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True. Just feels odd that a rifle starts it's drop around the length of a building though. Not complaining. Just saying. It's tolerable in a game. Anyways, read the bottom half of the post. What do you think of the random icons in fog of war idea? Or post an idea of your own. Much more likely to see some changes if you post some suggestions for solutions to your request instead of leaving them to their own devices. And more likely to get something you may actually like. Follow? I'm honestly ok with the way things are if they added more cover. Was just trying to figure something out that the masses may like too. You know, something that could easily be done without taking up too much of their time.

Been racking my brain about a solution for this for awhile. Trying to figure out what would fix it without feeling too unrealistic. Maybe that's why I can't think of anything that would work and feel well. Trying to keep some realism in projectile physics in a video game is just lolz. Maps are just too small to support any realism with drop-off rates. Almost all of those weapons in a realistic world setting WOULD be able to shoot across these little maps and be fairly accurately with little to no drop-off. And soldiers LOS would be be even further than the entire map. So screw realism. This is the only thing I could come up with but I can see how it could still be somewhat abused. Although it would still be much better than what it currently is: Not allowing full vision of forward troop-sited enemies from rear troops by using fog of war and some kind of "cloned" enemy image when the rear troop is your active one. For instance, a forward troop has an enemy sited but when you select your rear sniper it applies fog of war again for the sniper's normal vision and range, BUT 3+(dependent on range to sniper) enemy icons show in the general area in the fog of war representing imperfect accuracy(or guessing) vs enemies he can't actually see. You could target and shoot at any one of these icons as if they where all enemies and If you get lucky, you could still hit and kill it. But it would add somewhat of a guessing game and the decision of weather or not to waste ammo at all comes into play. I for one, have no problem with the enemy using the current squad site. Vs a human they need any help they can get. The problem is, they will sometimes shoot at our troops even without having ANY visuals at all on us. At times, they seem to just randomly shoot at anyone on the map which just feels cheep(especially true in enemy bases). This would be fine IF they weren't so accurate with their shots so it felt like a guess rather than AI cheese. Maybe this is supposed feel like they have cameras up in their bases all over the place? Even so, it's not cool

Agree with you. Some maps really are just a snipe fest(not enough cover to flank like you said). I never thought about the range being the problem until you mentioned it. Honestly, I started using the hunter for cover moving forward but that only works for a few turns if your lucky. I've officially given up on this last build though. Don't think I even got to lasers before it got crash happy so I wouldn't know ether if they changed it. Hard to tell how bad it is on the first weapons because their damage is already quite low. Here's to hoping the next build is a stable one.

Like I said, my game is modified in so many areas.... Not even sure what the accuracy penalty for moving and shooting in the same turn with heavies is. It must be awfully large though. Entirely possible that we play snipers differently to. I move often with mine so I'm always cover to cover with just enough AP's to fire 1-2 pistol rounds and no snipe rounds. Maybe 1-2 low damage shots isn't worth the time to some. Is for me though, sense it's saved my troops more times than I can remember. Aliens have a much larger advantage than normal in my config file so I need every bit of help I can get .

Ah, I see what you're saying now. Sounds like we just need better AI opponents honestly. Instead of aliens that hide miles away like little girls. See that's what happens when people whine about blind firing aliens... they don't do shit now when they could be squad siting just like our troops instead of sitting there like dip shits. You're saying you want a more extreme penalties for shooting outside the weapons range right? I could get on board with that sense the aliens AI is such a puss at the moment. Should be an awfully simple change for them I would think.

