Solver

Oh, I had not made any connection between Mind War and mind control. I had mostly seen the effects of Mind War dissipate. Now I feel stupid.

So one old, familiar balance issue - mind control is currently instant. That doesn't work well. It's not balanced, and more importantly, it does not feel fun or reasonable. One soldier that gets taken over is very likely to kill one teammate immediately, perhaps two. We've been through this with X1, where basically everyone hated mind control working like that, and it had to be changed in a patch.

Me too I don't currently have a system that can debug the game though... Just one more thing before you start a new game, could you the script again, but with UnlockFinalMission();

I have no capability to test anymore, but that should work... you might need to delete the internal script cache. Check assets/mods/internal (Delete the whole thing if it exists) and also %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts\internal

True, but that's basically a cheat button at this point as it seems to always win with no damage taken, and autoresolve isn't what normal air combat is supposed to be like.

Possible balance issue with planes - repair takes forever. As someone who isn't great at air combat, I withdrew a fighter with 10 HP from an Observer, and it seems to be taking something like 15 or more days to repair. Very slow.

During a ground combat mission, something went wrong and black tiles would no longer be revealed as I moved to get vision of them. I saved and re-loaded that save, upon which the problematic tiles became visible, but one Wraith seems to have become a "ghost". Load the save and note how the Wraith won't be targeted, that is, the target cursor doesn't appear when moving over that Wraith. Force-firing also seems to target the ground tile and not the alien. The alien is still there though, and can be hit by splash damage. gc2.json

I realized the floor thing later, it's definitely confusing how visually the floor is above the ground but is ground-level mechanically. What's going on with walking through walls though, as in my second post here? Also the inner light-coloured walls can be walked through, like in the first screenshot that inner wall separating a smaller room, you can just walk through the wall from the bigger room.

Weird indeed, the save file does have the right prerequisties. How about you edit assets/scripts/gamescreen.lua in the game's folder and add this to the end? UnlockResearch("Researches.OperationEndgame");

Now that the LMG is worth using, it's easy to see the magazine is too big. With 50 bullets per mag and 5 per burst, there's no need to reload. In X1, machine guns were good for 3 bursts before reloading. A bit more could be okay, but not 10 bursts as now.

What version of the game? Can you post a save file?

After a few ground missions with these changes, first impressions: Suppression is much better now, and the LMG doesn't feel like a waste. Still undecided if perhaps suppressed aliens have the ability to fire a bit too much. Sebillians are much better now, no longer overpowered early on. The Brutes are still very scary if you encounter 2 at a time but they're probably fair. Are you still intending to mix things up with damage types or other features so that each tier isn't always strictly better than the previous one?

Or that building's walls become possible to walk through when shot at a bit?

I encountered a map where strange trajectories happen around a building. After some attempts I reproduced a troop placement that makes it somewhat reproducible from a save file. Just end the turn in the save, but a few different results can be seen depending on how the randomness of the shots goes. Some explanatory screenshots: This building is where weirdness happens. First note the Psyon inside, and the red dot in front of the couch. From that red dot tile, seems like the Psyon can shoot at strange places, including at the soldier just below the wall, here from another angle: As far as I'm concerned, the couch is blocking the window and the soldier should be totally safe. Further, behind the building there's another circled area. An alien will appear there, outside that window, during the alien turn, and will shoot. Sometimes the shot seems to go through the entire building (both windows?) and hit one of the two circled soldiers in the chopper. Especially given that the alien is standing outside, so below the window, it doesn't feel like he should be able to shoot through the building whatsoever, let alone hit anyone. Could be bugs here, or just classic cases of LOS not matching the intuition from the graphics, but either way, something's weird. gc.json

Just to clarify my position, I don't want changes that make a hot LZ impossible, like limiting alien spawns or suppressing them. From my perspective, it's fun to have occasional missions where the LZ is not safe and you come under assault right away. I'd even say it's part of the all-important "you're never safe" feeling that an Xcom-like game should have. It's just that the dropship itself should be reasonably defensible, not totally exposed and hampering movement. Come to think of it, when the suppression code is fixed so it also works with misses, an alien shooting into the dropship at the start will probably be able to suppress 2-4 soldiers as well.

In X1, aliens started with 50% TU, on their initial turn. Not sure if this is the case in X2 now, but I still don't think it addresses the greater issue of the layout, which becomes relevant on those "dropship defense" missions where you're initially swarmed, and spend the first several turns getting some breathing space.

