platypusmcdandruff

I had a long break from this game due to a broken laptop - in fact I think it was V17 last time I played until a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm on V20 (with a hotfix applied tho I can't figure out which one), and a lot has improved. Previously I was on the verge of giving up anyway due to a alien ability to shoot through cover across the map, now I've progressed to the stage of assaulting large alien bases with praetorians - in fact I guess I'm not to far from the end. So well done. My take on the game now: Geoscape - still a bit too unforgiving, I know governments aren't renowned for behaving rationally but could they cut funding a bit less drastically. This is particularly noticeable at the start when you only have the potential for one base and so simply can't get to half the alien incursions as both interceptors and chinooks are either in the air, repairing/fefueling or just can't get to the other side of the world with their limited range. I picked Mid East for base 1 and C America for 2 because both of them can cover all their own regions and half-ish of their neighbours. Even then I lost N America and Oceania within 6 months, and only kept Indochina and USSR because I cheated (I own up) by drastically increasing sale price of alenium and alloys to be able to afford a couple more bases that I limited to essentially interceptor bases with a few defensive troops - although actually the enemy only seem to assault those I use for launching my own missions. I do like the option to simply launch airstrike at crash site. Could the government keep funding fixed for the first 3 or 4 months? Could it be a bit easier in general to make money and, without rebalancing the game to the startegic side with some more options - what about an option in the barracks to commit experienced soldiers to a sabbatical from active duty to train national millitary forces (or their colleagues) - this could both shore up relationships and make an extra income at the cost of temporarily losing good troops. Pehaps research knowledge could also be sold on although possibly selling knowledge to one but not the other of say USSR but not N America might have its own costs. Air combat - I still find this daunting, although I think it may just be me being a bit rubbish I'm mostly autoresolving and just not being that brave which is hurting relations. I don't really know what to suggest tho. Tactical - Again so much has improved here, enemies seem smarter and have much better starting placements AND they no longer shoot at infinite range often ignoring cover. Now the combat early on works brilliantly and progresses in difficulty at a good pace, some of the higher level enemies though still cripple play. Reapers - these are a huge threat (as they should be) and when I've been careless have often wiped out half my squad in 2 turns. Can they take suppression but less than other enemies, these are all about rapdily closing for melee combat and don't strike me as likely to have much sense of self preservation. I feel that it ought to take perhaps 6 turns for infected to turn to full reapers, for the first of which the should be suppressed and they should also move slower than full reapers (or do they already?) - these are supposed to be basically shambling zombies right? Perhaps urban maps should have a few more civillians to allow the potential for some missions to turn into minor zombies outbreaks. Would it be possible to add to the capabilty to set default troop loadouts/role (another new feature I really like) a bonus to progression in that roles key attributes i.e scouts might get slightly movement and sight range, snipers to accuracy and sight range, heavy weapons to rate of fire and strength. This could perhaps allow one team member to act as a spotter for threats such as reapers, and make it pay to have specific soldiers develop their skills in particular directions. Wraiths - these are a nightmare, and in a way that feels arbitrary and nonsensical - they just pop out of nowhere, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time and wipe out half my squad in one go. I actually think they should have the capabilty to teleport wherever they like but doing so outside their current sight range but that doing so should mean losing all remaining AP's and causing them suppression on the next turn, in addition they should cause cause reaction fire on materalising and should be very fragile, perhaps dying on 1-3 pistol shots. This would allow them to remain sneaky assassin types capable of causing havoc within your ranks while not being OP'd. Praetorians - Again arbitrary and overpowered. Their dread ability means the player can no longer afford to train up troops as anything less than 80 AP means a soldier is mostly paralysed. Could affected squad members feel where the praetorians influence was coming from allowing the player to effectively triangulate its position? Praetorians should struggle to contniually use their abilties, possibly running the risk of some form of damage causing blowback effect from psi powers several turns in a row.

Yes that does make sense. Although I take it that would mean I would have to start a new game in the updated version to see any updates/changes take effect - right? I am running a stable build - v18. Will backward save compatibilty have to wait until the next stable build?

