Max_Smirnov

1. You're forgetting that taking time to aim is represented by higher AP cost... Are you implying that a soldier is more accurate because he tries harder? And that he doesn't try that hard when firing an assault rifle, for example? I think your ideas are superfluous. Sniper rifles are unfit for CqC because of high AP cost, awful reaction time, low ammo reserves and lack of rapid fire. In short: LOGIC. Adding an extra, purely artificial mechanic to further decrease that usefulness is an insult to the existing combat system and the player, in my opinion. 2. Psionic attacks by Caesans are rare indeed, especially if your bravery is any good. Main psionic attackers are SPOILER ALERT, um, let's say, the Etheral-equivalents.

About the shotgun issue, I'd like to kindly point out that according to Xenopedia, all aliens are wearing highly effective light ballistic armor. So using buckshot would be highly ineffective, and as for slugs, well, the current damage caused by shotguns seems to work quite well, maybe even favouring shotguns a little.

Please. With all due respect, Sir, this is a retarded idea, plain and simple. I know it is popular in the industry, preoccupied with casual players, but please, let's reconsider the objectives of the game, okay? Is the objective of the game: a) destroying the aliens b) being nice to the aliens If the answer is a), the only conceivable (and thankfully unreachable) 'sweetspot' is intercepting and shooting down every UFO immediately after it appears and taking every alien alive for extra points, while not allowing a single human life to be lost. Yet it seems that for some reason, this kind simple elegance is not enough. I can't understand that. First you show the less experienced players their place, by making the air combat extremely hard, then you're trying to keep them in the game by rewarding the lack of skill? An experienced player, on the other hand, will try to find what makes the aliens more active, and what doesn't, so his or her objective will be to cheat the system, not to defeat the alien invasion. Also, there is already one positive feedback that 'rewards' ineptness - the more territories you lose, the easier it gets to defend the remaining ones. I think this is already more than enough. Shooting down UFO's keeps your funding levels high and allows to expand to thwart new waves of aliens. And provide money to cover for mistakes. Not shooting them down and losing fights leads to lower funding. I don't think any extra mechanics, timers, tickers etc. are really needed. Because feedback loops quickly run out of conrol, and produce crazy results, simple.

So yeah, the BALLISTIC shotgun is buffed all right, but its futuristic counterparts are still inferior in terms of range AND damage when compared to the basic rifles of the same tier. And they're offering no extra advantages to make their existence justified. Oh yeah, reaction fire, right. It's quite unimportant in this game since it's single shot only and out of about 50+ instances of my reaction fire I observed during my last playthrough, never ever it resulted in killing or even thwarting an alien. They're just too tough for that. Also, I'm confirming it too, I have seen it multiple times, machineguns always fire their reaction with single shot. Also, I know geoscape doesn't belong here, but you must realise that taking away two missiles from each MiG will just force players to deploy more of them? Instead of a single pair, flying two sorties with 3 each. They're bombers, they don't need to enter dogfights, so they can be deployed in any number regardless of the 3-plane group limit. All in all I think you're looking for balance in a horribly wrong direction here.

Oh I'm not talking about taking on interceptors on their own, without the battleship. That's easy. In any case, everything is more or less easy with 3 Marauders. The problem is to manufacture them in large quantities and on time. I wasn't using rockets since I'm only using torpedoes, useless against Interceptors. Because if the Marauder takes even 1% damage, you CAN'T rearm it. And light missiles are again, useless against big ships. About the Valkyrie drop pods, well. The idea might be cool but in reality, you land in the middle of the field, with little choice of the LZ, with no cover, and the aliens get the first turn. Not too sweet if you ask me. Oh yeah, and for me, the battleships started to appear around early February I think.

