Waladil

Yes I do know that the locals slowly get laser weapons. I hear they eventually get plasma, too. (I may have actually stolen my first laser weapons from local forces rather than produced them myself.) The change in how the equipment bar would work here is that rather than a universal changeover (since it seems to be tied to either your research level or the game ticker), it'd be piecemeal, random, and vary from one region to another, so forces in one place may have plasma tech, while forces in another are still toting ballistics. 1. Being able to give them commands is kind of just an extension of them being smarter. The commands would be very vague and might be better described as stance commands. Civilians would probably just have two: "Go to the dropship!" and "find cover!" (for use if the dropship might not be safe.) Aside from that it'd be up to the AI. Soldiers, a bit more complex: "Cover the civilians!" "Stick near us!" and "Fan out and find the last few." Or in terms of stance commands; defensive, tactical, and aggressive. 2. Your opinion is certainly a valid one, but I'll just point out that it's primarily a balance point which is of course still up in the air for much of the game. Also local forces wont necessarily be more powerful: under these conditions an insufficiently-protected region would have forces far weaker than you'd see normally, using the most basic gear and barely even able to make token appearances. (Like one guy at a terror sight rather than the usual 3-5.)

Okay, as I've been playing through there are a couple ideas that occur to me that'd make dealing with the AI-controlled humans a lot more pleasant. 1.) Especially for the terror missions, it'd be awesome if you could give the civilians and local forces general orders -- things like "get behind us" and "protect those civilians!" It'd allow you to play the terror missions a lot more like the new XCOM, but without magical civilian invulnerability the second you get close to one. As you sweep through order all the civilians to take shelter by the dropship, and order the local forces to cover them. As it is now (and I know the AI is being improved), the locals don't do anything that makes sense to me: If I were a civilian, with some freaky aliens to one direction murdering my family, and some heavily-geared humans waving me toward them on the other, I know which direction I'm heading (Hint: It's not towards the aliens). Similarly, I'm sure the local forces would be ecstatic to receive orders that both feel really important but are relatively safe. "Oh, just guard these civilians while you go do all the real work, allowing me to come through alive AND with all five extremities intact? Sounds good." On crash site missions being able to give some general orders to local forces would also be nice: Things like "Stick near us, we could use the help." This would be even nicer with the other suggestion, which is: 2.) Add 3 bars to each region, probably hidden from the player (or possibly one global set, but it doesn't seem much harder to do one per region), that track three aspects of the local military: Numbers, Equipment, and Command chain. Then, those three bars are consulted during the random generation of local forces on missions. Numbers and equipment are obvious, they'd control how many troops there are and how well they're equipped. Command chain would be more complicated, requiring a bunch of AI things (but they could probably be repurposed from alien AI code), and the higher that bar is, the more coordinated and communicative the local forces are. At high levels they're more willing to listen to Xenonaut orders, rather than haring off (either in suicidal bravery or abject cowardice), and might even share important information. Yelling out "Sebilisian to the north-west!" for example. Possibly also giving some scouting intel at the very start of the mission (crashed light scout has a default 4 troops, so they might say something like "We saw two Caesans leave the vessel, and one Caesan corpse inside" so now the player knows there are two or three active enemies. Keeping it useful but vague would be really nice). These three bars would each be governed by different things: Terror missions would have the strongest effects on the Numbers bar, with sweeping successes kicking it up a lot as recruitment swells and complete failures causing it to plummet as morale drops and desertions are common. Equipment would be benefited by shooting down and clearing UFOs, as the troops scavenge what the Xenonauts leave behind, and possibly also arms sales of some sort. The equipment bar would slowly drop, and any local force TPWs would take a heavy toll on it. (If someone survives they call for pickup which means the gear is recovered: Nobody survives and the stuff is abandoned.) Command chain would be best kept high by maintaining air superiority, which means shooting down UFOs, even if you don't clear them on the ground. Especially preventing the alien fighters from hanging around, and the UFOs that create those "events" on the geoscape. Generally preventing the aliens from getting a foothold would allow the humans to establish and maintain their command chains, so that bar would naturally rise (and the aliens would have to actively beat it down). The bottom line is that landing in territory for terror or ship capture would start to reflect how well-protected it is. Land somewhere that's got all 3 bars low (trying to reclaim the region, for example) and you've got no help, or it's scattered, scared, and ill-equipped. Land someplace well-established and guarded and you'll have a squad of heavily armed locals report to you, give you the preliminary scouting reports, and allow you to order them about as an auxiliary force. They might even send help for base assaults. (Side note: This general functionality also seems like it'd be very useful if Chris wanted to up the scope and scale of battles without horribly outnumbering the Xenonauts or upping the squad size to something like 15+tank. By having "a squad" of humans that are given imprecise orders, battles could be roughly doubled in size without overwhelming the player.) I know a lot of this is probably too ambitious to be added this late in development... although there may be potential for a later mod adding it in, I suppose. EDIT: This was originally not intended to be this long. Sorry for the wall of text, guys! (I'm not sorry, that's a lie.)

