Hiawata

That's a very interesting take on this. It would still feel wrong that there is a trade-off between boredom and speed, but at least speeding things up by sending scouts to their likely deaths wouldn't be grave in terms of finance. As people on this forum say, "Into the meatgrinder, my rookie minions!". From Monday onwards, it's back to Real Life for me, and I won't be playing a minute of video games for at least six months, and quite possibly longer. That includes not finishing my playthrough of Xenonauts. So, as much as I'd love to help out, and even learn something new in the process myself, I unfortunately have to decline. Whoa... If that's just off the top of your head, I don't even want to think about what others are out there. I see how some of those can speed things up. I also can see how removing these exploits would provide for a more exciting and challenging game, when you actually engage the aliens (though the problem of many turns of sweeping an empty map would remain).

It wasn't killed too often, exactly because I learned to use it the way you suggest. I found the fact that its vision wasn't affected at night very useful. But, during the day when that didn't make the mission substantially easier, I didn't think it paid off. It costs as much as six soldiers, doesn't gain experience, replaces two soldiers and can't go into buildings. I don't know. I guess on the more open maps, such as arctic ones, it might make sense to bring it along even during the day. In any case, the grind problem that I'm talking about is only mitigated if you bring a Hunter.

In my current game, I'm waiting until I build a garage and a vehicle, until I've set up a proper air force. I have used the Hunter Scout Car before, and I found it very useful in night-time missions. In day time, though, it replace two soldiers, still gets killed with a few good shots, and has a steep cost. As for going for the UFO, every time I did that, I ended up fighting aliens from two sides, and at least some soldiers were exposed. I really think that holding the UFO is a good option when you've safely moved towards it, killed everyone inside, and don't want to search for that last alien somewhere, or you know where it is, but you think it's too risky to kill it. But, going directly for the UFO is too risky for me, especially since you don't know where it is, and often times I do find it at the last bit of the map I check. Which means that I anyway have to sweep the whole map carefully first.

Thanks for the answer! I never noticed the penalty for moving, but that's probably because I only moved a tile away from cover in order to be able to lob a grenade over it. As for both hands being full, I was convinced the cost was the same whatever a soldier held in his/her hands. I remember having a shield + gun soldier, and I put a grenade into the soldier's hand instead of the gun, and the cost to throw the grenade from the hand was the same as trying to throw a grenade from the quickslot of another soldier who held a rifle. Of course, my memory could be bad, but if I'm right, is it possible that when I want to throw a grenade, the game calculates how much I've moved and whether both hands are full, but it doesn't pay attention to where the grenade is thrown from (hand or quick slot)? That is: no movement + both hands full + throwing grenade from quick slot = x TUs no movement + both hands full (one holding a grenade) + throwing a grenade from hand = x TUs

OK, so I should probably clarify what brought me to write my original post. I built my first base in Northern Africa, so it covered the whole of the Africa, Middle East, Europe (except Iceland), and a chunk of the Soviet Union. I built my second base at the beginning of month 2, in Indochina, so that it could cover most of the rest of the Soviet Union, all of Indochina and a bit of Australasia I think. While the base was being built, there was a lot of UFO activity there and around Central and South America. After the base finished (with two radars, a Foxtrot and two condors there), the aliens didn't do any activity there, so I didn't get the chance to improve relations and funding, and obviously I couldn't do that in the Americas either. There was a wave around my first base which I dealt with, and I sent a dropship to a crashsite after all the UFOs were gone, but a fighter appeared out of nowhere and shot it down. I didn't escort it because the crashsite was far off, and my condors couldn't have flown that far. (I don't remember why I didn't send a foxtrot.) Come month 3, I started building my third base in Cuba, but the same thing happened again. There was a lot of activity around it while it was being built, but none after it was done. There was also little activity over my first two bases, but there was a lot of activity over Australasia. So, again, I lost funding and relations. At the end of month 3, I lost South America. In month 4, I realized that a foxtrot per base wouldn't do, nor would one radar in base 3 be sufficient. But, since I both didn't get to do a lot of ground missions in the first three months, and I lost funding and relations, there was precious little I could do about that due to a lack of money. And then, to top it all off, while my interceptors were being repaired in my second base (with a foxtrot and two condors, you will likely get some damage when attacking corvettes) the aliens attacked it, and I lost it. I didn't continue after that. I didn't think there was any way to recover. The point is, I had a stroke of serious bad luck with being attacked exactly when my interceptors were being repaired. I also lost South America due to bad luck - the aliens could also have done mission above my completed bases. But, fair enough, bad luck is a part of the challenge. I also realized I made a mistake in putting just one foxtrot per base and one radar in my third base, but there was nothing I could do to repair it. Among other reasons for that was the the bad luck about where and when the aliens were active. I think that making mistakes (of the type I described) and finding ways to recover from them should be a part of the gameplay. So should losing a base. I don't know, perhaps I played things badly, and perhaps I had seriously bad luck that happens rarely? Perhaps I could have recovered?

