DeviousAlpha

I have also tested Fire in the hole, whenever I equip a breaching charge from my bag via the inventory, when I close the inventory its gone. My soldier's gun is still in his bag, but the breaching charge has vanished. Not on floor, not equipped, not in bag. It's quite bizarre.

I'm truly blown away someone would try to place a game like this from a tablet. But more to the point "shouldn't be too difficult" is entirely wrong. I am not saying this in a derogatory way but you obviously don't know what goes into design/modelling/drawing/implementing/bugtesting. It's a long process, and this game is for "PC" not tablet. I mean, if you can make it work more power to you but as far as I know the game was never intended to be played the way you're trying to...

So meta...

We lost a budding young talented sniper to it. It was a sad day, and the guns were fired in salute of his sacrifice for humanity (and physics).

It feels that way. Though a higher target is harder to hit unless using parabolic projectiles (like arrows) - Due to the lip of the roof they are on covering the lower body in a lot of cases. Alas, I shall probably not bother with the 2nd floor for now.

So far, out of the 4-5 times I have tried to utilize 2nd floor of buildings, my soldiers get instantly killed. An alien has actually never missed, no matter the distance when I am on high ground. Now, it could of course be luck, but it feels to me like high ground confers no additional cover? Additionally, its kind of irritating to have an alien move into the tile in front of a 2nd floor window (outside, on ground) and then shoot UP into the window at an impossible angle, and instant kill your soldier... High ground feels kind of useless to me.

Just last night 4 Sebilians attempted to swarm me. I discovered one, and the other 3 immediately closed in on the alien turn. It was quite the firefight. A general retreat with heavy MG fire and sniper coverage bought me enough time to flank with an assault while my shields drew fire. It was awesome! Also if you're near the beginning of the game Sebilians are exceptionally stupid enemies.

Due to my impatience I work on a 2 teams of 4 approach to my loadouts. Each team of 4 consists of: Shotgun Assault, Shield Pistol, Rifleman, Machinegun/Sniper. Typically the sniper trails and provides support to both team where possible. Riflemen, Shields, and Assaults all carry 1 flashbang, 1 smoke, 1 grenade. Situationally all are useful, smokes let you cover ground without much fear of reaction fire, flashbangs let the two assaults breach rooms/UFOs without reaction fire and thus take out aliens execution style. Grenades are great for throwing over walls when you don't have LOS for gunfire. Mostly the strategy is to draw fire with the shield/rifleman while the assault flanks. If an assault can get up close it is a good old fashioned execution. BANG. Goodnight sweetheart. Seriously, if you can get an assault within three tiles they will often outright kill an alien even if all other shots have missed. Breaching UFO's is sometimes tricky, it depends on the numbers inside. Typically I pre-equip a shield with a flashbang, open door, flashbang, rush in with the assaults to the tiles next to the aliens and unload 2 sets of 3 bullets in to aliens faces. If there are more aliens then I will open the door, draw reaction fire with a sniper shot from far away, unload with rifles, and close the door again. I repeat this until I am confident I can take out whatever is left inside in 1 round of all rush in. Something you didn't mention is what stats you value on your soldiers. Heavy MGs -> STR / TU. They don't really need accuracy with 10 shots, mostly they're good suppression and with 10 shots they'll pick up kills. Having high STR and TU allows them to get into position for shots much more easily. Snipers -> ACC / TU. Again snipers need TU to re-position quickly, accuracy is a no brainer. My sniper often picks people off that he couldn't technically see without closer allies seeing them for him. Assault -> TU/HP. These guys are often up front and frankly the TU is needed to get there with shots left in the tank. The HP is for when the shit hits the fan and they end up taking a shot or two. Something to note, I usually put some kind of armor on these guys so STR isn't a bad tertiary stat. Riflemen -> All rounders, ACC / TU / BRA. Almost all stats are good on these guys, I tend to favor accuracy over anything else but honestly I don't find them very useful before lasers are researched, even after that they are still eclipsed by the assaults and sniper. These guy don't get armor, often I give them a med kit instead. Bravery is something that is surprisingly useful here, nothing is worse than having someone die because the medic panicked and ran instead of treating their wounds.

Problem that has just caused me to have to restart my game Not a crash, a game ruining bug. On the sell/transfer screen, if you select which items you wish to transfer BEFORE switching to transfer mode, then click transfer mode, and then push the button to actually do the transfer, the items are transferred into limbo as far as I can tell. They just vanish, never arriving at the other base, but still leaving the first base. Also, the transfer items screen appears to have some graphical bugs. Such as arrow buttons overlapping the background art in the wrong way.

I'm now wondering if its possible to program a countdown into some missions where the ship will repair/leave if you don't breach and subdue the aliens. Or perhaps give the aliens some kind of weapons platforms or something to defend a bit more heavily. Hi ho silver! To the modding forum!