No! You fool! Now that you've reported this, my injury recovery times will be greatly extended! Dramatic screeeaaaaam!

No, you're describing something different. It's correlated to moving the mouse around on the geoscape, not time. I've seen it myself: Set time to lowest geoscape speed, move mouse around over ocean. Observe predicted funding change go deeper negative. Stop moving mouse: predicted funding stops dropping. Eventually find which region is responsible for it (mine was Indochina), and it'll only go down if you move your mouse over that country or a global region (like the ocean). The important bit here is mouse motion: Jiggle your mouse around really fast and your predicted funding will plummet by thousands a second. Take your hand off the mouse and it becomes steady. I don't think it actually effects your funding come end-of-month, I think it's just a visual bug. Edit: Also if I remember correctly I noticed this right after succeeding a terror mission. OP, does that ring a bell?

"WE. GAVE. YOU. COMBAT. LASERS. IN. A. WEEK. It took us a WEEK to invent a gun that'd make any military commander from the US, to the USSR, to Israel, to f****g Algeria cream himself! Now you want us to replicate what is no doubt generations of fiddly genetic modification in time for your next combat op. Uh-uh, not gonna happen." ~Dicky, when you continue pestering him.

Oh good, my game was slowly driving into the ground as I realized I wasn't competing economically anymore... could still fight them on the ground but that didn't do me any good because I was hemorrhaging cash and couldn't get my airfleet up to speed. No fights to have! Oh, in case it's not been reported, my base defense missions are bugged in a couple ways: After the battle nobody will be re-issued equipment like grenades, and apparently people don't heal, especially if they're put into the red: I had someone sit on "wounded 17 days" for several days, and she was also taking a seat on the Chinook which I couldn't put someone else into: Had to dismiss her (A COLONEL!) because she was just bugged dead weight. Also it got weird during the base missions because I reloaded a lot (I like the idea of playing Ironman but rarely like the practice... bad Wally...), and a lot of spaces on the battlescape were "blocked" by an invisible bullet- and person-stopping force. Also they seemed to grow every time I reloaded, possibly it was the places where actors were before the battle started? Final base assault one, you're probably aware of this one: Aliens would be stuck on a "floating" spawn platform disconnected from the base that bullets could traverse but soldiers could not. Another bug: I researched plasma tech before laser tech, and my base turrets were downgraded from plasma turrets to laser turrets when I researched laser tech. Yay for bug infodump! I should have probably reported these using normal channels.

