Went

I have placed first base at Arabia and second at Panama. Next month South America and Latin America rebelled But I want to repeat: I'm not complaining that the game is too hard on insane. Yes, it's hard, but this was my first try after release, so it is normal to be defeated such easily. My claim to the game mechanics itself, to the win/lose criteria, and not to its settings. Victory and fail - this is weakest sides of the game. Trivial mechanics, lack of special content, any movies or even comics in reward. Just a screen "Game over, you win/lose".

Obviously have I saved the game in calm point and tried all of these solutions you offer to me. We have 8 xenonauts and 2 sebs (officer and soldier) in corvette pilot room. This room is full of chairs, walls, computers and other obstacles, so both aliens covered multiple times from any position I can get. My actions? 1. I rush to kill both sebs from point blank range. Nice - I'll get 2-3 reaction fire one-shots, and other soldiers will able even to kill one of them. Next turn survived seb will kill one more solider and on my turn I probably finish him too. Result - about 2-4 victims. Not acceptable. 2. I try to suppress them first from safe point. Yes, I can do this. half of my men lose all his TUs for this. Than rest rush in... but they are snipers, rocketeers or something like... OK, they rush and kill one or half. Next turn 1,5 sebs kill 1-2 my soldiers and supress rest. But, probably, next turn I'll finish them off. Result 1-2 guaranteed victims. Acceptable 1 or 2 times, but not every corvette I'll breach. 3. I stay at safe distance and open door from side, fire all rounds, close door. Due regeneration every turn I'll need to start process over the beginning. But from tenth try or some later I'll kill one seb. Then I will rush other, or use same tactics. Result - zero victims. Acceptable? Probably not. Because this "tenth try or later." But if I wish excellent result I must follow exactly such tactics. So my opinion is: "tactic, effective enough for insane difficulty is insanely boring". If you'll offer me more effective tactic than "door game", I'll admit my wrong.

How I can do this? Build one more base? It's take many time and money, whose never enough in insane. Yes, I see funding withdrawal, but look at "paragraph 1" - I have lack of funding, so I unable to build one more base, so I unable to intercept UFOs, so funding withdrawal will continue. This downgrading spiral is very easy to enter and I don't see any way to leave it. May be I just a bad player. Perhaps I had to build a second base in the first month, and not wait for the second, extending the zone of radar detection in the first. So the player must guess the path of progress, rather than choose it to his own?

Probably this is not balance issue. May be I didn't play well enough for insane difficulty (I was able to build only two bases, but region below second base had rebelled despite the fact that I started to shoot down there all the UFOs above). But this is game experience issue. Unexpected, humiliating defeat "because rules" rather angry me than throwing a challenge to try again.

Fail condition must be... "smooth", "soft", "analogous", rather than "immediate and binary". Adequate fail condition is obvious: player lost all of his bases. How can it happen? 3 conditions come to my mind: 1. Base captured by alien or collaborate forces due ground assault. 2. Base destroyed by alien or collaborate aircraft due aerial assault. 3. Base sold due player's bankruptcy. (Conditions 2 and 3 may not kill base instantly, but lead to lose of some structures). How region lose related to this? Aliens create at controlled area strong surface bases, rapidly launching strong aerial superiority and ground bombardment missions, especially on XCom bases placed nearby. Can player parry this? Yes. He can counterattack and destroy enemy bases until region return to calmness. So we get a lot smoother, adequate and atmospheric fail condition that occurs observable for the player.

There is no need C4 to break locked doors. One machine gun shot blow it out easily. Vent shafts blow even simpler.

"Region lost" mechanics is broken, IMHO. 1. There is no way to slow down or revert region losing if you have no base near it. At the same time, there are insufficient money to cover sufficient part of the world with bases (on insane level). Though, perhaps, I just miscast money. 2. When I lost region below my base, my base continue to work, consume money, but it became useless because no UFOs appear above it anymore. May I ruin or sell my base in this case? 3. When 4 of 4 regions lost you just got "game over" screen and no more. Enough that it sounds like a bombshell, so also does not provide any opportunity to defend or parry this problem. My soldiers are unbeatable, my 2 bases around the world hit down any UFO entering their radar range, any terror or alien base immediately solved, I have enough money to keep all my personnel and structures, my scientists are near to find the solution of alien problem... and then I lost entire game! Any attack of my base, just "game over, guy, you wasted two days of your life because we don't implement some smarter ultimate fail condition".

