Hathur

I'm having a problem with version 1.21. Anytime I try to extract the file (I've redownloaded it 3 times incase the download messed up and also tried using Winrar and 7zip, same result), it always freezes up trying to extract atlas05.png.. it just sits there for 15 minutes trying to extract the file before I forcibly abort it. I think perhaps the compressed file is damaged or corrupt maybe?

Alternatively you can edit sounds_gc.xml and lower the volume of the jetpack in there from 0.9 to something lower (I find 0.7 a nice soft hum without being annoying).

Elevation isn't quite as advantageous as one might expect, but it is still considerably helpful. Using either buzzard armour or sentinel armour, I find it a must to have a scout with a sniper rifle use high ground as often as possible. It provides significant extended sightlines and most of the time (but not always) makes it easier to hit a target. Far more often than not I am able to shoot over or ignore cover that an alien has vs were I on the ground directly below (particularly helpful on urban maps. Fly on top of a building and fairly safely pick off aliens that are on the other side of a high wall. Works quite well most of the time. At the very least, it provides a safer method of performing recon or getting line of sight on an enemy for your snipers at the rear lines.

I just wanted to extend my most sincere gratitude to Chris England for the Dev Diary he wrote up, covering his experiences making Xenonauts. Merely as a gamer (with no personal desire myself or interest in development whatsoever), it was a truly fascinating read. I greatly appreciated how earnest it was as well, not sugar coating the bad experiences you had making the game but also letting us read about the good experiences also. I read the entire document glued to my seat and really found myself having a greater appreciation for you & your team as well as the game (which I already loved and have sunk at least 150 hours into). It is exceedingly rare to find dev diaries like this, the few others I have read in the past for other games felt sterile or lifeless, like corporate memos almost and most certainly don't hold my interest beyond a page or two at most. So, thank you again Chris and everyone at Goldhawk who worked on the game - and thanks for the well written, fascinating Dev Diary.

If you had audio files of Xcom's weapon sounds you can fairly easily replace the gun sounds in xenonauts. The trick is getting / finding audio files of original Xcom's weapons.

Downside to staying in your command centre is the aliens start blowing up your facilities if you don't engage them. When the mission ends you'll lose access to lab, workshop, etc (whatever they blew up) until it is fixed. If you have the means, it's best to engage the aliens rather than wait. If not, then sure take it slow and let them come to you on your terms.

Thanks for adding the extra asian & african faces, there weren't many before. Far fewer duplicates of those now.

Thanks for this fix, appreciated.

Except that, as I stated, I modded the file config file to remove that cap, raised from 95% to 100%. Modding the file seems to generally work, as when I changed the maximum to 0% I was in fact unable to hit anything. But changing to 100% seems to still yield less than 100% (and even if it was 95%, I find it hard to believe that missing multiple shots per mission at either 95% or 100% a bit.. odd).

I've had weird occurences too. I changed the max accuracy from 95% to 100% and even with aimed shots (that showed 100% chance to hit), I've on numerous occassions missed shots. Even had someone with 100% chance to hit miss twice in a row vs enemy 1 tile away. Sometimes the numbers are very odd. To be fair, I've also hit enemies when I had only a 1 to 5 % chance to hit with far more regularity than I felt is normal.

I actually rather like that map. Very tense to fight around with all the cover. Makes grenades and shotguns / carbines very important too.. it's a pleasant change of pace from the type of combat on most other maps. And agreed, Skitso's maps are wonderful. Couldn't imagine playing Xenonauts without them.

Manually launch interceptor after (or before) the dropshop. Just keep giving the interceptor a new point to fly to every few seconds so it is near the dropship. That way if a enemy fighter appears its always close enough to the drop ship to intercept before you lose the dropship. Just requires a bit more micromanagement.. but not that much to be honest. I'll typically send my dropship to its mission, then launch a corsair a just keep click the corsair's new destination near the dropship, essentially always stays ontop of the dropship until it reaches its mission safely.

Hm ok, maybe I'm just having insanely bad luck.. but it's getting tiresome doing the exact same terror mission map over and over.

I've had 5 terror missions in my game so far and every single one of them is on the same map, with the dropship just landing on a different part of the map. Is there literally just 1 map for terror missions used over and over with a randomly positioned dropship?

