svidangel

Yeah, it kinda bothered me that the only real difference was damage - I kept expecting based on the description that there would be accuracy increases or range changes, but sniping with a laser doesn't feel much different from a bullet.

Side note, but I have yet to see an intact gas station. I've seen the edges of one or two. It may say something about my playstyle, but I have yet to actually see anything other than a giant crater with a yellow/orange rimmed roof floating in mid-air by the time I get there. I'm sure the models and visuals are lovely, but I just haven't had the chance to appreciate them.

Had a soldier at full (73) HP and upgraded Guardian armor get oneshot by a stray bolt into a nearby snowmobile. And he was not right next to the snowmobile but about as far away as you can get and still be in the blast radius. It's fun to have blowy-uppy cars and such (not realistic, but common for video games and movies), but it feels like the damage is a bit high when a snowmobile is more dangerous to my soldier than a cyberdrone's entire fusion blast volley. Speaking of which, it's mildly panic inducing to see a cyberdrone only a few tiles away from the front of a packed Dragonfly dropship on the first turn. And yes, I've taken to setting off pretty much every vehicle and container I can before I get to it, I just hadn't realized that the snowmobiles would be that dangerous =/ Lesson learned.

Some thoughts on the final missions - UOO1 - the space/starscape background was neat, but odd that it could be only seen at certain angles. Firing across empty space didn't work as the "black" was on top of the weapon discharge graphics, creating a look like the weapon fire went "under" something as it crossed between platforms. UOO2 - as mentioned, spawning in on 2 sides in tight groups made things very easy. I had two Ares hovertanks and grenades and... I could have farmed them for a while. Endgame The first stage was fun, though the timer did not always seem accurate in terms of when waves of enemies would spawn in. Spawned in enemies were sometimes invisible. Attempting to find them by hitscanning (hold ctrl, look for red) resulted in my firing into empty space a bit since apparently both "fire" and "the empty place that controls the reinforcements" both count as "enemy" targets. There were major issues with LoS and explosions. Quite a few aliens trying to fire through floors, walls, etc. Unsure if it is intended, but the colossus armor and tanks could plow through the walls in those levels, unlike in alien ships which have the same wall texture. Hunting down the last enemies was not fun - it's a fairly large map with quite a few teleporters. There is no command center to reveal aliens at the end, and it just kind of breaks the feel of the level to "Rush" the destruction of the teleporters, then wander around for a bunch of turns looking for the rest of the aliens. Having some other option for ending the mission, even if it means aliens that were not killed can be moved to the next level (or randomly spawn in behind you). Alternatively, some sort of command center that reveals the map. Second stage - I was playing on Soldier but.. it was a bit of a let down in terms of difficulty. There were ~ 4 units in the final room, fewer than even in the similar UOO2 room. It was one of the easiest sections of the game, and the whole second stage itself was not that dangerous. Not sure if it would be fun to pack in tons of aliens or what, but maybe changing the objective in the first stage and including some kind of rear-guard action against fanatically charging enemies coming up behind you after X turns would make it more interesting. More eternals, and possibly higher health ones would be nice to see too. As it is I think I only ever encountered 3 (UOO2, battleship, second stage EndGame)?

On that note I think the text for the advanced fusion weapons research had a random "fff" at the end of one of the words. I figured it would be picked up when looking through the other placeholders and completing the set of research texts, but since I saw a fusion topic... Unfortunately it doesn't show up in the ufopedia and I don't have a save around the time so no screenshot.

It seems like the harvester ship specifically doesn't count the top floor. Not sure if that is because it is treated as a 3 floor ship and the 3rd floor is empty - the fourth floor is actually the 3rd floor you can get to? The fourth floor with the bridge ALSO does not count as capturable - if I move the whole squad up to the bridge I no longer get notifications that xenonauts are in control of the UFO.

Yeah, kind of a coder-centric approach, and given that I don't know how the code works... I wonder if it might work to have the pathing route through hazardous effects be 0.00001 higher than normal tiles. If you make sure to set all display values to integers, and just use the double (or whatever) value for pathing, then it might lead to units not naturally pathing though hazards without working with the AI too much. And would help prevent Xenonauts from preferentially choosing to immolate themselves at every possible chance. =P

It has occurred in a variety of situations, from UFOs to bases, but it shows up far, far more frequently in bases. Not sure if it has anything to do with my use of the space bar to increase unit travel speed.

Side note, in the same mission I lost a xenonaut, then had a servitor explode basically on top of their corpse gibbing the body into a blood stain... and they managed to survive. I recall reading somewhere that body destruction shouldn't allow a survival chance... but I appreciate the oversight :P

And then there were 3 more enemies, 2 of which were wraiths on the rest of the floor. So clearly something is weird about the detection of existing aliens in the Harvester craft. Have not had that issue on other UFOs. Went ahead and captured the UFO, verifying that it was not just a message, but it actually works to end the mission, despite there being multiple active aliens.

Unsure if actual bug, but do robotic entities not count towards xenonaut control of a craft? I received a notification that Xenonauts needed to control the craft for 2 more turns to win, then went off to explore since it was my first Harvester... and promptly found an enemy (servitor drone). See save. user_control_of_ship-31.json

Yeah, I have definitely had enemies stand still and then not shoot or otherwise respond to being shot at, especially when they don't have the range to immediately fire back. Like one of the servitors on top of a cargo crate. Not sure if it was able to path down off of it.

Kind of an aside, but with that exit design (the two barriers right at the entrance) it would have been impossible for the large hovering mechanical fusion spewing monsters (*cyberdrones) to exit the ship. Similarly, while there is a 2x2 teleporter, all of the doors leading to it are 1 square.

Target location is visually outside of ship, but attempts to path through front door. Same on both sides in at least those two squares. Seems to be true of most of the spots around the outer edge of the hull. From inside, though, the path is back around to the outside -

Yeah, the floating robots have a bad habit of bee-lining it for the very edge of the map, even on non-terror missions.