kabill

Yeah, this definately isn't just a UFO issue, as your last pic implies. I noticed when I was playing that it seems to happen at points where I imagine bits of the map (submaps?) border: This is especially obvious in pic 1, but also possibly the case in pics 2 and 3. I note that this is the case in the none UFO pic above (and would make sense with the UFO, since the problem is when crossing over into the UFO which presumably is treated like other submaps). EDIT: I'm wondering whether it's *random* submaps which are the problem. These two pics are from a terror mission where I know there are random submaps: Didn't notice it elsewhere on that map (that I was able to tell; terror missions are apparently now quite terrifying!).

Two issues with soldiers in elevated positions (i.e. on a second story of a building): 1) LOS seems a little off - I had aliens shooting, hitting and killing soldiers seemingly through the floor. I think I may have had some odd LOS from the floor my soldier was on to the ground, too. Sadly don't have a pic. 2) Shooting from an elevated position I managed to get the UI to give me a % to hit above 95 (indeed, above 100!): The soldier shooting is horizontally almost adjacent, but is elevated by one level (you can't see that in the picture). In case that matters at all. Didn't do any testing to see if this was a UI issue or whether in fact I had a 104% chance to hit, sadly (it didn't occur to me at the time; it was my last soldier!).

When you fail a Terror Mission, a text box comes but is incomplete:

Have now played up to mid-November. The first terror mission crushed me, giving me my first failed ground mission since I started playing. This was awesome. It was interesting to see the AI handling larger groups of aliens - it seems to be fairly good at keeping groups of aliens together (there was a hefty pack of 7-8 aliens all moving around the map together) and the higher accuracy of this version definitely saw some advantage going to the aliens now (compared with the early game where you're fighting mostly pistols). Also, although I lost I don't think this is a balance issue so much as less than solid play; I'm also contemplating getting armour earlier than I have been previously. Followed this with a downed Corvette - again the alien numbers and high accuracy made this an intense fight. I managed to pull through with only a single casualty, up until the game crashed. But it was a tough fight and if the AI had been more competent, I'd have been nursing many more bodies (as it was, a number of aliens had a tendency just to stand up and kneel down again). With this said, I think I'll reiterate what I said previously - the balance for me is feeling pretty solid at this point. Weapons are all useful in their respective roles and missions (beyond the initial Light Scout glut) are challenging. I've a few more specific points, though: Precision Rifles: What's going on with these? The version notes indicate that they have hypervelocity, but then also say that hypervelocity doesn't ignore cover any more. When playing, the UI seems to give me hit percentages which are ignoring the cover, but the number of misses I get seems to imply that the documentation is correct and cover is making a difference (and certainly I've seen plenty of Precision Rifle shots bounce of cover, which I never saw while hypervelocity was active previously). I've also seen some very low damage (~7-8) hits from a Precision Rifle - is this supposed to be the case? Early game missions: I got through the first two months of the game never seeing a UFO other than a Light Scout. I can't stress how tedious those missions got. Some of this is going to be 'fatigue' from having had many starts to the game in the last few weeks, but it got to the point that I almost wanted to stop playing. I'm glad I didn't, because once I got to some non-Light Scout missions, the game transformed tremendously. But there's a massive contrast been challenging and interesting battles when you get some of the bigger UFOs/Terror missions and the simplicity and ease of the Light Scout ones. I'm not convinced that this is a good thing. I noted in the release notes that Scout ships are supposed to occur earlier. I guess I got a little unlucky not encountering one/managing to engage one before November (actually, I'm still not sure I've seen one). If this can be made to happen even earlier and more reliably (first month?) I think that would be good to throw in some more challenging and interesting missions. Even the Light Scout missions could be changed for the better, though, by mixing up the crews so there's a variety of weapons, and maybe not having so many spawn and camp in the UFO (some of the maps could be really interesting, but often you'll encounter only a single alien outside the UFO, making the map basically pointless and making the mission easier as the Light Scout is simple to assault). UFO Door/Reaction Fire Bug: I was playing using a workaround for the UFO door/reaction fire bug. This made assaulting Light Scouts more interesting and less easy. I hope this can be fixed (easily). EDIT: I just remembered something which is probably a feature but I wanted to check in case it needs reporting as a bug. I had a building collapse. I was shooting a LMG at a hard-to-hit alien for several turns and suddenly I'm left with this: Is that supposed to happen?