I see. Well, as I said, it feels like having a stroke of seriously bad luck, or just making one big mistake, should still be a part of gameplay, not a game ender. To repeat, I wouldn't like a magic wand that would get the player out of a tight spot, just because, but some way that is at the very least tied to how well you've played up until that point.

@Dranak I watched a bit of how you play. I can see how advanced tech can make things somewhat quicker, plus the map is relatively small and it's a farm, so it's relatively open as well. But, you are exposing yourself to a lot of risk, and things could have gone differently. I don't know what exploits llunak is talking about, but whatever they are, I am probably not using them, at least consciously, and I'm also playing CE, and apparently, some of the exploits aren't in it. @llunak What exploits were you thinking of? @StellarRat As I said, I totally don't mind the "grind" when there's an an enemy somewhere. I do want to think through my moves, take cover, reaction fire, flank the enemy, etc., etc., etc.. The grind for me comes in situations where you advance carefully, but there's no enemy anywhere, most of the time. I'm still in the early stages of the game, so I can give an example from there. Basically, an industrial map will have 5 or 6 buildings, plus all the other stuff, plus the UFO. It will have, say, 5 or 6 aliens. Usually, 1 or 2 will be near the dropship. I'll kill those, and a come across another one or two soon. And then I'll spend two or three or four times the number of turns I spent fighting in searching the rest of the map. So, I'll put someone behind a car to look down a street, but I can't go down that street yet, until I've swept the buildings to the left and right of it, because I might get killed if there are aliens in them. I'll keep another two-three soldiers covering other directions, in case aliens come from there, and use the remainder to search the buildings. First one on one side of the road, then another one on the other side. Since I don't want to risk it, it'll even take me 2 turns just to cross the road between the buildings, and then a lot of turns to sweep both buildings. And I won't find aliens. Then it'll take me a few turns to position my troops to be able to move down the street, and then I'll move carefully, and then I'll come to another building, and the whole process is repeated. Most of the time, the last two-three aliens will actually be in the UFO, so I'll be spending an inordinate amount of turns sweeping an empty map, because of those few times when there actually will be an alien in one of the buildings, or behind some LOS block. And that one time, if I'm not careful, I can easily lose two-three soldiers. So I can't risk it. I can see how this is a much bigger problem on industrial maps, and I see that people on the forums mention often that they skip them "because of so many corners", but, really, all that means is that the map necessitates very, very careful and slow movement. Realistic, perhaps, but not fun. Again, it's tremendous fun when there are aliens to fight, but quite boring when sweeping an empty map. Other maps suffer from this as well, just to a lesser extent. As for how many missions I need to do, I feel like I have to do every mission I can, at least in the beginning. I got my ass whooped several times in the strategic war, and this time around, in order to have a proper air force and radar coverage, and defense for my two (soon to be three) bases, I did some rough calculations, and figured that I can't really afford it without the cash from the ground missions. Perhaps that changes in mid-game, I don't know.

Hmmm... Fair enough. I might have misjudged the severity of losing a dropship or of the force in a second base not paying for itself. The second force not paying for itself thing was actually more of an assumption - I haven't had the chance to continue that game yet. (And, by the looks of it, I won't be able to continue it anytime soon. ) But losing a base would be a game-stopper, right, at least in the initial several months? Or have I misjudged that as well? If it's true, it could happen that through sheer bad luck, you have to restart the game. As I wrote, it would be great if there were some mechanisms that would allow you to recover from things like that.

What I normally do is have several troops behind cover, and then move a soldier or two into some new cover. The ones that stay behind are there for reaction fire, the ones that are moving may spend all of their TUs, if that's needed to get to cover and crouch. But, if they can get to nearer cover, crouch and have reaction fire, then I do that. The next turn it's the ones that stayed behind that move to new cover, and so on. If I'm breaching a UFO or entering a building, I will always save TUs for reaction fire with everyone, as far as possible. And, I will always try to position my troops in good spots before doing anything further with them. So, it takes a lot of time. Don't your soldiers get killed easily when you play as you described? I'd think that lone soldiers would easily end up facing several aliens, or getting attacked from directions that aren't covered.