I run 3 fully developed bases and then 6 "radar stations" basically.. Just a base with 3 radars to help cover the rest of the world. My interceptors from the 3 main bases can generally reach any ufos the radar bases detect, no need to give them their own aircraft.

Smoke grenades work just fine vs. caesian elites, it is still giving them a 45% accuracy penalty when they shoot through smoke. However, elites, especially caesians, have a pretty high base accuracy so even through smoke they stand a somewhat reasonable chance of hitting their target with some luck. Again, sebillans are the only alien immune to smoke. You can see this clearly in aiprops.xml as they are the only species given the special ability to see through smoke. Caesian elites DO NOT have it. They're just accurate.

Re: harridan I think it might be because they have a rather high minimum accuracy requirement before deciding to fire in aiprops.xml This forces them basically to almost always use aimed shot I believe. I reduced it by half and they now seem to be happy to use snap shots or normal shots sometimes.

Smoke grenades. Try to make sure you have 1 soldier prior to the end of your turn with enough turn units to throw 1 smoke grenade a bit ahead of your vanguard forces. Smoke grenades will reduce enemy accuracy by nearly 50% (or your own) if they fire into or through it. It's best to use them as "throwable cover" (or concealment really, but think of it like cover for visualization). You can throw it on your forces as well and it will still work, but I find throwing it ahead of my team works better since the aliens will try to navigate around the smoke, often positioning themselves into a vulnerable spot on my next turn as they try to get around the smoke. Also, you can bring 2 or more soldiers with shields to lead the charge, though the shields will break after about 2 direct hits from a plasma rifle. I also sometimes bring a hunter scout car along as a giant moveable wall. It is expendable and can take a reasonable amount of punishment early in the game. But honestly, smoke grenades are tremendous life savers, just bring enough of them and throw 1 ahead of the team or between the team and where you suspect aliens might be hiding every turn. Doing this has drastically cut down my casualty rates (except vs sebillans, they are immune to smoke. You'll need to use shields or a vehicle as cover vs them. Though thankfully sebillans have shorter engagement range and worse accuracy).

Ilunak, you get easily perturbed when a few (2-3 ?) people just happen to post repeatable confirmation of a bug in the game. You do of course realize it often takes multiple people to verify or disprove a possible bug, yes? If it was just 1 or 2 people reporting an issue then it might just be an anomaly and not a bug.. but getting more people to post verification or denial of potential issue is important for purposes of getting the developers to look at it... responding harshly just because 2-3 people post verification seems excessive on your behalf. Granted, this thread should probably be in the bugs forum though.

I found it a bit disappointing too, considering a large vehicle should have decent storage space. For my own game I modded the vehicleweapons_gc file and doubled vehicle ammo for laser, plasma and mag (I tend to use vehicles mostly for force firing at walls / terrain rather than enemies anyway to make my own tactical approaches on a map).

I always make sure to have at least 2 carbines in the team (generally I have 2 snipers and they carry carbines in their backback. My snipers are the least likely to be wounded en route to the alien ship since they stay far behind to snipe.. so by the time I clear outside, the 2 snipers are mostly guaranteed to be at full health). Carbines are magnificent inside alien ships, cuts down the chance aliens can reaction fire against you, increases your chance to make your own reaction fire and can clear out a room safely and efficiently. But it's a weapon that only excels at close range (but does so immensely well). So for me it's exclusively an alien ship clearing gun and well suited for snipers as a secondary weapon (far better than pistols as a secondary since pistols don't have the killing power the carbine has at close quarters. Pistols are exclusively for shield bearers or rocketeers). I'd only use them outdoors as a last resort though.

Yep I just tried this myself. Landed at a ufo crash site, didn't move any troopers on first turn (they were still standing in their drop pod landing spots), tried to abort and it won't let me without losing the entire team. When i tried it using shrike and the starting chopper it works fine.

Great mod, projectiles definitely have an improved look to them Looking forward to Mag projectile changes, in vanilla they looked extremely dull originally compared to all the other projectiles.

Somebody would have to completely design / model it (lot of work) as it only exists as a single concept image in the game's folders.

If you still need terror and / or base defense missions, I have both here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9z2pocwdmf62zac/base%26terror_missions.rar The saves are at the start of the missions though, so you'd still have to play them out. Teams are well equipped (early game) so shouldn't be difficult.