ventuswings

This is reflected on base missions too, where it consists of breach after breach after breach... Think it could have used more branching areas like Xenonauts base or that of UFO Defense for more interesting dynamic instead of so many dead ends.

Unfortunately it conflicts with the Alien Communication Xenopedia or whatever that states that alien grunt is mindless automaton whence-upon ordered to commit suicide will follow through without second thought. It can be changed though, I guess.

It seems to be problem on other missions too (especially at one with lot of civilians) because they don't seem to reload. I don't know about removing alien infinite ammo before AI learns how to use their clips... I also wonder if Aliens should be given twice as many magazines with selling price for magazines cut in half. Xenonauts rarely have ammo troubles and can bring lot of magazine along if necessary, so Alien at current state are at bit of a disadvantage when it comes to prolonged firefight. Concur alien invaders should have ammo reserve threshold and that they should prioritize attacking Xenonauts if both destructible base structure and Xenonaut are within one's sight.

I really don't think light scout needs further weakening. Light scout missions are already far more easier than other UFO. If we actually go on to make non-combatants more awful, we are going to grind the difficulty curve we currently have into the difficulty cliff, while making already boring light scout missions more of a chore. Are you advocating rookies with initial technology should charge in and kick ass ala XCOM Enemy Within? Their threat level already decreases dramatically once the new equipments start rolling in. Stat of non-combatnat alien are also notably inferior compared to their armed kinds. Also the usage of the word non-combatant is clearly bit of a misnomer; it is obvious that crew of the light scout are NOT civilians as they trigger harmful Geoscape events as they fly by, unless alien military brass are so incompetent that they allow random teenagers to fly into hostile planet to kidnap and shoot at random fisherman for lols. The purpose of light scout is to scout (military operation). I assume the crew member to be engineers, navigators, researchers etc. who are part of military but without specialized combat training. Finally, I wouldn't really compare effectiveness of "alien" pistol to the pistol on Earth... If you must make Earth analogy stick, I myself wouldn't have problem taking down bunch of soldiers down with the Glock after traveling to the Middle Ages. I believe the very horror of piss-poor alien with piss-poor pistol wiping out your squad is the point of X-COM. If necessary, decreasing the number of alien on light scout is much better thematic way of reducing the light scout 'difficulty' without further gimping already weakest weapon (besides those of light scouts but that's another matter).

Yeah, seems like pretty simple thing to fix, unlike the problem with smoke grenade AI

Hello, I was wondering when this new sight system might be implemented. Do you plan to include it by the Christmas build?

I concur with the sentiment that 20 day command center build time is too much, especially since you still need to built structures for them to operational... Hope upkeep costs get changed that 2 bases are viable around 2-3 month, with three to potentially four base available late to end game. Also repeating my opinion that Scout HP should be lowered slightly: it makes mistake on early Geoscape more manageable, prevents Alenium Explosive rush from becoming "one right choice" by expanding the number of UFO basic craft can handle, and makes thematic sense as it's not military UFO yet. Either way, there's no margin for error right now, definitely hope you manage to find optimal maintenance value

It's perception that matters though. The players will believe doing ground mission over airstrike will result in notable funding decrease unless the game directly states it not to be true, in which case we are back to the problem of no one really caring about what happens to the civilians. I still believe saved civilians should grant +1 bonus to counter -2 hit from dead civilians (which is very common); this should help alleviate the misconception and shouldn't have significant impact on the game since, as you said, civilian cost is barely relevant.

@ StK: Not necessarily OP, just give alien the ability to do the same if they have spotter up instead of them being helpless, since I'm not sure alien will be able to hit anyone through the smoke if that tile forces 0% accuracy. Actually removing the 0% accuracy should make firing through the smoke stronger, as one do not have to rely on "random projectile miss" to cause a hit. According to response of other people I am not sure people are that unfavourable to the tactic of firing through the smoke. My problem with it is that alien AI just couldn't deal with it, but by allowing alien to do the same thing would much improve the situation. It seems more elegant than "once the projectile goes through the smoke tile, it shouldn't hit anything" which other people rightfully criticized. Of course, developers can take both suggestions into account before making their decision. Perhaps the drone thing is maybe going too overboard.

