BCool

I also noticed this, and yes lasers are arguably initially worse that the accelerated weapons. As it stands the description is not consistent with the displayed accuracy numbers. In practice initial lasers weapons are better at destroying terrain and walls and armor which does help in some maps and for some opponents. (For example you can use laser shotguns to reliably destroy interior ufo walls) Later you can research a damage upgrade for laser weapons, which makes them obviously better but still the ammo and the energy resistance of some aliens makes them not always better even then.

Just finished a commander ironman campaign, and I have a few tips if people are interested. I built my base on the western edge of Asia, where it only costs $1,000,000 for some reason, but has lots of land area and is near 4 regions. I also play the extended game, I think it actually makes the game significantly easier especially on commander. (more loot to sell) I immediately built a training center, power plant, and a hanger. I would time the build of a lab for the start of the next funding month (and time the build of 3rd lab for the start of the one after that) No workshops until you have 3 fully staffed labs. I skip the hospital until midgame. I just hire about 15 soldiers when possible and swap out the wounded. I also fire the weakest TU soldiers and replace them before the training center comes online. I accepted the reduced training rate due to the extra soldiers. I immediately researched the MARS and built one. I also built a 2nd plane asap as well. Early on the MARS is just so valuable, heavy armor, ballistic cannon with a range finder seems the best. Early on it is probably your best killer, and it can lure out enemies and survive most attacks in the early missions It is just so valuable to have the enemies run out and try to kill it. It makes them much easier to kill. You should still try to get cover for it and even smoke but just make sure it is the easiest target when you are getting overwhelmed by enemies. Tactical combat early on I go with 2 shields, an assault, a grendier, a sniper, 2 machines guns, and the MARS. The grenadier is so useful since the weight of the grenades and smoke is significantly less with the launcher. The range is nice too, and the ability to launch 2 grenades a turn is very nice (one grenader can smoke everyone!) My philosophy is to make sure every soldier is making a useful attack without leaving them exposed (or a plan to smoke the group with one of the last soldiers to go if they have to leave cover to make an attack or need to advance quickly). If they can't make a useful attack, then they are blowing up walls or cover that might hide enemies that could be attacked by other soldiers. Everyone uses the rebreather, with the possible exception of the grenader and sniper. Reaction fire is only used as an absolute last resort. If I know I can't attack an enemy and my only hope to save someone is reaction fire, is almost the only time I use it. Smoking your attackers is almost always better than letting the enemy attack. Even if there are no visible enemies I will smoke my soldier even if they have cover at the end of the round if there is an unexplored building/area near them. Battles with reapers is a possible exception to this rule, but even then I would rather just be more aggressive at destroying all cover possible from range to expose and kill them rather than waiting for them to jump out. You can still kill the aliens through a smoke wall especially with machine guns. Targetting a space beyond the alien through smoke will spray the area and still hit the alien more often than not with a 10 bullet burst. I ended up eventually getting to 5 hangers at the main base, and building 4 angel interceptors before timing the building of my 2nd base for the start of the 4th? funding period I believe. I set it up with 2 hangers, a radar, a storage space, and 2 missile batteries. I immediately transferred the 2 interceptors there as well as 4 sentry guns if I got really unlucky on a base attack surviving the missile batteries. Early on, you have to capture a cleaner agent, the general and as soon as reasonble a clearner soldier alive to get the bonus operation points. Use the points on supporters to reduce tension or get more Operation points (whoever is cheap) ideally the ones that give you either -2 doomsday tension or +2 operation points. Researching the general's interrogation is top priority after the MARS research. Time it and know that the protection status changes every 10 days. After getting all the operation points you can and enough doomsday tension reduction, then I try to go for the region bonuses. I try to the soldier bonuses if I can at reasonable price, high quality soldiers is just so important. If you are playing extended version of the game, then getting the selling bonus is really good after that if you can. Reduce monthly expenses then maybe reduced scientist and engineer salaries if you really can't get the others cheaply. Eventually I found it useful to have 2 sets of 3 interceptors to shoot down UFOs. Full missile loads with 3 interceptors especially with alenium missiles and maybe one torpedo for the right fight can take down almost anything, usually with minimal damage. I ended up using 3 upgraded angels and 3 phantom interceptors. Near the end I did build the gemini interceptors, and more bases just because I had so much money. Half of my soldiers killed (I think 10 out of 19) were MARS or ARES vehicles. So much better to sacrifice them than a trained soldier.

