mangalores

A DLC should not be a cop out for patching broken things in a game. DLC should add content, hence Downloadable Content. Bugfixes belong in free patches.

I have a weird bug, I don't know if fixed or if it is happening more often but as I reassigned a built Mig-32 to my secondary base the Mig ended up with negative fuel and remained so for ages now aka it is completely unusable. My bases were in Central Russia and the US. Might this happen when the bases are farther apart than aircraft interception ranges since I saw the aircraft fly from one base to the other? Transit flights shouldn't be really covered by the interception system to begin with (and possibly regulated via the store transfer system) since aircraft wouldn't be sent combat ready from A to B. This is on the Steam early buy version so it might be different than any on site releases.

That's imo however a problem of reverse development. You need more numbers early on when your equipment sucks than lateron when your Guys and gals are good statwise and have plasma weapons and power armor. In any strategy where your units suck you need numbers more and it's always a bit ridiculous to tie it to tech when we are not talking about airlifting anything the size of a company or battallion. Even with Wolf armour there are still enough ocurrences of instant death for soldiers getting blasted from anything heavier than a plasma pistol. Ideally I would like to churn through bodies early on till I can lower the squad sizes due to tech than to be retricted to one squad size and then be offered big squads when my tech probably makes them less important.

Make hovering over an alien auto target with primary weapon if available. It's imo rather bumpy to constantly select/unselect the guns when you want to fire (usually the added problem is finding a free firing arc aka the soldier with the best shot probability). Imo the most general thing you want to do to aliens is make them dead so it would be smoother that way.

Yeah, that disucssion. My main thought after playing around a bit with Xenonauts is what squad sizes are aimed for in game balance. In the OG the great stuff was that you could stuff your skyranger under the roof with soldiers when you got the impression your equipment sucks and you have to take a quantity over quality approach. Usually there was a efficiency curve for your missions since beyond ~12 men you were nearly ensured to have far higher casualty rates due to stray bullets and grenades since your men always bunched up somewhere so it wasn't a desired tactic beyond bringing more firepower to the fight since you lack the pewpew gun that concentrate that firepower and the armor to survive in smaller numbers. However the Charlie only has space for 8 men although the craft clearly has 18 tiles space inside which would mean 12 men if we assume troops are sitting alongside the sides of the vehicle. Since you can load a tank with 6 soldiers on it, it clearly isn't a weight issue but seemingly intentional? Additionally my impression from the starting weapons on normal is that particularly the basic armor and Jackal armor is essentially useless in combat. If your soldier gets hit he will be dead and to top it off his visual range gets restricted meaning more instances where aliens will be able to shoot the soldier beyond his visual range. If that's intended the limited recruitment capability, crew space in the base and squad size in the Charlie seem a bit strange. If the preferred strategy in the early game is to throw bodies at the problem one should be able to throw bodies at the problem. I saw that the game sprites go up to 16, not sure if that's for later transports. However bigger squad sizes and more space to recruit soldiers is more necessary at the start than in the end when fully powerarmored soldiers don't need to be in big teams to bring along tons of firepower. More importantly there should be flexibility for choice to have standard teams of 6-8 for small UFOs and possibly 12-24 for terror missions/big UFOs. In the terror missions I essentially got 3-4 men dead sitting behind cover in jackal armor but getting shot out of nowhere or hit from stray bullets. Since I don't see any ways in terms of tactical choice I'd chalk such things up to accidental deaths, however feel that if I have to cope for some attrition rates I'd rather have more people to bring along. Losing high exp soldiers is usually bad enough and starting over with a squad of rookies kind of makes it necessary to bring two of them for every veteran to stand a chance. I'd say in XCom:EU the main problem is that from midgame on you cannot afford to lose soldiers since your rookies are essentially worthless. This was even worse in the Altar games where you had no recruitment capabilities beyond special events. You can't afford to lose soldiers, which in turn supports save spamming. I have no problem losing men, but the essence of strategy gaming is the capability to establish a strategy to deal with the enemy and this includes on how to organize your manpower so you can afford losses. If the structure of the game makes it necessary to win every battle then you subvert the intention of dealing with losses and use strategy. E.g. in Total War games losing a battle or having half your army ravaged in a bloody clash so it is unusable for years on that front isn't an issue since you can plan your strategy to cope with those losses. Most UFO clones have the problem of making all tactical missions, mission critical to continue the game and so I'm most worried about this game aspect. Somehow I can really say up to now only the OG managed to give you good options to soldier on after your interceptors are shot down, your squad slaughtered and the skyranger blown up. And that's what made it a great strategy title with cool squad based combat!

So during the Cold War the Soviets want to play second fiddle to an organization that gives them access to advanced weapon technology and where the supporters will be made the saviours of mankind? Yeah, in the Cold War they totally would stand aside... and you get your hands on a great interceptor but don't give its producer and the maintainer of the biggest fleet of Mig-31s the avionics to make them great? Why? The issue is really that if we take the OG interceptors rarely went out of use. Put plasma cannons on them and they will still do the grunt work in remote areas while the avengers and firestorms target the big ones. If the attrition rate of Interceptors is supposed to be big, their replacement shouldn't be a game ender. Losing a highend ship should be pretty bad but if you are to mimic a real fight money wouldn't matter. The Soviets or Americans would build this stuff for free to outfit the Xenonauts and then produce this stuff themselves. While I like the interception screen for flavour I couldn't care less about that minigame tbh.

Well, aside of balance the only thing I wonder is why we need to build the Mig interceptor while we get the F-17 just by putting money on the table? Shouldn't the Soviet Union be better prepared to churn out the Mig interceptor than my tiny organization? I'd like more two sided flavour (Soviet + NATO) anyway. If I slab my first base in the middle of Eurasia, why do I use M-16s and no AKs? I'd just think if the only limitation to the start aircraft were some money and time since they are provided by the sponsor countries, things may be already less troublesome. Putting down 50 000 for a Condor is not that tragic, make it 75 000 for a Mig since it's a larger interceptor and maybe needs more mods and you could already balance losses this way.