doubleskulls

After finishing a campaign, on Commander, I've come to the conclusion that as things stand shields make the game a bit too easy. For most missions taking 2-3 shield units (with other soldiers dropping spares in the dropship) you can slowly move forward with very low levels of risk and use your snipers and other soldiers to shoot anything that is revealed. They are also good at providing cover when it doesn't already exist.

Do we know how Aliens are affected by night right now? i.e. do they have reduced vision range? I've had some situations where I've exposed an alien with a flare, and can't ever recollect having a reaction shot against me out of the dark, so I think they may just suffer reduced vision, and actually the player has an advantage. @FLIR - I started with TFTD, and its atmosphere is what's got me still playing the same games 25+ years on!

I think the problem is that its pretty easy to avoid night battles, I know I'll often time my missions to ensure they are in daytime to avoid having to muck about with flares. Atmosphere may help encourage people to play them anyway, but anything that makes them tougher is actually a waste of developer resources. The tougher night battles, the more people will avoid them, and the less those mechanics get used.

I've just finished 180 days on commander level, and thought I'd provide some feedback. There are probably spoilers if you haven't finished the EA yet. In general I think X2 is excellent, and I'm really looking forward to each of the milestones as it improves. The gameplay is often tense and missions are full of interesting tactical decisions. It really has captured the feel and gameplay of the originals. How I played I was not trying to RP, but to do the best I could. So I was min/maxing where I thought it appropriate. My initial base I built extra living quarters, workshop, lab, medical & training initially. Went up to 3 labs in month 2, and got up to 26 soldiers in the initial base, adding a 2nd radar and generator as needed. My other bases were just 2 hangers, access lift, radar, apart from the 2nd base which also had an extra hangar, and eventually 3 workshops and 2 living quarters. I finished with 3 bases, 8 Phantoms, with my 4th base starting on day 181. Secondary bases were defended by Sentry Guns, which won a base defence mission with 10 units. 16 is cheaper to hire and lower cost than actual soldiers. Research, I took Warden Armour second, skipped Magnetic Weapon research and went straight to Lasers. After that largely focussed on cash and improvements to the air war - more bases/radar, more Phantom Interceptors. I retired both Angels as soon as I could replace them as their maintenance is the same as a Phantom. Up until the end of EA, a Phantom with a pair of Laser Lances, and once I had it the armour upgrade, were good enough for every UFO I faced. Tactical missions. I was not playing anything like perfectly or as patiently as say TorNis does. Mars died on the 2nd cleaner mission, and I never bothered getting another one. With 9 soldiers I'd generally be taking 2 shields, 2 heavies, 2 snipers, 2 assault and I was experimenting with grenadier (either with a HEVY or just grenades), but I think 3 shields would be better when without the Mars. With 12, it was 3 shields, 2 heavies, 3 snipers, 2 assault, 2 riflemen. I equipped Assaults and Riflemen with shields to leave in the dropship, so there were spares if needed, and every soldier was fully loaded with grenades and other equipment, dropping what they can't carry on turn 1. Most missions don't have a timer, so I can slowly scout with Shields, and then pick off aliens with Snipers. Using the other soldiers to provide additional firing options, and/or reaction cover during the alien turn. Assaults were primarily for UFO breaches. I use the tactic of blocking up doors, so most UFOs are quite straightforward to take down, just putting everyone in front of the door, open it, kill/stun all aliens, block up the next door. Feedback Difficulty - the first couple of months I think the difficultly level is spot on (and I don't think the cleaner missions needed to be made easier). However after getting lasers & warden armour I'd rarely lose someone on most missions, and when I did it generally due to either my mistakes or extreme bad luck - the worst case I had a couple die on one mission to a fluke Psyon moving into line of sight, and with two shots, killing twice in the same turn. The Alien Base was easy to do when I took it on, with Gauss Weapons, Fusion Grenades and Exosuits. I lost one soldier, and that was due to a small error on my part, and a Reaper popping through a door I hadn't noticed. Overall the difficult is partly because of the effectiveness of Shields (see below) and the Alien AI. I think the accuracy/damage is about right, its just I can stop the Aliens getting shots off a bit too easily. When looking at the AI areas I'd think of is: the AI isn't good at using cover, it will often shoot, then wander forwards leaving itself in the open, rather than say