Are save games compatible from earlier versions yet? I haven't been around for a bit and have a game I've progressed quite far with and don't want to lose after a reinstall, but would like to update otherwise. I'm on an alien base mission now and the ongoing ability of aliens to sometimes shoot through walls is getting frustrating. Could a sub patch be released which only changed combat mechanics and left geoscape alone help with save compatibilty. P

I think the reason the corner thing grinds my gears is that despite having the good fortune never to have been in a real combat zone, I have played paintball, other video games and watched innumerable action movies (cheesy rubbish ones and quality too) and in all contexts cover comes in many forms, therefore the fact that in Xenonauts cover seems limited to the horizontally oriented kind pricks my bubble a bit. And oh dear I'm sure I come across as super obsessed now. If by now it's impossible to implement anyway, fair enough and hopefully by the time its finished other features will more than compensate anyway. The main resistance I have to Xcom:EU is the tendency of mainstream developers these days to charge quite a lot for what often feels like a not quite complete product and then charge more to add some of the missing bits in while also padding it out with DLC full of stuff like new skins for units which I tend not to notice much anyway. Maybe I will give it a go - in a year or something when they release a combi pack with the whole lot included.

PS to previous comment. As far as I can tell I am correctly patched - at least my launcher says V18 Hotfix 2. Maybe I should reinstall hotfix. And another thing (probably undoable). Could soldiers lay down? If they could then they should get an aim bonus (especially for snipers), although enemies behind walls would also need an extra cover bonus. The prostrate soldier would get a cover bonus from enemies on the same or lower level but suffer a penalty Vs any higher up.

Hi again. Sorry if I came across as overly negative. I think what I hope for (fundamentally) is something that feels like a plausible representation of this kind of combat. Consequently I don't care about most of the specifics, I'm not obsessed with psi powers, flamethrowers or grenade launchers per se and nor do I want both sides to be effectively symmetrical in their capabilities, merely that there is a complex range of weapons/capabilities most of which can eventually be countered in some way by something else by either side. I recognise that this may well be something that unfolds as the game progresses, but thus far I've been unable to progress past terror 2. I can no longer say this definitively as I foolishly saved over the relevant file earlier today but on the second terror mission, I have found essentially the same situation having reloaded to prior to the terror alert (on this occasion Istanbul each time) so unless the battlefield arrangement is somehow fixed already it seems odd that this situation is unique to me. I have played around with loadouts and squad arrangements, currently I have 1 soldier with a shotgun, 2 snipers, 2 LMGs and 3 ARs, each soldier has more ammo, one on his belt, more in backpack and several grenades. All those except LMGs also have a medkit or stun baton. My most recent squad arrangement is shotgun guy and 2 ARs at front who make a quick dash for the nearest cover, leaving not enough TU's to fire that turn. Behind them is an LMG and sniper who each take one step forward to the chinook ramp, crouch and fire, suppressing 2 of the 4 with the LMG, and sometimes killing one with the sniper. I've worked out where I am on the map (bottom corner) and so only need worry about one flank. I've sent one AR and the other sniper to the nearest cover on that side and used the other LMG to fire and suppress from the door. The final AR leaves via the front or other side but then heads off to the edge of the map in an attempt to flank the 3 enemies in front. I do find the cover issue more important, including at corners - if soldiers can take advantage of the a waist high wall, why not a corner? The only real difference is that the wall is offers cover to the lower portion of the soldiers body, while the corner does so primarily for one side. And actually hiding at a corner need not make that soldier invulnerable - if an enemy at another corner can't hit whatever part of them is exposed then they can still be flanked or hit by a grenade, rockets or incendiary weapons, moreover they should lose some offensive capability by hiding as they can't see or aim so well. [Max_Caine - thanks for the porinter to http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/136-Cover-at-corners, Teiwaz's comment is the one I was thinking of. Also your comment about alien defensive tendency is quite right, but surely sometimes the enemy should play defensively?] Varied terrain is much less important as hopefully its absence will be compensated for by other factors (primarily cover), and in any case maps with multi level buildings effectively include terrain anyway. As far as cover density goes - thus far I have played on an arctic desert, hot desert, farm/rural, an urban and some sort of industrial/warehouse zone map. On the arctic and hot desert maps it makes perfect sense to have little cover and on the others then once the alien LOS/range/accuracy (corner?) issue is sorted then the cover will probably be about right. Missed shots - yes I had read that this was being addressed but felt it was important enough that no amount of reiteration was too much. To the dev team - good job. Well done and keep at it. Issues and quibbles aside I would just like to see a good game made great. Platypus

