Solver

Aliens are absolutely oblivious to the vertical dimension. They do not go up and down anything, and also I notice that aliens won't go down in the UFO. Cruisers have this bridge-like area on the 2nd floor, usually 2 aliens there. Those aliens never go down and for me they don't even seem to move. At least Sebillians don't. They will fire at my troops if they have the chance, but they don't leave the area or even move within it.

I finally figured out another thing that's bugging me. There is no to little UFO variety at any given time. Game begins with light scouts and scouts. As Corvettes appear, scouts basically disappear. Then landing ships take over, then cruisers. There is almost no overlap. This is bad because it's less geoscape variety, and more predictability for air combat. It makes it more difficult to train a secondary assault team of less experienced soldiers because there are no easier missions, they're all pretty much the same. And it really makes map variety seem much worse than it is because you'll be getting maps out of a small selection at any given time. Like now, I'm playing against Cruisers, and three maps in a row it was the same map. Too familiar by now. Exit the dropship into a train yard, then a power station to the right across the road, the UFO is behind the power station.

If the last alien you kill at a terror site is a zombie, the combat ends with it dead just as Chryssalid spawns. As such, the round is over but the one alien counts as "escaped" and you get a "terror site not secured" for 0 points.

I just noticed that Corsairs can't perform an evasive roll. Checking the XML, I see they are supposed to be able to, while Foxtrots aren't, though in-game they can. Xenopedia confirms that is the intention. Seeing as how Corsairs come right after Foxtrots in the XML, I'm pretty sure there's an off-by-one error in the code that looks up aircraft ability to perform the move.

Some research texts do not show up, giving an empty xenopedia screen, like Alien Officer interrogation. I have some immersion-related points. First, I'd suggest avoiding breaking the 4th wall in in-game descriptions. Consider the description of the plasma rifle (and other rifles). Ends with: I don't think "the game" should be mentioned. Instead I'd keep it in-character, like "the best all-around weapon our operatives can employ". Also, what's up with casualty numbers? I really like that you have a casualty number on-screen, but at the end of in-game November mine is at 1013 people. A thousand casualties after nearly 3 months of an invasion, that would amount to a bit above 4000 worldwide per year. For comparison, that's less than the yearly deaths from traffic accidents in Japan, and less that two months of traffic-related deaths in the USA. The game is intended to convey that the world militaries are helpless against the aliens. Civilian planes get shot down, navy ships are strafed and bombed, cities get terrorized, but casualties are low. My main base in in Europe, and casualties in the Europe region are a 203 after this time, basically conveying the impression that I'm dealing with the aliens so well that the chance of being killed by aliens is less than dying in a typical accident.

It was a bit overdone but only because grenades were extremely powerful up to the last version a few days ago - they used to have nearly perfect accuracy and higher damage. They currently also decrease in damage the further you throw them, which, I believe, is not intended.

Stability has been great for me so far. 1 crash with 18.51 HF3, and zero since going on Steam.

So far expanding seems to be the hardest part. It's expensive. My initial goal when expanding would be to set up a secondary assault team, which indeed means radar + Chinook, which in turn means living quarters, stores and a hangar. Second hangar is the minimum necessary to actually shoot something down.

Not sure about that, they seem to lose TUs just okay after hotfix 3. I see suppressed aliens shoot just one single shot, or barely move. Looks like low TU. Except that they sometimes fire a burst, but that may be because a plasma burst needs not too many TUs to fire.

Except that cheap soldiers are even worse as scouts. The soldiers will die even more, cheap recruits will rarely survive even one hit from plasma. The Hunter will certainly take a hit, sometimes a full burst, and it will also get fully repaired after the mission if it survived at all, while a rookie will be injured and out for days if surviving. Further, the hunter is a priority target and thus you know your good soldiers won't be fired at, rookies do not give you that guarantee. Heck, you can even use a hunter as mobile cover on wide-open desert maps.

It's not there to shoot. To me, its entire purpose is to keep your soldiers alive. Surviving soldiers = stats increases = better success later on and higher mission rewards. Every time a Hunter dies, it's a soldier that doesn't die because he wasn't fired at. Use it to spot aliens, then fire at them. If the alien doesn't die, just make sure your Hunter is the closest unit to the alien. Then your forces survive, and you can still afford new Hunters even by losing them every other mission.

No. There is cover, cover comes in different quality, and the system is also directional.

Did you have enough money? Hangar space?

