Waladil

So a couple people cited the original game -- Let me point out, I've never played the original game. It was a bit before my time, coming out just two years after I was born. So I have no idea what the "OG" had. And yeah, the indestructible soldiers thing was completely intended as a joke. As to the overall value difference between elites and rookies: Yes, it's pretty huge. In current balance (being changed, I know), 40 is pretty much the "standard" cost for attacks. Grenades cost 40 with a two-handed weapon, all autofire costs 40, accurate shots cost 30-50 depending, so we'll just use 40 as the baseline. A recruit has 50-60 AP, so they can move a bit and shoot once. An elite gets 122 AP. If they don't move and just rotate a bit, they can fire three accurate attacks. As for strength, I'm finding that you can't really use MAG weaponry practically without having a minimum of 70-80 strength. I'm not finding the accuracy difference to be too great, but then again -- I'm using only LMGs, so I guess that makes strength more important and accuracy less. When I lost two elites to a fusion reactor going off on the top level of a carrier, I had to honestly question whether I was able to proceed. In fact, it was only the fact that I was running lots of calisthenics with my rookies that I was able to absorb that loss -- and rookie calisthenics is really unfun to do. Just select a person and tell them to run someplace. Repeat 4-10 times per turn, depending on rookie count. Just to grind up strength and TUs in every single mission. And make sure everyone's carrying lots of stuff -- hate to miss out on 'dem strength bumps!

On that quick-reload slot, does it accurately show the number of laser cells that soldier is carrying? EDIT: Ninja'd by above.

The alien heavy missile (fired by heavy fighters and interceptors) really should have it's fuel total either increased or decreased. As it stands the missile can almost make a full round and hit an interceptor that dodged it the first time. But it can't QUITE make it, so it really just wastes about 5 or 10 seconds per battle while you wait for its fuel to run out. So increasing its fuel total would let it actually have a shot at hitting an interceptor on the second run, while decreasing the fuel would just make the wait less boring after you dodge it once. Or possibly just increase its turn rate. Would make it harder to dodge, too.

Is this true across multiple troops and multiple missions? You DO have laser cells and enough TUs to reload, of course?

As I play through, I'm finding that the skill gap between new and old soldiers is far too great. Losing a couple of my elite troops is DEVASTATING. I've managed to recover, but I am admittedly using various exploits and doing my best to powertrain my lower-level troops to mitigate this. (Seriously. While my elites do the actual clearing of a UFO, I'll just have everyone else run calisthenics. It's really boring.) In addition, the later dropships have much larger troop complements, and adding new troops to your combat roster means you will be have some rookies. (Also it dilutes accuracy and reflex skill points.) Now then, in fear of Chris deciding to make troops indestructible, I decided to start coming up with some ideas to help mitigate this gap WITHOUT putting in any crutches. If you guys have ideas also, feel free to suggest them. Here's what I've got: 1.) Increase soldiers' starting stats while reducing the rate at which they gain stats. The most obvious way to reduce the skill gap is to literally reduce the skill gap. Go figure This would also add to the idea that our soldiers are the best in the world when they join us, not random village folk. 2.) Some form of skill and progress-based ways of increasing odds of survival. XCOM2012 had the bleeding out/stabilize mechanic, which is a reasonable way of approaching this. (Although they did make the stupid decision to have it come with a permanent hit to an important attribute, but that's beside the point.) Some other ways to go about it is to have researches and base buildings that increase the chances of a soldier's survival. In the buildings.xml file, I noticed a "Biosurgical Center," and I wonder if this was something that is/was intended to do just that. 3.) A "mentor bonus," where if a soldier is on a mission with / working closely with a better soldier, the rookie will gain stats at an increased rate. So it wouldn't help you get good soldiers at the beginning, but training replacements is more possible. 4.) Off-duty management, where you order the soldiers to actually DO something in between missions, rather than just chilling in the barracks. Things like "Obstacle course" to increase TUs and bravery, "Firing range" to increase accuracy and reflexes. "Weight training" to increase strength and resilience. It's more realistic than gaining skill ups in missions, because spending two days lifting weights does a lot more in the long run than five minutes schlepping gear about a battlefield. Of course, this option doesn't allow for battlefield experience, which is why I'd also recommend giving a flat +2 bonus to all skills per rank up. (Many of the things listed here would require a rebalance of how skills and promotions are gained.) 5.) A ticker- or research-based increase over time to rookie starting stats. Similar to 1.) but with this the starting troops would still have 50-60 in each stat but by lategame rookies would have perhaps 70-80 in each stat. Not enough to overcome the benefits of keeping troops alive, but allowing for easier replacement of elites by lategame.