Sorry I'm not the best at explaining things. What I meant with pistols still being a viable backup weapon for heavies is simply TU costs. The larger weapons take so many TUs to fire that they leave you almost completely vulnerable if you move at all because you can't move and fire effectively. This is where the pistols come in. If that makes sense at all. Not very good at explaining myself. But it feels pretty good if you try it out. Granted I'm using those numbers on a highly modified game where everything is rebalanced according to weight, projectile speed(lead times), and general weapon types. General idea behind what I did with my weapon stats: Weight controls aiming times, burst fire accuracy, and reloading time(to some extent). Projectile speed controls, general accuracy(relates to how hard it is to lead targets), and mitigation values. Weight and Projectile speeds I figured had less to do with weapon types and more to do with the effects on our troops using them. Which seems to work well for a benchmark to work off of that helps keep some balance between the weapon types. Unfortunately, you can probably guess that trying to completely balance weapons with some "formula" doesn't always work. You'll still need to fine tune weapons with some trial and error in the field. In all honesty though, weapon balance really doesn't make much difference because they made the game so easy to mod. I'm just hoping they release a fairly stable game so modders have a good platform to work from. A few months after release, I'm sure there will be plenty of "re-balance" mods for everyone's tastes. As far as the accuracy formula goes, I think it's fine where it is. They just need to explain, in depth, how it works. The more complicated it gets, the harder it will be for people to mod or even understand. I'll try to explain it real quickly but it may just makes things worse lol. OK this is all based on a perfect 100 accuracy soldier, on open ground, with perfect unhindered vision(nothing altering vision like smoke or objects). In your weapons_gc.xml you'll see a "props range" which would be better described as "Optimal Range". Props range refers to the range at which a particular weapon's accuracy and damage will start to decline when fired beyond(this has no correlation with your soldier's stats). Still with me? Hope so. Let's use the basic pistol for reference. I can't remember what the default pistol values are so I'll just post my current ones. <Weapon name="weapon.pistol" bulletType="normal" emptySound="Empty Click 1"> <props range="16" hands="1" recoil="0" weight="2" isHeavy="0" clipSize="12" reloadAPCost="20" reloadSound="Weapon Pistol Reload" reactionModifier="1.75" hpLimit="60" /> <SingleShot sound="Weapon Pistol Single" delay="0.6" suppressionValue="9" suppressionRadius="1"> <Set1 ap="11" accuracy="40" /> <Set2 ap="21" accuracy="60" /> <Set3 ap="31" accuracy="80" /> </SingleShot> <GUIImage name="gui/weapons/pistol" /> <GroundImage name="grounditemimages/pistol.png"/> <Ammos> <Ammo name="ammo.ballistic.pistol" type="kinetic" damage="15" mitigation="5"> <Projectile spectre="projectiles/bullet/bullet" speed="800"/> Now lets go through a few of those values and how they effect accuracy and work in combat: props range="16" (The optimal range at which the weapon can fire without loosing accuracy or damage. Read below for more on how this relates to actual accuracy values.) <Set1 ap="11" accuracy="40" /> (This value relates to the first "step" of aiming time if you fire the weapon with the lowest amount of TUs used. 11 TUs in this case, plus any additional movement time added on. In relation to "props range", you will have a 40% chance to hit an unobstructed target at 16 tiles(the weapon's props range or "Optimal Range") with a soldier possessing a perfect 100 accuracy stat. If your troop is firing beyond 16 tiles in range, the accuracy will decline in amounts relative to the actual distance past 16 tiles the target is. Beyond your soldier's control) <Set2 ap="21" accuracy="60" /> (The second step in accuracy which takes a few more TUs) <Set3 ap="31" accuracy="80" /> (The final step which uses the most TUs to fire but has the best chance to hit. Note; the default game doesn't have a third aiming value for pistols so you likely won't see this in your xml unless you've added it.) damage="15" (The damage value shows the "raw" damage of the weapon(before any armor or mitigation) that will be done to the target as long as your troop is not beyond the props range value. In this case 16 tiles. If your troop is firing beyond 16 tiles in range, the damage value is then lower the farther out the target is.) Anyways, hopefully this is a bit easier to understand... wordy as hell I know. There are more variables at work here like crouch vs prone but this should be enough to start modding weapons to your liking. Also, the reason you never see the accuracy values in the xml in actual combat is simply that they are all based on a 100% accuracy soldier. So you will usually see around 50-60 percent of these values with your starting troops. Needless to say, your soldiers can become quite god-like IF they survive enough battles.

Ahh, maybe that's the problem. Can't remember if I was only one tile behind or maybe 2-3. It always showed 100% to hit the guy in front. Although I've modded the accuracy on weapons so much that maybe that screwed with it somehow. Thanks guys. I'll pay more attention next time when the new version gets released. Hopefully a more "stable version". Given up tell then. The terrain levels I was talking about was just when exiting the drop ship(ramp). Although, there are so many graphical oddities that it almost seems there are different "levels", especially on the farm maps with all the screwy hedgerows.

