MartinSGill

Three aircraft (Phantoms) with laser seems to be working for me now. I somehow missed (or don't remember) the UFO - Extraterrstrials game. I do remeber the After-Earth etc. games. I actually rather enjoyed the third of those, not the first two so much. Maybe I'll see if I can find them. Although, i need to finish JA3 first :).

Don't know what you mean with UFO ET. I was happy with fighting used for UFO: Enemy Unknown (did you mean that game?), or XCOM: UFO Defense, whichever title you prefer. It basically came down to either better range, or more fire-power and you could quickly tell from each engagement where you were missing. Someone else mentioned turn-based air combat. I like that idea, but not sure how viable that is, given it would essentially mean a new game. I'm upgrading my 3rd aircraft to a phantom atm. I was sending them out with torp/missile and laser loadout. Guess I'll need to try dual lasers. Seems a bit off to me though. I mean, I have lighter, worse armed aircraft. Seems like the only hope I have is to pummel the UFOs from range, not get in close to get swatted. But if it works.. i'll give it a go.

I'm enjoying it even at this stage of development. I also agree with quite a few points made in many other threads, so I'm going to focus on the area that I, personally, feel is part I enjoy least. My biggest issue has been around difficulty/pacing with air-combat. I never liked the air-combat in X1. I'm just happy pressing auto-resolve and things should be shot down most of the time, if I've kept up my research and upgrades. I play these types of games for the tactical turn comabt.. not real-time panic-inducing twitch-combat. And I love the tactical combat even at this stage. I'm sure there are those that love the air-combat element. If people want the extra air-combat challenge, that's great. I'd like the option of skipping it. I thought this would be possible with the auto-resolve, but I'm now at the stage where I don't even send out intercepts anymore, because all that happens is my planes die. I'm playing on the lowest difficulty, have the best equiment I can (alerium missile/torps, laser gun, armour plating, first-gen self-built combat aircraft, name escapes me right now) and I always send planes in pairs. I can take out destroyers, but not if they have escorts and not anything bigger than that. I've now started sending planes in flights of three, and am thinking upgrading to flights of 4, as even with 3 I still lose a plane every time. Either I'm doing something wrong or the difficultly has suddenly spiralled out of sight. I have no idea what I could be doing to improve matters and the game isn't providing any clues.

Not sure it's the teleporting or the fact that the units are on different levels. To Reproduce: 1. Carrier UFO is good to reproduce this 2. Have one unit move through a teleport to the next level and a long distance away from the teleport 3. While unit one is still moving move unit two to the same destination 4. When unit two teleports to the next level the game crashes.

I can cause the tactical game to crash every single time by destroying the tank on the left edge of the map. V1.03 Save game attached. Just shoot the tank and game crashed. S87.sav S87.sav

It's been a while since I last played, and since we're at v1 I thought I'd give it a go again. I started on easy just for the fun of it, but one thing I'm noticing is that I have totally run out alien alloys. My entire game has ground to a halt because of that. I have managed to collect just enough alloys to create laser weapons for all my guys, but armour is out of the question, let alone anything else. I'm just waiting for the next UFO to show up so that I can get alloys from it. I was hoping Alloy Fabrication would allow me to create alloys, but nope.. I can't even spend money to make them, so I'm just stuck The aliens are getting stronger all the time and without alloys I'm starting to lose ground on them, even on easy!! Have I missed a trick somewhere? Is alloy fabrication hidden somewhere? Either way I guess I'm going to lose the game soon because cannot manufacture anything I've researched. Also.. why countries keep cutting my funding every month, despite me shooting down almost everything? I'd have thought on easy I'd have to fail spectacularly for that to happen.

I've been playing on easy, mostly just to see how much is already there and I noticed an number of very odd things after I attack an alien base. I cleared out all aliens (including stunning some with electro grenades, including the officer). First thing I noticed was that the text on the right hand side of the mission finish screen was overlapping. Then I noticed that my troop carrier was not returning to base. He just sat where the alien base was; I sent him back manually. I then noticed that I couldn't click on any of the base functions from the Geo screen. I went to full speed, a bombing and terror mission appeared, but they weren't on the map and I couldn't send anyone. Then the game crashed. I turned out it was crashing on Autosave. I reloaded from the last save (still in alien base) and all the above happened again. Even saving manually causes a crash. I was planning to put offer a save, but I managed to delete them all (oops) while messing around with beta settings in steam. I'm going to start the game again and see if I reproduce this.

I'd also add another thought... Terror missions are supposed to spread terror. I don't see our current crop of terrorists targeting little villages and farms and open areas. They go for crowds. You get crowds in tight urban environments. Attacking a shopping centre, or a marathon, or a rock & roll gig is what they'd do. Sod damage to my UFO.. i'd bloody land the thing on top of a crowd of a people, turn them into ketchup then send my troops out shooting indiscriminately at anything that moves. If a building is in the way, I'd blast it to rubble with my plasma's then land in the crater. If you really want to inspire terror in the players, then instead of the 5 or so civilian casualties on a mission have dozens. Get the player so worked-up and upset about losing so many people they'll do whatever they can to intercept the aliens before they ever get on the ground. If you think about how much damage a single untrained maniac with an automatic can do... then what damage could a group of highly organised, trained and heavily armed aliens do? Add that my charlie flight can be in the air for a few hours and a good mission is one where there are only hundreds dead, not thousands. After all, if the government is prepared to nuke their own city if you fail the mission, then the aliens really must be doing a lot of harm. I think XCom EU did this fairly well by having a lot of their maps look like warzones and you're rushing around trying to save what's left.