Weapon accuracy is multiplied by soldier accuracy, so a weapon with an accuracy value over 100 simply gives you a base chance to hit which is higher than the soldier's raw accuracy (so, a soldier with 60 ACC has a base 72% chance to hit with an aimed rifle shot, for example). So yes, it does matter (up until the point that you get very high accuracy soldiers, anyway!). Ironically, given our previous discussions, I do agree with this, although it's only something I particularly noticed today while playing 19.6. I think there's a lot of other factors that play into this, though. I've not yet gotten away from fighting light scouts yet (in spite of being half way through October) so all the aliens are still armed with plasma pistols and have a tendency to shoot on burst (which will give them the least chance to hit, especially when shooting beyond effective range). Plus, early aliens have inferior aim to Xenonaut soldiers and are less numerous. I think when higher rank aliens with better weapons turn up, it should swing to being more even (maybe).

I'd thought this was an issue but have done some experimenting and have confirmed it. Basic issue: When you open UFO doors, actions on the outside of the UFO do not trigger reaction fire from aliens inside the UFO. This includes moving, shooting and grenade throwing. Tests: I opened a UFO door and took shots at aliens with various weapons (LMP, assault rifle, shotgun and pistol). Even when not suppressed and in line of sight of the shooter, no aliens took reaction shots against my units. I also did this using grenades. Finally, I made a unit move backwards and forwards in front of the doorway using their entire TUs for the turn. Again, no reaction fire. Moving into the UFO triggered reaction fire as would be expected, however, as did taking shots after moving into the UFO. Notes: When I reloaded the game *with the UFO doors already open* the issue disappeared and actions outside of the UFO triggered reaction fire as normal. However, if I closed the doors and ended turn, the issue would return on the following turn when I opened the doors again. I guess this has something to do with when and how the game is calculating LOS for the aliens, then? In case it is useful, I've uploaded a save file which is the one I was using for testing. If I've loaded the right one, the entire squad should be huddled around the UFO doors and the doors should be open. Shooting immediately will trigger reaction fire, as indicated above. However, if you close the doors and wait a turn, then open them again you will see that actions outside the UFO don't trigger reaction fire. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32960771/2013-08-03_13.05.38.sav P.S. It's possible this is only an issue for Light Scouts. When I encounter other UFOs (and doors, since it might be a door issue), I'll experiment to see if there is the same issue.

Definitely happens with stun grenades (I've had it happen several times this morning). But then, they work like smoke grenades I guess.

Playing through the first month, I think personally I'm happy with the balance between the starting weapons now. I've been running with a mix and it feels like all my soldiers have something to contribute and are useful. re: C4 - I had a go at using this to attack a Small Scout. Explodes the doors quite nicely, but at present there's no tactical advantage to this since it requires I have my soldiers further away from the door when the aliens are engaged and doesn't seem to cause suppression (not sure why this is - it might have been because the aliens were outside the suppression range. Will experiment). With this in mind, are there still plans to add reaction fire when opening UFO doors (if that was even ever made a plan)? Also - I'm going to do a proper test with this but I'm increasing certain that reaction fire against shots isn't triggering from when you shoot from outside a UFO (room in a UFO?). I thought this might have been due to line of sight, but I'm nearly certain that I had instances today when I should have got shot at. EDIT: Have just confirmed that there's a bug with reaction fire triggering when breaching a UFO. Shall post details on the bugs forum.

Regarding stun, what is it that you're finding particularly powerful about it? In my last game, I was making a lot of use of stun grenades but largely because of the raw damage they do rather than the cloud. A direct hit does ~40 stun damage, which is as good or better than the early direct fire weapons (plus at least some splash damage if you miss) and so I was largely just bombing them with a couple or shooting first to weaken them and finishing them off with the stun grenades. I can't honestly say I needed to be using the stun grenades; the accuracy buff was sufficient to resolve that. But I was in a situation where I could use them fairly easily because of the raw damage they do and since stunned aliens are worth a few more points, I figured I might as well. What I'm thinking therefore is that if the immediate damage was reduced or removed entirely, with the main damage being done by the cloud, I would almost certainly stop using them for this purpose. Would this be likely to reduce anyone else's use of them, or do you tend to make use of the cloud more?

I posted this on the bugs forum but Stinky thought it was one of the community maps and I thought I'd post it here in case the creator wants to fix it. In the image below, there's a door which opens into a wall and therefore is impassible, possibly because the two hangers are placed next to one another (Stinky's hypothesis):

Ta, thanks again!

Ta, I'll repost on the Maps board (I'm wondering whether I should load up a quick battle on all the different maps so I know which are the vanilla ones!).

Awesome. How much did you change the suppression values, out of wonder?

The short answer is that I thought I'd read it somewhere (which I guess is not true?). I'd spotted as well that some of the aliens don't have armour values (e.g. Caesean and Harridan) but their Xenpedia entries indicate that they wear armour, hence me concluding that alien armour hadn't been fully implemented yet. Apologies for the mistake.

