Josip Broz Tito

That's more of a map design issue. More cover in terror missions would make alien group attacks more effective and tense, less cover= the situation you're describing. While it's good to have both scenarios, I favor more cover in maps. I'm like you in that I want to be a bit paranoid about checking corners...except I want that to be because the aliens are hunting me back. And yeah, it's awesome when the aliens spawn in the right ratios to keep you on your toes. I wish that the game would aim more for that situation, rather than 1 type and rank of alien predominating.

I'm the opposite way: I don't feel the aliens coordinate and work together enough. IMO they should be coming at you in groups most of the time.

What's wrong with having to play recklessly once in a while? You might lose on occasion? Good, a game's only fun when you have the possibility of defeat. Game's to easy if the player is always the one dictating the pace of ground combat.

NoirWolf, awesome idea. Timed + multiple means of victory/defeat+ indoor= yes.

I personally don't think there needs to be a special reward for this. Having more mission types adds the variety that's needed already. Shouldn't need to have an incentive to do a special ground mission type. Don't focus on making people want to do ground missions- just focus on making the scenarios interesting and varied. However, that said: I recommend adding a terror unit of some sort to each mission (even the early ones) and/or a higher ranked alien to serve as the 'leader' of the abduction crew (but not armed heavily). I love that this one will be timed. Some will complain, but that doesn't matter. Putting us out of our comfort zone and adding tension is great for changing pace.

Elydo, I'm having a hard time finding your focus on the issue. You did mention that you wanted their TU cost to fire reduced. Now you mention a reload TU and magazine change. In regard to the rest of the contents of your posts, you seem to put forth that casters are under and overpowered alternately. I've advocated leaving them alone, or at the most giving them unique magazines as Ishantil suggested in another thread. Where can we compromise? Idea: When I first acquired plasmacasters, the description made the weapon seem similar to the alien plasma cannon- in that it fired a ball of plasma that exploded. What if it were a high single-target damage weapon that had an AOE suppression effect at the point of impact? +aimed or snap shot at the unique points of 30 snap, 50 aimed (the reduce spammability) +high damage (slightly less than sniper) +medium/high accuracy

You would still absolutely break plasmacasters. At that point they would also become the king of close-ranged weaponry. How many LMG's did you bring into that base? 4-5 is the ideal for a base attack as it allows for center room clearance at a faster pace (thus preventing gangs of aliens from massing up and attacking). If you brought less than that= look at what you're trying to do, it's only reasonable to need a sizeable chunk of your squad dedicated to that central room. If it took less LMG's to clear the center room (with 15+ aliens), the game would become far to easy. That said, you cannot balance LMG's just based off of what they do in a base. Terror sites, base defense, and crashed/landed UFO's must be considered too. Changes like accuracy reduction for the sake of less TU's to fire would make them sub-par for open-area missions, and the go-to over shotguns for close quarters.

I disagree fully on plasmacasters: they are spot on where they should be, except for magazine size. When you get them= the game changes. You can now handle multiple elites in a fast manner. +Number of shots= fine, it's already throwing out 500+ dmg if they all hit something. Any more would be ridiculous in close-range fights. +Damage= 1-2shots elites (usually 2) +Accuracy= more accurate than the tooltip shows: plus the MGer using it will have high acc because of the 70 str requirement to wield it. Most shots will be hitting within the green range, or at least be so close as to kill aliens near the first/destroy cover. +Cover destruction= no clue what you're talking about. 1-2 shots most cover. Considering you can literally fill a backpack with magazines, the map could be all cover for all I care. +Firing cost= it'd better stay 40TU's. Any lower would be ridiculous. Can already fire twice per turn with any soldier able to carry it. Any higher and you run the risk of making the caster a poor choice versus the launcher or sniper rifle. -Magazine ammo count= it could be higher, but considering how powerful the plasmacaster is, it might not be wise to boost it. -Suppression= It supresses OK, but I feel that's more a symptom of fighting elites. Could be boosted, could be left as is= idc. The ability to turn rockets in the inventory to make more fit in a backpack would bring the launcher up to par w/ the higher MG's. As for it being better than the rifle= that was my personal experience. I should have prefaced this by mentioning that I prefer to stand back and shoot through the cover aliens are using rather than flank (safer that way IMO). My supersoldiers could all use the plasmacaster to its fullest, so I did so. More aggressive players might get better mileage out of using other weapon sets.

Lol, I'll have to take your word for it, however, I hope they make it harder rather than nerfing the tanks.

Completely disagree about machine guns not being kill weapons at any stage of the game. I've gotten most of my in-game kills from machine guns. Only part I agree with is that they switch out of a suppression role. This is fine, they become the go-to heavy weapon for breaching doors open, destroying cover, and killing with intact equipment. They dramatically outpace rocket launchers in destructive capability over a mission by far. It takes anywhere from 2-3 hits with a machine gun to kill early aliens, and quickly drops to 1-2 (rarely 3) with lasers and plasmacasters. By the time you get those, your machinegunners can fire twice, and the guns are more accurate (the tooltip accuracy % is bugged IMO). This means that your first few rounds tend to annihilate whatever cover the alien is using, and the rest tend to hit (and kill). In the previous build I gave all of my troops (except the snipers) plasmacasters and did even better than when I had rifles. Scatter lasers and plasmacasters are death-machines. They get even better with Predator armor! I can only imagine how the mag-storm is *drools*

That spoiler does explain a lot : ) Never nabbed a praetor yet. Look at them underestimating how good humans are at killing things.

That last mission sounds epic as heck!

