jazzglands

I think this was an unmet kickstarter stretch goal. I'd love to see it, but I don't know if the devs will incorporate it.

Aliens reaction-firing at airborne soldiers is a known bug.

They are called foxtrots the science chief wants to F the aliens. And no I don't have a problem with Condor. They're big, strong (as far as birds go) birds even if they're scavengers. At least when it comes to US military hardware, we tend to pick names like Condor.

I used to believe as you did, before I became a professional programmer who had to actually sit down and design a complicated project. It's clear you are at best a student of the field and at worst an armchair designer with no experience or expertise and a greatly inflated sense of his own knowledge. If I am wrong and you do have this level of expertise, then I hope you make your own X-COM clone. For a developer of your obvious skill and experience I would expect it no later than September of this year. I look forward to enjoying it.

Doesn't seem like I have that permission. Do you know of a reputable file sharing site?

Occasionally I see a crash at around Oct 30, 1979 on the current beta release. According to the dialog box, the reason is a pure virtual function call somewhere. It's intermittent, I've only seen it happen when the geoscape speed is set to 4x, and I have a save if you want it.

Why would they want feedback about balance changes on an old build? Also, I went until the end of october before I got my first game crash. Your mileage may vary of course, but I think you should just stick with it.

If you hate stat grinding, you could just do what I do and not stat-grind. Same with any optional optimization mechanic: as long as there's a difficulty level where it's not necessary to win, then a player has the option of not doing that thing. It's not like there's a leaderboard or multiplayer or anything so why does it matter that those who wish to stare at their screens grinding all day can stare at their screens grinding all day?

I endorse this plan. Aliens should be able to shoot down walls and cover like humans can, but there comes a point where it seems silly for them to attempt it. Something as simple as a range restriction or hit% restriction could do a lot to alleviate that. Perhaps the AI could have the aliens advance toward the humans if they can't get a reasonable shot off. That would make it important for the player to act aggressively and take out enemies as quickly as they could (or get themselves set up in a defensive area of the map) in order to keep from being surrounded.

I like this. It removes the prohibitive cost of air combat without requiring the devs to add in a bunch of new mechanics this late in the process. I'd say that advanced aircraft should not be free though. With free condors, the player has all the strategic tools necessary to protect their expensive planes.

Yeah but sometimes they try to shoot through multiple walls from the other side of the base or other such ridiculousness. I get that the AI is probably just trying to blow down the wall with plasma weapons or penetrate them with HV weapons, but it seems like there should be a range or number of walls or something after which the aliens doing bother with that.

Hah. This is a known thing though. Balancing air combat and the geoscape in general is the next step for the developers.

Regarding Chris's original design ideas: I like having to deal with staffing, but I don't think my enjoyment would be seriously impaired if I didn't have to deal with it. There's still a lot of strategic play on the geoscape with multiple bases, equipment management, squad management, and so on. I don't think I'd really miss having to hire/fire my techies. A lot of people have been talking about controlling upkeep, but it seems like you could just tie the upkeep cost of labs/workshops to the amount of scientists/engineers currently working on a project. It's the same thing as judiciously hiring and firing your techs, but you don't have to to the busywork of clicking around the hire/fire buttons. Eight soldiers per barracks seems pretty low to me. I'd say the base should start with two and the barracks building should be 1x1 if you really wanted 8 soldiers per barracks. That could just be me and my play style though I guess. Overall, those ideas seem like it would gear the play more toward managing your buildings and less toward managing staff/balance sheets and I think that's a positive change.

You mean gameplay over simulation. Perfect simulation is not the goal of any game. Except perhaps Dwarf Fortress . As others have said, "gaminess" that adds to the enjoyment is not a bad thing. I personally enjoy searching for the UFO.

It's just 2-D sprites. Should work fine.

I think that realism is still preserved for the initial screens. By the time you reach the top of the tech tree you're evenly-matched with the aliens so something a little more bright and advanced-looking makes a lot of sense to me.

It's XCOM with a UI that isn't horrible. That's really all I wanted, even though I appreciate and enjoy the 3-D Enemy Unknown remake quite a lot. There's still a lot of balancing and redesign going on, but it all seems positive so far and I have no reason to believe that the devs won't perfect it given time.

I think they "scout" it by flying over the base.

I once missed with a stun grenade then had a unit pathfind his way through the stun gas. He passed out instantly. When I got back to base, I nicknamed him "Dozer."

That would be like saying your ground troops should know how to secure an area and you shouldn't have to control them in order to succeed at a mission. It wouldn't be much of a strategy game without any strategy.

I came across a line of sight bug today on this version. It looks like a "destroyed floor" tile next to a "destroyed wall" tile causes line of fire (but not line of sight) to be blocked. Screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/I1oWnno.jpg I have a save file of a battle where this bug is present if you want it, but I don't know where to host it. Edit: It's not the machinery that's blocking the shot. You can tell by the way the line is drawn. Also if you try to aim past the "broken floor" tile a few spaces up and right from where the soldier's LOF is broken you'll see the line is broken there as well.

Darn. I guess I'll just make my own.

No, it's just you who should be a woman. dohohoho Really though isn't the quartermaster a butch woman? Even if not, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing a woman in one of those screens. There can be female soldiers after all. Edit: I do have two questions about the new UI though. Some of the soldier stats have two bars: one light and one dark. What is that supposed to represent? Will it be possible to tell which soldiers aren't at full HP in the new UI? I couldn't see anything like that in the mockups, and it looks like the "personnel" screen has been eliminated and split up into the other screens.

Maybe world governments are just doing the same thing we are: crafting small batches of prototypes and giving them to the soldiers that are sent to fight aliens.