using the remaining TUs to hide or get into cover. the AI does not seem to effectively use the knowledge of what it had 'seen' in the player's turn. Ducking out of cover, shooting, hiding again is very effective. The AI seems to only behave based on what it can see during its own turn. If its been shot at, it should at least move to better cover and ideally try and find and kill the shooter. Sometimes the AI camps in a spot and doesn't move until its got LOS on an opponent. The AI does not seem to share knowledge of what all Aliens can see. If one Alien can see a soldier another one ought to be able to throw a grenade at it, or manoeuvre into position to shoot (ideally outflanking). By and far the hardest part of most UFO downed mission is turn 1. I've had 4 or 5 aliens within sight of the dropship on multiple occasions, and because the team aren't deployed yet it can be tough to navigate. This is good! I like the idea of Aliens trying to ambush at the most vulnerable point. Shields - I think they are too effective. Guaranteed to soak ranged damage and provide cover for others (I often have a crouched shield in the open with Sniper / Heavy stood behind). Some people have referenced alternatives that were tried during the closed period. I'm not sure about the best options. Maybe reducing the HP or giving them a % chance to block shots (e.g. 90%) so they are less reliable. I'd even consider dropping the Shield entirely, and relying on high Reactions/TU soldiers to scout. I got the upgrade, and quite frankly I don't think I needed to. Mission Diversity - in the early game there is a good mix of missions, but one the cleaner missions are done it seems like there is one alien base, and a terror mission every 2 months. Everything else is a 'downed UFO' mission. This is a bit repetitive, and could do with mixing up some more. Money - is very tight, which is good so I had to really make tough choices about what to spend money on. This did have quite a big impact on research, since a lot of research opens up new engineering projects which I never prioritised for funding. The interrogation research is actually the best choice in many instances. I think the overall funding level is about right. Towards day 150 UFOs are generating a lot of income, and I was able to fund fusion grenades, exosuits etc. Pacing of Research- 3 basic labs, fully staffed, was more than enough to stay well on top of the research I cared about. Money was the big constraint for tech advancements, so slowing research down slightly may be useful. Vehicles - Mars - although tactically is good, its too expensive to build and replace. Unless the cost drops, in future I'll just skip it altogether. That means I can save a lot of money as I don't need to build it or undertake the engineering projects to upgrade it either. The only battle I used Sentry Guns in they'd picked up the Gauss upgrade and were great, ripping apart a Reaper, Servitor, Wraith invasion. Research - others have commented about the proximity of Accelerated & Laser Weapons. I actually ran into something similar with Advanced Lasers and Gauss - I think Gauss ended up being either the next research or the next but one. I think more spacing in when these are available would be good, and make the choice about skipping or not much tougher to make. That said I think Advanced Lasers, for terrain clearance, are very useful, so I doubt I'd skip it. At that point in progress I wasn't under much pressure anyway, so skipping or not would not have been a big call. Grenadier - on the first couple of missions is fine. After that I don't think I'd ever use the role again. Regular soldiers with grenades are more useful. This meant I had no 'rocket' option. Demolition grenades and lasers were good enough. Grenades seem to behave oddly inside the dropships and UFOs, sometimes ceilings don't seem to be taken into account with the 'hit chance' but are when the grenade is thrown. There are also some odd graphics with soldiers facing the wrong way when throwing grenades in a UFO. I think its been reported that stun grenades can affect soldiers on the level below too. I didn't use additional armour, Knives or C4 at all. Smoke is tactically useful so I'd often have one, Flashbangs are vital. Regular frag grenades are very handy with Wraiths (to remove cloaking) and tactically useful to soften up opponents. I didn't do any upgrades to any base buildings, or build any missile batteries for that matter. The only thing I upgraded were grenades (I skipped alenium, and went straight to fusion), Phantom armour and Shields (which I wouldn't do next time). Everything else seemed a luxury that could wait until after my interceptor coverage was complete (which depending on the number of UFO missions I'd have got to around day 210-240). Except maybe in the first month I was never short of alloys or alenium. If these are meant to be driving hard choices they aren't right now. I very rarely sold them, and with hindsight probably could have done so to get a bit further into my interceptor coverage.

