Stromko

Consequences for overkill? Sounds unfun, but so long as there's not a science lady griping every time I have to use a grenade to save the lives of half my soldiers, it can't be that bad.

I came here to report the same bug, all the details the same. +1 Had a difficult time shutting it down too, Xenonauts kept taking focus and returning to full screen after I opened up the task manager. (Windows 7) Eventually I was able to keep out of full screen by clicking on the task bar, or maybe I just got lucky.

Apparently there is a workaround, from that thread MrPyro posted. It seems we can directly download our games from https://secure.desura.com/cart/cdkeys . I'm getting the zip of Xenonauts v1211 right now, hopefully it will install fine.

I've been trying to get the newest version of Xenonauts installed for a solid week now. First it went through the whole rigamarole when I told it to update, ending up with a message that the servers were unavailable (my network was doing fine, thanks, and obviously I was connected to Desura or it wouldn't have said the new version was available when I opened it). So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and after it spent a long time verifying pre-existing files, told it to go ahead and get rid of the old files (why were there any left after I uninstalled it?). It then said there was no server connection again. So I made sure it was still uninstalled (it wasn't installed), got rid of the Xenonauts directory, and tried to install from scratch again. It spent about 20 minutes verifying existing files (wut?), now it says it's downloading it. But there's no speed, no estimated time left. It isn't downloading it. I would really like other options than Desura, sooner rather than later, because the bastard thing doesn't seem to like Xenonauts. I was able to patch to the latest version of Towns in this same period with no issues, but no Xenonauts. Update: Okay, 30 minutes on, just letting the 'downloading' bar sit there, now it says I've got 4 hours at 50 KiB/s. Well we'll see how long I'm getting any connection at all, but that's progress.. I guess. A bit sad seeing as I'm paying for a cable connection that can reliably pull a gig in about 5 minutes normally. I'm a bit bothered that I would've saved a few hours of my life if this was on Gamersgate or Stardock/Gamestop or Steam or direct download or anything, but oh well. Maybe it's finally going to work. Maybe. Wow, the second I posted this, I got an MCF Download Error popping up. Now it's back to validating existing files. Jiminy Christmas, this sucks.

I don't like how currently, civilian deaths effect morale for your soldiers. This would be fine, except that they then panic, freeze up, or flee like ninnies. I can understand your soldiers feeling bad about civilian deaths, I could see them needing therapy after this is all over, but why panic? The civilians are depending on your soldiers to save them, and crouching around the Chinook crapping themselves isn't helping. What the hell are they trained for if not to respond to this kind of situation, and just what are they so scared of? My point is, the death of civilians does not effect your soldiers' chance of survival. It actually improves their survivability in several key ways since now they know approximately where the enemy is, and it's apparent that said alien is not firing at the soldier in question or lying in wait for them. If you notice a dead civilian and a bunch of fresh scorch marks, it's actually much safer to go around that blind corner since the alien isn't ready to ambush you and you know what direction the shots would come from. tl;dr: Civilian deaths shouldn't panic a bunch of my soldiers every time I respond to a terror mission. I can't do anything about their deaths on my first turn, so it essentially takes away control of my units through no fault of my own.

For the amount of effort it takes to down it, it was a letdown that it's just a single-room shanty inside. I doubt that's a final-version interior though, so hopefully they'll add both complexity and scope when they make another pass at it. I'm sure they have every intention of exceeding or meeting X-Com in all respects, and just adding some rooms and alternate routes / entrances in the medium UFOs would be (relatively) simple, so can't imagine them not doing it when they get a chance.

The stretch goals being laid out as they are were due to voting, so I have to give them a little slack on it. Personally I don't care about a soldier memorial screen, at least not enough to justify the effort that would go in to justifying those tens of thousands of dollars for it. Most of the stretch goals don't excite me that much, but it's definitely not going to seem complete without a motion detector or proximity grenades which are quite far down the list. I think the 100K stretch goal of indoor missions is going to suck if we don't have motion detectors to help us search. I think people should just fund the game based on what it is, the quality of work so far, and the promise of the finished game as a whole. I can't fault someone for obsessing over the stretch goals, and like I said I'm going to miss some of those things at the bottom of the list if they don't make it into the game somehow, but I'm not going to be mad about it. edit: Basically, I think they'll make the vast majority of their funding from people who just want to buy the game, and are going to get the game. 20 - 30$ is a good deal in that regard. If they can't make some important stretch goals, that's unfortunate but we're still getting a good game.

