quiescat

truly luck of the draw there man, there random but in a range of 40 to 60, if i recall correctly. which is pretty small in the grand scope of statistics. now if you had every single one of your troops pop up with the same stats something might be broken.

drop smoke at the teleporter move 1 square over and move my team of shot guns up to point blank range and snap shot, if you set up for the breach you have full squad ready to melt face down there. get shot at threw smoke because aliens don't move to point blank range to fire and repeat. given the high armor you might have to move to the side of an andron to be 100% safe from reaction fire from the ones you kill on around 1 as it might take 2 snap shots from the shotgun.

thanks alot

max_caine, do you mind telling me how you edited the XML( guessing that's how you did it) to get 4 missiles on a corsair. i ask because this sounds like something i will love to have a mod to make this the norm. also i would like to test my theory on how easy it would be to replace foxtrots.

not sure about other weapons, but a burst from a LMG and a snap shot or 2 from a shotgun blows the locked doors in bases. you might end up taking an extra turn to kill the door if your unlucky. i just don't see that as being forced to have C4 as the only option.

not that i think this is very easy to make happen. but your troops can level up bravery when they panic, out side of the stats from the medals. so if you have a guy who is panicking all the time he will get more bravery assuming he does not die. so bravery is not the end all be all. but is sure is a hell of a lot harder to level then any of the other stats. almost wish it was a function of how many missions they have done or aliens killed as the have the stats getting tracked already, but to some extent that's what medals are so i don't know

as i understand no both are not in game, much like i think it was called colossus armor. i think there was also an upgrade for the hover tank

best bet as of right now, and this one is risky if you dont have the cripto thingy(i really need to learn how to spell that) is let all the UFOs just float around till a base attack and fail it,which should be easy with no troops. this mind you will take a time as i bet its the last base you placed so not as likely to proc an attack.

i am with view on this one, it would be nice if most ufos had locked doors much like the red doors in bases. so your forced to blow them up to get inside. something like a scout let them stay exploited, just make the more combat orientated craft have locked doors or remove the ability to close them once open. i will fully admit i have used it and saved my self lots of crying with it before. i think as of right now the AI cant handle doors well for a few reasons, namely there forced natures of passive or aggressive makes them too predictable, which may only seem like an issue since i have been playing as much as i have. then there is the fact that right now aliens don't seem to have the ability to open a door with out walking threw it so if you fully block a door it wont be opened. this last one may have been fixed i have not be using it for a while a build or so now.

**( disclaimer this is how i understand the system to work from personal experience and forum surfing )** so, i think you might have combined 2 stats in your post. so you have bravery which does effects Psi attacks. its something along the lines of cover for the brain if you will, its not perfect aliens just need higher rolls to affect your troops. then there is moral, this is bigger or smaller as a baseline because of bravery, but it has things that can effect it mid-combat such as having friends die and the proximity you talked about ( some psi attacks also hit moral i think ). this is the stat if it gets to low you will have troops panic with out any alien psi attack what so ever, as in the alien is not using powers to make your troops panic its just that guy got scared all on his own. i am pretty sure moral has no effect on psi attacks whatsoever that is 100% a function of bravery alone. so say you have a trooper who just got done wetting him self over the fact that his best friend died and now hes all alone, his bravery is still the only thing i think that effects his chance of getting hit with a psi attack, such as dread or mind control. which is still a pretty weak defense unless your guy is in the 70s or 80s for bravery (very hard to get) moral is bugged in its display i think, well less bugged and more each turn you have some moral regenerate, however every time you get shot or suppression, in the case of getting shot it double dips. your moral is going down while all during the aliens turn, then at the very start of your turn you get a roll to see if panic happens. then you moral regenerates, and then after all that you get to see the final numbers. much in the same way you dont see your health go down till your turn where you can check every one. so in theory you have a guy who does not look like his moral is low who ends up panicking because his moral really was low, but your confused becuse you only get to see his stats after regeneration. the bravery in the stats screen in base is the finial number counting medals, so you don't need to say Steve has 2 medals so his bravery of 50 is really 52 **( disclaimer this is how i understand the system to work from personal experience and forum surfing )**

my only worry with giving it 4 light missiles, this is a non-issue worry for me at least. that this change is just making the corsair a foxtrot that can roll. this is not a bad thing i feel. while light missiles have lower range they still have the killing power to let me phase out foxtrots, if i wanted to. given the lore of the corsair is to make it a companion to the foxtrot not a replacement i think there might be an issue of design behind this. i think the useless nature of the corsair as of right now, might let this be a worth while fix as it does not require any hard changes. the fact that if i am not mistaken on the global map foxs and corsairs have the same speed so both get out run by carriers and battle ships some what, so you still have reasons to make the marauder which will still be king as it should be. ( full on theory crafting here on) so with the change you have going i see my self sitting on 3-4 bases with 2 foxtrots each by the time i unlock the corsair. so with there price tag i might see it as worth once there unlocked to instead of just using 6 foxtrots per base to go ahead with doing a system of 2 foxs and 2 corsairs. i say this because the corsairs now can do the work of a foxtrot and still keep the killing power to deal with escorts. where as right now i deal with most escorts by sending 3 foxtrots when i only really need 2, just so i can deal with the fighters.

