Khall

We couldn't just give the aliens a melee attack, so if they wake up they could either attack the babysitter, which they might do if the babysitter is close enough, e.g. soldier with stun rod (they would have an extra chance to reaction fire before the alien does anything) or make a run for it and try to scavenge a gun. They wouldn't be completely helpless even if you took their weapons away.

Duplicate soldiers tend to be really buggy, e.g. you'll have 12 soldiers listed in personnel, which you'll be paying for, but 2 of them are duplicates, and when you put them on a dropship they'll take up 2 spaces but only 1 soldier will be on the battlescape. You could have the same soldier across multiple bases. I crash if one gets killed in battle. They basically become unusable. And if you try to fire them your game will crash. Generally, it's a bad idea

Another way to get soldiers is to wait until october, the list refreshes normally at the start of each month, but it will be empty after the first week, at which point you'll have to wait until next month (so stock up on some soldiers ) The good thing about this method is it's less likely to cause bugs down the line (I haven't had any bugs or duplicate soldiers with this solution)

A slight pause in the animation sequence (the frame before shooting) depending on different firing mode (e.g. No pause for snap shot, 0.5 sec pause for normal shot and burst, 1 sec pause for aimed shot, etc., something like that, so not to slow the game down too much) would be a nice touch. It would give a visual difference between the modes and make each mode feel a little more unique. For aliens (I assume they use different firing modes, or will) you would be able to know what kind of shot it is attempting, and add a little more tension. Current: Crap, he's shooting at me, I hope he misses. Proposed: Crap, he's going for a norma... wait, an aimed shot, I'm screwed.

A couple of the scenes from "Crimson Dagger" could be good inspiration for some fan art. (Also pixel avatar )

It says within the weapon range*1.5 I'm guessing that means if a weapons's range is 12 tiles you will gain accuracy if you shoot within 18 tiles of the target (12 x 1.5 = 18)

Shock-jock

It's the in-universe explanation for why early alien craft stop appearing as the game goes on. It's assumed that countries have gradually gotten the tech and experience to deal with, e.g. Light scouts, so those craft don't appear on your radar, leaving you to focus on craft the governments can't take out on their own.

Soldiers (and aliens) incur stun damage if they stand in smoke, your first soldier probably just fell unconscious. There is a mechanic that allows dead soldiers to be revived. Depending on how much "negative health" the dead soldier has (a soldier with 60 HP that takes 61 damage has a decent chance, at -20 HP there is 0% chance), he may be revived at the end of the mission with 1% health, spending 17 days in hospital

Every time I hit an alien with the precision rifle (explosives as well I think), it's weapon is destroyed (the alien is still alive) leaving it unarmed. It's to do with the overdamage system, it seems to apply when the alien is still alive (by design?), leaving them defenseless for the rest of the mission. In "weapons_gc", I noticed that while some weapons have "hplimit", the alien weapons do not. While it looks great blowing an alien's weapon to scrap in it's hands, it's a little over the top at the moment.

The humans don't really use "alien" alien tech as such, you can pick up and use alien guns dropped during missions (with an accuracy penalty and no reloading because they're not ergonomically designed for humans) in an emergency, but they are sold off automatically at the end of the mission. We develop our own (distinctly human designed) weapons based on alien tech, not carbon copies of alien weapons. E.g. We quickly develop lasers (the 2nd tier) using the properties of alien alloys and alenium, after which For reference you should be starting to issue laser weapons by the end of the second month, so personally I find these big debates about the starting weapons pointless since they're phased out rather quickly. And different rocket types are in for the rocket launcher e.g. Frag, armour-piercing, incendiary, with more unlocked through research

It works for me, I'm using the patched Xenonauts.exe (v17.51) for the standalone

This seems to be fixed in V17.51

Here's the contents of "_basebuilt.lua" from the Desura auto-update version (which works fine for me) if this helps:

I've had the same problem, the preset ones work fine, it's just the custom roles that crash when you click ok after entering the name

Downloading now!

Just putting this up as I know a lot of us don't check the main site for news (I rarely do at least). So some may have missed this news update. http://www.xenonauts.com/category/news/ A lot of its already been said on the development updates on the forums, but there's previews of base rooms, and they look absolutely fantastic. Seriously, I cannot wait to play on those maps. The tile artist has done a fantastic job, really impressed with how good it looks. Great job

C4 has a timer, you could use that, though I would raise the damage and radius in "weapons_gc" (currently the same as a frag grenade, which is nowhere near powerful enough, considering you're sacrificing a soldier). If you set the timer to 1, I think it blows halfway through the enemy turn, after the aliens have shot/moved (which could be a problem), but before the civilians moved.

There is a similar negative health system already in. When a soldier's HP hits 0 there is still a chance he will be revived at the end of the mission (says 1% HP in the after action report). Higher negative HP reduces the chance of a revival (-20HP has no chance).

Well both are already in the alpha, though you can only catch glimpses of the civilian (spectres not set up properly), so it's not really that big of a spoiler. It would mean a lot of work (a disadvantage of the system used, they can't just add a weapon to a model) creating the sprites for what is essentially weaker versions of the current NPC soldiers. I would have prefered using that much time to make something that adds more to the game.

On Arctic tileset: Armed variant Civilian variant

And the armed arctic researchers (I think that's what they are) if that counts

I agree the light scout missions do feel very tedious at the moment, I'm just rushing my troops out as fast as I can in search groups to find the 2-3 aliens on the map, which pose little threat when I do. It makes the early game quite boring. This will probably get fixed during balancing in beta though. I see it from a different point of view, night missions are not supposed to be chosen over day missions given the choice. Only if necessary should you do a night mission, for example, you shoot down 3 UFOs but night is approaching. If you wait until day you won't be able to do all 3 so you'll have to do a night mission to get them all. So I think night missions should actually have a larger penalty, e.g. sight radius is actually reduced instead of being blacked out near the edges and dark areas should have an accuracy penalty (flares could become useful by increasing sight range and lighting up a target, increasing accuracy). This could create more difficult choices for the player, should he risk a night mission or wait until day and risk losing the crash site. It's not really evident in the early game but later on when there are multiple crash sites is when the choices will arise.

I'd do it

The connecting bit between the two sections would also need to be filled in black (probably get fixed anyway but just thought I'd mention), but other than that it looks like a good solution