What is likely happening is that before you left the storage screen, you sent two separate orders out, and there are actually two transports right on top of eachother. It's a known bug that this causes a crash when they arrive at their destination, and I have encountered this myself.

More than just balancing the morale levels (which is for the future), it might have helped if there was a Berserk chance instead of just Panic and Flee. Something that causes them to spend all their APs taking wild potshots at the nearest thing they perceive as an enemy. If just a couple of my guys had been making return fire, there's a chance we could've dug ourselves out of this. Though obviously it's still not a good thing when the player has zero control over the situation and everything's up to random chance. Yeah, balancing. Can't wait.

So I just reacted to my first terror mission in the campaign, and it didn't go so well. I lost several squaddies trying to leave the chopper, as there's seven reptilian aliens hunkered down around it pouring fire on us. I managed to kill a few on the first turn, so there was still a strong chance I'd be able to make it through this. Second turn starts, every single one of my soldiers but one panics. He takes a shot at one of the aliens, misses, okay. Just had to hope for better luck next turn. Aliens kill another soldier. Third turn starts. Every single one of my troops is now panicked or fleeing. I lose another troop on the third alien turn. My fourth turn starts. Every one of my troops is still panicking or fleeing. Fifth turn, sixth turn, etc, etc .. (I'm posting this here on the general discussion forum and not on the bug forum because this is clearly just a balancing issue, and we're not in the balancing phase right now. Just thought it funny and wanted to share my experience )

Yeah, I just let one of my F-17's get hit by one of these 'Unidentified Object' missiles from a Fighter UFO. It only took 20% damage. All standard gear and armaments are infinite. Only soldiers, aircraft, vehicles and researched items need to be bought or manufactured. When you research new aircraft weapons they are finite and need to be manufactured.

I wasn't aware that UFOs fire torpedoes, is it just the corvettes and other bigger UFOs or scouts too?

I think they would stop funding the Xenonauts long before the majority of their population is dead, I can't imagine any nation being so stubborn as to actually fight to the last man, not when some kind of peace treaty / non-aggression pact is on the table. Sure they know they can't really trust the aliens, but when your citizenry is in a full panic because there's UFOs buzzing around shooting everything that moves, you either do anything to stop the carnage or your citizens find someone who will. Depending on the nation, it could take as little as 1% of the population being killed to destabilize their government. That's actually a huge amount of people, and would represent a true catastrophe.

They can't generate enough art assets as it is to get everything they want into the game, and adding whole new vehicles would be quite an undertaking. If they can keep it useful by updating the armor and all that, then it makes vehicles viable to use over more of the course of the game. I mean I hear that you can put a scatter laser on the armored car now. Why would you do this? The scatter laser isn't that viable over long distances, and by time you've got lasers the aliens have plasma rifles and heavy plasma that would annihilate your armored car in one shot. It's not like they're going to miss it. An armor upgrade is the only way a new weapons package makes any real sense. Well okay, there is the caveat that they might rebalance the vehicles and it might actually be quite sturdy in the future. I could see it being worth the time and money to upgrade the gun, then, though it would have to be quite sturdy for it to be preferable over a cheap soldier with a rocket launcher.

I think that's the best reason. You could send them in to dangerous situations, and if they got blown up, it should impact your score a lot less than losing a life. Right now if you lose the armored vehicle you lose several points, and since it can be destroyed in just a couple hits what's the point? Aside from its ability to run over fences, I don't really see any point for the armored car right now. If they buff the durability, it could act as mobile cover. As for offense I'm not sure how to make it useful. I'm able to put a rocket launcher and more ammo on a soldier: he's harder to hit, doesn't taking up four spaces in the transport, and I'm pretty sure he fires with less AP cost. It could make a lot of sense to give it longer sight range. We often imagine tanks and the like as having poor visibility, but modern tanks are much better about that and what we have here is essentially a scout car with plenty of view ports for an entire crew. It could definitely fit huge bulky optical systems like thermal imaging and night vision. Maybe it should have a sight advantage only in a narrow cone based on where the turret or chassis is facing. Really I could see the vehicles as having a lot of cool bells and whistles that would make them really useful, like smoke dispensers and floodlights, but it depends how much time the dev team wants to invest in it.