Game is completely Vanilla from Steam. I had the same crashes in a prior version of 18.51HF3 downloaded from Desura/Dropbox. Doesn't seem to matter which town I'm going to: Happened in Africa, Australia, and America. (All the "A"blank"A" places. Hmm...) I recall some terror sites working, I don't know when the crashes started except that it MAY have been when I started using a Shrike dropship. I'm about to get a Zephyr, so I'll test when I get a terror site with that.

This is true for the Ballistic pistol and the MAGStorm as well. Just putting this here for whenever they get around to fixing them officially. Gonna fix the MAGStorms on my side by hand.

Do you mean reaction fire from behind? That I've never seen and totally would be a bug. I have seen them do reaction fire anywhere in a 180 degree frontal arc, which does seem a lot wider than it ought to be. It's not clear whether you meant in your original post reaction fire or turning around on their turn which is completely intended.

This post was originally a complaint post about how missions will sometimes autofail if you order the dropship away from the mission, but I had an epiphany about the smart way to code things. So I tested it. And my hypothesis was correct. Also, I found an exploit. Basically, there's a hidden timer for each mission that controls how long you have to run it. Crashes disappear, terror sites get tac-nuked. However, that timer will not cause a mission to fail if there's a dropship en route. If the timer has run out, and a dropship is en route and then you order the dropship away, the mission will instantly fail. That was what was frustrating me, because my terror missions are currently bugged and crash whenever I start them. So I couldn't do the terror mission itself because of crashes, and I couldn't reroute to the UFO because if I ordered my dropship to go anywhere else the mission would fail and the UFO would escape. Until I realized I had a second dropship, and a bunch of fresh-off-the-boat noobie privates. I ordered a couple of them to board the dropship, and ordered that dropship to go to the terror site, never intending for it to reach it's destination. And it worked. I could order my primary dropship away from the terror site without the mission failing, because there was still a dropship en route. So, in theory, one could make missions exist in perpetuity with enough dropships (I don't know how many you'd need. Two or three, probably), by ensuring that there's someone ALWAYS heading there. I'll be using this to buy time on terror missions, you can count on that.

I present to you the game difficulty settings: <!-- DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIERS --> <!-- The values for each are multiplied by these numbers --> <alienTickerSpeedEasy value="1.0" /> <alienTickerSpeedNormal value="1.0" /> <alienTickerSpeedVeteran value="1.0" /> <alienTickerSpeedSuperhuman value="1.0" /> <ufoHealthEasy value="1.0" /> <ufoHealthNormal value="1.0" /> <ufoHealthVeteran value="1.0" /> <ufoHealthSuperhuman value="1.0" /> <alienAttributeEasy value="0.75" /> <alienAttributeNormal value="1.0" /> <alienAttributeVeteran value="1.2" /> <alienAttributeSuperhuman value="1.5" /> <alienWeaponDamageEasy value="0.75" /> <alienWeaponDamageNormal value="1.0" /> <alienWeaponDamageVeteran value="1.0" /> <alienWeaponDamageSuperhuman value="1.0" /> So unless there's a severe bug that's outside of this xml file, the alien tickers ought to be exactly the same, UFOs ought to be exactly the same, and alien damage should only be different on Easy. The one that I'm most curious about is the choice of variable name "alienAttribute<difficulty>" I wonder if they're actually just getting more HP like Chris said, or if all of their attributes are actually being buffed. It would make thing considerably harder, if the aliens were in fact not just healthier but faster and more accurate. Although I suspect that most of what you're finding is random happenstance or a placebo. P.S. I've been playing on Veteran for my all-LMG run. It's tough but not too tough. We have had casualties, and a couple disastrous missions, but all in all things are going well.

By the by, the aliens really don't have "eyes in the back of their heads." However, I've noticed that an alien without any visible targets will start every turn by turning a 360. Which, honestly, is pretty smart. It's a lot easier to notice with Sebilians who you can see further than and in close quarters where you can get all your soldiers to hidden positions before you end your turn.

So my current 18.51HF3 run (the all-LMG run I've been doing) has so far been arguing against indestructible interceptors. I've reached Marauders now and while I have had notable aircraft losses, none of them have "broken" me. I mean, losing a Marauder now would be really painful, since they take 90 technicians 10 days to make, but Foxtrots and Condors are essentially disposable (250,000 hurts but it's not THAT bad), and Corsairs... I actually never really got a Corsair fleet going. I got a couple and they died pretty quick, so I've been making do up till Cruisers with Condors and Foxtrots. I've probably lost 4 Foxtrots and about the same number of Condors, plus two or three Corsairs. So you can take some air losses without it being TOO bad. P.S. I love Marauders. They are so fun to use. 100 degrees/sec turn rate? Yes please!