guess i have just been very lucky then. most of the arctic, middle east, and desert maps i play have lots of open space. but i also don't use any of the map packs so that might color my view a lot. i did add in that i was playing on normal and there is a health buff at higher levels as i understand. but also comparing them to the sebs they run with which take 2 or 3 shots and almost never die to reaction fire where as i get reapers to stop pretty commonly. it might also help that i creep very slowly so i level reaction fire a lot. but i also try to force aliens to have to turn corners or shoot me from long ranges. when you put a reaper in that spot hes standing face to face with a plasma shot gun and quite often dies. but i will add again i am just a noob playing on normal. i figure they have lots of people tossing out feedback on insane-o-man difficulty experience. not even kidding with this load up the editor on a map with reapers and camp a shotgun around a corner about 1 square back so your out side the angle shot of that corner reapers end up pathing so they stand 1 maybe 2 squares away and shotguns reaction is great.

i cant shoot while floating like that but i also cant get eaten by a reaper, i can end my turn floating like that. that is sentinel armor dont have a buzzard to check but i thought they worked the same. should have reloaded sorry

my beef with nerfing reapers is they have next to no armor so they melt to any weapon. i am pretty sure they cant attack vehicles at all. as soon as you get any of the flying armor you can use like 3 TU to float up a square making them powerless. they have no means of reaction what so ever. there deadly where you don't have open fields of view thats it, other wise they are a turkey shoot. i think you should get your teeth kicked in for not having a guy or 2 ready to reaction fire if you know your facing reapers. reapers only show up with sebs the lowest accuracy and in my mind least deadly race . i think terror missions only spawn at max 3 reapers, so your only faceing a lot of them if you let them sit and fester, which is there flavor in my mind. maybe the health buff for higher difficulty makes reaction fire too unreliable but on normal they are not the biggest threat vs the other terror weapons. IE wraiths and the sniper guys the androns roll with so i say all that, as i go back to read you guys say they are hard to kill so i dont know a shotgun blast from plasma takes out the alphas far more often then not. so maybe this is just a scaling issues for the harder difficulty. also i am on experimental branch so unless i am missing some AI changes reapers might be able to move 18 squares and attack but i have never seen one sprint that far and do so. lucky crits i dont know

this may not be ideal for you, but if pisonics alone are killing the game for you. i would suggest editing the min/max bravery recruitment stats for all your soldiers to 100. this wont remove the ability's but will effectively reduce frequency, so when it does happen it might still kick your teeth in but i will be less likely to ruin the playability of the rest of the game for you. personalty i use a base line of 70 and till get berserk/panic happen but not all the time, but no mind control as of yet i just might not be to that point yet( just downed my first carrier as we speak. i do this largely because there is no real way to level bravery unlike all the other stats my thoughts on pisonics them self i dont mind them being squad sight but i would like to see them have a reduced effective range. by that i mean my sniper can shoot some thing like 30 squares, but push it past that even with a clear line of sight damage starts to drop off. how codeable that is i have not the slightest but even something as simple as a bravery buff if your targets further away then 60 tiles would be nice.

pretty sure its a bug if you use the manual button they still show up as green/red

gotta open them with notepad ( at least that's what i use) other text editors might work. mine was set to default open with internet explorer or something if i remember right

i hate shields, by this i mean i think they suck. the places where they are useful in breaching small rooms you can do with shotguns and smoke easier and cheaper in my mind, but more the one way to skin a cat is nice. for the longer range work via say terror missions your neutering your fire power SO much. for what amounts to mobile cover( something smoke does cheaper). by using pistols as your main weapon your forced to rely on short range combat, in which case i think the shotgun is just better. ** i am playing the experimental build which put a range Nerf on pistols and reduced reaction mod of shotguns and pistols down to 1.5 instead of 2 so that might explain varied mileage some what ** your machine gun test sounds like it might be worth checking on the debugger and by that i mean some one who knows what there trying to read. i set up test and face to face the shield will let a non com casein(god am i bad at alien race names) take a face to face 10 round burst but shoot him from the back and its auto death. did the same test useing friendlys but used the editor to give a non com a shield just in case it was because i was targeting the ground. i would copy/paste the whole log but its a mile long and the test is easy to set up

so i gotta say i am confused as to what your asking for. so do you mean how i know light scouts only have about 5 aliens in them, or are you looking for more along the lines of keeping the internal lay out of each ship lit up ? ( i think its unlikely this is what you mean ) i think you mean after you get the cryptothingy that tells you the mission and race of each craft so you would have that info on the crash site as well as the ufo when it is flying around. to be fair i dont know how that is split up as i dont get to build that far very offen before saves get broken. but i would agree after you unlock that info you should know the race your going to see not.

