lemm

Maybe I've played the game from the beginning too many times, but I think that there are still too many light scout missions. I know that you don't really HAVE to do all of them, but your soldiers stats and your bank account are ameliorated quite substantially if you do. Maybe light scouts could be destroyed half of the time instead of crash landing. The air combat minigame is enjoyable. I liked the alien craft rolling away from cannon-fire, but it's not a big deal to have had that removed. Aircraft recovery times are well balanced. I don't think the ground vehicles have a recovery time (?) though I think they should. The biggest problem is that base assaults in the early game can be a bit imbalanced, especially if the aliens arrive in a landingship with a dozen heavy plasmas when all you have are a few laser guns. Terror sites are sometimes impossible as well, although you don't have to win all of those to stay in the game. You can still exploit the faulty AI and beat these overwhelming odds, although I figure that will not be possible for very long. Then again, if you know that your base is going under, you can ship everything and everyone to a second base, sell the facilities, and rebuild somewhere else without losing too much cash, so maybe it's not so bad as long as you have a couple of extra bases in reserve. I like the research times; getting a second research lab up and running is now a necessity.

It would be nice if there was some option you could press to withhold reaction fire. There is a variety of reasons why you might not want to take a shot (out of range, behind cover or teammate, don't want to kill the alien). A simplified interrupt system would solve this issue. If you score a reaction opportunity, the game pauses, and you can act (take a shot or crouch), or resume the alien's turn by pressing space bar. At any time during the alien's turn, if you can still see him, you can press space to pause the game and act. If the alien is about to leave your view, or if he's about to shoot, the game will auto pause as well. The alien turn plays out at half speed while you have a reaction fire opportunity, and the UI somehow notifies that you are in "reaction opportunity mode." Actually, I wouldn't mind having the ability to pause the alien turn at any time regardless of available reaction fire opportunities.

If the grenade went off in the middle of the room, it probably wasn't close enough to any of them.

I don't think they actively target vehicles. The only time a vehicle is hit is if the alien misses a Xenonaut who is hiding behind it.

Foxtrots are also useful for drawing missile fire from alien fighters. Boost through the alien fighter's missile arc with afterburners perpendicular to the vector of the alien ship. All of their missiles will fall behind the Foxtrot. You should be able to clean up the remaining fighters with two Condors (two kills by missile and one by cannon). I keep 2 Condors and 2 Foxtrots at each base.

i'd like the ability to throw grenades around the corner

Usually 2 Assault 3 Riflemen 1 Sniper 1 Bazooka 1 Machinegun If I have a vehicle, get rid of 1 assault and 1 machinegun If I'm attacking a base, change sniper to rifleman If it's an early game terror mission, 8 bazookas.

Some people adore the air minigame. Chris seems to hate it. But you have to agree that it has a "cool factor" to it that breaks up the monotony of dozens of scout missions. Unfortunately, mundacity arises in the geoscape because EVERY week, EVERY ship (except for the ones that are trying to kill you) does the same random walk around one little corner of the globe. A little variety in the air combat would go a long way. Anyways, I don't think the development team would want to radically change the game at this point, so I'm making suggestions that would be very easily to implement and would not impact the geoscape balance. These features are just meant to make the Geoscape more "interesting." 1. Make Alien Bombers priority targets (i.e., air combat terror sites) Bombers are this unique type of alien ship that don't really go after you and can't be recovered, but are designed solely for ruining your relations with the host nation. Given that host nation funding is far more important now, bombers could have a more prominent role in the game. Instead of just milling about like every other alien craft, what if they circumnavigated the Earth on global bombing runs. They would be detected independently from Xenonaut radar similar to terror sites or alien bases (as they're just dumping plasma bombs on everything, they're fairly easy to track). In fact, a message pops up that says "Alien Bomber Detected" just to let you know how important this is. The bomber travels in a path resembling a straight line, across the globe (so that you can easily intercept it) and every hour it stays alive, it bombs something and costs you about $2000 in funding from whatever nation it bombed. Depending on the stage of the game, the bombers could have an escort fighter wing that trails them, or there might even be two bomber groups at once. It's essentially like an airborne terror site that can cost you up $50,000 or whatever in relations funding depending on how long it stays alive. This isn't really too different from how bombers act now, but it's just more advertised and more "fun". 2. Alien radar jamming stations (i.e., air combat alien bases). Another thing that's kind of messed up about the current geoscape is that radar ranges are gigantic and you can build two bases and see just about everything on earth. (It's even more amazing that a radar dish is operating while buried underground but whatever, it's just a game). To counteract this, the aliens have developed this radar jammer that blocks the Xenonaut radar and cloaks any alien ships under its protection. You can determine its location by how it distorts your own radar range circles (or maybe the Xenonaut operatives just stumble upon it as soon as it pops into existence). You have to take out the dish with your interceptors, BUT, there are alien fighters (and maybe even a SAM site or two) defending it. Essentially, it's just the same as an ordinary alien fighter wing, but instead of tracking you down and disappearing after a while, it persists forever and blocks your radar vision.

