Solver

On the subject of base defense, I'd love it if aliens could attack any base that they discover. If they attack a newly established base, well, tough luck. That would be extra motivation to outfit every base with at least a skeleton crew of defenders. As it stands, it seems that aliens not only prefer to attack older bases but also prefer bases from where you launch strike teams. Meaning generally that protecting your first two bases is sufficient.

Hmm you know, that point about soldier classes is actually a very good one. The UI needs to make it more clear somehow that these are just loadout templates and not classes. It is now very easy to get the mistaken idea that your soldiers have some difference based on whether they're a rifleman or a sniper. As for flashbangs, I don't know what you're doing wrong. A flash directly on the tile where the alien is will normally stun any of the lower tiers. There is a random element involved, but yep, flashbangs are strong!

1. You'll get better at air combat and it will seem easier. 1 Condor can take out a light scout, 2 Condors will take out a Scout. 2. The game follows the original in terms of soldier skill progression, and I think it makes more sense than choosable upgrades. Your soldiers get better at doing what they do. If they shoot a lot, their accuracy goes up, if they carry a lot, their strength goes up, etc. 3. There are no classes in this game. What you see as classes are just some pre-set loadout templates, that's it. As for bonuses, there are indeed specific ones. Heavy weapons fire 5-round bursts and do a lot of suppression. Sniper rifles are more accurate than normal rifles and have a longer range. However, both sniper rifles and machineguns are heavy weapons so their accuracy goes down if the soldier moves. 4. There are some bugs. Even aside from teleporters, I've seen aliens on the 2nd floor shoot down and even outside. Landing ships are particularly bad. 6. I think that is a bug. 7. That is part of the intention I believe, though the exact numbers are still being balanced. Things like highest-aim sniper rifle shots aren't for rookies, they're for good soldiers. 8. I really enjoy that missions are now the primary way of getting money. No more selling stuff by the million! I would, though, be happy to see some kind of cost for grenades and all those infinite items. 9. Yes, this is classic X-COM. Fresh soldiers especially seem to be amazingly bad shots. 10. The flashbangs are very helpful, they can suppress enemies. But are not guaranteed to do so. For best results, flashbangs should land closer (or on top) of the alien, and of course tougher aliens are more resistant. But the weak aliens can be suppressed with extreme ease! Try having a guy with a shield when you storm a UFO and use flashbangs then.

From the game files it rather appears that missile defenses decrease the amount of surviving aliens, although I have not tested them either.

There's a relocate button on the soldier equipment screen, on the left in the section below the soldier's attributes.

It's clearly marked as a preview though.

Yes, you probably did something wrong there. If you're in January with large alien bases, you need not only better tech, you also need experienced soldiers. A core of them at least. And also things get easier with more soldiers in the better dropships. If you're trying to assault large alien bases with teams of 8 rookies with crappy equipment, you're going to lose.

Overall a positive writeup, although they do seem to miss some points. The complaint about terrain destructability is odd as this game has as much possible destruction as the original. Rockets definitely do blow holes in buildings, despite what the author writes, and you can absolutely level the map. And I still think the choice of graphics in the game is brilliant. 2D sprites mean the game looks simple but can in fact remain at a nice aesthetic level for a long time, while 3D graphics at an indie budget inevitably just end up looking ugly because they're years behind mainstream games.

Blow up the reactor, get your troops back to the deployment zone and abort. If the win screen popped out automatically, it'd be almost impossible to fully take a base due to reactors getting blown up by accident!

