[OK, OK, so no motion detector. What about a gunfire detector?]

If we can't have a motion detectors or alien sniffing dogs, I'd much rather have some thermal imager or radiation detector or something that can detect hiding aliens through walls (at close range of course.) I hate having to search the whole map to find the last lurking alien. It's such a waste of time. Anything to speed up the process would be welcome. I'd even entertain the alien surrendering if it's the last one and outnumbered.

[Air Combat Movement and Targeting]

Hopefully the new UI will allow you to add more ammunition types for things like the shotgun as well.

Always nice to have people working on stuff that can enhance the game.

Hopefully either way I've doing some research and have a really good idea of how to mod the shotgun to represent buckshot instead of slugs (why carry one if you got a rifle available otherwise?) Should make them a lot more useful and different than the single projectile weapons (in the right conditions of course.)

[Air Combat Movement and Targeting]

Aircraft at the moment can have a maximum of 5 weapon hardpoints.

You can easily mod the existing missiles values (i.e. number of sidewinders per hardpoint, damage per missile, range etc) or you can fairly easily add new missiles types to fit on the existing planes.

Thanks for the info. I'll add that to my "analyze and experiment" list (shotguns and missiles at the moment). Hopefully, I'll be able to make some type of reasonable argument with the devs when the balancing phase starts for real. I'd like to contribute something to the game besides money.

[Air Combat Movement and Targeting]

I think that's more to do with balancing, almost no balancing has been done. Hopefully, it'll be around when you get alenium missiles when the 3 fighter groups come.

(Just realised that rhymes (kinda))

Even at that I think the air combat would be more interesting with more missiles on the fighters. To balance they could miss more often or do less damage, etc... The late versions of the Sparrow only hit about 40% of the time, but the warhead was four times the size of the Sidewinders. While the Phoenix was only fired in anger a couple times so accuracy IRL is really unknown, but it carried a massive 135 pound warhead and had huge range (132 miles). These weapons were all available in the time frame of the game.

[Air Combat Movement and Targeting]

I think as it stands the MiG just isn't really a very good aircraft. I mean it is necessary in large engagements because of its 4 hard points but its reliance on flying straight at the enemy aircraft means it takes a lot of damage in most cases and often just gets shot down. I personally think Air combat is more fun if you manually edit the F-17s to carry dual sidewinders (4 in total) but lower their damage.

I commented last month the the missile load outs for all aircraft were way too low. The F-17 should have at least 4 missiles, but in a "real" AS role it would probably have 6 to 8 missiles. Probably 4 medium radar homing (Sparrow?) and 4 IR (Sidewinder). While the MIG-32 would probably carry 4 big ass long range radar (like the Phoenix) and couple of IR.

The AMRAAM (fire and forget) wasn't around in those days although it would be an ideal choice.

One of the big problems with MIG-32 is it only carries two CRAPPY "big" missiles and two short range Sidewinders (OK). It really needs more effective long range weapons both in quality and numbers to be as useful as it should be.

Is it possible to change/add missiles and load outs with modding? Change you change the load outs in the hanger between missions?

I know better aircraft come later, but at the start I'm getting a lot of AC killed because I don't have enough quality to deal with anything but single scouts and corvettes. Last night I was barely into the first month of play and was having to intercept a three ship fighter group and three separate scouts all at the same time. We're going to need better AC if that's the usual pattern or a lot more AC for less money.

[Feedback on "Goldhawk Interactive & Piracy"]

Except reviews are inherently very biased towards either the policy of the reviewer/company or the personality of the reviewer. It's VERY hard to find reviews that are seriously trustworthy in my opinion and I would NEVER base a purchase on reviews alone plus the whole review scoring system is just beyond messed up right now largely because of metacritic and it's terrible influence.

You have some valid points, however, I've learned that if you find a good reviewer you usually can't go wrong on a highly rated game. I always look for reviews from independent reviewers that specialize in the types of games I like. IGN and the rest of those mass game/review sites are worthless. They're trying to get you to buy from them. For example: If I'm looking for a wargame I'll look at the reviews in the Armchair General because their reviewers are all mature wargaming/strategy buffs, history writers and ex-military (sometimes all three.) If they rate a game highly I'm going to be happy. In fact, that's where I found out about this game. If you go to site where all the reviews are by WOW fans or console gamers you'll never get a decent review of a different type of game. MANY times they've dragged excellent strategy games through the mud because of the "dated" graphics, sound, or because they weren't "exciting" enough i.e. spectacular explosions every five seconds or they're "too complicated".

[Air Combat Movement and Targeting]

You'd think the human pilots would prefer to attack from above and behind (boom and zoom), but maybe in the missile age that's not as important. One good thing about this type of attack is you have a lot of speed to use if you need to escape afterwards. For the MIG-32 it would be very advantageous as once the missiles are away there's really no point in sticking around. Of course, all air combat is two dimensional in Xeno.

