Skitso

Sorry a bit of off topic, but I just have to ask: how are you guys finding these alien bases? What events should trigger them? Will ufos build them? (Will air superiority affect number of alien bases built?) If you read my 20.8 experiences, http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8404-skitso-s-feelings-on-20-8 you can understand my frustration: not a single alien base until march...

actually, I'm quite sure atleast footprints could be doable. Each step would damage ground tiles the same way shooting does atm. The footprint graphics can't of course be direction based but rather random, general markings like shot marks are now. More walking in a certain square, the more pronounced these markings would become...

I broke my hand last friday (damn icey, slippery walkway) and had to undergo a small surgigal procedure so I've had a lot of free time to play Xenonauts. I'm now a bionic man with titanium in my hand! I started a brand new 20.8 game with easy difficulty setting (as I've had a bit of trouble with earlier builds) I had much better time this time around and the game felt FUN! The game never felt underwhelmingly hard (as it should be on easy difficulty setting) and it progressed quite nicely until corvettes. Geoscape balance felt great and I had plenty of resources to found new bases and buy additional condors and foxtrots. Ground combat still suffers from map repetition at least on scouts and small scouts. I also felt I got too few industrial tile set maps. AI is super great(!!) but seems to suffer some kind of bug that makes aliens strangely passive at least in crash sites. They rarely move towards my units or shoot on their own turn, but rather pull back to reserve TU's for reaction fire. This wasn't the case in previous versions. Also one AI suggestion to GJ: when an alien unit dies in a spot that AI thinks is a good cover, other nearby aliens tend to move to that same position and take cover. If I happen to have a good line of fire in that sqaure, this often leads to a pile of bodies in same spot. So I think a dead unit should signal the AI that this isn't a safe spot for other units, so they would move somewhere else, even though this seems the safest place. While the start of the game feels almost perfect, the main problem atm for me was that the game plot stuck to "interrogate alien officer" I had the same objective until I quit the game in march (I fast forwared a lot as I found out the game wouldn't progress). I never once had alien bases or base attacks and the game started to feel tedious, as all the missions I had was crash/landing sites and a few terror sites. This is the first time I really enjoyed the game, so you guys are definitely going in right direction. I just feel that the game lost it's structure after first two months and started to repeat itself too much. One or two small and easy alien bases (with officers) and maybe one tougher after three months would have made the game progression perfect in my mind at least. Thanks for reading.

Great news G-J! Any hope for a hot fix?

Yeah, definitely step in the right direction. Fence vaulting could use some speeding up still though and overall, I'd like the animations (especially shooting) even quicker than how they are now.

I'm seeing this strange passive alien behavior again. They wont move in and shoot me anymore but just move in cover and reserve TU's for reaction every single turn. They have lost all their great agressiveness they had in previous builds. Whats up with that? I also witnessed two sebillians side by side inside a building hunkering down in a corner and doing nothing for 3 or 4 turns. They just sat there until I shot a rocket at them... There must be something in the AI code that broke in that last update...

Yeah, the LMG shooting is completely out of sync. That I think is the most obvious and jarring thing considring animatons

I kinda agree, atleast in certain animations. Crouching, jumping over fence etc. animations could be more explosive.. fewer frames displayed faster could actually do the trick.

Yeah, but this was tossed across the whole first room in alien base. My guys were hiding behind the railing in bottom part and the grenade was thrown from the upper doorway maybe 15 tiles away... I'm fine getting my whole squad gibbed with an alien grenade when I've made a clear tactical mistake (letting a grenade wielding alien come too close), but if it's thrown from across a huge room in a way that there's nothing I could have done to prevent it, is IMO bad game design...

Anyone else think that alien grenades are "a bit" overpowered atm? Half of my squad got slaughtered to tiny bloody bits (which was great btw) by a single grenade in my first alien base mission on easy difficulty setting...

In base equipment screen you can quickly equip stuff with right click, but in ground combat inventory screen it changes to next units inventory?

Few Ui improvement requests: -Rotating structures in base building screen could use some refinement.. you should see the rotating white outline always, even when it's overlapping existing structures. Also, could we use mouse2 to rotate? -Top menubar location changes a bit vertically when switching from global map view to base screens. Not a functional problem but feels unfinished. -Scroll bars are super tiny and awkward to use. Ok, you can use mouse wheel... but still it feels unfinished. -are we getting a tutorial screen to all base sub screens and ground combat? (Hope so, they are great!) -Maybe add a bit of visual flavor? Animated text box opening/closing, fade to black screen transitions etc.

I think the air combat is at the moment unbearably difficult, even on the easy difficulty setting. Also, getting to engage with the ufo's is way too hard. I'm playing on the easiest mode and still feeling completely overwhelmed. I had my starting base at North America and managed to down 4 or 5 ufos in three months time before base attack and losing the game...

Yeah, I have to agree; smoothing the FOW edges would make the game look really good and atmospheric. I hope GH can add all kinds of extra visual goodies like that (foot prints in sand and snow, slight full screen blue hue in night time missions, cloud shadows, non gameplay shrubbery and tall grass...) as the game moves more in the final polish phase. slight vignetting (darkened screen edges) could also add a bit in atmosphere department...

As in title: is it supposed to be this way?

Is there a way to tell the effects of base facilities? I feel I could use some help in what to build and why. For example what are the benefits of building a sick bay? Yeah, I'm sure it helps my troops to heal faster, but it'd be nice to know the effects precisely. Does it help in healing troops that are assigned in action, will troops heal at all without it, or do I need to manually take them out of chinook to go to sick bay? Btw, seeing troops health in equipment screen would be also nice. Atm if I understand correctly, you can only see injuries in the personnel screen?

Okay, so I'm experiencing some odd bug as gibbed units show only this spinning animation and vanish. Also explosion animations dont show at all. This was working in the last stable version. Reported in bug forum.

But should this new gibbing effect work now, as atm I'm only getting this spinning effect when blowing my units up...?

I thought the spinning effect was a misplaced teleportation animation for gibbed unit... Guess i was wrong?

-Lizard men's shooting animation is blurred (scaling problem?) -Explosion animations doesnt shotw at all -When a xenonaut is gibbed, a teleportation animation is played instead? Wasn't this supposed to be a new addition in 20.3?

How about showing player some additional info about targets when hovering cursor over them? Like rank, health (barely wounded, almost dead, paniced etc) or some other information one could see in real life. Atm there's no way to tell in what condition your target is, even when they are half dead. This could also help inexperienced players in indentifying higher rank aliens.

I'm not going to update to any early experimental build but I 'd really like to see how the new gui looks like. Could some nice person post some pics maybe? Thanks!

How about an experienced veteran soldier as in the new xcom as a reward?

The UI will get a complete overhaul in the near(?) future.

Regarding of AC, I'm suffering a bit from "sticky keys" syndrome. For example when I try to select a plane by clicking it's small icon on the map, the game very often doesn't select it but gives an order for the last plane to move there or to move the map around. Anybody else suffering from these imprecise controls in air combat?