endervoid

From the perspective of the aliens having different clothes for different ranks is very stupid. Its like saying to the sniper "hey. i'm a general, please shoot me". No real army does that on the front. It should be really hard for your soldiers to distinguish ranks of enemies, maybe only snipers have a small chance to do that by observing the rank insignia (if its visible and not hidden. ).

I dont know how its suppression is handled in the game, but in my understanding of real life suppression fire there are differences to panic: - if you suppress a unit, you still have to flank that unit to kill it, because you cant walk through your own suppression fire - somebody suppressed is still able to act, more so if behind cover (he can retreat, throw grenades, shoot at flanking units, even shoot back to some degrees). A paniced unit cant. - you need at least a light machine gun to suppress effectively. And not every soldier should have a lmg because of the weight. (You can suppress with a assault rifle, but with a 30 round magazine you will have no ammo fast, the suppression cone should be small too. And when you reload you can be suppressed from the unit you just suppressed yourself). So basicely the main advantage of suppression fire should be its range and cone with an lmg, single target i would mostly prefer panic (because its like a stun, contrary to a weak aoe "root"). What i'm trieing to say here, it's all about how you handle psi abilities. You always can come up with something usefull that isn't mind control and doesn't duplicate an existing mechanics. But i would rather wish a fast and good release with existing mechanics then have them implement and balance new ones though

I aggree on the graphics and have to add the interface and controls in general too, they where just horrible. A open (even closed) beta would have helped that game so much. But don't know about the bland gameplay, just started a new game with GrayFiend's UniMod and so far the game is fun. But than i was one out of the few people that liked TFTD more than the first XCOM Just out of curiosity (not for trying to contradict or to argue with you), do you have some examples of bland gameplay in mind? Or is it just a general feeling you get when playing the game?

I don't know why most people don't like UFO:ET, i definitely had fun with vanilla and with mods it was a really good game. Despite it's faults for me it is even superior (as a whole) to the new XCom.

There are a Czech studio btw, not Russian. I wonder if that "Looking for a C++ Programmer" Info is new. Dont remember seeing that, but didnt visit their homepage that often either.

If there were laser reflection in, there should be reflective armor too. So in the end only perpendicular shots would do any damage. And rain and fog would make laser weapons useless too. I would rather have no reflection at all then having lasers getting reflected by mirrors, but going straight through every armor. That would brake the immersion for me.

Most of the stuff you suggest for the ai is for example in JA2 1.3. Still it's very dumb and even fighting 20v6 it loses very hard. In my opinion with enough effort (maybe 2 years don't know) you could make an ai that is competent in small skirmishes for a fixed set of rules (when everything else on the battlefield is static). But the biggest problems of AI is in situation awareness (pattern recognition, prediction of hidden movement), prediction and adaption. These points are so easy for a human you don't even think about it. For example to make a concept of flanking, the ai needs to know where the front and flank is first. Then it needs to know if the human will predict that movement and wait for the ai to flank him. And so on. Look at computer vision (one of the biggest research fields that shares a big amount of conecepts with ai), even if that research field goes back to 1960, the results we get today are very little. Task a small child can perform a not even solved. Just to recognize a leaf of a tree is very hard. So even if you get a AI that is very good at the concepts you wrote (i.e. decision making), the two biggest problems will still remain, perception and prediction. ATM the only way a non cheating ai can compete against a human is by having a higher depth in his prediction tree. But thats not possible in a game with that complex rules like xenonauts. So in the end it will be all about "Moar guns" at higher difficulties. And i watched the link about "depth" you posted. So in short depth means complex game mechanics and many possibilities of different decisions. In a tactical/strategic game that means a weak ai and therefore to be challenging after you master the mechanics it means "moar guns" too.

double post

Did you play the version with the fixed difficulty bug? If you do, don't be offended by the question please

There is already another thread about this problem. I don't have access to the new releases, but if i remember correctly from the public alpha and the forum, a shot going on the tile the alien is standing on is always a hit. So to miss you have to hit another tile. So close/middle range misses will always be a danger to friendly units and can look very weird sometimes. And like i already suggested in the other thread, the JA2 1.3 system was the best i have seen so far, but certainly some work is needed to implement that. But imho it's worth it, as unrealistic shoots are not so common and burst/auto fire looks much more realistic. And in tactical combat shooting is one of the core aspects, so i wish it would look better then it does at the moment. And who uses a sniper from 10 yards anyway Even with an assault rifle with a 4-8x scope it will be hard to hit at that distance. With a sniper rifle it's even harder (don't know if xenonauts uses "real" snipers or just assault rifles).

There are stun granades in JA2 when i recall correctly. As JA2 1.3 uses a more realistic approach, you can't "charge" someone and survive. The shock system alone makes you more or less useless after one medium-heavy hit for some time. And normaly you should be punished for running straight into an enemy. For me it has nothing to do with frustration (if you do stupid stuff you die, and going melee against modern firearms is one of the most stupid things), but sadly with the old XCOM "shallow" tactical gameplay, at least in times after JA2 1.3. There should be some kind of other system to stun an enemy then just running to him. You could use ranged stun or a "sneak" system. Or suppress the enemy with mg/auto fire, use smoke grenades, flashbangs etc. There are endless possibilities that won't give an interrupt. But i don't like the idea of the op that much, as it has to be balanced very well to work. The last example, when you run around a corner and meet an alien, but the soldier wins the interrupt roll and gets the interrupt instead of the alien, is a bad design imho. If someone is waiting around the corner he should always get the interrupt, as he will see the gun barrel. In most cases interrupting someone has nothing to do with the other units reflexes. At least if xenonauts is using the XCOM system, where an interrupt means only a option to shoot someone. If they are using the JA2 system, and someone is running in his interrupt round, then yes, your system could be good. .

The best system i have seen so far was that of JA 2 1.13. The difference of that system basically is: -In XCom (and Xenonauts as it seems) the to hit probability is calculated first, after that a deviation of the bullet/beam is made more or less randomly, which can look very weird. -In JA 1.13 it's the other way around, the deviation of the bullet is calculated first(based on shooters ability to counter recoil and minimize muzzle sway + gun accuracy, which depends only on the gun and ammunition). So the bullets will never fly away in 45° degrees from the shooter. After that the to hit probability depends only on the distance to the target. So even as a bad shooter with a lot of muzzle sway you will most likely hit a target next to you, and when you miss, then only by a very small amount. And it doesn't make auto-/ or burstfire fly randomly around the target. Looks much more "realistic" then in every other tactical game i know.

Totally agree with you, with increased rewards most players would only play night missions. What you can do is make the alians dispatch a rescue ship to a crash side, so if you don't start immediately with your mission, you won't get anything from the crash site. If it will be night or day just depends on the time you shut down the ufo. If i remember correctly, this was how terror worked in ufo:eu, when they started at night, they disapeared at dawn. To make up for the extreme disadvantage you have at night, you can maybe give your soldiers night vision scopes, which increase vision range, but also increase tunnel vision (which can turn out risky if the ai is able to flank). And maybe let you have infraret laser sights (which aliens could only see if they have night vision goggles, but as they naturaly see at night i doubt they need them. You can even make some alien types able to see infrared, so you have to be carefull using them). This laser sights will improve your aiming with night vision scopes. So you still don't see as good as the aliens, but once you see them, you have some accuracy advantages over day fighting. But also you have the greater risk of getting flanked or/and your position getting spotted by aliens with infraret vision.