Well glad it's not just me, was starting to think I'd unpacked the game wrong or something. If there is a critical damage boost, it only seems to effect Mig-32's. I've never had my F-17's die unexpectedly.

I agree, they'll need to get balance to where they want it before they start adding too much on top of it. Though vehicle armor should be easy to implement, assuming the code for vehicle-mods isn't too complex. There needn't be new animations or anything, as painted armor looks pretty much the same no matter what it's made of.

I think it would make sense that when a UFO strafes a fleet or abducts people or what-have-you, that it should have to either slow down or stop for awhile depending on the event. It just doesn't make sense that I can have F-17's right on a fighter's* tail, and then it kidnaps the crew of a speedboat without even stopping. Even if they've got tractor beams that let them just swoop by and abduct without stopping, they'd at least have to get close and lose altitude, and lose speed while regaining altitude right? I imagine that once UFOs are able to actually land, the abduction events will mean there will be landed UFOs, so that part doesn't need to be suggested probably. I include it here out of completeness. I do really love the event system though, it was so cool the first time I saw one pop up, and even cooler when I realized that actual UFOs I could intercept were causing them. * - On another note, perhaps these events could check what type of craft is generating it, so you don't see fighters kidnapping 35 people.. I can't imagine where they'd be cramming their captives, or where they fit the machinery that messes up the tidal system or whatever, though it makes perfect sense when I hear about them strafing ground targets. Sure they're technically interceptors, but plasma cannons hurt!

Just wondering about this as the Xenopedia doesn't say anything about the Mig-32 having a really vulnerable fuel tank or anything. If it always exploded after one shot, then I'd say that's ridiculous but it might be intentional. That it explodes after one shot about 33% of the time, seems like a glitch, unless we have critical hits in-game already. This has happened in combat against light scouts and normal scouts, just small craft. I was intercepting them with a Mig-32 armed with four stingers, using the Mig-32 because my F-17's were having trouble catching the evasive little buggers. Last time it happened, I had launched my four stingers and then, right as I was entering the UFO's range, told my Mig to veer off to the left in hopes of evading fire. The scout fired once, and boom, Mig gone. I'd have several intercepts with no problem using a Mig before this, where it would receive damage but not die, yet this time it died. Probably the fourth Mig I have lost in exactly this way, and now I just don't bother using them anymore. I know Migs aren't super necessary until you're going up against medium UFOs, but it would be nice if they were an option. Their higher speed (balanced by higher cost and the man-hours required to build them) make them pretty interesting, but this instant death issue counts them out.

Trouble with auto-resolving the fights is that they're usually quite dangerous. I think a time-boost would be best, so you can effectively skip to the point where you make actual contact, fire your missiles, speed up again, combat over. Either that or they could try to implement the gaming world's very first reasonable auto-combat algorithm-- by which I mean, if you send two F-17's to kill a UFO fighter or a scout, there's 0% chance of losing a fighter just as there would be if you'd done it yourself, but they'll get damaged which they might not have if you had manually handled the combat and used clever tactics. You know I'd be surprised if they released Xenonauts and still had these air-fights take total focus on the world map. In X-Com, you could minimize an intercept and let time pass normally, even letting other fighters reach the combat and pitch in. This could even allow you to use the normal time compression controls during air combat, at least up to a point. The minimum 5 game-seconds per real second speed seems about right for the speed of the goings-on in the dogfights right now, and 30 game-seconds per second would be plenty fast enough for the easy fights. So long as you still have the pause function in air combat, and ideally have toggles you can set for auto-pause / 5 seconds (auto-pause when first entering weapon range, auto-pause when first fired upon, etc).

I believe you're thinking of a ballistic shield, not a riot shield. I'd imagine alien alloys would need to be involved in order to make it effective versus plasma weapons, as well. Would be a neat concept, then. I just had to step in to make sure that ridiculous thing from Modern Warfare isn't being perpetuated Even ballistic shields designed to stop nothing more than handguns are extremely heavy and cumbersome, and I don't even know if they make any that stop rifles, but alien alloy / superconductors could make it a viable concept.