Not sure if this is a map or submap issue, but there is a door which seems to be misplaced in some manner such that you can't move through it: There is a way to move through, but you move through at a point lower than where the door displays.

The downward facing tractor obstacle/submap does not restrict movement (see image below). I've observed this in several places so it does not seem to be map specific. Image: P.S. It's possible that this belongs to the community map pack; if so apologies for raising it here.

Awesome. Just wanted to check in case it wasn't supposed to be like that. Also, is the hidden movement screen bug supposed to be fixed in 19.5? I'd assumed not (as I'm still suffering from it), but your post seems to imply otherwise. Assuming it is supposed to be fixed, I'm playing in fullscreen mode at 1280x1024. Dxdiag file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32960771/DxDiag.txt

I'm hoping that when armour values get set for the aliens properly, ballistic weapons will be made less desirable more quickly (since armour will have a disproportionately large effect on less damaging weapons).

I have a question - during the alien's turn, is it supposed to be the case that you can see aliens acting if you have spotted them on your turn but no longer have LOS to them? I had a ground battle yesterday where I kept retreating my soldiers back around some rocks such that by the end of the turn none of my soldiers could see the aliens I was fighting. But during their turn, I could still see them moving, expect when they went into undiscovered (black) areas of the map. This seems like it shouldn't be the case, but wanted to check.

I've had this feeling too. Sadly, it's impossible to quantify in any useful way, but I've always been surprised how often my soldiers get hit through smoke. It could just be the way smoke grenades work, though, since they don't fill all the spaces and it's possible I just get shot through squares where only a couple are covered in smoke.

Ah, fair enough. I figured it would cap at 95% *after* all other modifiers. In which case, the final tier on the sniper weapons is actually useless for almost all soliders!

Ah - I'd not suggest accuracy be quite that high (certainly not in most circumstances). Apologies for writing cross-purposes. And, the example I gave - it was four aliens, not just one (sorry, I thought I'd made that even a tiny bit clear, which I hadn't). It still wouldn't have taken that long in the OG, though (whether that be because I killed all the aliens, or the aliens all killed me!).

A crouching soldier seems to suffer higher penalties from shooting at a target in cover. I assume this is intended behaviour. However, this penalty also seems to be applied when trying to shoot through smoke. In this image, my kneeling soldier cannot target through the smoke: In this image, my kneeling soldier again cannot target through the smoke: This final image is the same as image 2, but now my soldier is standing. They can now target through the smoke: In case it is not clear, there are no other intervening obstacles, which leaves the smoke as the apparent problem.

I've been playing with the vanilla accuracy for 19.5 (i.e. with the short-range accuracy buff but not the general buffs) and I've come to the conclusion that I have a preference for the full accuracy buff rather than just short-range modifiers. I thought that the short-range bonus might make enough of a difference on its own, but this doesn't seem to have turned out to be the case (for me, anyway). I'd agree with Stinky's point about the sniper rifles, though. The final accuracy tier seems irrelevant. It would be useful if they didn't get hypervelocity, since it would give you a better shot against targets in cover still. But if you're ignoring cover, it doesn't matter how high your accuracy is above 95% (ah - unless there's still a plan to add a penalty to hypervelocity).

You're assuming that buffing the present level of accuracy in Xenonauts would involve a change from B to A. In my experience, having played around with various accuracy levels which range from vanilla through to scores slightly above Aaron's mod, that's not true at all. The move is from B to somewhere in between, which is precisely where I think it should be. You write about 'feel', but I'm afraid for me that the 'feel' of Xenonauts at the moment is that soldiers suck, far more so than they did in the OG. So, by your own measure (since you've rejected mine, although I'm not convinced for a good reason) I disagree with you. As evidence, I've just finished a mission involving a long shootout lasting in excess of 10 turns, with a number of the combatants exchanging fire at a distance of ~7 squares. A fight like that would *never* happen in the OG; it would have been over in 2-3, tops. Such a long fight, with me emptying entire clips (I managed to count the number of turns by virtue of emptying an entire belt of LMG ammo!) doesn't feel in the spirit of the OG at all to me (if that's supposed to be a good thing; I'm not always sure it is). It's worth mentioning as well that there's more than soldier accuracy at stake here - the aliens suck (at hitting), too. And I'd argue that, if we're writing about 'feel' and invoking the OG, that's doubly problematic since the lethality of aliens in the OG was one of the most important aspects of the game. P.S. I'd be interested to know how you get on with nerfed suppression. It's something I'd been thinking about looking at too.