Post your funny xenonaut moments here so we can all get a good laugh Here's one of mine from a few weeks ago. AI turn: Farmer runs behind one of my 3 remaining solders. Farmer shoots at alien in fog of war. Soldier Hit 1 soldier kia Player turn: Soldiers move behind a tractor far away from insane farmer. Soldier fires multiple shots at alien, which is now in sight, with a pistol. Miss Miss Miss AI turn: Alien moves to tractor adjacent soldiers and fires a plasma pistol burst at farmer. Miss Farmer runs behind 1 of two remain solders and hides in fear for his life. Player turn: Soldier fires Rocket at Alien. Tractor Hit 2 soldiers kia, Insane farmer kia. Alien wins

Really isn't as bad as you guys may think. Strength = Increases when you are incumbered and you take any action(movement while carrying extreme weight increases your strength. Sensible right?) Accuracy = Increases when you fire your weapons(Although it should be when you actually hit something) Reflexes = Increases when your soldier gets a reaction shot(Based entirely on your soldier's starting reflex percentage and the weapon he/she is using). AP = Increases with anything you do but at quite a low rate. Bravery = Increases each time your soldier panics(Backwards if you think about it) Resilience = This I'm not completely sure on. One of two things raise this. It ether increases slowly as your soldier takes damage or it is simply increased when your soldier ranks up. A few of them are a bit odd like bravery but none are really game-breaking considering you can change the rates in the config to your liking.

My soldiers are just giant magnets is all. All bullets just change trajectories mid-flight and head straight for them hehe. Joking of course, although it does feel like that at times lolz.

Very odd, because I've yet to be able to shoot(while standing) over a crouching troop. No joke. Unless you guys are talking about the troop standing is actually on higher ground or something? We must be talking about two different games or I'm in the twilight zone lol.

Simple fix to keep the balance is to work with the props range and AP's usage. It really isn't so bad the way they have it. What I did with mine was simply increasing AP costs on weapons like the Sniper, Rocket Launcher, and MG's. If it takes nearly an entire turn to fire at max accuracy with a sniper, very seldom will you use it in close range engagements. As long as the sniper doesn't kill in one turn, this works well. I actually raised my AP costs to the point where rookie soldiers may not even be able to use the last "focused" shot and will need to increase their AP count first. There is a fine line between balance and just plain annoying though. We don't want it to feel like the player's options are too limited. Obviously when your soldiers grow to the point where they have 70+ in AP you don't want them to still feel like a rookie. So just be careful how much you raise or lower things. For example, this is what my numbers look like for the ballistic sniper(although this is on a heavily modified version of the game). props range="33" <Set1 ap="36" accuracy="60" /> <Set2 ap="46" accuracy="80" /> <Set3 ap="56" accuracy="100" /> Granted, I'm still fiddling around with the balance in mine so I may even make it more expensive to fire heavies eventually. Although you don't have much for a low AP cost shot, it does feel bad ass like a sniper should at range. And with these high costs, it gives a real incentive to take a pistol along for the random close encounters. The best part though, is that(along with the heavy weapon strength movement penalty) it keeps people from bringing NOTHING but snipers or MGs only. Well, at least until their soldiers are all godly vets.

Gotta be flipping kidding me! Bahahahahaha. Didn't even think about trying that. Thanks so much Caine! This thread can be deleted now haha Note: Are you sure about this though? I don't seem to recall any stages beyond just one in the xml. I'll give it a try though. Hope you are right Although, I'm pretty sure the "odd AP results" you're referring to is just movement additions, arm lift AP(don't think this is even used), rotation AP, and stand/kneel AP. They all add additional time to the overall AP used for healing.