Scores have been reduced, because only just recently have the scores actually had an impact on your end-month income. So the scores are lower now to prevent people from getting too much money. Although the rating system (the word attached to your score) is pretty useless. Since the main source of score is aline kills/captures, your score pretty much increases linearly with enemy ship size. So you'll always (or nearly always) be "average" when clearing a Light Scout. I don't know why other people have been reporting that basic training is gone. It's still there, you know. However, the text box just has #### now rather than an actual. Still costs 10k per soldier, still takes 10 days, and they still promote to Corporal (+skill points? Dunno about that) at the end. BUGS: Heavy Fighters will still chain-attack planes. Alien Bases have really weird lighting and LOS stuff. Hard to describe. (Although I will say: It really felt like I was attacking an ALIEN base. I could practically hear the enemy commander saying "You're on my turf now, son...") Also during that alien base attack there were a few times that I shot doors closed. As in the door was open, took a few bullets, and sealed shut. Only way I could open them again was with more bullets. Suppression does not appear to properly remove 1/2 of alien TUs. It does remove 1/2 of human TUs, though. (This bug has probably been around for a while, but nobody saw it because until recently the AI had bigger TU bugs) Crashes on occasion at the beginning of terror missions. Does not corrupt iron man save. Although it was consistently crashing at once specific terror site, redirecting to the landed UFO worked fine. Some tiles are inappropriately transparent to bullets and walking. Some of the large (4x4ish) pillars on desert maps do this, and the Shrike walls on some maps do this. All the above bugs and comments are from the Steam release, which seems to be 18.51HF3.

Please don't make claims like this unless you're sure. Especially because it's so easy to go to the xml files and check. Non-combatants (both Seb and Caesan) have 50 APs. Plasma bursts from both rifles and pistols cost 40 AP. Single shots cost 20 AP. Suppression is supposed to remove 1/2 of their TUs. So if you've ever seen a non-combatant fire a burst after being suppressed, or fire two shots, then they aren't losing all their TUs. I've seen them do this many many times. Scimitars and Hyperions appear to be working, but I've just done the research on them so far (haven't built any yet). Also, you guys wanna hear a joke? Plasma cannons. They're so worthless now. I'm literally more afraid of regular plasma rifles than plasma cannons. (Note: According to the xml, plasma cannons do the same amount of damage as plasma rifles, but are less accurate. So my lack of fear is justified.)

Stellar, the Scim has worked in the past, as has the Hyperion (specifically they worked in 18.3ish). I've not tested them in 18.5, though. Solver, it seems to me that a suppressed alien simply doesn't lose any TUs. They don't seem to have a suspiciously high number of TUs unsuppressed, they just don't lose any suppressed. Oh, and the Hunter is totes useless. Two rookies with LMGs have more firepower, more TUs, and are cheaper to replace. And if you don't have to replace them, they eventually become two experts with LMGs, whereas a Hunter eventually becomes a museum piece. This all goes double once you get higher-level weapons and Buzzard armor. (I skipped both Jackal and Wolf armor, since I am not willing to lose a massive 4 sight range for more armor.)

Just so you guys know, I believe (not sure, can't confirm) that you can currently buy a copy of Xenonauts on Steam. It's not widely announced, being an Early Access thing. However, if you have friends who are interested, telling them "Go buy it on Steam" is now a possibility.

No, I don't feel like they are too good. I feel like the recent changes homogenized most of the weapons and LMGs got the best arrangement of factors. I feel like a burst from an assault rifle which is smaller, lighter, and only fires three bullets (although I know that the actual time of holding down the trigger is practically identical) should be faster and/or more accurate than a burst from a big heavy machine gun. I mean, I can consider a to-hit chance of 10% to be perfectly acceptable, because I'm rolling that 10% five times. And any hit is tied for the most damage available at any given tier. Cover isn't as much of a worry, especially thin cover like hedges and fences, because I can just destroy those with a sheer hail of bullets. Really, I think that machine guns right now are right. Everything else ought to be brought into line with them and given specific, useful roles. (Plus, LMGs are the only weapon one can effectively guess at enemy locations with. I've killed several aliens without ever seeing them, just by guessing at their location and firing bursts into the dark.) EDIT: LMG-only run update: October 16th. Things have been going well. A few casualties here and there but well within operational parameters. Scatter lasers have been developed and 6 of the 8 troops carried them into battle in an operation against our first enemy Corvette. The mission was an unparalleled success. There were no Xenonaut injuries, and we killed three Androns (our first Andron encounter) and captured one Harridan (also first Harridan encounter) using only flashbangs. The other three Androns and the other Harridan died on impact.

