Skitso

Haven't had chance to try this yet, but most additions sound good. Here's few additional thoughts embedded in the quote:

double post, sorry

This is easy to reproduce: just start an ATLAS base mission, enter a room and rotate the unit one tile at at time until a wall should be revealed. If there's a prop attached to the wall, just the prop or part of it becomes visible. When you turn one more time, also the wall will become visible.

This was marked as a fixed issue in the 2.19, but I still have locker doors etc. bugged in ATLAS tileset. And:

If I try to rotate a unit by clicking RMB in an open doorway (open door cursor icon visible) it is denied and the game sounds error beep SFX.

If Xenonaut unit is killed by bleeding, player might not notice it as the camera doesn't focus on it. It also might be a good idea to add a pop-up whenever a Xenonaut unit is killed.

Great feedback and I agree with almost everything you said. Especially these I feel should be priority improvements:

...and with these replies you just proved my point. No point to continue this discussion.

Agree. It seems we have few people here who really struggle to grasp the concept of game design. No matter how realistic the game's theme is, all the design decisions need to be made with gameplay and balance in mind. And no, that doesn't mean the game needs any magic or dragons. We can have a nice and realistic milsim themed game where gameplay and balance still comes first. I'ven seen so many walls of text here describing everything between ancient war techniques and modern SWAT tactics just to justify odd changes in the game that I can't even bother to read them any more. Even if something is objectively more realistic, it still doesn't guarantee to make the game better.

I refuse to believe you are serious. Do you really think that whether it's a movie, book or game, it's a more enjoyable experience if you know exactly when it's going to end?

Yeah, I really thought about upping their numbers significantly. Just decrease it's specs (accuracy, health etc) as much as needed to allow s lot more units. That'll make them feel really different compared to other races.

I've been thinking the same thing. Mantids just don't feel like a proper threat and a solution I came up with is to have a lot more of them. It would tie nicely to their insect-like demeanor and would offer a different kind of challenge. It'd also look really intimidating to walkmaround a corner and see like 7 mantids compared to, say, 2 sebillians

Well yeah, his character is perfect and funny - I don't want to change that. I just think he could say something useful (within his character) in his speech bubble instead of "the door was closed for as reason".

I would prefer the head scientist to give some useful and game-play related tips instead of his snarky, useless commentary he currently has. He could give some opinions how to proceed and what the player might want to research next. Tips could be vague and even unhelpful, but it would still make more sense and make the unnecessary speech bubble have some reason to exist. Same with the workshop dude too, of course.

MARS should use 95% of it's TU's to bust through a wall. It's way OP atm.

Completely agree. It's too gamey and breaks immersion. Same with the Cleaner progression counter. It should be way more vague rather than exact percentage. This could of course be made a difficulty level dependant and a toggleable option the same way the enemy health is currently.

While it would be a welcomed addition, I'm afraid it's a lot more complicated to pull off than you think. I'm almost 100% sure it's not gonna happen.

Amazing comment. I agree 100%. Especially the progression part is so true! Kinda related: The new, more organic way of spawning different Cleaner missions is of course a clear improvement over the more linear Milestone 1 system. The old, more curated system did provide a nicer feel of progression though. I loved the way I needed to raid the Cleaner base for intel and then take care of the VIP. It just felt better and made maybe more sense. On the current system I might not even get the intel gather mission at all. And it's my favorite mission type so far, so thats a bummer. While the game should absolutely retain the organic and semi-randomized nature, it does need s bit of structure to feel better. What I propose is that the intel gather should be removed from the random mission pool and always be the first cleaner mission after ATLAS base. It should also be persistent (non-missable). We'd still have Cleaner VIP elimination, convoy, soldier rescue and VIP rescue missions for random spawns. If you need more mission types, having a behind-the-enemy-lines agent mission with only one or two units could be tense and a nice change of pace.

I played on v2.16 one veteran ironman run without training center up to day 110 and found the general difficulty to be pretty spot on for me all the way until I got lasers and guardian armor, which made the ground combat too easy at least until Cleaner HQ and Observers. The aliens just couldn't produce enough damage to be much of threat and were also too flimsy health wise. I didn't get the Dragonfly yet, but could see it trivializing the whole tactical combat part of the game with the ability to deploy two MARS units and 10 soldiers. I suppose at least the Abductor needs a lot larger crew with boosted health/armor to provide any kind of challenge to full dragonfly/guardian/laser team. I don't play manual air game and just auto resolve everything. I made a mistake of building too many Angels: I had 3 at Europe base and two at America base. I had some trouble catching Abductors, but otherwise having them armed with accelerated cannon, sidewinder and armor plates, I had absolutely no trouble gaining air superiority. Overall the air game felt a bit too easy and I never lost a single aircraft. First base attack could be a bit easier (the tactical mission) but be harder to avoid. It's too easy currently to spot the UFO heading towards the base and too easy to shoot it down. I'd say the money balance is in a fairly good spot. I could expand bases and buy enough cool toys but needed to think and prioritize stuff. On the other hand, I had accumulated way too much alloys by the point where I had researched Warden armor and accelerated weapons. I could just manufacture new gear to everybody at the instant I had them available, which felt boring and too straight forward. I suggest increasing Warden's and laser weapon's alloy cost 2 or 3 per unit. I also had the same issue with Guardian armor and laser weapons; I could manufacture everything in one go as soon as they became available. This time I had other stuff to spend my alloys too (like Phantoms, air weapon upgrades etc.) so I couldn't make everything at once, but I stil suggest increasing laser weapon's and Guardian armour's alloy costs by 4 or 5 abd decrease alloy cost of other things so I couldn't upgrade my whole team at one go. And why did I play without training center, you might ask? Because it's way too OP. Rookies are already too good when I recruit them and they gain experience way too fast. Xenonauts become homogenous super soldiers in time of maybe 10 missions, and after that everyone can excell in everything.

I've now played until day 90 and just had the lasers unlocked. I still have the same issue with alloys (and alenium at this point too) as before. I could manufacture 3 laser pistols, 4 laser rifles, 2 laser shotguns, one laser sniper and one laser MG and I had over 100 pieces of alloys and alenium left. And I haven't even had a good run; I've had lots of deaths so I needed to manufacture maybe six extra wardens, skipped many crash sites, missed at least one abduction mission etc, so I could have had a lot more alloys and alenium...

Not sure if a bug or just unfinished asset, but here it goes: Light version of Warden armor uses the same model as the heavy one in tactical combat. (ie. it has shoulder and knee pads, helmet etc. that should only be with the heavy variant.) EDIT: seems to be the case with the Guardian armor too

Once again a see through wall. I'm not sure if a save will help you at all, as this seems to be the infamous 'damaged state of a tile is not updated' bug that is fixed when a save is loaded. Annoying. Grr. user_bug_6-7.json

This bush here doesn't grant cover. user_bug_5-6.json

No worries, it's a tiny issue and I can live with it. For now.

As the ATLAS base is an interior space, I'm not even sure if we need such wall shadows in the first place. Is the other issue where all the different cabinets, lockers etc. become visible before the wall behind (if you turn soldier one tile at a time to reveal a room, you can reproduce the issue shown in the image above) them also a shader issue?