You don't have to investigate crash sites, you still get points for downing the UFOs. I believe the general assumption in this sort of setting that UFOs which disappear because you waited to long are recovered by local government forces (who of course share nothing with mysterious multinational organizations). You use special radiation-detecting equipment, at least the sidewinder missiles do. It sounds like the UFOs can only be engaged at very close range (the modified sidewinders can only get a lock from about 1 KM out according to the Xenopedia). Frankly I'm surprised the Xenonaut radar dishes have such enormous range as they stand right now. I would think the NATO and Soviet Bloc nations would have thousands of radar dishes covering their territories. I have seen the occasional a message about a UFO being detected by normal forces and them waiting for Xenonauts to respond, though it shows up as an event-blip and not an actual radar contact. Honestly I'm not sure it makes any sense to have regular radar stations and hangars as parts of a base, when in reality you would need hundreds of them spread all over to cover the globe (and could probably get that from member states no problem). So, I guess your stuff is just extremely, extremely advanced and very rare? Heck, your low-fuel fighters can't even land in one of the numerous allied airbases that exist all over the world, they just crash and die if they can't make it back to base. I guess they're so advanced they can't even land on normal tarmacs.

I wish the corvette were bigger in all ways on the tactical map, bit of a downer to go through all that trouble to shoot it down, you get there and it's just a metal shack that looks really cool on the outside. I second that if it had two floors and more interior walls it would probably be fine, though. I'm sure they plan on working on it more. edit: Looking at that image again, I'd say it definitely needs side doors as well. Once aliens have better AI and start patrolling around their craft, this would make it much more dangerous to approach and lock down, but would open up more tactical possibilities if you can manage to lock down the surroundings. If these are the ships they use for terror missions or other landings, it would definitely make thematic sense to have side doors so they can disembark and overwhelm the area quickly. This might already be planned, though, I notice there's a seam on each side that could certainly be adapted into a narrow hatch.

I'm thinking there'd be research material to take, perhaps some way to figure out their breeding cycle so you can slow them down or assess the threat. The nuclear option would be the absolute last resort, and almost out of the question (until things get utterly out of control) if said hive is located under a major city! The Xenonauts would want to get down there and take care of the problem before any bombing is necessary, or it would be seen as a major failure on their part. They're trying to prove themselves to the world community and that's a dirty job.

I don't think machine guns should be so inaccurate from a crouch as it is already. As it stands right now rocket launchers are much more accurate, which just seems ... weird. Obviously rockets are more powerful, as well. There's still balancing to be done in the future, though, and I hope they take another look at the shotgun as well (maybe they can use some of that Kickstarter money to get a little armory going and find out for themselves how .223, 9mm, 7.62 and 12 gauge rounds really perform). Personally I think accuracy works badly in the game as it stands right now. I'm fine with the hit rate, but shots that miss should not veer off at a 45 degree angle except in the most extreme circumstances. If we're talking about suppression fire, the shots that don't hit are going to need to at least hit close. Right now you can be standing 30 yards away, fire a burst, and half the shots won't pass within 10 feet of the target. That's not suppression fire. Suppression fire is when your ears pop or you lose a few hairs because the round is that close. As for stat effects, I think they're on the right track with reducing AP, and I don't see a problem with this. It would take quite a bit of suppression to keep one of your soldiers down for multiple turns, and it's perfectly valid for a soldier to be pinned down and require rescue from the rest of your squad. I think there's a certain elegance to just keeping it that simple, but perhaps people would prefer a more nuanced approach where suppression fire has an effect spread over several stats. So it reduces AP (starting with that reserved from the last turn for reaction fire), reduces chance of reaction fire, reduces accuracy, and perhaps reduces morale? How good of cover the target is in should definitely be a factor. Perhaps it could be as simple as any shot that hits the cover in front of them, rather than whizzes by, just doesn't have an effect. Damage potential versus the target could perhaps always be a factor, not just when it couldn't pierce the armor at all. A .50 BMG round flying by ought to be more shattering to your equilibrium than a .223. If suppression can simply be based on how many rounds fly past the target (or even hit it?), I don't see why 'suppression factor' would need to be an implicit stat on a weapon, as it seems like a simple function of how much lead / scorching plasma is flying past. Obviously a single-shot weapon would take several shots to have a suppression effect, a burst-fire weapon would have a greater suppression effect, and a full auto weapon would send a lot of shots near the target. I just don't want this system to be too gamey and statistical is all. We don't need total realism, but we don't need anti-realism like what amount to obvious buffs and debuffs.