Goroth Obarskyr

Indeed, the ability to make your own entrances is quite valuable.

^this^ If this were the case maybe we could recruit some rookies that knew which direction to hold the gun. It would be an op advantage that we players do not need. (jk jk) Ok one more thing about rotating soldiers is that it's not well conveyed at all by the game in its current state. Do rotation costs apply when a soldier spins and shoots an alien behind him? Is it included in movement costs? Are TUs charged for diagonally adjacent squares as well or just orthogonally adjacent squares only? Of course as you play you learn these things, but at least for the sake of consistency there should be a tooltip somewhere. Keep in mind that when X-com came out in the 90's it came with a thick manual. I promise I'm done now. No need to have Mytheos reach dangerous blood pressure levels

You can postulate and make up as many numbers as you want, but for me having actually played the game like this, it doesn't feel like it's gotten hugely easier. Like I said before, balance is ongoing, if free turning were implemented it would be peaches compared to balancing equipment and the AI. I think we've reached as much as is going to be resolved in this thread, and this is the part where we 'agree to disagree.'

@Mytheos My point in the previous post was that what we're talking about here is removing gameplay, not adding it. My feeling is that rotation costing TU is unnecessary. In my opinion, a lot more often it just means you're counting in your head cost of rotation in addition to movement so you can get that snap shot off at an alien you can already see than prohibiting you from spotting an alien, allowing them to "ambush" you or whatever. I realize it's a very minor element to change but I think ground combat plays a little more smoothly with it taken out. Also, it does not suddenly break the balance of ground combat, nor does reenacting Swan Lake with your soldiers become the most effective strategy. I think the significance is being blown a little out of proportion here.

The short answer is no. However... As I understand it currently, maps are not randomly generated per-se, but there is room for some variation within the same map by random selection of submaps (all the buildings, trees walls, etc...). Each map consists of a kind of layout as well as a number of submaps which can be interchanged so long as they have the same dimensions. You can read more about how maps work on the wiki. It's also worth mentioning that right now there is a community map pack with a huge number of maps to keep you from getting bored

That must make everyone right, then?

1. It definitely does function as a small TU bonus. I'd say the gap between rookie's and veterans is not accentuated by the ability to freely rotate, however. 2. I'm suggesting that TU cost for rotation is an unnecessary gameplay element, so yes, free rotation adds no gameplay whatsoever. 3. One way is not more realistic than the other, just that TU cost or no, one way is no more so than the other. 4. My point is not that stopping and looking around costs too many TU, the reason that I suggested this is that I think it's a factor that isn't relevant to the game often enough to be justified. Think of it like optimizing the experience with a minimum of moving parts. 5. As far as making the game more forgiving, balance is ongoing and any shift this might cause can be ironed out in future versions of the game. If you're worried about the game being too easy, weapons and the flaccid AI performance are the real factors you should be worried about. There's not as much reason to do this as you would think, all I can say is to try it out for yourself. Unless you're playing with a squad of 3 soldiers, I think this idea of 360º vision breaking the game is kind of unfounded.

So I've been playing the game a bit with turning at 0ap. I've been trying to test correctly, which is of course trying to abuse the advantage as much as possible. Really the biggest difference is just in how much a lone soldier can scout at once. That being said, the practice of sending a lone soldier maximum distance into the fog of war and then spinning him/her around is sometimes just a quick way to get them killed. It's still much more beneficial to move up cautiously with the squad members supporting and spotting for each other. I find that free rotation doesn't change fundamentally how encounters with aliens occur. When entering an undiscovered area my method has always been to enter with enough TU's to look around, and/or shoot, and/or move back to safety if there happens to be an alien present, and having free rotation hasn't really altered this practice at all for me. The fact that squad sight is such an integral part of ground combat means that there isn't much opportunity for the infamous 360º sweeps to come into play. The real difference in the game with having free rotation is not whether or not you spot an alien or walk into oncoming fire, but in whether or not your soldier gets that snap shot off or has enough TU to run it that last tile into cover. Obviously I haven't played through the whole game, this is just my opinion after playing the game both ways on fresh saves, on the limited set of official maps. If anyone else tries playing the game like this, I'd be interested in what you think

Along the same logic troops currently have effective 360º vision but at the cost of a few TU's. Sure, you could stop after every tile and do a 360º sweep if it didn't cost anything, but any cautious player right now is going to stop and spend the TU's to look both ways when they pass obstacles that may be hiding aliens. Aliens will still have the opportunity to shoot you from beyond your vision range or of course shoot you in the back if you forget to stop and check while moving a large distance. I think the only thing that would change is that combat would be more streamlined and you would get 1 or 2 extra tiles of movement out of it. While soldiers would be able to check all around themselves, they can't be looking everywhere at once like in the Firaxis XCOM. Once the turn is the aliens' you still have to hope you're looking the right way. I'll definitely try editing my config.xml and testing this though, thanks for letting me know about that!

Now, I understand that this is the way it's always been done since the original X-com, but is having it cost 1TU to rotate a Soldier 1 tile really worth having in the game? You might say that it's unrealistic to have free rotation, but to that I say that the current system doesn't allow for all kinds of things, like facing sideways while running a different direction, walking backwards, etc... In some ways free rotation would be more realistic because it could be an umbrella functionality that could account for any number of ways soldiers would walk around in combat other than marching straight forward. So if not for the purpose of "realism" why is this part of the game? Does it add any gameplay function? It's just another idiosyncrasy leftover from X-com. I remember my first time playing X-com and carefully calculating in my head how many TU's I needed to arm and throw a grenade, only to fail to take into account the cost for rotating, leaving my poor rookie standing there with a live grenade. New players are unlikely to grasp how rotation works right away, I think. I know I didn't. It's not like soldiers wouldn't still have cones of vision, giving the AI opportunities to blindside the player and good stuff like that. I think it would be interesting to at least give it a go just to see how it feels gameplay-wise without it. TL;DR: TU cost for rotating adds nothing to the game except x-com nostalgia flavor and it should be removed.

I agree, new hidden movement screen is really annoying. Let's hope they fix it soon.

Hey there, I've been enjoying all the crazy maps you guys have made, but I just played one where an alien spawned on a patch of arctic water. Unable to move, I put him out of his miserable existence. Check your spawn points and make sure aliens aren't appearing on top of things they shouldn't.

Generally after an alien turn/hidden movement, UFO's often will be plainly visible and you will be able to see the modules inside them through the walls. I disabled the hidden movement image in my xenonauts game directory if that has anything to do with it.

I like this. It could be like the arctic implementation of the trails in the wheat fields. Also whoever mentioned the destructible patches of thin ice turning into water--great idea. This could be tactically exploited to block off certain paths to prevent the aliens from flanking you. Perhaps we could contrive similar things for other tilesets as well. Maybe something along the lines of the Starcraft 2 collapsible rock tower?

I kind of liked the oceans being black in the old one. I think that should stay, otherwise the new UI looks much better.