Irishguy117

I thought the game didn't give you the mission if you had only vehicles and no human soldiers?

That would actually be pretty awesome. I'm actually getting an interesting idea for an alternate style of terror mission, maybe 1 out of 3 times or so instead of being an elite team of the aliens best it could be a veritable swarm of low level aliens. Could be interesting, and I can definitely justify it as the aliens spreading out to cover a large part of the city faster. Its a bit subjective as to whether or not that would be fun though, kinda depends on the alien AI and how much ammo you think to bring.

Actually I'd reccomend you just go. This early you'll be dealing with a small alien base, and you should be able to handle it. The boost from taking the base (As opposed to the lost income from the constant funding drain if you don't) will be very helpful in recovering. With laser weapons and a mix of wolf and jackal armor you can take a small alien base no real problem. And Kevin, I didn't mean have all three drop troops, just have two major warships as escorts to make them more difficult to shoot down. Its an idea I'd like to playtest, there are potential flaws, but it could make things interesting. I've no idea how to execute it though, I'm just a player.

Could you assign large UFOs to escort each other? So a base assault or terror mission could be made really hard to shoot down in the air? A wing of three langinships, or a landinship escorted by corvettes or something like that could fix the problem, at least make people aware that base assaults and terror missions are supposed to be happening.

Why is that a problem? Why should the vastly superior alien forces be trying to hide from me?

Because I just watched a UFO on a base attack mission go from North Africa to Scotland to the Soviet Union before finally attacking my base on Rhodes. This took them almost a full day to do.

No they wouldn't, because the whole point of this invasion is poking us with a stick and seeing what we do, not obliterating all resistance. But thats no reason for the aliens to drop the stick, forget they were supposed to poke us with it, and then remember a few days later after calling frank from the other UFO cause you forgot your password for the alien map database. If base attacks are supposed to be part of the game, I should be able to tell. If you think that an alien headed straight for your base is too obvious than have it blend in with the wave for a much shorter time, or have three come at you and only one of them is the real base attack. Something that makes the Aliens look aggressive instead of stupid.

At least that way you know the aliens are trying to do something. Besides right now terror missions are easily distinguished by the escorts until you get Quantum Cryptology Center anyway. At least that way the aliens look less incompetent than they do now, and the player can understand the reason why base attacks aren't happening. Right now the stupidity of an alien invasion that can't remember where my base is is almost distracting, and as multiple people are pointing out, isn't all that fun anyway.

The scenario you're picturing is clearly different from the one I'm picturing, because you're giving yourself too much time to react. In vanilla right now UFOs fly over your base all the time and do nothing. The UFO should come in with the first of the wave, launch its terror mission or base attack as you're scrambling fighters and trying to prioritize targets.

Not if it comes in the middle of the wave with a bunch of other UFOs to use as decoys. Besides, the whole point of what I'm saying is it shouldn't be in the atmosphere long enough to stand out or get noticed any more than other UFOs. Right now UFOs buzz my base all the time, I just let them do it cause they never actually attack as I systematically dismantle them in the sky.

I'd actually really like to see your take on wolf and buzzard armor, this is awesome work. I have one request though, could you make a variation of the female basic armor with the jacket zipped up? I like fanservice as much as the next guy, but when I'm playing as their commander I'm supposed to frown on that sort of thing between the soldiers.

The real problem with base and terror missions is they dick around too much. Just have them enter the atmosphere, fly to their destination, and carry out their objective. Right now they take the scenic route, get lost on the way, fire the naivgator, take a left at paris and then eventually remember they're supposed to be attacking you. By that time, I've shot down the entire wave. What it should do is spawn in as part of the wave and immediately make a beeline for your base, or a city, or the place they want to build. THey've already sent in scouting missions in the first month, so they know where they want to build, where I am, and where all the major population centers are.

Speaking of, Solver do you think its possible to make the base attack missions dick around less? Right now it feels like the navigator on the UFO is lost and accidentally turned the map upside down so he has to wander around for a few days before he finds your base.

The game is balanced on the assumption of consistent casualties, even the occasional squad wipe. If you're save scumming or just doing really well in ground combat, the game is easy. Replacing lost soldiers is a big part of the costs the game assumes you have, and if you aren't paying those costs everything becomes easy to afford. Sounds like you might enjoy insane difficulty more. And I deeply disagree with you that losing the fussy mother aspects of checking with each one of your soldiers to see if they remembered that guns need bullets today is a bad thing. That's a flaw, just because it was in the original does not mean it should be recreated.

Personally I'd like to be able to airstrike landed UFOs just like crash sites.

Alien AI was in fact calculating burst accuracy incorrectly. If you're not using the most recent build you are absolutely correct.

Well considering that after the battle we spend some time scraping up every piece of alien tech we can find I assume we can pick up our own mags then too.

For heavy weapons 30-40 TUs is good enough(Its too low for ballistic weapons, but in my opinion too high for lasers and onward, so it makes a useable game balance judgement), but for rifles it should be 10 at most. I know guys who can do it without looking in under a second. These are supposed to be the best in the world, cherry picked from special forces groups.

I still hate fighting androns, but they're not as bad as sebs. And yes it turns out that sebs make excellent stat growth early game. Just pin one down inside a light scout, keep hurling flashbangs at him, and have your entire squad blast away with pistols until their aim stat grows. Its actually more likely to pass out from the flashbang than to die from the weapons fire.

We should also bring back alien base parking lots. Who needs corridors, rooms or doors? Just a big wide open parking lot, full of aliens.

If you keep your tech up Corsairs can solo landingships, or if you're a little behind two corsairs can kill it with high expectation of taking no damage. Its simple, the landingship will target one of them, so you have the one being targeted run away while the other sits in its blind spot and pump fire into it. If that's not enough to kill it, bring the other one in from the front and finish it off.

Personally Corsairs are the foundation of my airforce lately. I usually build my squads as one foxtrot and two Corsairs to keep control of the skies.

In my opinion sebs are regenning too much health ATM. Although come to think of it... BRB must perform SCIENCE and exploit game mechanics.

Part of the problem is the game forces you, or more precisely encourages you, to develop serious weakness to Psi by making soldiers high in one stat and low in the others, I.E. making it very likely that players will recruit people with low bravery but high aim, or strength, TUs, etc. Whatever looks more useful in the early game, because people don't recruit soldiers capable of withstanding Psi attacks because soldiers capable of withstanding Psi attacks have the athletic capability of a dandelion and severe nearsightedness. The real trick is that you have to hire soldiers with high bravery, period. Even if those soldiers could miss the broad side of a barn from inside the barn, if you want to be immune to Psi attacks completely, or even reliably.

WHAT. 50-60 reapers? I need to actually play Operation Endgame sometime.