wcanyon

I played probably 100 hours into that. It's a bit Play-Skool in its presentation but I really like the combat (pausable real-time). There's a bunch of mods for it, I'd recommend getting one. For $1.40? Hell yeah.

Well they're both photons, so yes. That's... no. Not what happens. Long story short: if you're a photon, some things are essentially invisible to you and some are not. Here: https://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/questions/mikep.html

You realize that I didn't say they couldn't be directional? All I said was that they aren't line of sight - meaning they can go through walls. Anyway, my point with radio was that whatever magic powers psionic powers there's no reason for it to be line of sight -- since I have to assume it isn't happening via photons. If it _is_ photons (if you want to take the rather unadvisable step of actually explaining psionics) then you have to explain how they get through the skull but can't get through any object between the target and sender. I think if you're gonna go handwavey just do it and don't try to explain things away.

Sounds silly, but I don't think this is unreasonable. Psionics should be a "HOLY HELL WTF" moment at first and then the science team should get a handle on it and then come up with armor upgrades ("Psi Hardened Helmet") that you have to build out. Also, making psionics be only LOS seems sorta silly to me. Do they operate over laser beam? Even radio waves aren't line of sight. Feels hacky.

Yes. Read this thread

I think the decision on psionics is to a) fix them b) play it c) balance. Psionic is pretty broken now.

> that they work anywhere on the map right now Oh, yes, yes indeed that's what's happening.

I've said this before but I think it bears repeating: 1. You need to be able to issue orders to your soldiers that only non-lethal methods will be used on comrades who are controlled. It seems highly unlikely that people would shoot their friends the instant they became mind controlled. 2. There needs to be some sort of research tied into psionic resistance. I'm thinking it should be triggered by the capture of the alien leader. If neither of those happen I think I'll just play with the nerfed psi powers (or turned off).

> not interested in any negative opinions..... will ignore them, In other words, "please join my hating circle jerk". No. If you actually had game industry experience, this post might be worthwhile. But I doubt you do, so this is just the whining of a child.

Or just do status effect icons -- you know, like every other game since M.U.L.E.

A coupla smacks on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle would do it.

You... actually do that?

My top complaint with the Valk: I have no clue which direction I'm heading after I place my troops. That's just a bit important. Using the Valk should mean you see more of the map around the drop zone. Actually (and I've said this before) I think the map should be visible but FOW'd when you land. You just flew over the site in a helicopter -- yet have no idea where the UFO is. Wat.

Do you work in tech support? Sounds like "Works on my MachineTM"

I find that when I have a guy in a squad and he gets controlled by aliens it goes like this: 1. set up squad to wait for aliens to come around a corner 2. one dude gets alien controlled 3. he shoots at a squaddie 4. several squaddies shoot back, killing him Basically there's a 50% chance that alien-controlled dude won't make it to the end of the turn. How would a soldier tell the difference between someone alien controlled and someone who's just berserking? Why would people instantly start firing on their friends once the realize they are alien-controlled? As a commander I should be able to give an order that alien-controlled soldiers can only be dispatched with non-lethal means. The whole thing strains suspension of disbelief too much.

True. But I addressed this in my OP: you're likely not going to fix all the game crashes by release time and releasing a game that has CTDs on load and doesn't have an autosave will frustrate new players. As well as casual players like me. > Saving the game every turn causes a noticeable lag Does it? Why not save the game while people are playing the beginning of their turn? Wouldn't be much CPU hit going on there. Surely you can be doing CPU bound things and IO bound things at the same time?

Yeah, I'm aware of that. But when a turn takes 3 or 4 minutes and I'm getting frequent CTDs/locks _AND_ the autosaves may or may not actually reload... having an automated save feature seems like a nice thing to do.

How about local forces radioing you and telling you where they think the alien is?

I've reloaded and gone back a few turns about 10 times in one mission in the past hour. I save every turn but even then, my saves might crash when I reload. So that means going back another turn. Or maybe 1 more beyond that. 2 steps forward, one step back. Doesn't help that the game is crashing a lot as well. Since the save system is apparently bugged and the game is also dealing with bugs, the game should have at least 2 turns of autosave in missions. It's incredibly frustrating -- especially for a game that is so near to release. It's gonna frustrate new players when it's released if you don't have an autosave feature and they hit this many CTDs when loading a save.

Had a guy with a plasma caster do reaction fire when an alien (sebillian) came around a corner. The caster sound effect got stuck on a loop, had to kill the game. Happened again 15 minutes later. Was in a sebillian base mission.

How is that any different than now? And how would they miss it if the messages stayed on screen? I think you misunderstand: > Clear the log at the end of the human turn.

They are tedious. They take about a second each. In the later missions, that can mean 5-9s at the end of every alien turn because of all the dread. It gets old and slows down the game for no good reason. My suggestion: effects log, left side of screen: Barry Allen is overcome with dread. Bruce Wayne is unnerved. Clark Kent is overcome with dread. Oliver Queen has gone berserk! And so on. Clear the log at the end of the human turn. That would be more useful than a message that is gone a second later. Ideally those messages would be hyperlinkish -- they'd set focus on the affected soldier when clicked.

I wonder if it's bugged. I have a guy that has 56 TUs and he can't reload it either.

I posted this elsewhere, was asked to bring it here. A couple of things about this berserk/unnerved system that need help: 1. When someone is unnerved or berserked it's impossible to figure out after the alien's turn. All I get is a brief message and a sound effect. There should be an icon in the soldier's portrait that means "unnerved" etc so I can pull that person out of heavy combat. 2. Berserk people just shoot randomly. That's not what berserk means. 9 times in 10 my people go berserk when there are no aliens around. I would expect berserkers to run straight at an enemy and start firing. That would make more sense. Why would a berserker just start shooting randomly? In a military sense, battle "berserk" doesn't mean just smashing shit, it means losing control and rushing the enemy. 3. Alien control. There should be some sort of research around it. I lost 3 people on a mission due to alien control. When I get back to the base, there's nothing about it (other than some text in the alien leader research summary). There should be a suit addon that will allow me to partially negate alien control. There should be at the very least a research item that I can research that will give my guys a 10% chance to resist or something.

> Build three radars in each base to maximize detection range, they are way cheaper than new bases I had no idea this was a thing... I thought they chained up in a inter-base fashion, not an intra-base fashion.