Great game, thanks for all the hard work! I finished a soldier ironman campaign and started a veteran ironman campaign. I really enjoyed the game. The tension in the early game on ironman really made every decision feel important. Money is so tight that you really have to make compromises (like delaying the hospital and training center for example). I liked the air combat. I really liked the ability to rapidly refit the planes to fit the situation. I liked the mars platform and the different loadouts which can be customized for the mission (like using the smoke launcher for the Cleaner leader capture mission or the raid of their base) or customize the loadout for the aliens you expect to meet or for the environment (rockets or cannon). I think the grenade launcher also is really fun and frustrating early on. The ability to launch 2 grenades each turn and to carry a lot of ammo compared to grenades is worth a bit of frustration (I found the accuracy enhancing equipment helpful for my grenader). On my first play through I understood the limitation on only clearing 2 ufos of each type without paying OP points, but I wouldn’t have chosen it if I had known of the option at the beginning of the campaign. Interrogating the cleaner agents for more OP was great. I wish something like this continued with the aliens. Maybe at some point you learn a way to communicate with one or more of the alien types and you get OP the first time you capture each different alien of that type. If that would be implemented it would be nice to have a text popup when you select an alien on the map indicating the alien type. Perhaps introduce other opportunities to get OP points during the middle or late game. An option to get a some amount of OP instead of money for letting foreign governments to clear a downed UFO? (only once per UFO type perhaps) I only played on soldier so I can’t say that the panic system was too lenient. I’ve played a lot of xenonauts 1 so I knew how important it was to control the skies. However there was no panic for most of the middle and late game. As other people have suggested, more mission variety in the middle and late game would be great. Like saving a supporter from an alien attempt to kill, or to flip them. Base attacks, seems like you should get some rewards for shooting the ufo down with base defenses. Perhaps a unique ufo mission where the ufo is more damaged than normal. Random combat observations I found that forcing your machine gunner to fire into a ufo filled with smoke with 0% chance to hit the aliens, ends up hitting the aliens anyways more often than not. I like it a lot, but perhaps not intended? You have to use control to fire at a space behind the alien that you want to hit I was surprised that the jetpacks wouldn’t let you stop at a point in the air and scout the map as you could in Xenonauts 1. Is that something that will eventually be implemented? Also I was surprised the ARES (upgraded MARS) wasn’t able to move around like a soldier with a jetpack at least. {edit: I guess I never realized it could, sigh) Random thoughts Perhaps sometimes, especially when a fighter engages your interceptors, the aliens get the initiative and can place their ufos rather than the player. Might spice up some of those fights. Probably never going to happen, but I thought it would be cool if there was an option to send 2 helicopters on a mission for twice the soldiers. I was surprised there wasn’t an option to patrol over a landed ufo so the interceptors could wait to shoot it down when it left or an option to shoot at the landed ufo with interceptors to trigger an air combat perhaps. And since there is value to alien corpses with the ballistic testing, there really should be an option to just kill a captive alien (or just use them as resource for the project to start)

I don't know how the bug is triggered unfortunately. Whatever triggers it doesn't stay triggered when you save and load the game. So I don't think a save game file will capture the problem unfortunately. If it happens again, I'll try to remember what I did to see if I can reproduce it. I don't think it has anything to do with the input devices I'm using. I am using a wireless trackball, but this only havppened once in a complete campaign.

When I tried to sell items it didn't bring up a confirmation window and I couldn't complete the sale. I was able to exit the screen by hitting escape a few times. When I then try to save and quit (ironman save) again a confirmation window didn't show up, so I wasn't able to quit or save the game. Edit (I was able to save and quit after I started a tactical mission) bug_report_2026-05-03-12h19_st_7.21.6_user_f11.zip