doubleskulls

Maybe an exploit, rather than a bug. I'd expect that the % TU calculation would ignore overloading penalties. So a soldier with 60 TUs, irrespective of what the are carrying, needs 45 TUs to fire a 75% shot. However it appears the % calculation is done after overloading is applied. This is very easy to recreate. Start a mission with a soldier carrying too much equipment, but still having some TUs available. The solder will have percentage based TU actions, e.g. shooting, based off their TUs after overloading is taken into account. That means if you have 8 TUs you can fire a x10 burst from a machine gun, be reduced to 2 TUs. Dropping a grenade will 'refund' 6TUs and you'll be back up to 8. At this point the calculation thinks you've got 14 TUs and have spent 6. Dropping 3 more grenades will raise you to 26 TUs, and you can once again fire a x10 shot. This will work until you are back to not being overloaded. user_commander-3.json

I'm not convinced of the need for a manual. Many of the questions that have been asked are answered in the game already. Also, modern games are much better at explaining things in-game than traditionally. I think dev time would be better focussed on tooltips, the xenopedia and, if there is stuff they just can't get in those for some reason then isn't this a fallback?

Maybe a small thing, and potentially just about preference. I think the label 'unit time' is a bit misleading and can could confuse people. The 'unit time' is actually 1 day, 4 hours, as correctly shown in the 'duration' field in the bottom right of the screen shot. However, if I didn't have 'warden armour' selected, I would not see this and then it gets confusing. I'd see a screen showing 'unit time' as 2 hours, and the total to complete much more than 4 times this. Perhaps just changing the label to 'next complete' would help? Then its much clearer what the information being displayed actually shows. Until I wrote up the bug report, this wasn't obvious to me

Or maybe running up to the aliens thinking they are friendly Or just being dumbly curious, like 90% of characters in horror movies

Maybe there is a balancing point where, rather than a more gradual escalation, we just have more mission diversity. So there could be, for example an 'abduct cleaner operative' mission which is covert, maybe with a smaller squad and limited equipment. IMO XCOM 1 & 2 did a lot to raise the bar in this area. Tactical battles are great and I think having more diversity in the challenge within them would be good. I believe I'm in a minority, but timed missions are much more exciting IMO.

Chris has stated there is significant AI rework planned during EA, so hopefully more aggressive AI behaviour is part of that.

I think you can get pretty good coverage with 4 bases. One in Sudan area, at level 3 radar covers all of Europe, Africa and chunk of Asia, Soviets. A level 2 in the Gobi desert covers the Soviets and Asia (except Australia / Indonesia), then level 1/2 in North America and a level 1 radar in South America. Other than extra workshops I haven't really found a need for much else in the additional bases.

There are a couple of extra dimensions could be factored into the analysis Mars has a much better survivability than any one rookie due to better armour/HP. If Mars is injured it fully heals immediately, unlike a rookie, so its more available to participate in missions (injured rookies could sit in medical for a month, being paid whilst they do it, the lazy sods ) When a rookie dies you'll often lose equipment - e.g. armour. There is theoretically a one off cost for other equipment for a rookie - e.g. laser rifle, but we could possibly write that off against the upgrade costs for the MARS. MARS is generally tactically better than a rookie, so is likely to result in fewer casualties in a mission its on, and a higher chance of success (i.e. 8 experienced soldiers + 1 rookie are worse than 8 experienced soldiers + MARS) On veteran / iron man, I probably lose less than one soldier a mission. Generally I think Mars is worth it, although now I'm in the later EA game, it is starting to lag behind in terms of survivability. If I don't take it, I'm taking a Colonel too, and I'm only not taking them because I do really care if they die. If someone has to die I'd prefer to spend $125k to replace MARS than train up a private again!

It terms of working on specific missions I think base defence is relatively rare, maybe one or two per campaign? If the devs have time to improve mission diversity I'd like to see a more variety in the more regularly occurring missions - especially UFO capture. XCOM2 had a lot of additional mission types which could be good to try and inspire new ones for X2.

Today the x3 rifle burst is 50% TUs, and aimed 48%. So practically speaking you can choose to fire both twice now. It would seem a bit weird to me to say that you can fire aimed twice but burst once.

If you run out of space in the storeroom is the game telling you to sell the stuff you don't need. As far as I can tell you only consume alloys & alerium, so can sell all the alien equipment, captives and corpses. Bases are expensive, an access lift, 1 radar and 3 hangers and 3 Phantoms is costing around $3m to build/buy, and $800k pcm to maintain. Month 4 and my income is around $4m pcm, so expansion is largely funded by looting.

Having scientists / engineers being the civilians running amok and getting killed (and needing to rehire if they die) would be nice flavour. Do bases actually take damage from the attack? That also could make it more interesting - destroy a lab with HE and you have to repair it. So deciding whether to use laser weapons and carry a higher repair bill for every missed shot would add to the decision making.