True, there is cover shooting but it's fairly broken and inconsistent. Can't shoot over kneeling troops in front of standing troops (but it does safely work for reaction firing. reasoning?). The percentage to "HIT" your own cover and therefore destroy it is just laughable and not needed. Although it's like this for aliens to, it just isn't needed. Aliens have a hard enough time the way it is, the IA scripting doesn't seem to have aliens stand and fire behind cover at all. So they just destroy their own cover constantly. Not to mention, they are always shooting each other in the back which is another topic entirely lol. Think about it though, these are aliens vs soldiers, not kids playing cowboys and Indians. Just how bad of a shot are these so called leet soldiers and aliens that they can't shoot over their own cover? And to be fair, this game, at it's worst, in unfinished state, is better than Firaxis's so-called remake as far as strategy games go. Hardly even a shadow of the original X-COM's. It shouldn't even have the same name. A watered down, incredibly linier, trivialized mess. The only difficulty relied on overly accurate and overpowered aliens with random one shotting of your squad members. More like a board game just rolling the dice than a strategy game.

Just a simple adjustment I'm sure. Please oh please oh please increase the damage healed per activation. I'd just mod it in myself but I honestly gave up trying to figure out how it's working in the script. Always getting odd results. It gets extremely old clicking medkit, then soldier which needs healing, then waiting for animations to finish, and again and again and again. Takes literally 20 mouse clicks just to heal one heavily wounded soldier atm. By no means am I saying I want them cheaper to use, only faster. Pretty please with sexy on top

Second that. The no roles column is annoying to say the least. If there's not enough room just drop one of the less important stats. Don't know which one though. Probably bravery.

This. After much testing it seems as though when you end your turn without a wall inside your soldier's view, aliens will treat it as open terrain inside bases. Very odd but a simple workaround is to make sure you have a soldier "facing" the walls you feel the alien fire will come from at turn's end. Sweeping your soldiers around the outside base walls and clearing rooms from the outside-in also helps because you shouldn't need to cover as many walls. If you have a solitary soldier surrounded by aliens outside his current room location it can be a game breaker to say the least because you can't have all 4 walls inside your one soldier's view. You'll likely get shot in the back. Very very odd to say the least lolz It's very hard to narrow down just what is going wrong in alien bases because they seem to use the old blind fire trick too. It may just seem that way though and it's all one of the same.

Gotta say it's probably the best idea I've heard that will not only "help" satisfy both player types but should be a much less time consuming solution for the devs than having the hardcore and casual air battles selectable during game start. Whether you guys like the idea or not, I wouldn't be surprised if they run with it because of time constraints. Funny how they try to introduce an improved, tactical style of air combat and it only serves to come back and haunt them. I actually feel for the devs somewhat so I'm gonna give this one two thumbs up. Nice idea Gismo. It's nice to see people thinking of solutions from both sides of the table instead of just one.

Like the title implies, Here's a very easy fix that will take you all but 5 minutes to help balance out the troop carried Rocket Launcher. Simply make rockets weigh 5. Now you COULD by all means just load up all your troops with an extra rocket and drop them in the field for your launcher guy to use but that takes time and patience. And besides, patience and intuition should be rewarded in the field yes? I did this small change to my game a few patches ago and it feels about right. You'll have to make your shots count. Your rookie soldiers may even have to do some runs carrying too much weight to build up some strength before even bothering with the launcher. Although, you may want to increase effective range on it because armor is no longer an option. Well, at least until your soldiers are quite strong.

Yep, stun grenades are well overpowered atm. After modding the hell out the game to my liking it seems as though the problem lies in how stun gas works. Regardless of what type of stun projectile you use, they will always do the same "gas damage" because the damage itself is related to the "stun gas" tag and not the actual projectile used and not the amount of gas released at explosion. So currently there is no way to change gas damage amounts for each weapon type. If you haven't already noticed, both the grenade version and the much larger rocket version still take the same amount of rockets/grenades to knock the same alien unconscious. Which is unbalanced atm. The grenade should do much less stun gas damage vs the rocket for obvious reasons. On top of this, the gas "type" explosives release nearly the same amount of smoke with almost the same vision restraints as smoke grenades. Although, we can change this to our liking in the gas_gc.xml. Which I highly suggest doing. In this way, we can at least tone down some of the OP vision restraints from the stun explosives. I would also suggest changing the radius's on both stun grenades and rockets. Nades to just 2 and rockets to 3-4. Which will give at least SOME reason for taking a few stun rockets along for the chance of dropping multiple aliens. Hope this helps. Getting off topic a bit here but also wanted to add that changing the rockets to a weight of 4 or 5 helps quite a bit in balancing the currently OP launcher. You won't be able to carry loads of rockets unless you wanna bring extras with other troops and drop them in the field. You'll need to make those shots count. It should have been this way from the get go. Not sure why it hasn't been changed yet. Anyways I'm out.