I think that the default "heavy weapons" could be split into "machine gunner" and "rocket launcher." They could both keep the H designation, though.

C4 and rockets is good enough for me.

I think the appearance of the first scout should be a lot sooner. Unless I get exceedingly lucky, I always seem to fight a dozen light scouts before a scout finally shows up (and this is on veteran). After four or five light scouts, you're going to have a Hunter or Jackal armor which makes the these missions little more than a chore. After the player has recovered 4 light scouts, then scouts should start showing up at least once per wave, and by the end of October, light scouts should hardly show up at all. I'm a lot less strapped for cash too, now that the funding nations are more generous. The player is basically guaranteed a fully operational second base by October's end whereas in 18.6, you had to down a lot of UFOs to have two fully furnished bases by the time plasma tech was reached. Making the player's success dependent on how many light scout and scout missions he can slog through and more dependent on how many critical missions (terror sites, base defenses) he can complete is more rewarding I think. I still think that way too much of the globe can be covered by two bases, especially at the higher difficulty levels. Finally, airplanes should have some rearming time, or capital ships should have shields. If an unescorted capital ship flies close enough to your base, you can take it down with wave after wave of MiGs firing avalanche torpedoes. You really *should* have to finish it off in one sortie, otherwise the air combat is made horrendously imbalanced just by a lucky alien ship spawning location.

I like the new Hunter; it has a role as a scout that can provide suppressing fire in a pinch, and the head lights are incredibly useful at night. I bring one along with me at all times now. I think the MG hunter could have a lot more ammo, however; 100 rounds would be good. As a balance, it could have two firing modes: a 30 TU spray for area suppression (make it less accurate than it is now) and a 60 TU aimed burst for focused fire. I don't ever use the rocket hunter, so I can't comment on it. The door mechanics are great too; breaching the UFOs is a lot more difficult now than it used to be. You might even want to require UFO doors to be blown open (as I don't know how you would open one from the outside anyway) so that players need to bring C4 with them. Shields are still sorta useless for open field combat. I tried a mission where I just left them in the dropship on the first turn and then came back to get them before breaching the UFO, but that took way too long, and I don't think it would have provided much benefit anyway. Perhaps the Hunter could have a storage compartment? Idk. I think shields would be useful in alien base missions, and that's about it.

To add to this, if the cursor was hovering over a door, then the cursor remained as an "open door" icon when the debrief screen appeared.

After you've killed the last alien, if you click the ground repeatedly to send a move command while the game is loading the debrief screen, the "click" sound will play as soon as the debrief screen shows up.

This looks like it will make fighters a lot more useful, and dogfights should be a lot more fun too!

You can always give a guy a shield, have him drop it on the first turn, then go back and get it when the outside of the craft is cleared.

Additionally, given the increased damage randomness, more pellets will result in a more uniform amount of damage from point blank blasts.

Dunno if this is a "bug" or not, but I blew up a C4 outside the alien ship door. While the door wasn't blown open, the alien inside was audibly injured.

Well, in v6 I used to just throw one flash banger in the ship and that would usually stun everyone. That doesn't seem to work as well in v7 though. Fortunately, sSmoke grenades are far more useful, so now I usually: 1) Open door 2) Drop smoke grenade 3) Throw in a couple flash bangs (depending on how many aliens are inside) 4) Chuck in grenades and shoot until everything is dead.

I've only played half a dozen missions so far, but the Sebellians seem a lot more brazen, especially when there are several of them in a group. I don't remember them charging into the open in v6 like they do now. Alien craft breeches are a heck of a lot harder now in the earlier game, given that the aliens are harder to suppress with flashbangs. I think the riot shield might finally be getting some use. Anyways, ground combat is definitely much more enjoyable so far.

So, does the lead scientist act like an arrogant prick in all of the other translations, or is this just a British thing?

- Smoke from smoke grenades now blocks line of sight (still also reduces accuracy of shots through it) Haven't tried 19.7 yet, but this seems like it could have a huge impact.

I generally use the vehicles for scouting and providing suppressing fire.

At the moment, not very many (maybe a few per UFO per tileset). However, you can browse the forums for map packs. Try the community map pack, for starters.