Its a night battle, and as you can see I've not even had visual on the UFO yet. This is the insides of it! Once I throw a flare in the direction, I can see the UFO.

@happystrawberry1 Please try to be civil. I believe that Alienkiller is not a fluent English speaker, and unfortunately it means their communication can be difficult to understand.

The reserving TU for crouching seems to be exclusive with reserving time for shooting/throwing, which is not what I expected. I want to be able to reserve time to crouch and shoot. Reserving time seems a bit weird in the UI as when you go to the next turn the TUs are reserved still (good) but it doesn't show properly on the UI.

So you'd expect that if everyone dies there is no chance of recovery (based on medical centre / difficult settings)?

If you stand a soldier in front of a door, and close it, aliens will never open it. This feels like an exploit, as it particularly makes some of the UFO breaches a lot easier as you can block routes and can effectively manage to clear one room, block the entrances, and reposition for the next room. As there is no time limit on most missions this makes you can use an extra turn to get all your TUs back / reload etc, quite safely, even when in a UFO.

This is good. Where this can break down is where the solider is changing role, so if I have 2 laser MGs, and make 3 solders heavies (with the laser) one won't get a weapon. If I think make one of them a rifleman the unequipped heavy will not automatically pick up the now 'spare' laser MG. I've been caught out by this a couple of times. So I manually have to check every soldier before launching and/or make sure the stocks of spare weapons are 'correct'. Also, as I'm regularly changing the soldier role I regularly set them all to 'blank' and then reassign them, to have the correct role composition, with the best candidate for each, for the squad .

I'm pretty sure there are lots of gamers who'll happily pay for 'flavour' packs to get more national content, although I suspect once you've got the biggest player bases covered, the demand may not justify the investment. Myself, I only tend to pay for additional content where it impacts gameplay. There are some well trodden routes with this for the genre too, e.g. cybernetics and/or robotics, so plenty of collateral to inspire.

I'd love to have more missions where we are fighting cleaners, raiding shipments, ambushing them or even defensive ones, e.g. VIP escort or defending a convoy.

If I am taking say 2 snipers, I always want by 2 highest accuracy soldiers in those roles. If one of them gets injured then the 3rd best accuracy will be a sniper, but they are likely to be in a different role (e.g. rifleman). So am I regularly changing roles of soldiers. Also I tend to not take soldiers once they've reached Colonel. The last thing I want is one to get killed randomly in a breaching a UFO, and its good to level up the rest of the team.

'Manage Soldiers' from the Soldier menu I'm aware of sorting. In my main base I've got ~26 soldiers, and for every mission some get injured and some recover, and new ones are recruited. So I don't have a very stable squad mission to mission. Ideally every mission I want to bulk unassign all soldiers from the dropship, and assign them to a 'blank' template. I'd then want to filter out the soldiers I do not want to take (those who are injured, in transit or based on rank). Then I want to sort them, generally by strength or accuracy, and then assign them roles. This is quite fiddly with the UI at the moment, and involves a lot of horizontal scanning across rows (are they injured? in transit) and I can't easily just go vertically. I'd like to be able to filter out Colonels, I don't take them on regular missions unless I have to, and this becomes annoying later on during the EA, as I'll have half a dozen of my 'top ranked' soldiers who I don't want to take. Being able to drag & drop the columns would help too, so the ones that matter most to me I can put adjacent to each other, reducing horizontal scanning.

Good to hear!