I thought about it too and found probably much better way of decreasing effectiveness of the smoke giving AI way of handling the smoke: * Smoke tiles block LoS but NOT possibility to hit. Simple change that should be effective since alien AI already have squad sight implemented; if there is spotter which sees Xenonaut standing, other units can now shoot at it even though there is smoke between them. Most importantly, this gives the alien ability to fire into the smoke, instead of it being tactic exclusive to us. I don't know if developers intended for smoke to kill possibility of hitting to 0% but it is clearly not working with the force-fire command anyway. * Have Psionic units immediately cast 'Locate Enemies' at start of the turn if one of the aliens spot a smoke tile. (change it to 'if that Psionic unit spot a smoke tile' if locate enemies ability is only for that unit, not universal) Saw this ability on Xenonauts wiki, seems straight-forward and intuitive for aliens so they can squad sight at the unit revealed. * Give Drone units ability to see through smoke? It fits with the lore because they are robotic scout units, and gives Light Scout etc desperately needed buff (give reason for players to actually prioritize taking them out over other combatants). Seems less intrusive way of alleviating the problem than changing how weapon projectiles work. EDIT: Actually, why doesn't smoke grenade work like original XCOM?

Does firing at square not visible give 0% chance? I thought it had been only exclusive to when line-of-fire is completely blocked by full-height block or smoke. I am all for friendly fires (I love how accuracy turned out in V19) but what I wanted to say was that the projectile fired when the chances of hitting the targeted square is 0% should do nothing, not that any stray shots shouldn't happen to hit anything else nearby. More accurately, what I probably want to say is that once the projectile goes through the smoke tile, it shouldn't hit anything. It's really strange that when you decide to fire at alien while standing in midst of smoke, it won't hit at all due to the chance to hit being 0%, but when you actually target the tile right behind him, now they do. In fact V20 system makes it even worse now since it's tactic only human can utilize, making the job of adjusting AI for the 'fire past the smoke tactic' even harder: I proposed the idea to shut down the concept but I guess it can lead to other unforeseen consequences. Perhaps the upcoming LOS changes might alleviate this problem since one actually have to scout to see where alien moved to, I don't know. EDIT: Ignore my suggestion written here, think I found much better way.

I've seen uncombatant Caesan miss exposed and standing Xenonaut two tiles next to him three times already, and also have low probability shot show up on my end occasionally as well (~65%). Then there is everpresent shootout on V20 where unit completely out in the open keeps missing each other despite being about five tiles away; this is actually more advantageous to humans because we know to just walk right up up to the alien, instead of stupidly keeping four tiles of space between them, for greater accuracy. It is my opinion that accuracy formula be slightly adjusted that there is much greater chance of being hit overall for unimpeded-line-of-fire shots which come from less than about seven tiles. Being stupid should be punished for ala V19 stable, perhaps not always but often. I suspect higher accuracies will be acceptable considering the high endurance of Xenonauts. Deleted to give precedence to other points, except to bring up that alien AI should really be adjusted to deal with blindfire that comes within the smoke, like retreating, throwing grenade into it, beelining straight into it if close enough, or even responding back with blind fire of their own. Several props behave really strangely with the rockets, such as large square rock on the desert or tree climps on the Middle East map. More specifically, if they are not intended to be destructible, rocket should detonate on its surface instead of traveling and exploding within the prop. I wrote this on another thread but just posting it here so this doesn't go unnoticed. I can't see a reason not to do this given the armor is permanent, and usually earlier tier alien stats are bad anyway.

If you intend to keep the current UI, I recommend you change the parameters so that 0 points give excellent rating and go down from there. It will better communicate to the players. I've also noticed Foxtrot does 40% damage to Scout, meaning player has to invest full squad of Foxtrot just to take it down reliably. I am uncertain of the overall balance yet but I wonder if it might not be better to adjust Scout's health so that single Foxtrot can do at least 50% damage... Otherwise players are really forced to rush aircraft weaponry - Laser weaponry or Alenium explosives - early just to keep up. Overall I have to question if the player who are not aware of already established tactics can survive, especially those unfamiliar with concept of multiple sorties. Is anyone having luck with keeping their national ratings positive?

@Qenwen All the theory-crafting about it can be found here.

With the limited ammunition, is AI capable of reloading or try to use melee attack when they run out (I assume alien can melee with their weapons too since Xenonauts could)?

