ventuswings

I have no problem with outcome rolls, but is developer changing their mind regarding necessity of the fuel? Autocombat taking no fuel and actually giving fuel(!) can break the balance by allowing your squad to shoot down more UFO than what your global strategy and squad composition dictates.

Speaking of friendly fire suppression, Xenonauts still seem to be immune to their own stun grenades EDIT: flashbangs.

I'm pretty sure Reaper needs no change at the moment; it lost near invulnerability of the Chryssalids in exchange for the improved AI. If this resulted in serious balance problem, actual reasons regarding its detrimental effect on game-play would have been already brought up instead of semantics regarding realism, I think.

Regarding point two, that's why I love base defense missions because opening the door there is permanent choice.

Yeah, something is wrong if it is harder to kill soldiers than those in the new XCOM Even in the late game - where number of Xenonauts in combat become similar to the original - winning the mission with only a single (or no!) casualty is quite frequent if not accounting for deaths due to ROS-bugged psi, which quite frankly is balance breaking.

Honestly, Reapers are always going to get "OP" corner kills no matter how hard they get nerfed. Though perhaps specialization of Reaper into stalking ambusher is interesting development that differentiates it from Chryssalids that served as pure shock troops that had no problem standing on its own at the open field (on contrary, Reapers are immediately neutralized without sight-blockers since they can be suppressed). Hell, considering that role, improving their stealth AI so player have reason to fear complicated indoor environment would be pretty cool. Even now you can see them charging forward then stopping right next to the soldier due to having no TU for attack, instead of falling back to the darkest pit and waiting for next opportunity. EDIT I don't know, I thought alien was pretty cool. Intelligence tailored toward predatory ambush is far more scary than mindless banzai attacks for me (especially since Reaper do not have health - and now TU - to reliably support the latter tactic).

I'd still want to see if stamping out ROS rules and bugs (where psi attack still occurs without ROS) would allow proper counter-tactics before nerfing the psi again. It's really the only thing Caesans have going for them.

Well, perhaps working excess damage and reduced shield HP - because shield HP greater over health of single soldier is ridiculous, more especially when it comes to upgraded assault shields - might be good enough starting point before trying out other changes. Better yet, AI that accounts for the shield angles.

I know Chris said they wasn't concern about autoresolve using no fuel, but maybe they could tweak the formula so that once you pass certain threshold of available fuel, the percentage chance to win decreases in exponential manner. Or at least have it set so that <7% fuel gives no chance to win.

Shield is too strong at current form of the game because AI refuses to put their 100% block chance into account and do not walk few step around to circumvent it. Also, the fact that shield absorbs all damage despite having only ~1 HP compounds the problem as well (I seriously think slashing shields HP is good idea to account for this feature). AI can aim and shoot at the soldiers crouching behind the shields, but it does not change the fact that exposed shield-bearing soldiers can frequently survive facing an alien with an full AP unscratched. I am also concerned about lack of lethality in game because I liked old XCOM's formula of minimum 1 causality per mission (unless you happened to be skilled and notably lucky), but that goes into personal preference category and is whole different topic.

To be fair, their lethality is just as bad.

It was one of the reason why I was fine with end of turn explosion for ES as well, but making them be manufactured is fine as well.

Is development team still interested in improving the Mission End Screen further after all the important stuff gets done? To have it be similar to some of the suggestion here would be a delight!

While I am not eloquent enough to throw my hat into the ring, I am here to say that I support the developer in their decision to include % TU system contrary to what my initial reaction had been!

And I still maintain that if they can't do it from the start, player should not be able to pull such shots with accuracy either. I remember some other people also arguing for slight decrease in global accuracy by tweaking the formula. Wait. So for the TU %, it uses TU available at mission (after penalty) instead of overall TU for the soldier? That has got to be a bug.

Yeah, I've seen some late game missions and they don't seem notably difficult, besides some obvious abuses that need to be fixed out as Wraith teleport.