xenopedia screen that pops up when you research a new topic has that info. if you hit the little question mark icon it shows you the full list of all the projects you have researched. in that list is one for xenonuat armor which gives you a break down of there stats so you can compare

so number one i have not the slightest clue sorry. i do know that when you hire one they get replaced on the roster with another. out side of that i never noticed. if i had to guess i would say its monthly with your funding. number two i at least think i understand better. so if you notice when a UFO is floating around you get little pop ups on the map that say things like freak storm, ufo sighted, abduction, and other such nonsense. well each event reduces your standing with the area its done over. this includes water so letting ufos sit out at sea still hurts. in the case of ufos if you shoot them down more before they get to many events off your going to be at a net gain. with bases i am going to take the wild guess that they also have missions/events they just dont pop up so the longer it sits there the more damage it does. terror sights are the odd man out in my mind here if you let one go its a massive hit but if you let it land and beat it i understand it to be a massive gain in rep. however if you shoot it down before any thing happens its just like any other ufo. the same can be said about bases in that if you attack one its a pretty big rep gain but a ship has to land and build it. if your lucky you can snipe it before it leaves right after it builds the base.

have not had to deal with them in bases, but i have noticed that if even 1 pellet of the 10 get anywhere near your troopers its suppression time. not sure how suppression is split up for bursts. if its per pellet or what, i will say this however for how fragile they are i view this as a welcome change. before i ignored them as any thing but a minor threat because of squad sight. so far i have not had any one die because of the scout droids alone.

the TU you used to walk to the side of the tree that is your lean around to shoot its just not fine tuned as a single player fps. start thinking of all the rocks you see laying around as at very least chest high, and the guys your shooting at ya there trying not to get shot in the face. so in theory they are trying to use the cover there behind. despite the fact that the turn based nature of it all makes it look like there just standing still ready to get shot in the face. the friendly fire i will give you takes a bit of working with largely due to the fact that your lines of fire not perfect, however if you have dude A kneeling in front of dude B he can be shot over with out risk, but if there is one tile spiting them its no longer risk free shooting over that guy. when you have guys running in groups they either need to be split pretty far left and right (3-4 tiles) or need to be on top of each other front to back out side of that friendly fire gets risky. think civil war musket lines.

you have a point, if it did the exact same thing as the quick slot for ammo. that one just shows a red zero with the ammo icon, or in this case it could a grenade with a red zero. i dont know what is there to say your able to change any of the pictures out side of the fact that basically the entire ui is clickable. side note if you don't have a gun equipped i think the ammo box turns black as well. this might be splinting hairs on the starting base location deal but your opening briefing is along the lines of hey you go save the world. then we plop you into a map of said world and give you the build a base icon with a big circle around it. admittedly i am not sure your told hey your going to have fighter jets at any time, but i would hope you got the broad strokes of the game before you bought it. i am not going to call that a perfect system. i think however at very least on normal or easy, you have the latitude to still beat the game even if you go and plant your first base any where short of one of the tiny islands. even then what would the funding information tell a player that new, other then hey money you don't know how to spend. at some point i think sink or swim wins out over the text book needed to convey the information to start min/maxing your first go around. the unwritten game manual might fix all of this.

i find its keeping my planes in the air that tends to be more of a challenge then radar range. i go for a 5 base pattern of one base for North and south America central gets cover by proxy. main base is in north Africa this ends up with 3 radars so it covers EU middle east and south Africa. 1 soviet some what near Alaska and one in Australia. the set up you have sounds like it might have dead zones near the edges of your range where the faster UFOs can tease your foxtrots into running out of fuel or forcing you to down them over water. but if the do lower radar range they might need to tone back how much bases cost per next teir as my last base is a fight to get built with out grinding ground missions for the extra cash. next game i am going to have to try your set up and see if it works better to have 3 bases and just build 6-8 hangers instead of my normal 4. as a side note this might explain why i think the quantum cryto thiney i cant think of how to spell right now costs to much for seeing how you need one for each base with radar coverage