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mangalores

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  1. We essentially agree. As said I kind of like the idea of a good all purpose end game fighter but my thinking indeed would be as you suggested a role specific fighter at the stage where the Marauder comes around. I was just thinking to extend the research to another stage where you then get the last tier fighter together with the Fury, in essence extending the time frame in which you need something better than the Condor and there won't be a better equivalent right around the corner. Xenonauts cut it out and the OG certainly didn't do it perfectly but one good reason to not go all perfect last tier craft would be if you really need salvaged resources to build and maintain them, a bit like the original concept of the Fury needing a supply of quantum singularity nodes to keep getting those "I win" torpedoes.
  2. Not to be a pooper but I find that not so lucky thought concerning games. The game basically rolls dice but the gameplay is about what the player can do, organize, plan and react to these dice rolls. In essence the question should be what the psionic powers are meant to change in gameplay for the player to do. The great critic about MC is that the entire tactical game is about unit dispersal, movement, location and identifying threats. It kind of wrecks that because you have no unit tactics to actually deal with it. Imagine chess where the queen could be randomly overtaken by the other player. It would completely mess up the game. Maybe a Reaper is a good example for having some similar factor but well dealt with. It's a one shot kill weapon that can really murder your team, in that way you could say it is overpowered and can be frustrating. But with a Reaper you can assess it being there (Sebillions around, big mission => there may be Reapers), your men slow to a crawl you check all corners, you preserve reaction shots. Then you could have Buzzard/Sentinel jump suits you move soldiers into safety, put vehicles in front etc. etc. etc. So you have this overpowered melee unit (since no other unit nor your men can kill someone by touch) but there is plenty to be done to manipulate the odds of these dice rolls. Imo the important bit aren't specifically the algorithms of those psi powers but the question how do you introduce gameplay to the "psi warfare". E.g. one pretty crude but possibly fundamentasl change would be that MC doesn't kick in the turn the soldier gets controlled but next turn. That introduces one simple thing: The player can react to this change in the tactical situation. That's imo also where the LOS idea comes from by others. It essentially moves psionics somewhere where you can identify and neutralize it fast instead of being hunkered down in the UFO. It creates gameplay because you can react and adjust tactics. I just wanted to add that imo that aspects goes beyond some formulas and algorithms but to a question of game mechanics and that for a player to accept getting thrown a curve ball he needs to get a reaction time to deal with it.
  3. Well, it is kind of nice to have the top of the line be an allrounder good at everything. That's where I'm coming from when suggesting to have another specialized craft in between. Other than that the current Corsair is only on the level of a Foxtrot which also limits its necessity to those old craft.
  4. The problem with the one plane is that it's the one that gets replaced by a better allrounder. If you specialize you need enough specializations, not essentially just one general purpose replacement (not counting the Fury which is a bit a super weapon). If the Marauder couldn't dogfight and you have a superior dogfighter coming after the Marauer you'd give a greater halflife to the Corsair instead of the Marauder being the immediate top fighter for everything. You obviously could also switch around, have the Saracen be the next as a long range interceptor and the Marauder still be the supreme dogfighter later on. That doesn't matter. In essence keep the MIG/Condor divide, thus you need a torpedo pendant to the Corsair instead of a replacement of all other types immediately afterwards coming before the Corsair has even become necessary ( as heavy fighters and interceptors aren't that common when a Corsair becomes available).
  5. I've only played v21 stable because when Steam updated to experimental the game became extremely unstable so I rolled it back. I'm not really argueing for or against it, I just can say in v21 I found the Corsair a real hassle. I mostly autoresolve because things take too long otherwise and found that in most instances the Corsair will get shot up badly where the missiles guarantee that a Mig-31 will be your mainstay until the Marauder. The number of fighter escorts seem pretty low until the Marauder so the two Corsairs I built in my latest game saw minor actions and were essentially outdated when large or massive UFOs with fighter escorts appeared because a triple of one Marauder and two Foxtrots were far better at their job. I wish they'd kept the Saracen in and by having several airframes allow you to better balance your forces and you can get such variation of loadout. I think the one complaint would be that the Corsair is "sold" (in description and appearance) as an evolved aircraft which in any world should mean it works like its precedessors do. They probably should have done such deviations / specializations in the mid/late game with the Marauder, Fury and possibly by adding the Saracen. Aka, Fury is the ultimate Mig 31 replacement, the Marauder more a heavy tank without combat roll that can soak up damage but can't evade and the Saracen as the knife fighter. Possibly the Corsair is just misplaced in the tech tree and the description is outdated for the idea it stands for.
  6. Not sure how the new version deals with autoresolve but the basic problem in my view was that the Corsair would always get shot up even against enemies a Condor would simply use its missiles and never get a scratch. So it would spent far more time in repair than essentially any other aircraft. In manual combat guns are also more longwinded than missiles. Also when fighter escorts became a real problem the Marauder came around. Until then the MIG31 is the sole killer out there again because of range and lethality of missiles. I'm fine with trying to specialize the different weapon platforms and I haven't played v22, yet, it's however that the Corsair as a supposedly evolutionary aircraft is actually more specialized than any other aircraft but the fury.
  7. Why would a Corsair with two guns be better than a Corsair with one gun and missiles in the anti escort role and thus become an option vis a vis the Condor for cost efficiency? With two missiles you kill one fighter and the other with the gun = killing two fighters with two guns. Difference being that advanced missiles will also hurt bigger UFOs.
  8. Well, you knew it was an XCOM clone, right? Wouldn't be the same kind of game if you couldn't see a Major throw his grenade like a girl killing half a troop of soldiers. Never allow anything to be between the rocket and the alien, particularly another soldier.