The first time I met a wraith, I was fracking terrified, because it was a night mission and only my second Cruiser raid: I heard the teleport sound a few times, which scared me to begin with (Turns out the "teleport" sound is the same as the "reaper eating someone" sound. Or very similar). Then I find this bird-beak-having thing and think "Oh cool, a new enemy to fight, let's capture it for... "study." I move my tank in, full of confidence... it turns, shoots my tank once, and teleports away to parts unknown. I immediately alt-tabbed and sent the following messages to my friend: "OH F*CK ME THEY CAN TELEPOT." "TELEPORT*" "AND ALSO TELEPOT ACTUALLY." They still worry me, but they never seem to use the teleportation very aggressively: Jumping behind my troops and filling them with plasma seems to be too complicated of a plan for their tiny bird brains. (In my Xenonaut base we don't actually study any captured aliens. We just build giant hamster wheels and throw cheese at them. Morale is high.)

Ah, your hint gave me enough to figure it out. I had all my troops throw grenades at the ceiling. Sounded out where the last guy was then spammed him with stun grenades. Thanks!

So I'm breaching an alien landing ship, and I've figured out there's a second floor above me, which holds an alien with a plasma cannon. I know this because the fool has tried to shoot us through the floor with it (to minimal effect). At the back of the landing ship there are two blue things that look like alien elevators/grav lifts/teleporters but I can't seem to use them. How do I get up there to kill the last guy?

You know, what I've noticed after my mass-reductions in reaction modifiers is actually primarily that reaction shots are taken far less: as of now I can pretty much move with impunity and never be RF'd. I intentionally turned it way down so that I could gauge what too low feels like after too much. Not only were the shots few and far between, but they were also inaccurate, so I don't think I got hit by a single RF during that mission. Interesting that changing the modifier changes how often they RF -- maybe the algorithm for whether or not an RF is taken includes a "only shoot over x% chance," which might explain why aliens take advantage of it so much better than humans: At least in the early game, aliens shoot few rounds but with great accuracy and damage, while humans shoot many rounds with lower accuracy and damage. (I can't speak to the lategame, having not played it yet.) The base human weapon with the highest accuracy -- the precision rifle -- has a reaction shot malus, while the alien counterpart has a reaction shot bonus. Bottom line, aliens would qualify for that x% a lot more than humans would.

I do use the Hunter (will be replacing it with the light tank soon actually), and it's nice... still does get RF'ed once though when it and the enemy mutually notice each other. I admit that I don't consider RF a resource to myself, and avoid weapons that get bonii to it, preferring standard rifles and precisions, so that may be why I don't get them myself very much. (As a rule of thumb, I avoid tactical options that involve letting the enemy take the initiative AND hand over my decision-making process to the computer. ) Yes I am using HF2 and it does sorta cut down on that. It doesn't help much on wide-open desert maps, though. It also doesn't seem to stop the aliens from camping near the door of the UFO and shooting that out when they get squadsight. I'll look into Assoonasitis' mod, seen it recommended a few times around the forum. Maybe Chris'll just say "screw it" and make that mod canon, heh.

