inure himself to that activity, even if he's getting paid. He deserves our pity. Quick now, send him your pity. As fast and as accurately as you can, by way of physical objects if necessary. @ Tobbzn - Highly accurate, low-damage soldiers make innovative tactics important. Instead of taking a risk by shooting at an enemy you might not hit, you need to figure out how to survive the risk of maximizing the opportunity to hurt him. Do you close and try to get better penetration, load up with heavy weapons that you'll really need to use well to benefit from, set up killzones and try to manipulate the enemy (and hope they don't catch on). And plenty of moments in media demonstrate this premise. Off the top of my head: Battle LA showed professional soldiers being ineffective for the most part, and really captured part of the unique feel of playing X-COM to my mind. Crysis (the first one) had that glorious level where you had to leg it from the crab tank as it sneered at everything that could be thrown at it, but still was slowed down by the ineffective fire, allowing evacuation. Halo games on legendary, Elites and Brutes become total bastards to kill (The first battle with Elites in Reach is a nightmare in my opinion, heh. Bullets are so ineffective against Ultra shields). Plinking the enemy to death should be the resort of the amateur, and ineffective compared to playing better.

You could actually have it be a landed ufo, coded to not take off. Justification lore-wise could be that at this point, right at the beginning, the aliens are still massively overconfident and don't believe they have anything to fear.

It just wasn't that fighters day then... Beginning with boredom and ending with the ground. >: )

Can the aliens split squadrons? I ask because I had a flight out to intercept a scout, and they can't have been more than a couple of hundred miles out when a heavy fighter arrowed into them from the scout's marker. Quite a co-incidence if it wasn't intentional, though I'll admit I don't think there was any escort in the initial detection notification.

Having a good day Delta? [grin] I'd agree about the disconnect between lore and gameplay; I've mentioned before that I'd prefer accurate soldiers that didn't do damage as a better alternative than soldiers that can do damage, but can't hit a damn thing. One is frightening, the other is dis-empowering. If you know you could be doing something but you're not being allowed to (hit), that's annoying. If you are doing something, but it's just not working, that's both scary and a challenge to overcome. Something to keep in mind though, is that the horrific accuracy is one of the hallmarks of the OG, and Chris has been explicit about his desire to recapture the feel of the original. Xenonauts has fixed some of the mistakes of the original, some of the needless hassles, but it hasn't set out to improve upon the formula.

If I wanted to be mean, I might mention that such people using an Avalanche to make their point wouldn't really be all that effective, as Goldhawk would either suffer survivable damage or simply dodge the criticism. If I were mean. : >

I figured that was the rationale, it's just a bit strange that it's only limited to the first couple of weeks rather than continuing, if at a much reduced rate once it's served that initial purpose. I guess my point is that the reasonably high rate of occurrence at the beginning of the game followed by the complete lack of it ever happening again is noticeable. Especially when the purpose of our organisation is based around no-one else being effective. As it currently stands, it's more apparent that local forces start off being far more effective than the xenonauts, then suddenly lose that. If nothing else it might be worth highlighting that in the process of downing these early, basic ufos the local forces get so torn up that they cannot continue to do so.

Yeah, I'm good with the interface telling you that what you're trying to do isn't working, that makes sense. What I'm against is being told that what you're about to do won't work.

Actually, I think I remember that happening to me once. I got a bit confused, then... I think I reloaded to before the interception and when it happened again assumed it was some critical hit mechanic. But the entire engagement was a complete furball and I was far more concerned with trying to avoid obliteration that the details slip my mind. I'll see if I still have the save, but I don't believe I do. I keep five and rotate through overwriting them, but this was a while ago. Edit: Yeah, the cannon disappears entirely, that's what triggered my memory.

I'm against telling the player everything, like the fact Androns or drones can't be suppressed or stunned (I beat a drone to death with the stun rod in the process of finding the latter out. I beat an Andron to death for fun) It's part of what the autopsy tells you if nothing else, and having an exploratory autopsy tell you what you already know is a tad underwhelming. Part of the fun and the fear of the game is dealing with the unexpected, and the terrible "oh shit" chilling feeling when something appears that you've never seen before, that you have utterly no idea what it can do, is one of my favourite parts of the game. Overcoming such a threat is another.