I'm starting my new LMG-only run. On Steam, no less! I'm 3 missions in so far, and here are the rules I'm following. 1.) All troops must carry only a light machine gun, ammo, any armor, and a few stun/flashbangs. 2.) Aside from capturing one specimen of each enemy species (minus Andron, obvs), my combat tactic is to find targets, then fire bullets until they die. 3.) To increase the number of machine guns, no car may be brought. Only troops. So far, things have been going well. I lost one soldier in the first mission (shot once by friendly fire, then took several plasma bullets from the permeable-walls bug), and aside from that we've been successful. During my last mission I literally cut down three trees because they were between my troops and a caesan. In the same mission, a caesan fired at us from outside LOS (his buddy squadsighted for him). Just for sh*ts and giggles, I fired bursts in the approximate area he was. Both bursts I fired hit and the second one killed him. Yeah. Machine guns are currently win. I'll keep you updated as I proceed. EDIT: Had a second casualty. Due to TWO horrible command mistakes (first I moved her out of cover unneccesarily, then I accidentally ended my turn really early when I was going for a medkit. Should also mention that my troops carry medkits, forgot to put that in when I wrote down rule 1 above.

I've been trying to play with the current balance... and finding it unreasonable. Suppression: All of a sudden it's become incredibly easy to suppress aliens, with usually the first near miss making them get down. However, they seem to no longer lose AP to suppression, making the mechanic less useful. (I often see aliens with 50 max AP firing a 40-TU burst after being suppressed.) However, human units that get suppressed still lose 1/2 their TUs. Don't know if this is a bug or a balance issue. Grenades: They NEED to have over 10 range. The old balance (of having mortar arms on all of our soldiers) was obvs. bad, but the current range of 10 is impossible to use. They're less accurate now and having a dropoff of damage is really weird -- why would an explosive device get weaker because it's far away from it's point of origin? Remove the suppression/stun dropoff after effective range, and make them even less accurate (so you can't RELIABLY use them at long ranges, but if a soldier gets a good throw in it should still be effective.) Precision Rifles: While I understand their new higher TU cost, they are now essentially useless. They do a whopping 5(!) more damage than assault rifles and have NO mitigation. In the old version, precision rifles made great "battle rifles" that were used in roles essentially similar to assault rifles, but slightly longer range. Now, you lose the option for burst fire, have to deal with the "heavy" trait, and have half the clip size. In return, you get 50% longer range, 5 extra damage, and the option to pay 10 more TUs for 20 more accuracy. What I'd suggest is to further increase ALL aim levels of the precision rifle by 10 TUs, increase the accuracy of each level by 30, and increase their range by at least 10 more tiles. This would take them out of the battle rifle region and into the sniper rifle region, having nigh-infinite range, good accuracy, and high damage but having very high TU costs. And most of the maps in game aren't really sniper-friendly, with lots of things to block LOS that aliens love to hide behind. LMGs: Are surprisingly accurate. Honestly, the best weapon in the game right now. They've got the same damage and mitigation of snipers, and their burst fire is the same cost and accuracy as a rifle's burst, but with two more bullets per burst to get hits with. The only downside they have is that you HAVE to choose burst (not really a problem) and the heavy tag, which is mostly negated by the sheer volume of fire. In fact, I think I'm going to try all LMGs next. Shotguns/Pistols: Haven't used them, but looking at the xml files... The shotgun is a carbon copy of the Rifle, but loses burst and the highest level of accuracy, and has a tiny clip. Also has a 25% smaller range, AND 5 points less damage. The only advantages are 2kg less weight and having a higher reaction modifier... so unless an enemy's going to turn the corner less than 15 tiles away, there's literally no reason to ever use the shotgun right now. Pistols barely do any damage, and have a really short range, but they actually have a notable advantage: They can get shots at 30 or 60 accuracy for 1/2 the TU cost of the rifle. And they've got the one-handedness, light weight and high reaction modifier. So there's even LESS reason to use a shotgun. Seriously, the only situation where you want to have a shotgun rather than any other weapon is if an enemy's about to trigger a reaction shot, and they're between 10 and 15 tiles away, and/or they have between 20 and 25 health (after armor mod). And even in that highly specific situation, a pistol might be able to get you TWO reaction shots at different points for more damage than the shotgun total. In general, I don't like the low-accuracy game. It puts too much power in the hands of the RNG, and too little in the player. I've seen people arguing that having inaccurate soldiers makes for a "tactical" game, and I disagree with that. Example: I was playing XCOM2012's multiplayer with a friend, and we decided to make a game for "teh lulz" where both of us took only basic rookies with basic rifles. Each shot had a 45% chance to connect by default, then modified by cover. In the end he won, simply because the RNG rolled in his favor more often than it did mine: My troops weren't any more or less in cover than his, he just got luckier rolls. It wasn't a tactical game -- it was a luck game. I think if you manage your troops well (both strategically and tactically) you ought to be rewarded with high percentages and effective hits. On a Geoscape balance note: The light scout's ability to roll is essentially meaningless, as I've yet to have a single missile fail to connect (and I've not been using special launch tactics, just letting them fly as soon as lock is achieved). Also I started getting full-size scouts after just three light scout shootdowns (+1 auto-generated mission). It seemed strange to be getting scouts that quickly. I had just enough time to get my first Foxtrot by the time they arrived. (Note: As soon as the game starts I hire 5 scientists. When Alien Invasion finishes I assign the 10 starting scientists to the Hunter. When the 5 new ones arrive they work on the Foxtrot, and the other 10 get to work on the Fox as soon as Hunter research is done. At the same time I start making my first Hunter, immediately followed by my first Fox. So I get them out about as soon as is humanly possible.)