As the title says, in my opinion reaction shots are "mad op" right now. Especially because the AI overuses them, and without having any method of getting greater line-of-sight (reading game files it seems that eventually there's an armor that'll do it... eventually) it is virtually impossible to avoid being on the receiving end of them, often. And since the aliens rarely miss on their reaction shots, I often dread my own turns greater than the enemy turns. A compound to this issue is the clunky way the squadsight is handled, specifically that aliens can easily throw rounds at you from nigh-on half a map away. Between those two problems, unless I kill every enemy I see within a single turn, I'm usually on the receiving end of hellish firepower: I'm currently at a spot where my troops have Wolf armor... and my enemies are toting heavy plasma, plasma snipers, and plasma cannons primarily. Wolf gives me a roll to survive those, but asking my troops to survive a single turn when spotted by the enemy is apparently unreasonable. Anyway, what usually happens if I fail to kill an enemy in a single turn is that one will turn tail and run, while his buddies shell my troops/vehicles from a distance. Often he'll have a reaction shot for me at the same moment my Hunter spots him, since the Hunter has equal sight range. So then I'll take a turn of his teams shots... and I have to take another reaction shot when I pursue. It's brutal. Side note: Aliens seem to be far more likely than humans to take reaction shots: This is best showcased by a recent event when I had four soldiers (with 30-40 TUs each!) staring at a door... and it opened, a Caesan walked out, took five steps or so, and shot at my Hunter, never once being shot at. Contrast that with my turn when moving a single tile within enemy LOS procs reaction fire. Suggestions: Nerf reaction shots overall? Prevent reaction shots from occurring at the outermost 2 tiles of vision? Have a minimum-distance-travelled-within-LOS requirement? I decided to be a b*tch and just edited my own weapons.xml file and reduced ALL reaction shot values to tiny numbers (pistols went from 1.8 to 0.8, rifles went from 1.0 to 0.1, shotguns 1.4 to 0.4, so on.) I did this for both human and alien weapons, since I'm nothing if not fair.* Gonna see how that works out, although I get the feeling it's going to become far too easy as the AI tries to use it's same old tricks and have horrible odds. *I did notice an oddity when going through that file: The alien sniper plasma has a reaction value of 1.5, meaning it's better than shotguns at taking reaction shots. And the final straw that drove me mad was a sniper-equipped Caesan getting a one-shot-kill with a reaction shot. I'm pretty sure that value is (at the least) not supposed to be that high. OKAY, thanks for reading my rant. I know its a rant, but I needed to say all that. And a good part of it's rambl-y, I know. I'm sleepy right now. Stop judging me. Stop it. STOP IT! Oh, and inb4 "learn to play," "it's in alpha so you can't complain," "stop trying to make everyone else play your way."

So I actually registered a forum account to weigh in on this topic. I've been meaning to for a while but only just got around to it. (Yes, I've got a copy of the game and have played it, just never got around to talking with y'all.) I like, at least conceptually, there being room for the Xenonauts to find alternate sources of income. And manufacturing especially makes sense from a flavor standpoint: The nations give you your monthly funding, and that's your "salary" with which you defend Earth from the aliens. However, you can go above and beyond that, and craft higher-quality weapons who you sell to those same nations. People have said here that (let's just quote Belmakor): "I prefer if the main source of funding is nations." To that I point out that the main source of income remains the nations, because who else is buying these weapons and armor? They aren't just going "away," they're being sold to someone, who would logically be the nations. In exchange for this material support from the Xenonaut forces, they grant you some additional money. Obviously they shouldn't be saleable for ridiculous profits, but they should make something. At the very least the sale price of all manufactured goods should be increased to: creation cost + (monthly engineer salary * (engineer-days needed to create it / 30)) + sale value of alenium and alloy materials. That'd make all manufacturing break-even, and I suppose you could make a little short-term profit, but that'd be wiped away come the next month and paychecks are due. And you'd make some profit in months with 31 days but at this point we're discussing values far too small to be ever worthwhile (hurr hurr I just spent 50,000 in salaries, 40,000 in creation costs, and used 110,000 in alenium/alloys and sold it all for 201,000! I'm so good at this game durrrr.) It seems generally silly that these super-high-grade, technologically-advanced weapons and equipment, the best tools humanity has to fight the aliens, are being "sold" at less than one-fifth the price of the common materials needed to create them. IIRC, Jackal armor costs 5,000 to make and sells for 1,000 -- that just doesn't make sense. Let's assume that the 5,000 represents "common" materials, things that are available here on Earth in plenty. Metals, fabrics, ceramics, fuel, stuff like that. Where do the Xenonauts get these materials? Their host country, no doubt. Going through government supply chains would be cheaper and more reliable than private-sector, so 5,000 represents the price the local government offers the Xenonauts for these materials. Why would we offer them something forged from those materials for one-fifth that price? Any "save the world" discount that government is giving us, we're giving them, plus an extra 80% off to boot. That just doesn't make sense. So even if making the prices profitable doesn't make people happy, they should definitely be upped to a break-even point.