He's on the hardest difficulty level, and I think he was a bit unlucky with it too. They are tough missions, even when you know what you are doing, and losing soldiers is an expected part of the game. For me, that's okay. Its definitely worth bearing in mind that you don't have to do those missions immediately, they are persistent and you can do them when you want. I waited until I'd fully upgraded to warden armour and lasers/accelerated before tackling them.

I think there is an issue with presentation of the information which will confuse players. At the moment the funding screen does not provide any information about why or how the funding from any region is changing. So there is no feedback loop, so players don't know why funding is changing. I'm not aware of anything that clearly states that funding is inversely affected by panic. Players see a tech saying '$240k extra' and they don't see a $240k rise, because panic is rising too, so think there is an issue with presentation of the funding information.

Its intentional, so you can plan additional building before the generator comes online.

My standard breach tactic is to open the door with a shield and throw a flashbang. If I'm going to trigger reaction shots throwing the flashbang it significantly increases the likelihood of taking casualties doing it the 'safe' way. I agree that grenadiers seem underpowered, but I think within game balance grenades are pretty reasonable. It may not be realistic, but if grenades become better then the only reason to shoot would be either because of long range or to get the kill, and get the equipment/corpse.

What are people's strategies around bases? I'm thinking Base defence missions - can I get away with Sentry Guns? $40k to build, but only $2k pcm maintenance makes them cheaper than soldiers with pretty much any sort of worthwhile equipment. Are they good enough for base defence missions? If so I can build bases without needing living quarters etc for soldiers, unless I want a dropship there. Missile batteries - are they worth building? On veteran I've had one base defence mission and it was a bit painful but survivable without any batteries. Workshops can generate a small profit, but the return on investment is quite poor, so its only worth building workshops you need. The upfront investment in workshops etc does not pay back within the scope of the game. Having a 2nd base with workshops is useful so I build fast enough. How many labs do people build? I'm thinking 3 may be enough, which I can fit into my original base. So other than maybe a second base with some workshops, I'm thinking everything after the first base is mainly just an interceptor/radar base - 3 hangers, as many radars as you need for coverage, generators for the radar, and Sentry Guns for defence. 1 base with 3 radar costs the same as 1.5 bases with 1 radar, so I'm thinking North America and South America probably require a base each, but Europe/Africa and Asia/Soviets can each be covered by one base with 2 or 3 radar. Will that be enough interceptors though?

I appreciate you are being humorous, but its easy to forget, but soldiers and vehicles cost maintenance. Each soldier is $10k pcm , and the MARS is $5k. So although the initial recruitment costs are lower the ongoing maintenance is $250k pcm for the rookies (ignoring costs for living quarters) vs. $5k for one MARS. Even having to rebuild the MARS once per month its still cheaper. So even on the cost basis MARS is still better

1) Just got laser weapons. How does thermal damage compare to kinetic? Thermal does double damage to terrain, otherwise I think it makes no difference. There are differences between the weapons though. 2) What do those numbers for the different regions at the bottom of the screen on the geoscape mean? How do I influence them? That's panic, when it hits 100 you lose that region. Shoot down UFOs and complete the missions. So if a region has higher panic you really need to get radar coverage in and get some interceptors up and fighting. 3) Will multiple medical centers stack? I don't believe so. 4) We need more tool tips. Currently, we need to build a structure then scroll over it for the tool tip on what it does. Fair enough 5) How do soldiers increase in rank? By taking part in missions. There is presumably some hidden XP that they gain for surviving, killing aliens etc. The stats all have tooltips that tell you how you gain progress on them. I'm not sure, if you've built a training centre, whether they'd level up from that too or whether it just improves stats.

I'm definitely not an expert on the best loadouts, but Phatoms only have 2 slots, and I think dual lasers is better than missile/laser or cannon/laser. I did experiment with laser/laser and cannon/cannon, but it just seems to give worse outcomes in auto resolve than just having lasers.

Proximity mines and timed bombs would be fun to have. I generally rely on doors to get into buildings. Its great to open them, shoot, close the door, blocking LOS. The alien AI seems that is does not remember what they have seen, and only respond to what they can see now. So staying out of sight is important.

From what I've seen, and unless the in-game stats are lying, accelerated weapons are marginally better than lasers. I think the primary trade off is about research, and whether you want to use a research to get accelerated weapons or are happy to skip them and have the slightly worse lasers instead. My next game I'm going to try skipping mag weapons research and go straight to lasers. I think it will be okay. The alternative is to take mag weapons, and delay laser research until you are close to getting plasma. This may be slightly better if you are going to build more labs so will get the research time down.

I use the Mars's rocket launcher only. No grenadiers. If I didn't have Mars for a mission I'd take one, but I don't think I need to have 2 RPGs in the squad.

I think its doing it deliberately so they don't take weapons, depriving the mission team from having them.

Being able to pick the image you want from the current library of images would be fine though? Are you even opposed to people uploading completely new images they'd created themselves?