So, is it correct the aliens just camp in their ship with a few 2-4 leaving on scout duties? I can't fault them. Sending a couple of scouts out on reconnaissance while the main force defends the ship and attempts to repair and evacuate is solid strategy. It does mean however that every map breaks down to a slow sweep, and then a breach and clear of the UFO itself. Is it something to do with the way I'm playing? Slow and steady, or is this just their standard (and pretty sound) AI. Additionally, let's hear your breach and clear strategies. For the most part I line up the shields at the door, equip flashbangs, open, throw, unleash the heavy, sniper and rifles, finish with shotguns where necessary. If I can't do it in one round, I typically just close the door at the end of the turn, re-arm and go again.

Hi Aaron, What is the state of the AI in this patch? Close to release status or are they still a bit dumb? Thanks

Actually something that has come to my mind in this thread. When creating a game I currently choose a determined difficulty setting. But, would it be a lot of extra effort on the part of the team to have an 'advanced difficulty options' section, where you can choose things like 'heavy weapon penalty', 'more TU to shoot' etc. Don't take those examples as golden, they're poorly worded but I think I have got the idea across. It would be refreshing to be able to set up my game as a combination of 'base settings' (normal, veteran, impossible) with optional tweaks, for example how a game of Civilization can be set up.

We have an alien traitor in the ranks Chris! Burn the heretic, kill the mutant, purge the uncl... oh wait sorry wrong setting. Court Marshall that soldier immediately!

I would expect the alien version is slightly more than just a plain old flamethrower. Maybe like, a magma gun? A liquid-plasma thrower? Something terrifying for sure.

Hi Chris and co! I was wondering if you guys had considered what you will be doing once you have released xenonauts? Do you think you will stick with the series (assuming success)? or are you more interested in diversifying and exploring other genres etc? I know I would love to see you take the xcom genre forward, having replicated it well I think there is so much more that can be done in this genre. I've always wondered what it would be like to play Xcom on the offensive instead, taking it to the aliens so to speak.

Thanks very much for taking the time to get back to me Aaron, I will hold off on play for a while more then. Don't rush it, we can wait, hopefully you guys can bring your vision to fruition.

Hi Chris and team! I know you hate to give dates so I'm not asking for that. I adore this genre and Xenonauts (from the 4 hours I have invested into the beta) very much! I don't want to burn myself out if there are still a lot of bugs, or a bunch of content missing I'd like to wait to play until we're at least 85% or so complete. Would you be able to give us a rough estimation on how complete you feel the game is at the moment? Maybe not as a raw number, just anyway you feel says it best. I know the safe option is 'just wait for the final release' but damn, you're making this game well and I am sorely tempted to just throw myself at it anyway. If you tell me 'its only text & some optimisation of the engine' to go I'd be in for it immediately. If you say 'the AI still needs a bit of work' I'd rather wait. I'm all about the gameplay, flavor text isn't going to bother me. Thanks a bunch!

Thanks for the info Chris. I thought those walls might be rather strong. And yeah been noticing the grenade/c4 craziness. Glad to know you guys are on top of the silhouette thing. I might add that its hard to see what tile you are selecting sometimes too. The only other thing which seems buggy/glitchy and I assume is intended to change is the weird behaviour of what walls show/don't show and some strange line of sight issues. Thanks for making the xcom game I'm dreaming of

I like to go for maximum coverage of land. Shooting stuff down over sea or chasing it around untill it comes to land is a hassle. For that reason I usually end up in the IndoChina region covering a little of russia and most of china.

So... will the camera be rotate-able in the final game? Right now not being about to see people because of the camera is driving me bonkers. A simple solution would be to outline or silhouette in some way people who are behind scenery. This would be a good improvement to the game generally, as, even with camera rotation some units could still be invisible while others are not. Other stuff... grenades? Something I really enjoyed about UFO:ET was that I could make a reasonably accurate/useful grenadier. He carried a bunch of grenades and I levelled up his throwing/aim stat. It allowed me to have another strategic tool in my arsenal, either for stunning aliens, breaching buildings/ships or just general grenade-y death. I feel like currently grenade accuracy is pretty terrible over medium distances and utterly worthless over longer ranges. C4? Is it intentionally impossible to blow the wall off an alien ship and come in through the side door? I have attempted to use C4 to no avail. This may be intentional due to strength of the alien walls, or bugged, or both! Would love for clarification. Lastly, I've been massively enjoying my recent foray into the game and I really love the idea of the air combat. Currently I feel the TU system could still benefit from little bits of polish, mostly around taking shots and how they factor in turning/not turning etc. Really looking forward to the beta version, and the final game!