Thank you for the update!! I hope this build doesn't have any game-breaking problems

This is pretty cool idea. It would be great to improve the unpredictability of the missions, as currently you exactly know what to expect from the UFO type. Unfortunately I wonder if the varied alien weapons loadout would work, as including earlier tier weapon to the alien equipment would not work due to high effectiveness of the armors. Also, as new weapons grant technology, having heavy plasma per say show up on Scout (or battle rifle on landing ship) would be unbalancing. Variability of the alien weapon is much improved once we get past the point of Scouts anyhow. Regardless I think possibility of lower ranked aliens showing up with more advanced weapons after that particular type of the weapon has already been 'unlocked' would be amazing change, as at current point with the fixed alien loadout, earlier UFO type missions loses all threat with advanced armor. For example, once you get to Wolf armor, you know you can just grind light scout missions without any risk because plasma pistol basically does nothing to them. I still think it would be fun to have alien "hero", or if the variable statistics is difficult to implement, have random chance of higher ranked alien - excluding storyline specific ranks like officers of course - show up once that rank has been unlocked Geoscape-wise (in order to maintain Geoscape research balance). It'd be pretty cool for you to do light scouts or scouts mission expecting easy mission, then random soldier appears out of nowhere and chucks the grenade! Also I think number of aliens on the terror mission would be fine as long as plan to put some of the aliens on the patrolling/defensive AI (instead of everyone rushing you) gets implemented.

@Hovis I think it's not the problem with the squad sight, it's just that having seen tile once provides complete information for free for rest of the turn. You can still move your spotter and blind-fire at where you saw the alien was standing at, but you really shouldn't be expected to know result for that action without having someone take a look at it. I'm much more impartial about second point though, suppression already feels too strong...

Also to force players to engage in more late ship missions instead of air bombing everything, already proposed idea about setting experience cap for specific type of ships make sense to me. For example, if it's impossible for someone to get stats higher than 65 from doing light scout missions, player will have to send their A team to late-game ships to train them instead of farming the light scouts and scouts for stats.

If there are another specific mechanism for funding to be implemented, I would honestly like devs to implement funding changes related to Cold War blocs first.

The bigger issue would be that changing Xenopedia entries will be daunting with this change. Personally, I'm not bothered by it, especially since STORY SPOILER

Insane difficulty suggestion If the decision to give lower ranked aliens better weapons depending on state of progression ticker are implemented, have the likelihood of alien coming out with advanced weaponry much higher (or always in Insane?) Decrease the amount of alien alloy given for every UFO.

To be honest, focus of the discussion really depends on answer to this question. I didn't get a chance to see Build 6 in action but every concern can be fixed by simply re-introducing the point benefit for Terror/Base/Landed missions? (Since these missions can't even be airstriked, I don't even know why national bonus for these mission are cut should the information here be true). I severely disagree with the mission score having no effect on the national rating. I thought these change might actually improve the value of civilians but if reverse is true...

I'm actually wondering if some of this secondary objectives can naturally be accomplished by making special, friendly-filled terror map like one enclosed in this reply, where: GREEN = Civilian spawn point BLUE = Soldier spawn point RED = Alien spawn point The idea is that all civilians (and soldiers guarding them) are concentrated in two or three shelters, which hopefully alien AI upon seeing them starts to move in. Civilians and soldier AI seem decent enough that there wouldn't outright jump out of the buildings if there are threat nearby. This is second version considering current Sebilian AI where entire force seem to rush for Xenonauts upon discovery. When aliens nearby first shelter engage Xenonauts, entire Sebilians on the map should try to move toward them (as in current version) but will have to move through two other shelters in order to do so, forcing them to engage the other two shelters: Concept behind this briefly made example is that one shelter would have decent number of civilians, but most poorly defended. Both three sides would be besieged but one side would have Charlie next to it so Xenonauts can quickly move into reinforce. Shelter on top left of the map have least amount of civilians and therefore expandable, but if player wants to save them Xenonauts can take the alley right above the map, fighting past few aliens entrenched on one building nearby but still do not having to walk through the center street occupied by full alien force. There would be another major shelter right opposite the map where Xenonauts will actually have to fight through the map to reach. In consideration for its isolation, the shelter is defended by most amount of soldiers and only have two of its side exposed but is expected to fall with all inhabitants dead unless foolhardily rushed for (score from civilians saved from two other shelters would offset the point loss). Interesting thing with this multiple shelter design is that player will be forced to split his squad if he/she wish to obtain the optimal result. To my knowledge, terror map like this hasn't made yet so I am extremely interested in how map like this will play out (I'm pretty sure it will not work exactly like expected). Also point value from saved/killed civilians will actually have to be significant for this "secondary objective" to have more than thematic effect.

To be fair, we should still up the value of civilian regardless. The issue of immediate civilian death could be alleviated if the spawn point is mostly placed within buildings. After all, what kind of people manage to survive through several hours it takes for Xenonauts to arrive while standing in middle of the street?