Not sure how much TUs aliens are supposed to have, but I notice suppressed aliens have enough for one 3-round burst from a plasma rifle. Don't know if that is intended. And I am surprised some people find the Hunter to be weak now. It's weak but still overpowered, which is not a contradiction in this case - it's still better than taking two extra soldiers, because it's capable of ensuring higher survival rates with its spotting and ability to attract fire.

Feels like points for missions have been way turned down, I now can't get better than an Average rating at the end, and that's even when I kill all aliens without taking any casualties, and securing a lightly-damaged UFO.

It's a good point, I assumed the current night mission setup is temporary. There's not really any FoW in night missions, it's just pitch black. Not so much like being out at night but rather like being in a windowless bunker. Outlines of buildings and the like should still be visible and FoW-covered, not just disappear. The original did it well by having a small visible and illuminated area around your soldiers, and dark FoW elsewhere.

Yeah, maybe it's related code-wise to the launcher ammo changes that support the new explosives, but to me this has happened both with regular and Alenium explosives so far.

I am fully supportive of Chris's decision not to use Steam forums in an official capacity. They offer no customization, are strangely designed, and technically much inferior to a proper forum like this one. They also do quite easily become a cesspool indeed. However, still worth checking occasionally because constructive feedback does sometimes happen even in places like that. Also importantly, the forums do need a voice of reason that provides helpful posts, even if such posts do tend to be quickly drowned in the noise. Ignoring the trolls is not very difficult with some experience, at least I'm many years past the point where they'd anger me

Max is right. I feel confident saying that as someone very experienced by now with forums. People will concentrate in different places, and people will be on the Steam forum in large numbers. Because it's the most easily accessible one, because you can go there directly from the Steam client. Like it or not, people will be there. Unfortunately, forums like Steam's generally have a lower signal-to-noise ratio, but there are still good posts that are worth reading. I'd also really suggest rephrasing the top thread on the Steam board. "We do not use these forums" is a very bad title that immediately creates an antagonistic impression. A much better title would be something like "These are not official developer forums". The text of the post does a good job by saying that devs may occasionally check there, but it really needs to be friendlier. With the gaming community at large, things like that matter, and Steam gives enormous exposure.

Sometimes, but never on a soldier's first mission as far as I can see, a rocket trooper becomes useless. The soldier begins the mission with the rocket launcher showing 0/1 ammo, as if it needs a reload. However, it is impossible to reload either as usual or by dragging a rocket onto the launcher, this is as the soldier is normally equipped with extra rockets in the backpack. No idea so far what triggers the bug.

I've observed a few times that, if a scout car gets destroyed, it just resurrects - it's back in the Chinook when it gets back to base and goes happily on the next mission. This happens only in special circumstances though - when you have multiple scoutcars built and it is NOT the first one that is assigned to the Chinook. That is, if you have Hunter001 and Hunter002, then assigning Hunter002 to the chopper results in this bug, while Hunter001 would behave and die normally.

Initial impressions on the new balance. 1. The Hunter car is wrongly rebalanced. It's now sower, so I will just move my troops slower, but still behind it. The core of the problem remains unchanged, and it is that putting the scout car in danger is extremely preferable to putting soldiers in danger. I'm fine with losing a scoutcar every other mission if I have to. 2. Too much suppression now. I see aliens suppressed by the first bullet from an assault rifle. It's probably too much to effortlessly suppress everything. 3. The TU costs are now such that a high-accuracy shot from an assault rifle costs the same as burst fire, and so I don't really see when burst fire is good anymore. It's better to take an accurate shot which will probably hit and suppress, while a burst will most probably not hit. 4. Grenades might have been a bit overnerfed in terms of their effective range. This is still better than them being perfect artillery like before. 5. Pistols still need a slight buff to be a viable backup option for heavy weapons guys or specialists that are low on ammo or TUs. 6. This is not a problem of the combat values strictly, but ammo is still not a factor with ballistic weapons. Every soldier is either dead or heading back to base before needing to reload.

Got my key. Hopefully this means I never have to download anything off Desura's site again. This is great!

Then I assume UFO spawns have also been considerably decreased? At least it feels that way. Previously I'd get 2-3 missions in the first few days by shooting down UFOs in radar range, now my first UFO in radar range showed up after about a week. So it looks like the frequency has slowed down, though it is probably a good thing.

That's fine, I just don't believe they should come up before you intercept a single UFO. Also they should clearly have damaged UFOs.