I just "finished" campaign on the current beta build (on Normal) and here's my analysis of the geoscape part of the game... 1. The game has two distinct phases, basically pre-battleship phase, where I was able to easily destroy any UFO with F-17s and MiGs, and the battleship phase, where the aforementioned machines suddenly lose any meaning. I had 4 bases, 3 F17s and 2 MiGs each. MiGs are easy to produce if you have cash, so that was no problem. I was using F-17s to knock out escorts (if any), then sending MiGs for the kill. Due to constant upgrades in missile warheads, I encountered no UFO that could withstand 8 torpedoes (even the ones that destroy 2 with their point defense), and similarly, Heavy Fighters were easy enough to knock out with 1 missile to force them into a roll, followed by well-timed two missiles and cannon fire. I hardly ever lost an aircraft. Then, the Battleship/Interceptor combo appeared and suddenly, my air fleet stopped working. Knocking out 2 interceptors with 3 F-17s IS possible, but not when a Battleship covers them. But that wasn't even the main problem. Battleships are the first UFOs that are faster than MiGs so chasing them turned impossible. After losing several air combats, I've decomissioned my entire fleet and started to mass-produce Marauders. No half-measures could do, I had to build two bases solely dedicated to manufacture Marauders (90 technicians each) and still, first two months were a disaster. Only when I had three groups of three Marauders each, I have regained the control of the skies. Still, it required flying three sorties agains each group, knock out Interceptors, retreat, carry six torpedoes, retreat, and finally carry six more torpedoes to finish the battleship off. I tried to engage them with gauss cannons, but it was a pretty much futile endavour. Even after launching 4 Fusion Torpedoes (two hitting, one plane was drawing the BS's attention and couldn't fire) and spending all cannon ammo on the battleship, it required two further sorties to finish it off, so I stopped trying to save fuel. And this is another problem, my Marauders were taking some damage vs. Interceptors (with Plasmas, as much as 20-25%, with Mags, no more than 5%). You can't refuel a damaged plane, which I don't exactly like (you should be able to refuel planes damaged up to 10-15%, I think), and Marauders take ages to repair (shouldn't the repair times be per % of HP lost, not per flat number?) 2. The Corsair is completely useless. It requires a pretty big investment in time and money, offering only modest improvements. There is little it can do that F-17 can't, so only fully replacing F-17s with Corsairs would net any advantage. Still, such a move would be impractical due to long construction time and substantial cost. If I built a fleet of Corsairs, I'd have means to knock out Interceptors, but, since there is no faster replacement for MiG, I wouldn't be able to do much versus Battleships. By the time you can build Corsairs, doing so would mean no weapons for the troops. When you are finally able to deploy an industrial base large enough to build fleets of aircraft, the Marauders are around, and they're so utterly awesome there is no point of building any other fighters. 3. The dropships. Man, talk about a letdown. I actually lost interest in playing after finally trying out the ultimate one, Valkyrie. While this belongs to the ground combat topic, I must say that increases in squad size, while useful, aren't that critical. And the innovative Valkyrie deployment method actually is disanvantageous compared to the normal one. But the main problem is SPEED. While Charlie is unreastically fast (why? Isn't it just a helo? Drop it to 350 kph, to keep immersion , and allow an improved dropship to be researched early), the other dropships gain almost no increases in speed, which is a major letdown. A game is about work and reward, and I daresay, the dropships are the biggest reward of all. UFO had the Avenger, which was pretty much OP, but, dammit, it was pretty much the final reward for playing. I guess that adding more ships at this point is pretty much impossible, but the game loses out a lot by making all the dropships too similar. Increase the differences in speed, remove or improve the "drop-pod" system and maybe add some combat means to the better dropships (maybe an antimissile system + cannon, so they at least could stand up to a lone small ufo?), that'd make the game much more fun. 4. As far as the funding goes, I have no issues whatsoever. Even if you allow yourself to lose a couple of regions, you can easily make up for that elsewhere by shooting down all the UFOs and doing it fast. Before the battleship phase comes in, that is. I particularly like the constant money drain caused by the alien bases, that way you're able to quickly find out where the base is and send scouts to find it. Although aliens building a base on Week 1 is pretty unfair; they shouldn't be building any before their bigger ships appear, right? - Max