Much as I like the game returning to dropships, the current layout of the actual dropship is a mess - in combat, it's just a deathtrap. If you hit a mission where there are 3 Sebillians near the landing spot, you'll notice that. I enjoy the fact that, just like X1, some missions can start in a difficult position, and your landing zone could come under attack. But the X2 Blackhawk is like it was designed by an alien infiltrator to ensure that Xenonauts would not leave it easily. Specific problems: * It's totally exposed. The nose and tail provide a little protection from the front and back, but any aliens on the side can fire at the entire crew. This also means that firing out of the dropship is extra dangerous because overwatch will probably hit someone. * The drop from the helicopter to the ground means you need 8 TUs to get out. Also soldiers start facing the wrong way, as in they face the nose and not the sides, so also rotation is needed. This makes the first turn more difficult, when you want to properly leave the chopper. * The row of seats in the middle means that troops have to leave by the side they're standing next to, or else suffer an extra TU penalty for vaulting inside the chopper. Another detail making it harder to leave. I think something like the X1 Chinook layout was great. A big ramp to leave from, with side exits to provide tactical options, and decent protection from most angles. The original Skyranger had the same ramp layout but no side exits. Frankly I don't think a Blackhawk is a reasonable choice for X2 given how the helicopter is really used. This video shows drops with Chinooks and Blackhawks, and highlights what I mean. The Chinook's rear ramp lets the infantry get out and move quickly. With the Blackhawk, they get out and immediately go prone, clearly relying on the Blackhawk's door guns to provide fire if needed. In X2, troops cannot go prone, and dropships don't have guns making sure the immediate area is safe, so the BH ends up just being awkward.

From my perspective having some kind of dropship assignment is just confusing, and goes against how games tend to work in general. X1 already had enough difficulties (with CE and without) to make soldier loadouts understandable, i.e., convey that the saved loadouts are just that and not character classes.

My experience could not be further away from this. Of the two starter races, I consistently find Sebillians much, much more of a threat because of their regeneration. I have to concentrate firepower to ensure a kill, and don't really benefit from taking potshots. When storming the UFO, I also have to be much more aggressive to prevent them from regenerating too many times. This is compared to the early Psyons, who don't pose any threat. Part of this could be due to the weapons balance though. In X1, I preferred heavy suppression tactics against Sebillians, whereas in X2 right now suppression is low, and the LMG is also terrible at dealing damage. So maybe fixing those issues would nerf Sebillians somewhat.

One additional can of worms here is, you need to balance the level-up time for rookies with the amount of difficulty and missions. If levelling a rookie up to badass status is too easy, it doesn't feel rewarding. If it takes too many missions, you repeat the problem X1 had where people would grind many more missions that intended, in order to compensate for losses and have a squad of badasses by the Carrier/Battleship phase. I think the solution lies in the realm of Geoscape mission spawns, that is, missions should not only increase in difficulty as the game progresses, but later phases should also spawn some easier missions, where you can send less-experienced soldiers.

From some missions on the current build: I agree with Max that the ballistic rifle doesn't seem that versatile, and is underwhelming in general. Burst fire is costly and doesn't do much in terms of suppression anyway, aimed shots are costly enough to almost make the rifle as unwieldy as the sniper/LMG. I'd favour a slight accuracy increase for all modes, and a lower TU cost for bursts to make them a valid option when the amount of bullets matters more than the accuracy. The rifle should, overall, be versatile above all. Usable at all ranges, and allowing for fire-and-maneuver tactics. With regards to fixed TU costs for firing in general, I'll say the same thing I did when X1 tried it - the primary effect is that it further elevates TUs above all other stats in importance. High-TU soldiers essentially get more firepower, not just versatility, while low-TU soldiers become nearly useless. Grenade throw costs are too low. I can support the idea of lowering them compared to X1, but currently they make it easy to advance while throwing grenades left and right. A thought regarding weapon versatility and movement in general - would it be worth it to try a system where the TU movement cost depends on the weapon held?

I have this on 5.1, 6.1 and 6.2, when running the game on Linux. I know of course Linux isn't currently officially supported, but the game runs amazingly well with no other issues. The body models of Xenonauts and aliens are invisible. The heads and weapons are fine. I've experimented somewhat with the graphics settings but this seems to be the case with any resolution and any quality setting, with both Proton 3.16 and 4.2. Forcing D3D9 rendering does cause the models to show up, but breaks many other things graphically, which is not surprising. Could be a X2 bug, or a Proton/Vulkan one of course. EDIT: Okay, looks to be a driver issue. The NVIDIA 390 driver is broken but with 430, the problem is gone.

So I think HMGs always worked in roughly the same way except for 0.30 where they did minimal suppression. The goal was definitely to keep the same visible outcome all along, although the firing mechanics changed. You could affect the calculation in assets/config.xml: <Suppression regenerationPercent="25" iconOffset="-80" iconName="tiles/SuppressionIcon.png" showEasy="1" showNormal="1" showVeteran="1" showSuperhuman="1"/> In there, add an argument called flyByRadiusFactor, e.g.: flyByRadiusFactor="0.5" The default value the game uses is 0.5. Lowering the value (maybe 0.25 is a good first guess for you) should decrease the suppression dealt to units that are in the firing line but don't suffer near hits, as in the usual situation for friendlies to be in.

@Charon Thanks for all the work - it's not just the modding work, top notch in itself, but there's also so much more, like providing excellent support to all who needed it!

Congratulations on the beta launch!