I find it rather intuitive that base defense missions should depend only on your own tactical ability and control of your troops, and not be decided in any way by static defenses or other elements of the base that would detract from your own control. I am complaining about being required to jump through hoops. There are things that the game should ask of me, but there are other things it asks which basically amount to just extra clicks or time spent for no good reason. Micromanagement of that sort is evil. When I have to manually check loadouts not just before missions but anytime I see a suspicious UFO, or when a soldier gets injured, that's micromanagement and not actual tactical decisions. After a lot of experience with games like this, it becomes clear that they are fun because they give you lots of fun decisions that matter, while also minimizing the decisions that don't matter. If something should be done 100% of the time because it nets you better results, that's not a decision. Then it needs to be eliminated by changing the balance, automating it, or something else. Making sure your soldiers are equipped for base defense is a no-brainer. No quality decisions are achieved by essentially forcing many extra clicks.

That's the point, you're just forced to do it the tedious way instead of being presented with the screen. Doesn't add anything but tedium, it's not like the idea is that you should be taken by complete surprise so you can't even equip. And the problem isn't with the base defense requiring different loadouts, it's with the soldiers that were wounded and otherwise automatically reset to default crappy loadouts.

Fixed defenses would of course make sense, but would detract from the gameplay. Realistically, there's a whole number of defensive systems that would be employed. Not just static guns but also each door would be possible to lock so they'd only open if they blown up, etc. But realistic base defense missions would lack the gameplay quality. The inability to choose loadouts though is negative for both realism and gameplay.

I think this is one of the small but very important issues left. The loadout screen should come up before the base begins. Having loadouts for your soldiers is of course the only realistic option, it worked that way in the original, and it would save the manual hassle of equipping all soldiers whenever there's a suspicious UFO. And it would plain and simple result in better gameplay.

I would not necessarily say it's more brutal. At least not yet. Maybe after psionics and morale are properly implemented it can match the original. Thus far the sheer horror of your best soldier getting mind controlled or panicked in the Skyranger and slaughtering half the crew is unmatched. Or losing 3 soldiers to a well-placed alien grenade. But as some of my soldiers (their ghosts, rather) could attest, your troops are still perfectly capable of one-shotting their comrades with stray shots.

That sounds like a great thing to me. It should be possible to lose the game. Even the Firaxis remake maintained that possibility. You can definitely survive a full squad wipe. Rotate your soldiers. Even if you get wiped, you should still have a few experienced ones back home. Later on, I have two strike teams operating from two different bases. If one gets wiped, the other team can take over temporarily while the first one rebuilds. Now, losing a base defense mission is usually fatal unless you have several strong bases, but that is also as it should be. Makes those missions feel more dramatic and important.

That sounds like a great thing to me. It should be possible to lose the game. Even the Firaxis remake maintained that possibility. You can definitely survive a full squad wipe. Rotate your soldiers. Even if you get wiped, you should still have a few experienced ones back home. Later on, I have two strike teams operating from two different bases. If one gets wiped, the other team can take over temporarily while the first one rebuilds. Now, losing a base defense mission is usually fatal unless you have several strong bases, but that is also as it should be. Makes those missions feel more dramatic and important.

The problem with such a reward, though, is that it then feels in no way different from a typical UFO crash mission. That's where you get some alloys, alenium and a relations boost. While abduction missions as proposed sound like they would have different pacing, and that's great, it would also be cool to see the rewards somehow be different.

I miss it, and hope it returns. The animation is there, the code for general throwing is there, I hope it's possible to extend throwing to all items. While rarely necessary, it's one of those things that made the original even more awesome.

Don't sweat it Aaron, there may not have been any updates for a month, but the game improves significantly with every update that does get released. And it already is better than any other remake/reimagining of X-COM. I'm looking forward to the implementation of the few important mechanics still missing, but I don't think anyone can bemoan the lack of progress.

While solid, I think it's only a partial solution. Even in the current iteration, aliens do prioritize civies (to a ridiculous extent in fact) but converge on you after all civvies are dead, which takes little time. And if civvies start near the dropship, that would likely mean much of the map would go unused - it'd be a corridor between your dropship and the alien starts that gets all the action. I think a general AI adjustment for terror missions might be in order. I am not sure if all aliens need to be set to the most aggressive behaviour on terror sites. Some of them could be just patrolling / defending as this is also a good chance for them to draw Xenonaut forces thin by forcing them to spread out.

