thixotrop

The base defense role was not mine. I have read it somewhere in this forums sometime ago and since then using it. You can have more than one of that roles to help you. I understand that you would like to "tag" a soldier for a specific role, so that when he/she is available again you can refit him/her with the correct equipment. I did that too in the beginning but changed my playstyle, so that I always search for soldiers that fit into the role I need, e.g. rocketeer with strength, sniper with precision, assault with reflexes and so on. With the "tag system" you will always rely on some specific soldier to play that special role. When this one dies the role is vacant and no fit other soldier in reach. Not great. Changing soldiers in different roles let them gain experience points in more than one stat, so they are more reliable. Although not all soldiers can do anything (*), so this is no viable way to gain "omni-potent" soldiers (no pun intended here). I cannot find the thread anymore, but I am quite certain there was this argument, but I can be wrong here too. Maybe your problem with upper levels is related to this here. (*) Just a side story: I had a new female soldier having slightly good reflexes and precision so I made her a sniper. She couldn't hit a tractor when practically sitting in it, so annoying. She earned kills only by throwing grenades. I made here an assult to see if that helped, but no luck, couldn't hit a wall stuck in the broom closet. Again only grenades worked for kills, although she was quite weak and couldn't throw far. My last trial was to give her shield, pistol and some grenades and after a couple of battles she really could aim with that pistol. Nearly every shot she made hit and often was the last hope in a group. I upgraded to plasma pistols just for her. She made it to Colonel as a Shield-wearer. Before that I hated shields. She couldn't do another role then, I tried it was horrible, but shield was her thing. Therefore I tagged her mentally with shield. Unfortunately she died with 3 others in an UFO as a stupid suicidal Alien threw a grenade blasting the UFO engine.

Sentinel and Predator armor have their own breathing devices. The soldiers can stand inside gas without any problems, altough they react with a "ugh" and stop moving as if they are affected. Little anoying but not more. (At least this is in V21. I am waiting for the next stable release.)

In my experience so far the vehicle death is following my list here.

I also think the vehicles should get retrieved from battle field. It does not have to be free though. Depending on the damage state there should be an option to either rebuild or wreck. With damage state I mean the four states that I have seen so far (I am still in V21): 1 - Damaged only in HP, so still operative. Auto-repaired in base. 2 - Damaged badly so that wheels and top are off and hull is scorched, not operative anymore and treated like a fallen soldier in ground combat. Auto-repaired in base. (Only have seen this with Hunter so far.) 3 - Heavily damaged, hull wrinkled. Total loss. 4 - Total annihilation, vehicle vanished completely so that soldiers can cross the position. Total loss. As long as my observations were not screwed by bugs (!) I think state 1 and 2 are reaaly reasonable. State 2 and 3 should have the mentioned option to handle costs versus time to be operational again. Regardless of all above, I also think the vehicles are not sturdy enough, 1-2 shots easily destroy them. Yeah, Hyperion too. EDIT: Just remembered; Scimitar and Hyperion will show the Hunter wreck in state 2 and 3. At least in V21, I don't know if that has changed.

For soldiers that stay in base, due to being wounded or left behind for others to go to combat, it really helps to make a sort of "base defense" role with a certain equipment. You can also have more than one base role. That way you will always have the good stuff available for the "away team" and changing equipment is much faster. When you give a soldier a role (e.g. rifle man) it will be equipped with the saved armor layout, the missing item will simply not be equipped and the slot is empty. So I think an empty slot equals your proposed red cross. However, I agree that armor and weapon management is a bit tedious, but I don't think it is game braking. The glance-around-a-corner was discussed before in quite some extent and accompanied with grenades to throw around the corner. (I would have liked that). It was not implemented due to game balance and game engine limitations. I have never had problems with soldiers in and some around the house (though I am still playing on V21). In terror missions I almost ever have 2-3 soldiers in one house, mostly two snipers on second level. The others are next to the walls around the house and there was never a problem with walking around .

Or they just moved the UFO over a shallow hedge next to the already known landing zone, out of sight out of mind. And as they were not need to fly high over the hedge no radar has observed it.

Funny I had experienced and reported this building behavior way back in V18.

A see a possible exploit... Pick up corpse, two more appear, pick one again, two more.... And after mission you get body armour back from all the dead corpses for free. Ok you need to have more graves dig up for the dead guy: Josh Eales 1, Josh Eales 2, Josh Eales 3 .... But no pain no gain, eh? (Sorry, couldn't resist..)

