[how can I remove berserk?]

I always just stun baton my bezerking people. I think its a great feature and I like how it can mess with my perfectly constructed squads and force me to improvise.

You know you can wake up your stunned troops with the first aid kit, right?

[Air combat, do you autoengage?]

Sometimes auto is better sometimes it's much worse. You'd have to play enough manual to understand when to use each mode.

[Xenonauts V1.08 Released!]

There are plenty of bugs still, but not game wreckers. I hope they put out some more patches. I just don't expect them to come as quickly.

[Attempting to stun a civilian results in overkill use of force]

I said, "Set your stun rod to 'human'!"

[Alien grenades make me incredibly sad]

It could be a bug too. You could re-post this to the bug section.

[General strategy for survivng at insane: tips needed]

I would have put your first base in Saudi Arabia. You're wasting about 1/3 of your radar coverage on the North Atlantic. The North American base would be better in Central America or Cuba.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

I use shotgunners with high time units. They are supreme. Run up to enemy and 1 shot kill using only 20 time units. One time I forgot to bring them on a mission and had a hell of a time raiding a UFO without shotgunners.

Yes rifles are mostly useless. They are good at nothing

If you pick troops with high reflexes and high TUs you'll have the perfect combo for shotgun troops.

[Alien grenades make me incredibly sad]

The Seb wasn't wounded/hit by the reaction fire, and soldier one didn't fire anyway - it was soldier 2.

What you explain is correct (I am aware that a shootee spins to face the shooter) - if it was soldier 1 firing and hitting the Seb; but it was soldier 2 firing and missing. Soldier 1 never fired.

Did the alien spot the other guy when he spun around?

[[Laser] Carbine vs Rifle ?]

Shotguns and carbines in Xenonauts are made for ranges less than 6 tiles. Preferably you'll get to 1 or 2 tiles ranges before you fire. They are very powerful at those ranges. Much more damage than a rifle. They're really for close assaults indoors in Xenonauts.

[What the..]

No, the reason why the rifle is used as a main weapon in most armies is due to the fact that it is versatile and combat typically takes place at much, much longer ranges than in Xenonauts. The effective range of a shotgun is ~50 yards, while an assault rifle is more like ~200 yards. But Xenonauts doesn't represent that kind of combat. It's closer to SWAT/armed response units where shotguns are much more prevalent.

Also, why is "moving and firing" a characteristic of a 'support' weapon? (And isn't that exactly the major strength of the shotgun, too?)

Not to mention they are generally fatal or at least incapacitating against humans with one hit, so the damage difference isn't much of a factor like it is in Xenonauts.

[Alien grenades make me incredibly sad]

Can this be explained?

Yes, the new reaction fire system causes anyone that is wounded to automatically face the direction the shot(s) came from. You're soldiers will do that too. You can test this by shooting one of your own men in the side or back. This is the only way that decent reaction fire can be done. Otherwise, your men and the aliens would just sit there facing the wrong way letting the enemy pump rounds into to them over potentially multiple turns which would be silly. As mentioned above the aliens used to do a little pirouette every turn to check LOS (since no one seems to have a functional neck in this game.) You probably do that with your men collectively, but the aliens did it individually. That looked really dumb.

[What the..]

So I just went back and tried it again. And I realized I was playing a mod (I have like three different xenonauts icons on my desktop and I guess I got them mixed up). And while I can't say rifles are still 100% better because of the same before reasons, I tried it again on the base game and the rifles are better performing.

Dude!

[What the..]

Thinking about this some more, I believe the shotguns may have become far more useful after the reaction system was finished and they gained the 1.5 advantage to reflexes. That came late in development. I believe the weapon damage and accuracy balancing was done BEFORE that happened. Perhaps another round of balancing should have been done afterwards. I don't know if the shotguns would have been nerfed or the rifles bumped. My preference would have been an increase to rifle accuracy.

[What the..]

Already did. And I must say.. I prefer the shotguns still.

That surprises me somewhat since you lose the ability to suppress from any distance. With a bunch of assault rifles you can achieve suppression from a fair distance. The poor man's LMG sort of. A lot of time was spent balancing the weapons against each other in beta.

