Skitso

Many soldiers' hair sticks through his/her helmet in the inventory screen paper doll. Shots blocked by armour and/or shield generate blood particle effects even if no damage was dealt. Need to be changed into sparks or similar with some "metallic thud" sfx. The two cleaner cell missions feel way too identical with same buildings just shuffled in different positions. I feel at least the main building should be unique in each map. MARS still crushing walls too easily and thus plotting routes way too aggressively. Increase wall crush TU cost by 1 or 2

The playtest version at least didn't update to 1.14 and still crashes after Cleaner HQ

Cleaner intel gathering mission does feel kinda daunting for a second mission of the game with all the special rules, reinforcements etc. It might be a good idea to add one or two more "standard" straregy mission(s) before it to smooth the progression and difficulty curve.

Great idea! You could have 2 buttons in the loadout screen: Launch dropship and Arrange and launch.

Speaking of biomes... the ancient mayan temple ruins in the jungle biome look bland and feel oddly specific and a bit too stereotypical to represent all the tropical areas around the world - especially when you find them in every jungle map. This old screenshot is IMO much better. It looks more interesting and is geographically more vague: Not every jungle map even needs buildings. Some might be really dense with vegetation with almost claustrophobic feel, while others might be more urban and open with shacks, roads ect like in that image.

Are the normal black suit cleaners supposed to be such ungodly snipers? They hit me from across the map, through windows, obstacles and smoke, multiple times in row. Super annoying from such early game enemy.

Fair enough then. How about fading the background darker as you've done with some other popups if I remember correctly?

I'm not sure if the Geoscape HUD graphics are final, but if it is, the main objective and panic values look somewhat unpolished and feel like they are "just thrown there". I made a quick mockup where the objective text is better embedded into the UI and looks more polished. It's far from perfect, but something like that might be a good idea to do.

with 1440p

1. Moving cpl. Huari here in the shroud: 2. Reveals an enemy unit here, but with no line of sigth: 3. Backtracking here and line of sight is regained. Why didn't the unit stop here? auto_groundcombat_turn_1_start-1.json

-Should there be a night time tutorial popup? Was it in X1 or did we have one in earlier builds? Can't remember... Nevertheless, I didn't get one on my most recent playthrough. Also, I remember some time ago that it was made so first mission was always a day mission, but has that changed as now my first mission was night and I didn't get a tutorial popup. -WOW what the hell, since when have we been able to zoom in tactical battles? :O :O Very nice!!! -Hmm... Jungles might still need something to make them feel more lush:

Not sure if intentional, but to me, these larger popups overlapping the lower HUD looks shoddy.

As seen here: My resolution is 1440p

@Chris, do you have any plans to fix the automatic roof toggle logic before EA launch? Having buildings' roofs visible when possible improves game's visuals quite a bit IMO. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated to implement than what it sounds, but I just happen to love how the game looks when I scroll the camera one level up. (And not just the buildings, but the landing ships and UFO's deserve to be seen in their full glory too!)

Oooo, the new cutscene portrait images are hot!

Thanks for the reply GJ. Unfortunately I don't have the save from that mission anymore. It's the first time I encountered a situation where the AI clearly does something that made me think it had to cheat. I understand the AI plays with the same rules as the player is, so units sharing the LOS is logical and understandable. But I'm sure it's not that. I made sure of it as I replayed the scenario again and again with similar results. I can assure you, there were no way either of them could see the flanking unit and it can be easily noticed in my screenshot as well as it's the corner of the map and the building blocks all LOS to the enemy. But anyways, all I have left of it is that screenshot... so good luck finding the issue there.

@Gijs-Jan, @Chris, any input on this?

Don't see the difference there. I'd maybe change it to "MAIN" or "PRIORITY" or something in that vein... the main scientist might mention in the description text that this particular reasearch option is something that will push the main operation forward.

@Chris, there is also the issue that you as a developer know your game and it's tech tree inside out and a LOT better than any of us ever will, and most certainly better than the average newbie that plays the game only once and just can't make such informed decision when you don't know the costs etc. until you've researched it. For an average player, they are just binary choices, not some "paths" to follow. I don't know... *shrug* I'm happy I'm not the developer haha

What if you, instead of buffing the accelerated weapons, just make them quicker to research? So if one chooses to go that route, you get the (near) instant gratification out of it and it would space them further away from lasers.

You know what @Alienkiller? I've tried to mostly ignore your posts as they rarely, if ever, contain anything worthwile... but your constant nonsense clutters the forums and it just rubs me the wrong way. If I give Chris some additional details of some issue, it doesn't mean you need to come adding your opinions that nobody asked for. This forum is for bug reports. Keep it clean.

The shadow on the floor

Yeah, I was wondering the same in my "random thoughts" thread: "Also, I feel the game kinda plateaus between day ~90 to day ~140 where the game offers nothing particularly intresting or new challenges. It's just a wave after a wave of destroyers and observers, later with escorts, but I got bored to be frank. I just intercepted UFO's, collected their bounties and concentrated or researching and manufacturing. Even the end game counter has risen to almost 50% without me doing anything to raise it. If it's too early to introduce alien bases at this point, it might be a good idea to mix in a terror mission or add a cleaner cell styled scripted mission or something here to spice up the mood."

Same issue is also seen with cover indicators. Those should be an easy fix as they shouldn't be displayed at all if the tile is not seen.

Modules still feel kinda OP as they weight so little and take so little space in the inventory. Feels almost cheating I can take both extra armor AND extra accuracy. I'd set the weight to something between 18-22 instead of the 12 that they seem to be currently.