Agree with most if not all of the suggestions but I think it may be too much to ask atm. Maybe for the next xenonauts if there is one They have their hands full already if you haven't noticed. Still soo many bugs to fix before thinking about adding new content. Although, an easy way to mod your own "scout" hunter and still keep the balance is simply to raise the AP's up to at least 60 but not the site range. Site range is where things will start to get unbalanced in a big hurry. The hunter isn't meant to absorb tons of damage or be a tank. So having hit points at 250ish and AP's at 60 is a good start. Hit points do need to be at least that high though, simply because the hunter is a 2 by 3 tile beast that aliens will NEVER miss. Ether that or you could raise energy resists a tad and have hit points lower if that's more to your liking. Currently the gap between the hunter and the next vehicle is so long that it's hard to balance. It feels overpowered at game start and way too underpowered to bother using a bit later on. They need some other vehicle to fill that gap. Or some research changes.

That's what I like about you guys. You're somewhat honest about it. Just don't have the time. Although, you can't honestly tell us that more tactics(prone-shooting and cover-shooting etc..) and better AI are honestly a bad thing. Maybe for Xenonauts 2? Granted, the AI could be a hell of allot worse than it is. It's actually quite good in comparison to some other games. Does need to be a bit more aggressive though instead of camping the whole time. Besides the poor aliens really need accuracy lessons in their currant state. Then cover and prone-shooting wouldn't feel so OP And honestly, weapon ranges\ammo limitations will always force you out of cover and troops advancing. With aliens that are AS bad ass as they really should be, we'd need those options is what I'm trying to say. Aliens with longer ranges, better accuracy, and come in larger numbers than our troops would also server to bring back the "fear factor" that imo, is still lacking. But hey this is all talk for another time right?

Now that you mention it Mythoes, I've yet to have any REAL money issues with the game but that's likely because I always start in the same spot with 4 countries inside my radius. Not to mention, I've put well over 400 hours into the game and at this point I already know the best way to get started while saving money. Actually if you start in that same area the latest build feels about spot on as far as monthly funding. Not too easy but not too hard ether. But starting anywhere else cuts your funding a bit too much. Especially if you're new to the game sense difficulty levels don't effect pay in any way. Which they should. It would still be nice to have pricing adjusted a little so manufactured items are worth "something" though. Even though it doesn't really matter in the whole scope of things. It's just feels wrong lol.

Also thought about this but then came to the conclusion that there would be no difference between night and day battles. Night battles should have at least a little spooky/fear factor with them. So I did almost the exact same thing to my previous version as the devs did to the latest release. Improved flare ranges, larger radius, and only slightly cheaper because they have no weight. Although the devs tend to make TOO big of changes when someone complains. Ending up too easy or way too hard. So I feel grenades in general are too damn cheep to throw now. If only folks would know how to use them in the first place lolz. Here's a good balance for flair stats if you wanna mod it in your game. Real easy to do. The range is fine on them because of the way flares work in-game you don't want them to be thrown beyond your soldier's site range or he'll have to move closer to see the flair. It's real odd how it works, sense they work on the same principals as grenades. Anyways, just leave the range alone. What you do want to change is the "radius". Because they will only light up a radius around it, the base 5 radius isn't nearly enough to make up for the fact that your soldiers still can't see more than 5 to the sides of the flair. So change the radius number to something between 7-10. In this way, night battles are still more challenging and take longer then during the day but it won't feel like all you do is pitch hundreds of flairs the entire battle. I personally use 8 as a radius in my game and it feels about right to me(night missions are much more tolerable). But use what you want. If you wanted to cheese the entire night missions you could set the radius to 1000 or something but what's the fun in that?

Completely agree with the manufacturing actually paying something worth selling items for. Right now it's almost pointless to sell anything. They should at the very least pay half of the money, time, and alien resources spend to make them in the first place. As of now all my starting jackal and old used armors just collect dust sense it's not even worth the time to sell them. And yes, also agree with the very unbalanced country payments. Needs help. Large countries need to pay much much more than they do so you aren't stuck plopping your first base in the same damn spot. Good post. Thumbs Up