Ok this applies to V21 (my current game state), but it should apply to newer versions too as I haven't read of any changes in the change logs then: If a soldier is killed by a blast/explosion/grenade/whatever that leaves only goo, the armor and mostly all equipment is destroyed. When this blast/explosion/grenade/whatever-event happens with a flying soldier there isn't even goo. When there is no corpse visible in the ground combat scene, there is also no corpse in the ground tiles of the equipment view of a soldier when he steps on this tile. When there is a corpse, equipment and armor comes back to be equipped again.

Lol, just have read your other post and thought, I might mention that here too. In the beginning of the game I did a lot of manual air combats, later I almost ever do autoresolve. So for the late game a manual air combat only when... ...there is a slow "victim" UFO and I am game for that. ...my jets are intersepted by air superior UFO fighters. ...I want to do more than one UFO encounter with one flight. Because then you can control the ammunition better and save some for the next UFO.

I have never experienced that, playing since V19 and still in V21 (currently in operation endgame with insane psi powers...yes I know ). My system: i5-3450, 16GB RAM, GTX 560Ti, Win7-64bit, screen size 1920x1200 fullscreen

The stock photo background in post #6 was shouting "stock photo" to me, even before I have read your text above. It looks so typically fake (three girls: red, black and blond hair....one for everyone...gnaaaa, artificial positions, staged "happiness"), I could puke. The first images of post #1 are the best of thoses, though I like the drawn image currently in the game better. It fits to the art style of the game.

As I have watched this video - amazingly massive enemy counter-fire - it reminded me that I always miss to see some current UFO damage state info in the fighter control panel at the right side. I know you see that when you zoom in on the UFO. Your jets are turn red from top to bottom with accumulating damage. The red UFO sign does not change. I think it would be helpful to see the damge there too. Maybe like this: I don't know if this is moddable, I can't do it.

But then english is not wrong at all. You heard about the British Empire? The "stole" a lot of countries (see Eddie Izzard ).Although, at that time it was a quite accepted behaviour of the ruling nations, I guess.

Ok, I though that Androns could see through smoke too due to IR-vision, technically based, not naturally like Sebillians.

Now I am curious, what do you you think is far better than the english version? Only the language changed. And don't tell me it is the Umlaute (ä, ö, ü)! If you like that, go check Turkish.

Androns are also immune to smoke effects, aren't they? And smoke is not "you-cannot-see-through" but "reduction-of-hit-percentage". Sorry I just miss the correct words right now.

Xenonauten... Aua! Also wenn man an die englische Version gewöhnt ist, sieht und liest sich das mal echt seltsam. Kann aber auch an mir liegen, ich spiele selten Spiele auf deutsch.

Rtfm ftw

Thanks, couldn't said it any better.

So when you stay there and keep fighting them, it will be like this: [video=youtube;uqhWDgo40o0]

Isn't that an oxymoron, so mutually exclusive by itself? And yes, the sarcastic vibe rendered visible only after some sentences.

Thanks for the answer.

Agree. The demo video looks nice already. Hope it will have decent strategy too and not combat only.

This post/question goes to all the digital artists here. The game graphics, like the pictures of the xenopedia or other, do look like as they were made as a 3d model and then snapshotted to a 2d image. They may be changed after that, I don't know. The hyperdrive image below shows very good what I mean. The overall structure has the correct perspective of a 3d model, but it looks as painted only. I really like the look and feel of the art in the game. I know that it is possible to create such perspective without 3d modelling. However, I think the perfection comes more with 3d. I really would like to know what software is used to create such things? Why I ask this? Being pencil-drawing and acryl/oil-painting now for the majority of my life (only as a hobby), now I want to dive into digital art too. I know a lot about 3d-CAD work (SolidWorks), which I really love to do in my job, but this is a complete other way of creation. I have tried now Photoshop and Gimp for 2d painting but these are not intuitive as CAD-software. For 3d I am still biting my way into Blender, very hard with the millions of shortcuts to remember. Hence all these programs have such steep learning curves, moreover 90° walls in my feeling, that I have quite some problems learning it. Maybe I am spoiled by my CAD-thinking approach to 3d. One small example of mine (photohgraphed and slightly digitally enhanced):