Does this balance discussion only pertain to ground combat or can we raise other balance issues as well? Assuming we can, I just made a very interesting decision. Near the start of a game, I had a Condor trailing a light scout until it hit land. When the scout finally did hit land, I engaged it... with 0 seconds of combat fuel. Immediately, I was told that if the Condor remained in battle it wouldn't be able to return to base. I ordered it to stay and fight. Why would I intentionally sacrifice a Condor just to shoot down one little light scout? Because, I realized, that replacing the Condor costs me $50k and some time, but no workshop time. On the other hand, the loot from the crash would be 60k in plasma pistols, a little more in plasma clips, and extra money come the end of the month. In addition to that, running the ground combat mission would help all my soldiers get skill points and therefore be more able to handle later, bigger threats. So I find it odd, long story short, that I can justify sacrificing a plane to shoot down one reasonably unimportant target because I'll still profit.

I dunno... are you sure that Desura's trustworthy enough to send out Steam keys? I mean, they barely manage to perform services that are part of their platform, let alone services that help people switch away from Desura. I kid. Hopefully.

Had another crash. Well, technically a hang that I had to ctrl-alt-del to force quit the game. When I tried to replace a dead squaddie in a dropship that had not yet returned from it's mission (actually it did two missions in a row before RTB, in case that matters) and then went to the Dropships screen to look at the unit layout, it hung when I tried to return to the globe map.

I did see aliens firing at me through walls a couple times. However, in my case it felt "believable" in that my troop was in enemy LOS at the beginning of my turn. Also, I had a crash. I ordered a troop to move forward, and crouch before firing at an enemy. He had enough TUs to turn and fire at the enemy at the accuracy level I ordered, but not enough to turn and fire with the crouch turn speed penalty. (IIRC he had 43 TUs and had to turn 90 degrees -- 2 TUs standing, 4 TUs crouching.) The game had not yet updated the TU cost for the crouch penalty, and the icon was white when I clicked (Showing me a cost of 42 TUs, instead of the real cost of 44). The game hung for a bit then CTD'd. Very much a fringe case, but it was a crash

Yay! And it turns out that the pet theories put together by some of the people in this thread were right! Which just kind of feels good, not really a long-term benefit. Oh, and Gauddilike: When I stopped to test it it was at a range of like 4 tiles or so. Close enough that the person throwing it was caught in the blast. But when I threw it at the alien... yeah, that was over 10 tiles I think. It suppressed fine at range in the last version.

Using the dev mode I discovered the following tidbits: The "alien-view mode" only has a LOS equal to that of what I set in aiprops (hence why Chris reported that they couldn't repro it). Notably, on that same view, all actors were visible even if the tile beneath them wasn't -- related? Just part of the dev mode? However, I gave them a few more APs (40, exactly enough to fire one burst) and they did fire on targets outside of their nominal LOS. Also, they always seemed to end their turn with exactly 20 TUs (the amount needed for a plasma pistol snapfire) completely regardless of what they did during the turn: I watched one fire a burst, then uncrouch, and he indicated having 20 more TUs with which to reaction fire. Assuming they're playing using the same TU system we are, it seems highly unlikely that EVERY alien would end EVERY turn with EXACTLY 20 TUs. Not 21, or 22 ever -- just 20.