X is being OP against ~X (!X, not X, -X, everything else X), do you understand me? Everything plays well but Sebillians play bad. Not too challenging, just too boring. Veteran is too easy for me - nothing about challenge at all.

I have predicted such answer No, it's not, AI is foolish as hell. Seb (or several of sebs) sit behind the pilot chair, but my troops stand behind door in 4-5 tiles. I can "open door - shoot - close door" until on some turn (10th or 20th) I will be at last so lucky to kill him in one round. So current AI dooms seb to be flawlessly killed and me to be flawlessly bored. However, the enemy would come to the door, open it and kill 2-3 soldiers at point blank range. This is too costly for insane level. I tried play in this manner (no reloads, fair play, avoiding of use AI bugs e.t.c.) and after second month lost 2 of 4 regions. It would be much more interesting if on insane difficulty we would have the same rules as on normal, but hard money limit. The need to choose between wages and save money a lot more interesting than necessity to thresh one lizard a dozen rounds in a row.

I'm sure you're right. May be health bonus not an evil itself. But in the conjunction with regeneration it make sebillians boring and uninteresting opponent.

Sorry, but never seen this. Also, if they unable to retreat, they must just attack and die like officer, but not sit and cry behind UFO cumputer. All alien AI now aimed to slow down the game, make the completion of the mission as long as possible. This is wrong. Opponent player must attempt to inflict the most damage in less time. Then the fight will be dynamic and exciting. Something like is implemented in urban terror missions.

Yes, I did this. And next turn supressed sebillian just one-shoted my soldier covered behind some obstacle. But, of course, I admit that sebillian is quite killable. Shields, plasmas, MAGs and atomic bombs will work too. When I say "sebillian is OP", I make this in the comparison with other enemies. I kill all other enemies easily and getting fun from this process I like to fight with Caesians, Androns, Reapers. But Sebillians make my butt to burn. They just sitting behind covers and eat my ammo and time. This is balance problem. It would be great if a wounded sebillian retreat and hide from the player to recover his health, but not stood as unwavering statue, shrugging off all attempts to kill him.

How I can get Scatter Laser up close to alien when he counterattack and one-shot kill anyone in range? Scatter takes about 80% TU's to fire. And don't forget - we play ironman mode and have only one chance. Shotguns? Imagine your carabeneer is dead

Yes, there is a way to kill Sebillian. You can stun it with several stun grenades or blow up with 10 rocket launchers e.t.c. But imagine you playing ironman mode, you wiped out area around UFO and you lost half of your squad. Now you breaching UFO and you don't have gunner, boomsticks, 10 stun greandes and missiles. You have several riflemans and a sniper. Sebillian hidden somewhere inside UFO and you can not kill him from the distance. Only you enter inside Sebillian counterattacks you and one-shot one or two your soldiers. Your reaction fire, covers? No, Sebillian knows nothing about it. He just penetrate all your defense and then hide somewhere again. And again, and again.

2x laser rifles, 1x scatter laser, 2x precision rifles, 1x alenium missiles, 2x ballistic rifles + grenades. Why 10 rounds? Because if you don't kill it in one round, it regens to 100% on the next. Yep, regen is root of all evil.

Almost everything But most problem is sibillian officer.