  9. EDIT: Ninjaed... On a similar note: I'm not sure it makes sense that a dropship on its way to a landed UFO will just casually engage the UFO when it flies again, the pilot knows he has no weapons onboard, right? Shouldn't a dropship disengage from aerial threats and run for the hills (if the UFO decides to give chase and destroy it fine, but currently the dropship just runs into the UFO oblivious of the threat)? I guess the behaviour might have been with the idea of having late game ships as capable fighters like the Avenger which routinely was the best combat ship as well.
  10. So I was wondering if there is anything more planned for the late game. I essentially struggled through the phase where battleships and carriers become the mainstay UFOs and raking in tons of cash I ended up with 18 Maurauders in three bases and just waiting for my workshops to go through the plasma equipment. One battleship and I ended up with the final mission. What I wondered if there will be come more content for that late game. Overall with said air power, two strike teams and plasma rifles it was only a matter of me wanting to get to Sentinel armor etc. before starting the final mission. The last tier of weapons (singularity weapons) seemed sadly rather small and underdeveloped and there isn't reall anything I need it for. I know the game is in its cleanup phase and possibly I just had a bit wonky narration because essentially the first battleship I saw I instinctively used shock grenades to knock out the boss alien and thus opened up the final mission. Maybe the aliens should turn more aggressive against Xenonaut bases in this stage to push you back when your tech has reached more than parity than the aliens at least on normal diffculty? I just wished there would be one round more of content in research and discovery before unlocking the final mission that's all. Maybe the whole strain of PSI powers and defenses against it and essentially upgraded armor/weapons though I know the later is unlikely to impossible. What do others think?
  11. Wait for Sebilian terror missions. It sure felt very assuring to simply nuke every alpha reaper showing up on the map. Overall all explosives are mainly a way to stop an untennable tactical situation from killing you. I find they work fine for that, including rocket launchers who don't have anything specific to hit to murder it. As said, even very distant aimed shots just had to hit within a few squares of said reapers to kill them. Far safer than having everyone line up to take potshots or get eaten. Rocket launchers are similar to grenades a specific tool to make a specific kind threat go away. In case of grenades that is if you get swamped aka a lethal threat appears too close for comfort and for rocket launchers the same goes to destroy a threat before it emerges. Late terror missions can have ~20 elite Androns + 3 heavy drones + snipers. I essentially nuked a street crossing to prevent such a force from flanking me. I sure as hell would use the rocket launcher to reduce the number of enemies before taking chances with individual shots by the rest of the team to thin out the ranks. If you are worried about enemies not clustering together, in such missions they do and you better be ready to waste multiple explosives to ensure whatever you aim at dies quickly.
  12. I think it's only too long when compared to how quickly you build advanced aircraft like Corsairs, Maurauders etc. Otherwise I'd think anything that keeps the workshops busy is kind of a good thing similar to how it would be bad if the research labs would have no projects for extended periods either. Also forcing me to have evolving strike teams (aka where you only slowly replace equipment) feels right. I guess you could reduce build times if you had consumables (e.g. ammo and similar) so that your workshops still needs to prioritize between different aspects of your base management
  13. Overall imo the question should be: How is the player supposed to play the game to counter PSI attacks? What kind of measures are available to him and what advantages and possibly disadvantages should they give him? As is a bunch of reapers or a squad of elite Androns with heavy drones is a scare because you as the player are expected to somehow tackle the tactical situation against those odds. This might include anything from excessive use of explosives to running away. With PSI attacks I do not see the gameplay aspect aka what am I as player to do about it. It's essentially too random atm. The morale degradation might be fine as just another tactical aspect (though I still don't see much to do about it) but e.g. berzerking against friendlies or mind control just does stuff. I'm just in that phase against Caesans and praetors and I essentially use every gamey trick in the book because gamey tricks are the only thing you have as tactical options against PSI attacks. I didn't feel that need even against a swarm of Androns.
  14. It's not really a scare, It's plain annoying because you can't prevent it nor do anything about it. As is you can only do the chicken dance by having everyone drop their weapons at the end of the turn which is not really very immersive but rather gamey (and just hope the AI doesn't figure out grenades). It hopefully gets better when the LOS problems are fixed but a message popping up that you lost a guy to mind control doesn't add much to the gameplay if you couldn't plan to do anything about it. It's not even throwing dice because you don't even hold the dice. There is a reason that in the OG you started to weed out your troops for high psionics only. It was plainly annoying as hell to bring anyone else from a certain point onwards but at least you had that counter. I think my rookies were relegated to second tier troops and mortar teams in late game while the A-team breached the upper floor with blaster bombs and flying suits to kill the commander. An additional problem is that Xenonauts has a bigger alien crew than the OG so carriers, landingships and battleships will easily have three or more psionics onboard. That means three guys MCed every other turn without a way to do anything about it because currently it can hit everyone, more importantly the only threat is he doing something on the aliens' turn or your guys reaction firing him on the aliens' turn. In any case you have nothing to do or decide because when your turn restarts you leave him be because he will be back with you next turn.
  15. I find the item destruction already preempts me from using grenades excessively. When facing a dangerous situation I will use grenades to neutralize the biggest threat but against most other situation a combination of single shots seem to work fine. Admitedly I play on normal but to me that should be the most balanced gameplay. Thus far I only went out all grenadier style when on a terror mission where three heavy drones and tons of red Androns attacked one flank in droves. That were three soldiers who threw about four grenades each to kill the tanks and a couple of the Androns which came too close (they were also mainly a breach team aka had no weapons for mid range and couldn't stay out of cover to shoot at their targets with all the heavy weapons and snipers being nearly cut off from them). I only earned 150k for that mission (compared to ~250 for a carrier or a cruiser) but given the threat level I found it worthwhile. I essentially sacrificed money to ensure my soldiers could survive the onslaught.
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