Special UFO missions (besides crashed ufos): After I got 3 bases with 3 planes each, it was quite easy to destroy most of the UFOs, which resulted in a lack of these special missions, at least this was my impression. I would love if some of these special missions are triggered automatically, so the player cannot avoid it. (looking at you base defense) . Another option would be special camouflaged UFOs or something like that, which cannot be shot down, like the regular ones. 100% agree we need more mission diversity. Unique upgrades: I understand the idea that you want to avoid small-scale engineering of single items, which is ok for stuff like grenades. However, for my aircraft, I would prefer to upgrade them step by step at a smaller cost for each. (you did it for personal armor!) I'm happy with the current system. Money is very tight anyway, and if you've a dozen interceptors upgrading them all may be very expensive compared to just a single upgrade. Soldier exhaustion: Xenonauts 2 needs an exhaustion system for soldiers! Don’t allow deployment in multiple missions during a 1-3 day window. Or at least decrease the overall states by x%. They can sleep on the drop ship! Soldiers equipment: I still find the system not very intuitive and difficult to manage. Especially the case when you come back from a mission and some of your guys are lightly wounded. You have to manually empty their equipment (I have an empty “role”) and deselect the transporter. I don’t have an easy solution here but there may be some. I agree there needs to be improvement here. Soldiers in general: There is no really difference between soldiers, especially in the later stages of the game. It would be nice, if they earn some simple passive perks, depending on their role in the battlefield. Like, +5 ACC with their favourite weapon and so on… That's not my experience. Soldiers have very different stats all the way up to Colonel. Colonels are better at everything than privates, but compared to other Colonels they can have big differences in stats. Color coding: The soldier selection bar in the middle of the top screen during missions needs some improvement. It is VERY difficult to recognise the weapon and the role of the soldier in mid battle (in xeno1 there were simple role symbols). Suggestion: allow to color coding the armor of your soldier or at least give each role a color code which is shown in the bar. Yes please... I find it very difficult to differentiate the troop types and the icons for the weapons (even on the soldiers weapons, let alone the top nav) are often very similar so its easy to make a mistake. Reserve TU: Please let me reserve TU to crouch! Yes Please. Smoke grenades: Why do they stun? Why don't your soldiers have gas masks? Some of the later armour does have gas masks. Friendly fire and suppression: To often my guys supress or hit each other due to a stray bullet, especially in close encounters. I mean, there are a combat team, they know when they are firing, there is no surprise. It would be nice to address this issue. E.g. plus 50 % suppression resistance and minus 50% to be hit change when your own, close by guys are firing. There is a setting to say 'no friendly fire risk' or you can individually turn off which weapons will be used for reaction fire - its the eye icon in the bottom right corner of the weapon's panel. Civilian: In my last mission an unarmed civilian run into an ufo and teleported around – he was killed. Suicide by aliens - Why? The AI is basic... personally I think its hilarious. CPU: My relative new Laptop gets quite hot running the game. I find this quite strange for an turn based game. Any idea? Autosave: Please add an autosave at the start of the first turn during ground combat. Currently, only successive turns have one. Baton: You can put a baton in the second hand slot and use it, while carrying a 2-handed weapon. This should not be possible. Would you disallow using a sidearm with a sniper rifle too? Geo: It should be possible to seen how many days remain in a month and the current financial expanses, not only in the report at the end of the month. The month is 30 days, and you get the funding report first thing on the 31st, 61st etc. Zoom: There should be a vertical zoom for ground combat. Aiming at greater distances, e.g. sniper, is difficult, because I cannot see the soldier, obstacles and the alien at the same time. There is, pageup/pagedown.

I think the economy as a whole is a bit weird. Our engineers are the only organisation on earth who can produce advanced weapons, but we can't sell them at a profit? The only way for engineers to be profitable is do nothing, and the return on investment for this is very low, certainly its not worth hiring engineers just to sit idle. I'd expect to be able to have a useful income stream, and a profitable one, turning alloys into accelerated weapons and selling them. Instead I'm better doing nothing and selling the alloys. My suggestion would be to make idle engineers produce no money, but be able to produce goods you can sell, rather than use.