I thought a few times whether I was playing too cautiously, but then two reapers ran at me and promptly got mowed down by my soldiers, and then I thought again that my caution pays off. I once assumed that there just couldn't be an alien in the last two tiles between two buildings, because I had covered all the ground around them, and any alien surely would have showed up in one of the many turns that had passed. And then mister space lizard who surely would have showed up actually showed up from exactly those two tiles. Through sheer luck a soldier survived a direct hit, and it took me some 10 turns to rearrange my soldiers, cover all the directions (in case more space lizards slithered out of somewhere), heal up the guy who got shot, and flank the space lizard. That was tremendous fun, but now I check every bit of the map, and most of it does not contain space lizards to have fun with. I also tried high-tailing it to the UFO, but if it works, you get less money because you leave some aliens alive. That would be fair enough if you also took less risk, but in most situations you actually expose yourself to more risk, as you are likely to have left some areas unchecked, and the last thing you want is some alien sneaking up from behind you while you're setting up your breach. Also, an alien might spot you as you are moving towards the UFO, but if you just want to clear the UFO, you might ignore the alien and move on. Which is fine until you run into another couple of aliens, and then the one you escaped from catches up as well and you end up wishing you had been more careful and thorough in sweeping the map. The holding the UFO victory condition is really there so you don't have to hunt down that last alien, or so that you can leave that last alien in that covered, tucked away position (e.g. in a difficult to assail building) and not send your soldiers to be cannon-fodder. Which is really a very neat and creative piece of gameplay design. But, it just isn't there to speed things up in general, just in very specific situations. That's at least my experience with caution.

Yup, I learned that the hard way - the missile batteries are there for a reason, as is the possibility to have soldiers in all bases. The thing is, it seems like a sensible thing to do - you set up a second force, send it to missions to help with paying for maintenance, and also to train it up in case of an assault, but it can still happen that you lose the base. The soldiers could be away, the interceptors could be out of action for some reason, or you could just get unlucky or play the base defense badly and lose the base. And that's perfectly fine. Except that you can just restart the game if that happens. As I said, if there were some way to potentially repair mistakes or strokes of bad luck (though certainly not in the form of mana from the sky that you get as a compensation for bad luck, or as a reward for screwing up) it would be way better. Right now, it feels like selling buildings to reduce maintenance, losing a base, your dropship getting shot down, totally screwing up a base assault or a terror site, or whatever, should be a part of the gameplay, but in truth, in most cases these things seem to me more like the beginning of an irreversible loss, that will play out over the course of a couple of months.

As I side note since we're mentioning maps - I really totally like them. They are gorgeous, they look realistic, they are interesting to move around through, they don't seem to give an advantage to any side by design (though in a given situation they might, which is great), the cover system really works well. There are a few features that I would like to see, but I'll reserve the suggestions for when more a concrete discussion gets going about your future game, or for the CE subforum. In any case, really, hats off to the people who made them - both the developers and the modders (I'm playing CE).

As I said, I only played Firaxis X-COM for a short while - an hour or two, or a few missions - so I haven't gone that far into the game as you did, to be able to see the "pod" issue you mention. Back to Xenonauts, would making maps somewhat smaller change something? Together with that, you could potentially reduce the number of soldiers and aliens, so that the ground mission isn't overcrowded, but everyone would still spot each other sooner, and there would be fewer empty places to check out. It's really not about having to move cautiously, it's about nothing happening on most of the turns. For every 10 times you prepare cautiously for something, something ends up happening 2 times. Or perhaps the number of aliens could be larger? Though clearly that would require rebalancing. Or they could be more effective (at least some of the species) at acting like a team, advancing towards you, flanking you, changing positions, moving across the map to support those who are under attack. Now they seem to do that last thing only if they're close by, and after I kill a few, at least some seem to retreat back to the UFO and camp out there. (But again, I can't risk assuming that all of them did that, so I still have to sweep the whole map very carefully - even though in most cases there really are no aliens left except in the UFO.)

Since I'm playing an Ironman game, I'm not keen on experimenting, so if someone can tell me, is there a difference between the TU cost of throwing a grenade in the following situations: a) you have a two-handed weapon and are throwing a grenade from the quick throw slot b) you have a single-handed weapon and are throwing a grenade from the quick throw slot c) you have a single-handed weapon and are holding a grenade in your other hand, and are throwing it? I think I put a grenade once in the free hand of a soldier who held a shield once (the idea being to open a UFO door and throw a flashbang), but I think I remember the TU cost being the same as throwing the grenade from the quickthrow slot. Also, what is available through the quickslot for grenades? Only the grenades that are on the soldier's belt, or also the grenades that are in the backpack?

Hmmm... I've already posted, but I just saw the introductions thread. So, I'm a student who loves challenging games, though perhaps I don't have as much time to play them as I'd like. I never got far in the old X-COM games, but I did enjoy them. I played a lot of JA2, and some JA1, I played UFO: Extraterrestrials, and other tactical ground combat games. Thusfar, I'm liking Xenonauts a lot, and going through the forums, the community seems great as well, so a big thank you to all of you - game creators, community, modders and community coders!