Josip Broz Tito

Both of these combined might be great together- and would save on coding time!

I'd prefer white phosphorus ; ) Anyway, I feel stun grenades are close to what they need to be. As they were= better/safer than the baton. As they are= a little to slow-acting and only useful for getting aliens to shift. Maybe the devs want this to be an area denial weapon? Rather'd have incendiaries for that to be honest.

The MG needs ammo equivalent to what 2 infantry machine-gunners could use. As for pulse laser= it only needs ammo equivalent to what 2x rocket troops could carry. If you go much beyond that= vehicles become far better than infantry considering how powerful the pulse laser onwards are. With the pulse and up, you're already getting much larger line of sight and the ability to fire twice in a round for high AOE damage. I've never been able to get an infantry rocketeer with high enough TU's to fire it twice. I feel people aren't realizing the power of these weapons. I do support co-axial scatter-lasers etc for the scimitar and whatever the hovertank is called. It's nice to have the option to not destroy equipment, or to suppress rather than annihilate.

I don't know what to tell you, I'm always glad to see a light drone because they're cake for me.

The repetative nature of the light scouts could be alleviated by adding in mixed-crew ships. These would be ships with caesans and sebillians, possibly a drone or two. Maybe even 1 harridan (armed w/ pistol) or a reaper in very rare cases. For me, I do all the light scout missions I can...I just know what to expect each time. That's what kills it a little.

Look at me mis-remembering. GJ posting those up, Stinky.

I feel the pulse laser ammo is about equivalent to 2 soldiers holding the maximum Alenium rockets. At the most, maybe 2 more shots would be good to add.

Gonna disagree with you on this Stellar. I feel that jackal armor is meant to be essential to reducing early game losses to light plasma weapons. Once I acquired it, light scouts became easier to deal with. I feel that you're meant to at least have jackal by the first terror mission. By extension, light drones have a machine-gun light plasma w/ slightly weaker bolts. Jackal armor makes me feel fairly immune to light drones, barely taking damage. In wolf= they're a joke. I can walk right up next to one and eat full blasts. Aside from unarmored troops, if you compare the rest of the tiers against the light drone= they don't scale well at all. I don't know if there should be a drone in between light and heavy to solve this. It could be a re-skinned light drone that fires a heavier plasma machine-gun. IMO, the easiest way to make light drones relevant without to much of a buff is to tie their AI together w/ the troops around them and buff their suppression values. By 'tie together' I mean making the light drones stick near another unit and fire at its target. This would tie into the xenopedia entry and my view of how the devs want it to be.

Great point. There is a melee function by pressing the 'M' key, but it doesn't seem to do much except with shields. Might be a great way to add in a knife slot in the inventory, with the ability to upgrade to higher tech melee weapons that can pierce alien armor e.x. plasma stilletto.

I second what StellarRat has said.

Yeah, alien drones are rather weak right now. You could dramatically upgrade the light drone's suppression abilities and in the xenopedia say that their weapon is designed to cause visual disorientation in humans. The heavy drones need a HUGE health and armor boost. They die so easily since they are easy targets. The fact that they explode on death is gravy if other aliens are around. Since it's essentially a hovertank= make its weapon hurt. Alternative, more aggression with a burst-fire plasma shotgun-type weapon. That way it charges into your troops, wreaks havoc, then can explode to try and kill them.

I have a bit of a hard time telling which are the caesan officers, but the others aren't to hard. Andron: Purple coloration on whole body, head is different than the others: has a visor and a small antenna going up from one side. Not that it matters, can't stun them : ( Sebillian: Heavily armored with only the head exposed, slight red lining to the neck area (if I recall correctly) Wraith: I've only seen one, but I think I remember it having purple or red armor. If you get to the top floor of a landing ship and are in doubt= stun everything. When you are attacking the command room of an alien base, the officer will look different from all of the rest in the room. Harder to capture them there.

TFTD lobstermen had a decent melee attack if you didn't kill them with a thermal lance in one go. Wish sebillians had a melee attack...

Coup, we'll be getting along well : ) Figuring out how to help newer players on the easier difficulty settings is always good for player retention though. As for the higher difficulties= I'm a masochist. Give me the TFTD and Apoc goodness.

Good point Stellar, I didn't remember that. I admit when I'm incorrect (which I am in this situation). Adding an inventory to the chinook might be the solution, although we don't really have super-specialized equipment in this game, so auto-reload between missions makes sense. AI changes will make a huge impact on this down the road. Hopefully, they can make it so the aliens don't waste ammo and can then re-implement active usage of ammo on their part. In fact, they'll have to if they allow aliens to use grenades.

Those are all good ideas. I wouldn't mind a bit of an x-com apocalypse being thrown in w/ some remote-automated turrets to assist the player. Aliens could destroy these, but as you advance in tech, they get automatically upgraded. Not a solution, but something fun to help out. I haven't had a base defense mission these last two builds: do the aliens try to capture the control room now?