I really wanted to support this game because I loved the original Xcom series but don't think I'll like the new one, and want to support indie developers. So far there is quite a bit to like but I'm concerned about the fact that V18 is apparently a beta candidate as I think there is still a hell of a lot to do to make it what it should be, not just leftover bugs but essential game mechanics that look likely to be left out altogether. In my current game I have shot down 12 alien craft, researched the early vehicle, heavy fighter and a couple of alien techs. I started my first game on hard but due to a few game breaking bugs and my own incompetence am currently on easy. As I'm not that far through some of my gripes may turn out to be neutralised by more research (or more updates), but having read through various forum posts I'm concerned and wanted to register my current impressions. I also have to admit that I have little or no idea of how to make some of the improvents I consider neccessary. I also don't feel I've yet seen enough to comment on AI etc. Things I like: Geoscape - looks and feels good, with enough to make it important but not the core of the game. Air combat - I'm pleased that this has been included (so far I suck) and think it's about the right complexity/simplicity balance. I don't feel any need for pilots. Base management - looks nice, interested to see how my first base defence works. Things I don't like: Ground combat - Personally I feel that psionics should have a mid to late game role, I understand that badly implemented they can totally unbalance the whole thing but this is ultimately just a matter if designing them right. For example psi agents could be made slow and physically weak and in need of protection while also having a tendency to catastrophic blowback in some circumstances from using their powers - inexperienced psi agents could trigger booby traps in the minds of some aliens causing soldiers near the psi agent to become stunned, revealed through the fog of war, go beserk or suffer other deleterious effects. This would leave the player with the conundrum of a fragile unit that needs protection from a distance. Fair enough if the dev team have concluded that psi powers should not have a role in order to focus on the combat, but this leads me to my biggest gripe as the rest of combat is either bady bugged or seriously substandard. My current save is at the start of my second terror mission (I made it through the first one by saving every turn and many reloads), this time around my dropship has landed such that 4 (I think) aliens are visible by the time my troops have stepped out the doors and many more seem able to shoot me due to the nearby ones acting as spotters, or over long alien LOS/tendency to shoot through objects. This means that even when I tested what would happen if my troops cowered in the relative shelter of the chinook one had died and another was critical after the first alien turn. When I took a more traditional tactic of fanning out to the nearest points of mutually supportive cover I managed to take out one alien but 3 of my 8 troops died on the first alien turn, most of them due to fire from the still FOW enemies. I want the game to be hard but this is on easy. Apparently the inability of troops to take cover at and fire from corners is unlikely to be changed - this is absurd, given that cover is at the core of the game, I can't find it now but I read a post suggesting that calculating LOS from each corner of tile A to each corner of tile B might resolve this. Equally absurd is the fact that all maps are flat. Not that I have personal experience of a combat zone but surely varied terrain is fundamental to a game based around different teams shooting each other with guns. Grenades are still broken but I appreciate that this will be fixed. I get the impression that weapon variety may be limited to tiers (ballistic, laser, plasma etc) of more effective but otherwise functionally identical choices i.e shotgun type with short range and poor accuracy but high power, sniper type with long range and good accuracy but low fire rate. I am hoping that further research will prove me wrong and lead to more variety, such as mines, flamethrowers, grenade launchers and something to reveal distant areas like binoculars or aerial surveillance. Suggestions (some of which may render others unnessecary): - Cover at corners. - Variable terrain. - More cover. - less accurate aliens or tougher troops. - more map variation. - flares on night missions should illuminate more ground. - More plausible missed shot trajectories - a shot from near point blank range should not miss by a full 45 degrees. Suggestions for geoscape: - Governments could interact more than I've seen so far with Xenonauts and each other. - A bit more starter cash, lower costs, more forgiving governments, or a slightly slower ticker - I only have one base so far and already two cities have been nuked as dropships from my mid east base (chosen as a base there covers all its own region plus significant chunks of several others, base 2 will likely be Central America for similar reasons) just couldn't get to S America or New Zealand in time. I want to like this game and I'm sure a lots of hard work has gone in already but bugs aside there are still several deficiencies, that if left unremedied will lead to me giving up and feeling glad I only paid standard pre order. Please don't make excuses about the engine not permitting varied terrain or over features fundamental to a game such as this one. I'm sure it's true but it simply means a poor choice of engine was made in the first place Platypus

I only got xenonauts the day before yesterday and don't yet know how to find map title from in game, but this bug also affects other maps. I had the same thing on the farm map and on what I guess is one of the industrial maps where 2 wooden pallet stacks were inside chinook, occupying the same space as my men who therefore couldn't move. I tried to destroy them by shooting and grenades but killed my own troops before they were destroyed. When I took a scout car vehicle this could move, crushing pallets/haystacks in the process. I worked out which file the farm map uses (for me its small_roadjunction) to try the map edit fix suggested by max_caine, and moved the hay stacks. Could the floor of the chinook be made impermeable to such objects, if need be crushing them as it lands? platypus