Does armour protect against stun damage? Boost them up slightly if so, I guess. Haven't seen it occur too much on my end. Otherwise (if there is no specific stun protection value) I'd still argue that all buff Jackal needs is slight weight decrease and nothing more. At current state of the shield, I'm sure some people will still use them with the right value ($5000~$10000?). They confer excellent survivability. It's like 80+ reliable free health. That's as good as wolf armour.

Are you sure? Maybe it's because I like high HP guys (and with roll of 40-70, >60 HP people are easy to recruit), but by the time sniper rifle rolls around most of your squad should be above 60 HP. Sniper rifle could one shot people around ~50HP range I guess, but even that would require a considerable lucky roll. And there's always possibility for 50% (not 150%) damage roll as well. Considering all that, rolling the sniper rifle damage to 30 would make it a joke, as it would take 3 shots to kill >60 HP Xenonauts. Perhaps such low damage output would be acceptable had the weapon on discussion been a low TU, burst weapon but it's alien sniper rifles capable of firing one (accurate) shot per turn. Also you're using an extreme outlier, the worst case scenario - sniper hitting Predator Xenonauts who has <60 HP for full 150% damage roll - to make your argument instead of what would usually happen, when lowering damage output will lead to significantly lower lethality on all other Xenonauts. To put it into perspective, it will take alien sniper 3 shots to kill unarmoured Xenonaut which is very low lethality for the scenario that's much more likely to happen than the one you bring up. There has been some prior discussion about Predator armour being too strong, so maybe it's a good thing there exists a weapon that counter over-reliance on armour instead of cover.

Also wasn't there a limit to the maximum amount of fund a single region could give you?

Dreadnought I really wish they kept it as some sort of unassailable, undefeatable UFO that starts to appear once in a while if player stalls for way too long.

Just wanted to bring up few ideas I had for preventing shield spam, since I saw devs were looking for ways to curtail it on Announcement thread: * Have hand <-> backpack switch for shield cost lot of TUs Severely limits utilizing dual shield or shield with two handed weapon (via switching held item appropriately) * Have shield only available via manufacture Discourages shield spam, and have player make a decision when it comes to low HP shield; does Xenonaut put away the shield to prevent it from being destroyed, or still keep it for guaranteed block of one shot?

Tech. Info Xenonauts v21, experimental build 4 with balance update Observed Behavior Moving up to an unsuppressed alien (up to 1~3 tiles) with shielded soldier is viable tactic, as alien will not move and instead shoot straight away to front of the shield. It could simply have moved few tiles to side or back of the soldier to bypass the shield entirely. Desired Behavior Alien should account for the block chance of the shield. Alien should still fire at the front of shield if no alternative is available (or if moving so is tactically unwise), but otherwise should move to get 40% or 100% bypass chance.

By the way, when speaking of 70 accuracy, which difficulty are we talking about? If it's Veteran, I think it is fine but I guess for Normal decrease to about 65 is more agreeable. Edit: One thing to note is that even at current state it's not difficult to keep the casualty late low (not none). I honestly believe casualty rate of one to two is perfect place to be for normal mission, especially with random stat roster and permanent items. Also, aliens do not have grenades and shield that decisively negate whatever little stat advantage they possess.

Speaking of alien accuracy, does alien AI take into account the shield protection angle (ie. walking around the shield-bearers back, or at least few steps to the side, to prevent 100% block)? Otherwise, greater volume of fire is always the better choice - remember there is armour degradation to think of as well. Edit: I also concur with KateMicucci's statement that other tiers of armour are just too strong, rather than Jackal being underpowered. Jackal simply reduces the likelihood of Xenonaut being one-shot by plasma rifle, which is armour role I prefer over guaranteed ~3 hit survival. The built armour can be used for rest of the game as well, instead of being lost upon death as is in Original XCOM. I second that Wolf armour should come later (or be slightly weakened). Wolf just arrive too early after Jackal, and encourage player to make comparisons.

And it's not like aliens are being crazy snipers either. After all, aliens do miss to such an extent that people had to question whether their close range modifier were properly working. The guards do sometimes pull accurate shots out of nowhere from long range, but so can you. Edit: If overall accuracy is too high on both sides, that's argument for either tweaking the accuracy formula or reducing Guard accuracy and max stat roll of new conscript down to 60 ~ 65.