No, it's asking the player to account for this and take responsibility for planning ahead. I've been able to do 3 missions without resupply no-problem by allocating a few extra inventory spaces to soldiers, or by having stronger soldiers hold a magazine or two for weaker ones. Is it realistic to not have extra ammo on the chinook? No, but it does simplify and make the game a lot easier if there was. I don't want to see the difficulty in this game gradually reduce during the patches. A change like this would really reduce the amount of pre-mission planning a player is required to do. That doesn't align with the design goal of making the player make tough choices. If you want to be able to hit every UFO crashsite on the globe with one chinook= you should have to plan ahead for that as a player by bringing more ammo. It's a choice now and should be kept that way, otherwise it's further hand-holding. I'd go so far as to say I'd like to see a fatigue system implemented for successive missions across the globe without decent rest.

I never remembered aliens running out of anything in the OG. Not saying they didn't- I just don't recall ever running into that. As far as using aliens unlimited ammo handicap...it's just that: a handicap they receive for not aiming as well as a human player can. Infantry ammo is not a problem unless you don't bother to plan ahead and carry enough. Not allowing an auto-refill after every mission forces you to choose if you want to risk going to the next mission without resupplying. This is a semi-hard decision in some cases= that's a good thing for gameplay. The ability to use dropped alien weapons is already a concession for players that didn't think to bring more ammo. I don't feel this is an issue really. Aside from hunters needing ammo on par with 2x machine gunners (like rocket vehicles have now), if you lose the means to kill the enemy= you lost the mission. Abort and cut your losses.

I've never had stun damage get listed in blue text from exposure, only from the initial release from past builds. It still works, just takes a few turns of exposure now. So...not so great ; ) If I wanted to saturate an area= I'll use the gas rockets. The grenades were useful for stunning individual aliens in the past. Now I just tend to use batons after suppressing.

Format your posts so they can be more easily read. That said: heartily disagree on the modifier (many one-shots w/ snipers on non-coms), 80% all the time= more occasions of dead soldiers + makes little logical sense, and flashbangs do seem bugged. In the mean time: click your soldier's weapon, highlight the UFO door until it turns green and spend a few turns shooting it down. You're now at a distance and can easily light up the aliens inside w/ machineguns and snipers. Alternately, blow it up w/ c4 then launch rockets inside.

Lemm, great idea: adds more to research, and makes sense. It might be good to tie in such research to alien bases since they have facilities for growing and healing troops. Since there is already a precedent for the Xenonaut organization utilizing alien medical tech in the upgraded medkits, why wouldn't they utilize the technology aliens possess for other medical and ability issues? I could see research like this: +Alien Blood-Oxygen Transmission= retooling alien artificial hemoglobin to dope the blood of xenonaut soldiers= slight TU boost to each current and future soldier +Alien Blood Coagulants= Xenonauts have purplish-red blood, but no longer can bleed out. Medkits would still be useful for dealing with HP damage. Late-game research obviously. +Alien Maturation Chambers= 10% reduction in geoscape time to heal wounds. Internal Armor Plating= Very thin and flexible plasma resistant sheeting is surgically implanted along the torso under the skin in Xenonauts to provide a last-ditch layer of protection against otherwise fatal wounds to the torso. This would provide a small armor boost to all current and future xenonauts. +Alien Training Interfaces= Virtual combat training that taps directly into the nervous system to entice the growth of improved eye-hand coordination and reflexes resulting in small boosts to accuracy and reactions. Another version could improve strength through direct encouragement of myofibrillar hypertrophy (strength gains without size essentially) for small boosts to strength. All of this sounds pretty gruesome, but when you think about it: the xenonaut soldiers must be very dedicated and believe in what they do. It could be assumed in game that these soldiers have previously agreed to do whatever it takes to save the Earth. Accepting biological and mechanical improvements for warfare could fall under that. Gameplay-wise it would give us more to research and would make new recruits non-sucky.

I can see that being a cool change.

I can see easy mode having this factored in. I'm in the camp where I feel the game should be balanced based off of the higher difficulties, then have simple things like lowered alien count/handicap for lower difficulties. Terror missions do need some sort of more advanced warning when they pop up to bring plenty of explosives, armor, smokes, and a vehicle. They are absolutely doable as it is now, just not for those who don't know what to expect. That is a problem. I'm all for games kicking you around, but for xenonauts losing your veteran troops is devastating. Have to replace them with people that can barely wear armor and a weapon vs having a decent loadout. Do I mind this? No, but I understand how frustrating it can be for someone not used to this game. Perhaps the very first terror mission could involve lots more local forces, since the aliens aren't using their most elite troops and weapons yet. As you get further in the game, local forces are obviously outmatched.

Unlimited ammo in the dropship is a terrible idea. Absolutely negates one of the key aspects of the x-com series: inventory management. If you're running out of ammo on your troops= bring more next time, and hope the aliens dropped enough for you to finish the mission this time. If not= abort. The game needs be a challenge.

Didn't they just change it so that the initial release of gas from grenades doesn't deal stun dmg, but only the gas released afterwards does? I don't know if that was part of the rollback or not (haven't been able to play today and yesterday). Personally, not a fan of that nerf. Rather just use the rockets and batons now. Gas rockets should be fine- it's harder to spam them. Glad they actually made them release a full cloud of gas a build or two ago.