[Air maneuver]

StellarRat don't you already have a thrust (speed) control for that? Or do you want the airplane to hover?

(and a pause button to help you control more then 1 plane at the same time)

I want the plane to close to max. missile range and maintain that range unless otherwise ordered to do something else. Of course, this all supposes the plane is fast enough to keep it's distance, if it can't at least it should try.

[Don't know how long this has been in the game, but it's a cool feature.]

He wrote a program to automate the mapmaking process. That's why there are so many.

So they're kind of random then?

[Feedback on "Goldhawk Interactive & Piracy"]

I used to pirate when I was much younger, but I've reformed myself and I haven't copied a game in years. There is really no excuse to pirate a game "just to try it and see if I like it" now that so many reviews are available. Xeno is the biggest leap of faith I've taken on a game in a long time because it hasn't even got to beta yet. Normally, I'll NEVER pre-order a game because you are opening yourself to being ripped off by crappy software. As far as the "I'm poor and can't afford to pay" and the "only rich stockholders are losing money" arguments those are totally wrong. I used to be "poor" and just worried about putting food on the table, but I have money in stocks for my retirement now after years of sacrifice to save up. It angers me to hear that "only rich people and big corporations" are getting ripped off. I'm not rich and I'M GETTING RIPPED OFF TOO. Piracy is stealing profits from the developer and it means they have to charge more to all the "rich people" that actually buy games and/or cut development budgets. If you want to look at a small company (three guys that weren't "rich") that lost a lot of profits because of piracy do some research into Battlefront. They produced a revolutionary gaming system in the early 2000's. At one time they estimated that 1/2 the copies of their game were pirated. They now have DRM because of the problems and are doing a lot better (five guys now!, LOL.) So, it doesn't just hurt BIG CORPORATIONS it hurt little guys too probably a lot more than big corporations.

[Don't know how long this has been in the game, but it's a cool feature.]

Have you looked in the mapping section? Ormou (sp?) has released 201 additional fanmade industrial maps.

201! Holy, and the game isn't even beta yet. I'll have to take a look. Thanks.

[Don't know how long this has been in the game, but it's a cool feature.]

No it's new to Xenonauts, hence my stunned disbelief and horror when it happened the first time ... It's going to be interesting stacking up the craft requirements against the income when the game is more balanced.

I'm not crazy then good! "Stunned disbelief and horror", yeah that pretty much how I felt then "DOH!"

I'm definitely getting the feeling this is going to be a tougher game than XCom even at Veteran level. We haven't even seen the AI in full bloom yet. However, I love the new feature set. It's not going to get boring too quickly. I do wish I'd get more variability on my landing maps. All I ever seem to see is the city and I always land in the SE corner with the alien in the NW corner. I'm sure this will change when the game is done.

[Air maneuver]

The only thing I'd like added to air combat is a command to that keeps the aircraft from getting closer than max. missile range. The MIG-32 is difficult work with when you have more than one aircraft to control. Even so, the way it is now I can live with.

[Don't know how long this has been in the game, but it's a cool feature.]

Apparently, if an alien ship is around they will target your Chinook. I don't believe that as the case in the original XCom (or my memory is wrong.) Anyway, what happened was that my Chinook was on a recovery mission and flew into the same area where my interceptors were trying to shoot down a group of three alien fighters. Unfortunately, my fighters were destroyed one by one and when they finished with them the aliens intercepted my Chinook and shot it down. So, I learned three things, 1. You need to scout the alien UFOs before in engaging (if it's a group of fighters you'll need reinforcements) 2. You might need to escort your Chinook. 3. Probably ought not to send the Chinook into an area where there are alien ships flying about.

[Don't know how long this has been in the game, but it's a cool feature.]

I hate to admit it, but I did notice that when your Chinook gets shot down there is a chance some of the special ops soldiers will survive. Very cool and realistic! Also, noticed that the hot fix fixed the not being able to buy personnel problem as well as the aircraft retreating CTD. Very nice. All I'm seeing is good stuff as the game matures.

[Air maneuver]

I would love to see more air maneuver for your aircrafts like

• Force to land

• Go for destruction

• Target the engines

Also there would be a quick status-check for all your aircraft useful. If you click on the intercept button you have to choose the destination before you can see all the aircraft and their fuel and health status. I would prefer to see the list before choosing a destination because sometimes I just want to see if my aircraft are fully refueled.

I can't see any of those being realistic options. Modern missiles and guns just don't allow for targetting certain parts or "tempered" destruction. All heat seekers will go for the hottest part of the target and I don't know of any missile or gun that can be precisely aimed for a certain part of a target even now (never mind in the 70's). If the target was very large the guns on an F-17 could possibly be aimed at a certain area, but when your going 450+ mph and engaged in violent manuevers odds are that ANY hit will be the best you can hope for.

[Instead of Motion Tracking Device - Alien Sniffing Dogs.]

It's probably too late to put something like this into the game, but it's not a bad idea. In real life, detection dogs have been trained to find pest species, not just bombs/drugs.