Insane difficulty. Alien races are totally unbalanced: 1. Caesians. Balanced well in the early phase of game, but later became too survivable for their constitution. 2. Sibillians. Totally overpowered. Especially in later phase, especially officers, especially inside of UFO. My 8 soldiers were unable to kill one sibillian for 10 turns shooting him from 5-6 tiles. 3. Androns. Too weak for their terminator-like look. Much weaken than sibillian. Сoupled with ignorance of covers and low accuracy they are simplest targets in the game. 4. Harradians. They have exaggerated vision range. 5. Reapers. All OK. 6. Light Drones. Absolutely useless. Weapons balanced good, but Jackal and Wolf armor practically useless - my soldiers die in one alien plasma rifle shot. Draw your conclusions, gentlemen. Half-year balance work has left too many flaws in the game. As before, insane level not challenging - it is notorious and labor-like. Series of similar missions in the middle of the game cause irritation rather than interest. Yes, many of bugs and balance holes fixed. This is great. But game did not become a tactical or economic simulator worthy of its predecessor. This is simulator of expectations, of hopeless waiting the moment when the game will show me something that I have not seen half an hour ago. P.S. Aerial fight really rocks. For some reason, it generates more adrenaline than the rest of the gameplay together.

Yes, you are right. I mentioned view distance. All idea of squad-vision is unnatural (sniper didn't see his target but have 95% probability to hit it). But this is already part of the game and I don't think it is will be good to try change something there.

Played a little (in the late phase of game). I liked v20 and I don't like v21 (especially enemies firing outside of LOS). Probably I placed my message in wrong topic, but it relates to any patch or build after V20 stable.

My though is "all experimental balance in 21-st version is futile, it will not fix anything because gameplay problems elsewhere".

I think, V20 Stable has good firing balance and there is no need for any further experiments with it. There are many of other real problems with ground gameplay, and these problems can not be fixed just by numbers tweaking: 1. Boring, passive AI. Aliens just sitting in rows behind cover and ... DIE! Even if they just will randomly roam the map, their behavior will be smarter and more dangerous for player. Moreover, aliens take same positions every time on same map. For example, 2-nd and 3-rd floors of battleship UFO all times empty. 2. Late aliens have too much HP. Even sectoids likes walking tanks. This make fight them boring, but not more dangerous. 3. There is no gameplay progress from battle to battle. No psy (real psy, not this annoying "DREAD"), no flying monsters, no enemy tanks (drones not a tanks - they are pieces of alien junk), no proximity mines, no incineration ammo, no smart rockets, no close-range enemies (except reapers, but they are not enemies, they are RELOAD-TRIGGERS), aliens do not use top floors etc. We just getting larger numbers and another sprites. 4. Soldier leveling is too effective. Even on normal difficulty newbies almost useless against veterans. This leads to inadmissibility of veterans loses, which leads to reloads or slow, notorious gaming. You need to make loses almost unavoidable, but acceptable for player. Also there is no "specialization leveling": soldier, which all game was a sniper, can in one second become an elite machine-gunner. 5. Final mission is a shame. Buggy, trivial, uninteresting, with no new content and senseless. Why we didn't just not carry fusion bomb to enemy dreadnought instead of assault team? I think, final must be more complex than one mission. For example, player will need to build some protective shield around the planet by constructing several generators. Aliens will try to attack and destroy them, so player will need to defend construction by rocket systems and garrisons. P.S. I understand, developers was tired with this project and want to finish it quick as possible. But if they leave all upper-mentioned questions with no answers, game will remain a disappointment, but not the "spiritual successor to the original X-COM".

I have black square instead of my Valkyrie dropship and I unable to deploy non-flying unit out there. Sure, this bug is well-known. It will be fixed in this hotfix or some later?

I see big black square instead of Valkyrie. It is a bug or just an unfinished asset?

Ouch, bad news for me. Of course, I have used this tactic in the beginning and killed one or two Caesans in control room. And I got many plasma holes with my troops and emptied almost all ammunition. But then I just tired to do this I want to play, but not to waste my life on the boring, repetitive grind.

It will be nice if I will see objectives with their completion level during the play. I don't want to guess what is "energy core" and what will happen when I'll push "abort mission" button. But even worse problem is horde of aliens in control room which are impossible to kill. Each of them has about 250 hps (like my armored tank, lol!) and heavy plasmas/snipers. Please tell me - which assault tactics intending developers when create such tough alien opposition?