Terror missions now really do mostly consist of aliens charging your position. Gets outright crazy once you make it to Landing Ships. Whether I win or fail the mission, it happens on a very small patch of the map, my soldiers never go past that newspaper stand across the street, if even that far. An alien squad goose steps towards the Chinook: Fully fledged assault teams: This is probably what base defense missions should feel like, though. Aliens advancing on you until either side is completely dead. But in terror missions, this effect of the AI is certainly interesting.

The dev team is a talented bunch, I'd be happy to see them start on a new project. I'd also be more than happy to see them release - after the project's official over - the game's source code, which would allow for community-based bugfixing. I have no doubts the community will be strong, and I have seen such an approach succeed with communities smaller than this one already is.

Regarding Ironman, it should be viewed as an option for gameplay, not a security measure. Of course players who want to use Ironman and still cheat with savegames can do so. Creating even a moderately secure version would be challenging and frankly not necessary. If someone really wants to go back to previous saves in Ironman and is willing to use all sorts of tricks to do so, well, that's their problem. Might as well edit the game files to give your soldiers 500 hit points each and blast through the missions. A good Ironman solution in the battle mode is just to overwrite the autosave each turn. Prevents going back in time while protecting against crashes. The current behaviour of smoke I consider to be a bug. I think it's supposed to decrease accuracy, not outright prevent aliens from shooting. Apparently the game considers smoke tiles not to be shootable through, so you get a red line when firing through the smoke - even though it is still possible to shoot and even hit targets. Currently smoke is broken in the sense that it can act as an invulnerability field if thrown on your soldiers, or as a fire-preventing field if thrown on aliens. Smoke aliens and they will refuse to fire at anything that is not adjacent to them. Terror missions are also a bit buggy in terms of how aliens behave and possibly how spawn points are placed. My experience is that you begin a terror mission and then aliens just converge onto your dropship. You don't really fight on the map, you fight to secure the surroundings of your ship, and as soon as you've done so the mission ends because all the aliens run to the ship. On occasion I've seen a lone alien couple be stuck in a corner, but at least on small terror maps either all, or all except two, aliens will just assault your dropship.

Regarding Ironman, it should be viewed as an option for gameplay, not a security measure. Of course players who want to use Ironman and still cheat with savegames can do so. Creating even a moderately secure version would be challenging and frankly not necessary. If someone really wants to go back to previous saves in Ironman and is willing to use all sorts of tricks to do so, well, that's their problem. Might as well edit the game files to give your soldiers 500 hit points each and blast through the missions. A good Ironman solution in the battle mode is just to overwrite the autosave each turn. Prevents going back in time while protecting against crashes. The current behaviour of smoke I consider to be a bug. I think it's supposed to decrease accuracy, not outright prevent aliens from shooting. Apparently the game considers smoke tiles not to be shootable through, so you get a red line when firing through the smoke - even though it is still possible to shoot and even hit targets. Currently smoke is broken in the sense that it can act as an invulnerability field if thrown on your soldiers, or as a fire-preventing field if thrown on aliens. Smoke aliens and they will refuse to fire at anything that is not adjacent to them. Terror missions are also a bit buggy in terms of how aliens behave and possibly how spawn points are placed. My experience is that you begin a terror mission and then aliens just converge onto your dropship. You don't really fight on the map, you fight to secure the surroundings of your ship, and as soon as you've done so the mission ends because all the aliens run to the ship. On occasion I've seen a lone alien couple be stuck in a corner, but at least on small terror maps either all, or all except two, aliens will just assault your dropship.

A time limit that forces you to run recklessly around is bad. A time limit that forces a rapid, aggressive advance instead of the usual slow and cautious advance can be a good thing on some missions. As the Yugoslav dictator says, the game has to provide a real possibility of failing, that's one of the key aspects of the original's game design (and of 90s game design in general).