If they were put in, I would prefer that they were separate units that take up dropship space. Maybe you can direct control where they go, but they can't move more than X spaces away from your human units. If they detect an alien, it would be an area thing - you wouldn't know exactly where the creature is, but the dog could face in the right general direction and bark or something. It shouldn't be 100% accurate - occasionally, it might lead you to a bystander or get distracted by the UFO (and all the alien corpses around it).

That's pretty much what I was thinking. It might not be too late. As far as I know the motion detector hasn't been programmed yet, why not do this instead??

[Instead of Motion Tracking Device - Alien Sniffing Dogs.]

Eh, sorry if I'm going all Sgt. Friday, but I think this is a neat idea, and I have some questions about the mechanics of it. Would a dog be assigned as equipment to a solider, but behave and be controlled like a solider? I.e. it would take up a slot on the dropship? What would you suggest for the actual "sniffing out" of aliens? Would that be a specific action that the dog could do? Or would it be something that would be reported at the start of the turn? And how would you suggest it be represented on the map - some kind of icon? Should dogs be 100% precise, or would it be better that the dog identify an area where the alien is?

Well, Max, I actually put some thought into this ...I was thinking that the dog would take up a slot AND it would be assigned to a specific dog handling soldier. If the handler was killed the dog would become "inactive" and just sit in it's last location. The dog would have it's own sprite just like a soldier and it would always be directly in front of the handler (next hex.) There would be no action points expended for to work per se, just having the dog would be enough to show the general location (maybe + or - one hex) of any stationary alien within a certain radius (maybe three hexes?) even through walls at the start of each turn. My reasoning here is that a dog has about 3x the hearing of a human and a zillion time the smell ability. Additionally, the closest (human, machine, or alien) that was moving this would be indicated at a range of six or nine hexes by bearing only i.e. the dog is nervous and alerted and the handler can see where it's looking. Also, it would not make any difference if it was night or day as dogs have good night vision and, of course, hearing and smell are not affected.

The dog could be killed or wounded by alien fire or explosions. I think the dog could also use non-active combat armor (like Jackel) and possibly carry a small amount of supplies (med kit, spare ammo, grenades, etc...)

That is my plan for the "first level" of programming. Basically, a motion detector with feet (except that it can detect stationary targets.)

For the second level of implementation the dog could actually detect where the alien had been and indicate a direction of travel i.e. tracking (maybe just by sprite facing or with a map arrow.)

Finally, the third level would allow the dog to have a separate AI routine that would allow it to pursue and attack an alien if the handler let it go off leash.

Personally, I'd be quite happy with just the first level of programming. I could also see short cutting the dog and just making it a piece of equipment, however, I think that is not too realistic.

[Instead of Motion Tracking Device - Alien Sniffing Dogs.]

I suggest dogs that can sniff out aliens instead of developing a motion tracking device.

Reasons:

1. Doable immediately (i.e. no new tech has to be developed by XCom) provided there are live aliens to train the dogs. Dog can be put into training cycle just like new soldiers.

2. Fits better into the time frame of the game from a technological perspective (late 70's).

3. Can detect stationary as well as moving aliens.

4. Can track aliens in addition to detecting stationary or moving aliens.

5. Have substantial melee capability.

6. Can be used for live capture instead of stun rod.

7. Come on, everyone wants to see a couple XCom dogs tear up those alien bastards.

[Motion tracking device]

I think dogs trained to sniff out aliens is a better alternative. Of course, you'd have to capture some live aliens first so the dogs could be trained.

[Pre-spotting the UFO...]

Scouring every last inch of the combat zone to find that last XenoKitty would be even less fun when you get back and find it has apparently been asleep on your bed the whole time, even though you looked there twice.

true. Xenokitty would not be too dangerous, 90% of the time it would get shot in its sleep.

[Pre-spotting the UFO...]

Well we all know that cats are experts at detecting and avoiding aliens!

[Pre-spotting the UFO...]

I just had this crazy idea! Alien sniffing XCom dogs! Perfect for finding the hiders!

[Pre-spotting the UFO...]

In the level editor you can designate several different landing sites for the UFO (and the chinook) and the game will choose one randomly when the map loads up.

That's good. Just to clarify a bit, in the old XCom the alien crewmen tended to hide in the same spots on the map. If I saw a certain map I could predict fairly well where the alien troops would be hiding. Hopefully, the AI Programmer will address this issue. Obviously, you don't want them standing out the open saying "shoot me", but hopefully, they won't always appear in the same buildings, etc...

[Pre-spotting the UFO...]

I still think that showing any indication of the UFOs location will severly limit that particular maps life lengthwise and cause people to feel that maps repeat more then they should.

Can't the UFO land in multiple locations on the map? As long as the aliens can be anywhere I think the maps will not get boring. One of the flaws of the old game was the aliens tended to position themselves in the same spots if the map was the same. Hopefully they've fixed that.