I think it comes down a bit to what we expect from the game and the difficulty levels. On easy I should never have to restart because I made a mistake (e.g. focused just on troops, or just on air-combat). I.e. very forgiving. On normal, I should be punished for making mistakes, but they should be recoverable if I identify them and take corrective action. In my view, I should as a player be able to complete the game in a single play-through without having to give up. Fair. Is the word I'd use. By fair I mean that the game gives me enough hints (and I don't mean flashing yellow notices, but gameplay hints, i.e. scaling of enemies etc), for me to be able to prepare. If I don't prepare I lose; that's fair. If the difficulty suddenly spikes without warning, or I have to have played the game before to know what's coming (or have read a game guide), that's unfair. On veteran I'd expect to have played the game a couple of times, know the research tree reasonably well, know the basic mechanics, so the game should be a lot more punishing. Having to abandon a game should be a regular (but not too frequent) occurrence for a casual player. Elite/heroic/whatever: Having to abandon a game should be a frequent occurrence for a casual player. A player with loads of XCOM, TFTD, Jagged, etc experience should have not too much difficulty completing the game on normal. Of course, I accept that everyone has their own views on difficulty, and these are just my own. Personally, I'd rather play through the game on normal, and find it too easy and play on veteran next time, than get slaughtered on normal and go play something more fair. I won't do the success of the game much good either, I feel.

I just hit this on my first play through on steam. Air combat was simple up to now.. just send some fighters.. un-pause and UFO is toast. Then all of a sudden medium turns up... so just in case I send everything I have (2 condors, 1 Mig) and lose all of them. I totally hated the game at that point. From total superiority to completely wiped out. Totally unfair, and I'm just playing on normal difficulty. I'm most of the way through my second month. I finally got some allenium in my last UFO mission, and I'd just finished researching it when I got totalled. Because there was no clue that UFOs were going to suddenly become invincible, I was researching weapons and armour for my troops, as I was regularly losing soldiers and wanted to keep them alive longer. Even if I sell everything in my base, I cannot afford to manufacture a MIG. the game is basically over. There needs to be some more sensible progression of the difficulty. I've not even encountered any groups of UFOs yet. If I can defeat a "small" UFO by using 2 condor's with starting equipment and by not doing anything on the mini-game at all, then the next step up should not wipe me out completely. The next step up should cost me a fighter, but not the fight. When I start losing fighters regularly, then I've got a reason to make sure I upgrade them and make sure I have more available; just like losing soldiers means I spend time researching their equipment. There is no reason (other than meta-gaming, i.e. knowing the game mechanics) for improving my fighters if I win every fight without effort. So the game needs to provide better clues that I need to do something. I totally love the ground combat, but in truth, all I want to do right now is turn air-combat off entirely.

Then maybe it's just the research report text that needs updating.

I've been playing the Steam Beta and last night had something strange happen. I researched alien biology, and got a message about how I can now build a facility to house captured aliens. It then allowed me to research stun weapons. Nowhere do I see an option to build this alien containment. Not in engineering, base construction, nor is there an option to research it. Is this a bug.. or have I missed something?

The original xcom used energy to achieve a similar effect as this TU bonus. If you run around like a lunatic then you basically have unusable TUs because you're collapsed on the ground wheezing. Stand still for a turn, and you get your breath (and TUs) back. I'm not sure "bonus" TUs are a good mechanism. Benefits from standing still are already worked into your actions, e.g. If you don't move you can spend those TUs on higher accuracy. I suppose you could add some additional defensive benefits, e.g. the longer you don't move the harder you are to detect (to a limit); camouflage tends to be much more effective if you're standing still, for example. Of course, if you've already been detected then standing still just makes you easier to hit .

I second everything said so far. Been playing on Steam (hurray!) and I've noticed a couple of things that are already frustrating me. Make (seen) aliens behind terrain more obvious -- An alien was behind a rock and I couldn't see him at all (my troopers had such problems). I knew he was there, and I could hover over him to target him.. but it usually involved hunting around until the icon changed; I spent some time hunting for a way to rotate the map, but didn't find one. Some way of clearly indicating there's an alien there you can see. A clear silhouette or outline, or maybe fade the terrain. Add a Next & Next (Ignore) button (and shortcut keys) - Just like the original XCOM had. I discovered by accident that the mouse wheel sort of does that. I really like the Next (Ignore) button; it suits my play style. When there's action in one location I tend to move the troopers closest to it first (regardless of their order/number) then I move the rest. The Next (Ignore) button would allow me to be sure I'd moved every trooper I wanted to. Option to show movement zones & available cover - When selecting a trooper it would be great if movement possibilities & possible cover were shown. E.g. outline all tiles with green/yellow/red to indicate where the trooper can move. If a terrain feature provides cover if the player is behind it, maybe indicate that. I'd have this as an option as I can see that some players might not like these extra cues, wanting to figure this out itself. You could tie the option to difficulty level, so it's on by default on lower difficulty and off by default at the harder levels.