I use the soldiers menu a lot to choose who I want to take on missions, and in which role as I find it a bit easier than through the assignment dialogue. One thing that would be very helpful would be able to filter out soldiers based on a few factors are they available (i.e. exclude heavily injured or in-transit soldiers) are they injured (i.e. exclude anyone with <100% HP) are they already allocated to the dropship - yes/no (i.e. only show those units who are or are not already 'on board')

Or manually just toggle reaction fire on/off for each weapon - its the eye in the weapon's window.

Just like this

SGM Jane Jones panicked after getting shot, and dropped her shield, but the rendering is still showing her having a shield. You can see it on the floor too.

I agree more range would help. Right now I think you'd be better off with a high strength soldier with a pistol and grenades, than the HEVY. Also the grenades themselves aren't powerful enough and the upgrades are quite a long way off. Maybe giving the HEVY more penetration or destruction compared to regular grenades would help to make them worthwhile.

I've already got to day 180 on Veteran and have started a new campaign, on commander, and have reached day 87, I am really struggling for cash, which in itself is good, as it really forces me to choose what I want to spend money on. Difficult choices make for good games! I think the balance is about right in tactical - commander definitely feels like a big step up from Veteran. Overall tactical missions are tough, and require focus. Any mistake can easily lead to a death (or multiple deaths), and deaths are expensive in lost skills and equipment. The 2 cleaner missions are very tough, but make a nice change of pace from the normal downed UFO missions, so I'm happy with their difficulty. On both of them I succeeded in assassinating the VIP, but lost half my squad doing so, including MARS, which I haven't rebuilt. Next time I'll probably skip Mars altogether. $250k to (re)build is a lot. Maybe this needs to be brought down a bit? $150k maybe, and $75k to replace if you save the wreck? Smoke maybe a little too effective at stun damage, but that could just be because the AI does not seem to account for it, and will run through it and then stay in the smoke rather than moving out or around it. I'm not even sure its considering it when shooting. Whilst I'm on it, the AI isn't good at exploiting cover, and if it has a target will just run forwards, leaving itself in the open. Sometimes the AI soldiers don't seem to move at all, which seems odd. Even if they are in 'guard' mode I'd expect them to wander a little bit, especially if they've been shot at. Grenadiers feel underpowered. First couple of missions (before the Mars) they felt like a reasonable substitute, but I think I'll be better off just carrying grenades and no launcher. Maybe a pistol and/or baton too. This run I skipped Mag Weapons, and went straight to lasers. Cash is so tight, next time I'll go accelerated weapons... they are just as good at half the price. My only hesitation is how much money do I 'waste' on accelerated weapons when I switch to advanced. Probably worth having one set of accelerated, then if they are lost, replacing with lasers. I do have Heavy Lasers on my interceptors, and that has made a big difference in their ability to take down UFOs. The two Angels or one Phantom can take out a medium. I suspect Accelerated Cannons don't have enough ammo to do the job, and would therefore research Lasers just to get to Heavy Lasers. Other than keeping a viable assault team, top of the list for my money is more interceptors, and radar/bases to put them in. I'm going to need at least 12 Phantoms, and to build enough bases/radar to give me coverage of at least 5 sectors, and realistically I'd want all 6. That's going to suck up all my cash, probably right up to day 180. With that in mind, I'm thinking my upgrades are going to be very limited and very focussed. Right now, I'm thinking Advanced Lasers, maybe Alenium Grenades. Gauss weapons when I've got the tech. I can't image much else getting prioritised before I hit the 180 day 'end'. From the tech there is quite a lot that isn't really needed and could be skipped. Not because the tech isn't interesting or useful but, by and large, its allowing me to upgrade things I don't have the money to upgrade. Its actually making me think once I've got Phantoms, Heavy lasers, Warden Armour and all the cash tech, the most important research may be the interrogation to get the additional damage and training without having to spend money elsewhere, or maybe just let the scientists make money. Plasma Weapons Alenium Explosives and Gauss Weapons will be 'must have' when I can research them. I went to 3 fully occupied labs in the 2nd month, and I'm thinking that was a mistake, and maybe I can get through with 2.

I think you are missing my point. I do load my guys to the max, but by gradually dropping the excess equipment I can get snipers etc to have multiple shots on the first turn.

Please lock this thread @Chris