[What the..]

It might be interesting to play a few battles using only assault rifles OR only shotguns (plus the various grenades.)

[Illogical things in the game]

Don't look behind the curtain! Actually, someone could design a much larger UFO defense game where the whole Earth is working to stop an invasion. I might actually play something like that. I have doubts that individual recovery missions, etc... would be modeled though.

[What the..]

I don't use reaction fire much at all, really. And it works in the open pretty much too because all I have to do is get within the max range of the shotguns and I can still hit them more and harder than a rifle does. 3:

No, no, shotguns have a reaction/reflex bonus that means a troop with one can spend a lot more TU in sight of an alien without drawing reaction fire from them i.e. you can move from cover to cover without getting shot. It also has a bonus for shooting at aliens that move in your sight i.e. your chance to reaction fire. Sorry I wasn't clearer.

[Final Mission Question - Obvious Spoilers!]

They're fairly easy to destroy (I found 2 fusion grenades sufficient for each one), but they are guarded.

Fairly pointless if they don't help you win the mission. :-(

[What the..]

Well for one I'm talking about the very start of the game, as I did this just to try currently.

Well, shotguns are much more powerful for cover hopping type tactics specially at game start. If your good at moving from cover to cover and you take advantage of the reaction fire bonus it is going to be a real killer. Later on when you start engaging more aliens in the open or have a terror mission I think you'll see the downside. Big ships have much larger crews and they will give you run outside the ship. Also, laser weapons and higher make rifles much better than the starting model.

[[1.07 HF] Scimitar turns into Hunter]

Hmm, does it change into the third type once you transfer third vehicle ?

Hyperion! Hyperion!

[What the..]

That's also a problem, stellar. Even if it does hit they usually do negligent damage when I could do more than that by just running up/cover hopping my way to point blank and one-two hit killing a lot of enemies instead. Plus aimed frequently takes a lot of TU for one hit. When, again, shotguns can do more than that for a lot less TU.

Well what tech level of weapons are you using? Are we talking about open terrain or inside UFOs/buildings? If you like to close with your enemy quickly then absolutely shotguns are a better choice. My style is to engage at long range with LMGs and then finish them with rifles and snipers moving up shotguns if they aren't dead already.

[What the..]

In that case I don't know, maybe you use tactics that favour close combat. I don't use shotguns outside of UFOs, because soldiers with rifles usually wouldn't let any aliens get within effective shotgun range anyway.

Same here.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

Added some minor typo fixes and a touch more info/hints about a couple weapons. Now v1.1.1

[What the..]

I don't know why your having such a time with rifles. I frequently have hit probabilities over 60% with aimed fire. That's not accurate? Burst fire at point blank is pretty deadly and has over 90% chance to hit in most cases. Are you recruiting troops with decent accuracy? Firing from a crouch?

[How to assault larger ufos?]

For larger UFOs you'll probably want more assault and shield troops maybe two of each. Another trick is to put shotguns in the backpacks of your troops that normally don't carry them. Once the final assault in the control room starts you probably aren't going to need any spare shotgun magazines for those guys. It will be decided quickly. I usually blow the main door with C4 and have all my rifles, sniper and LMG(s) fire at whoever they spot on the lower level. Usually you can take out several aliens this way. After that I move in with shotguns and shields and take anyone that's left. Once the main level is secured I gather everyone around the teleporters and equip a couple guys with grenades and smokers. Then we charge up the lift (assault troops first) and engage anyone in the upper teleporter room. After that you have to assault the control room. This can be a high casualty operation. All I can suggest is use cover, smoke, and gas. You can't pussy foot around, you to rush the aliens with shotguns and kill them quickly. If you can work your LMG(s) into the room without getting them killed you might be able to suppress some of them. The officers are hard to suppress though. It can be pretty bloody. If you trying to capture an officer or some other high level alien you're going to need stun rods and/or electroshock grenades.

I could probably write a whole other guide on this topic because there are substantial differences fighting inside big ships and bases.