Never said it wasn't an invasion: just that they aren't well-prepared for it. It's the only way to justify the gameplay with the lore. If they were prepared= alien troops would have heavy armor going right from the get-go as well as prepared capital ships. This means they either have a limited supply of heavy armor and weapons, or they're scrambling to manufacture them as they invade. It also suggests that they haven't had time to convert ships beforehand and are trying to conquer us as fast as possible by sending weaker ships as soon as they're ready. Actions like this smack of desperation. Since the aliens know of our atmosphere and its composition and should be able to design for it= they must be rushed for some reason. Either another alien race has pushed them from their territory, or they're desperate for Earth's resources. If you go with this= it opens the way for a Xenonauts 2 in the future ; )

Once the game gets past ballistics into laser, I honestly never use pistols on machinegunners or snipers. With machinegunners= they tend to skill up fast so anything that gets close is screwed. Snipers= usually have them just behind a rifle or machinegunner so N/A. For me, they mostly need to be balanced for use w/ a shield. Increased magazine sizes for energy pistols would help a lot in that department, especially if they're using armor too.

Because you can fire off a pistol much more cheaply than other weapons in regard to the accuracy you get. Will it do a lot of damage to be worth it?...eh. I have had a hard time justifying pistol usage in the last few patches.

I really think people will complain regardless if alien damage is boosted w/ some weapons later on or if they're more accurate than what's around now. Leave them for the harder difficulties. I personally would like to see 'elite' versions of the weapons with the aliens reverse-engineering our mag weapons. Reason: I get the feeling now that the aliens aren't actually set up for an invasion (the invasion's an act of desperation) and that they're learning as they make the attempt. Plus, the introduction of these weapons wouldn't leave a lore-hole: we wouldn't need to research these since we were the ones who invented them! (This goes off the assumption that Mag weapons are an improvement over alien tech. Never got to them in a game.) Plus it would be a cool dynamic. If there's one thing that humans are good at, it's fighting stuff: each other, aliens, w/e.

Pretty cool and informative analysis, Ishantil. Only thing that throws it off, and this has been mentioned before, is the pistol TU's to fire not matching up with the others. With the others, you can use a 40TU shot in the assumptions, with the pistols you would have to assume 2x shots to match TU's...but then it gets fun with figuring out which accuracy to assume as well. I would love to try a mod with these changes though!

Yes, didn't seem to happen all the time. That, and the soldiers they were on had good reaction fire from my shoot-the-ufo-door method. I just figured they were shooting on empty- regardless, it's annoying. Ishantil, ok- cool. compressed/combined magazines would be great!

No.

That actually makes the ammo-carrying situation for a machine gun worse, since I couldn't fill nooks or crannies with them if I decide to carry a few grenades or other equipment. Math it out. 3 bursts per 1x1 magazine. a 2x2 magazine with 5 bursts. 3 bursts X 4 magazines in the same space- 12 bursts currently, versus 5 in your proposal in the same inventory space. It'd basically be a nerf.

Those aren't in production for a reason lol= they're horribly inaccurate. But...we now have the technology. I'm not a fan of reducing ammo for the machine guns at all. You already need to bring a billion magazines/batteries (which is ok). A boost to the laser pistol and plasma pistol ammo count would be cool w/ me.

*cracks knuckles* *points at lemm's suggestions and nods* I like lemm's suggestions. Unfortunately, since the ticker won't/can't be fiddled with= the Marshal of Yugoslavia has this to suggest: Ground Combat: On difficulties higher than normal, you will encounter higher-ranked aliens in a pyramid format sooner. Ex. Light Scout= All non-combatants as it is now since that's logical. Scout= 1-2 warriors as officers, rest non-combatants. Small chance for a droid, psion, or reaper to be on board (aliens testing them against humans in small-scale experiments) The gist is that you get a mix of crew ranks and species on ships with a more logical progression instead of ships with all of one rank. The weapons equipped will stay the same to maintain progression, but you get a few aliens better able to use them to increase the difficulty. Terror units on a few smaller ships add spice and tension to harder difficulty missions AND they don't affect research progression. Light droids do a bit, but you still need Wolf to get Buzzard. When you get psionics working= include a few caesan psions on all larger ships to support the crew regardless of race! I see absolutely no reason why we can't have mixed crew ships and bases, with each race playing to its strengths. Sebillians closing in with shotguns, androns slowly advancing with cannons, harridans sniping, wraiths harassing, and caesans playing midfield. Challenge me by making the aliens truly distinct from one another, then tweak their AI to capitalize on their strengths, mix them together...and poof: diverse and interesting gameplay. Throwing more aliens at me will not make it harder really when they tend to be uniform in the mission (same rank, weapons, race). I diversify my squad's roles= do the same for the aliens. This is one area where it doesn't pay to stick with the OG's formula, IMO. I may make a species by species breakdown of suggestions for behavior, stats/unique characteristics, and dmg resistance changes later on when I have time. 2nd suggestion: I assume you guys are working on the alien's ability to move in the Z-Axis (up and down). This would go a LONG way to making the game harder/more interesting. Aliens taking advantage of the high ground and tight spaces in buildings is what's really needed in Xenonauts. Humans have the advantage in the open, aliens have the advantage in tight spaces w/ short range= play on that. If we want to fight on our terms= we have c4 and rockets to open these spaces up. Take a page out of TFTD on this one. Reapers+Pack movement+buildings= please : )

Hah! That's a pretty funny bug.

Looking forward to this. Responses like that are part of the reason future Goldhawk games will= auto-buy for me : )

Dranak, again you prove why you're the authority on air combat. Very enlightening : )