Xintrosi

In my last game to have save games affected by updates (so I never finished), I was either in mid-december or mid-january (really can't remember). I had 2 Air bases and my main base. Air base: 5 hangars, radar, mix corsair/foxtrot with some marauder on the way Main base: 2 workshops, 2 labs, 2 living quarters, 7 hangars (1 dropship, marauders/foxtrots), and about 12 soldiers. I only hired more soldiers because I'd just upgraded to shrike. I had full wolf armor, and was phasing it out in favor of sentinel. I was mostly seeing landingships, but cruisers were making occasional appearances. Had nearly full plasma weaponry for all craft and soldiers. I took out 2 alien bases, and did 2 terror missions. Unfortunately, I think this was before they nerfed the UFO payoff and upped the initial funding, so I'm not sure I'm a useful data point. EDIT: I never bother with garages/vehicles. Are they useful later on? I found the default hunter very underwhelming the one time I tried it.

Probably? I watched it often as a kid, so it holds a place close to my heart. Anything to "justify" spending more time and money on video games!

Ah, so it's the Scout Datacore? That's unfortunate. At least next time I can plan around this. Thanks for the info!

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, but I am curious because I took out 3 Corvettes before a Scout happened along my path. Once I raided the Scout, Alenium became available as a research option, but not from any of the Corvettes. Was I unlucky in components from the Corvette being too damaged to trigger the research? Or does only a Scout trigger Alenium research? If the first, then I was unlucky in my collateral damage and that's fine (curse my overly effective aircraft!). If the second, then I was unlucky in my UFO spawns (which by itself is fine) but the research is oddly gated (which I don't like). Alenium is a very important research topic because it unlocks a lot of other stuff, and not being able to grab it from Corvettes really doesn't make much sense. Once again, if there is an item on the Corvette that could trigger it and I destroyed it, then I have no complaint. But if Corvettes CANNOT trigger the research then I think that's silly. 30 Scientists sat there doing crap all nothing because the Corvette offered nothing for them to research.

Frankly, the way I worded the question, nobody should be answering 6+ unless they are very new to the genre or extremely unlucky... considering that in order to average 6 losses per mission would require a near-total party wipe on the first mission. And every subsequent mission. Unfortunately, I can't edit the poll options, so there are some that no one will ever click.

I am not going to add enough poll options to cover every eventuality (later game difficulty increase, terror mission vs crash site) so please expound on your response! I used to restart an Ironman file if I lost 2 soldiers. At all. I've only recently gotten over this perfectionism, so my Ironman file has only recently gotten to Plasma tech (usually skip lasers). I generally don't lose anyone in most missions, but if I do, it's usually some catastrophic mistake (misfired rocket, complacently misplaced smoke) that gets 1 person killed and another 1 or 2 severely wounded or killed. What about you? Friendly fire from 90 degrees getting you down? Reaction fire rushing in the UFO front door turning your Colonel Sanders into chicken chow?

A recent mission that got a few of my xenonauts wounded/killed was due to 4 different flash bangs not suppressing despite being targeted right on. One of the Caesans actually managed to get knocked out before he got suppressed! I hadn't realized that might be a bug; I figured there was some hidden die roll I was losing.

My first no-loss success in XCOM2012 was because I named all of my soldiers after people I knew. I'm apparently hard to kill, because 3 times "I" was one-hit killed but managed to be critically wounded instead. Also, if you've made it past the alien base, you're over the hump and you should be fine. That's one reason why I like Xenonauts... it ups the ante over time rather than spiking too early. This current game of Xenonauts my first mission went flawlessly: no civilian deaths, no xenonauts were scratched, and I managed to mass flash bang stun 3 aliens. I was sitting pretty. Second mission? After a botched light scout entry I got 1 Xenonaut killed, 3 critically wounded (1 had 1 HP!) and 2 others were at about 60%. Normally I'd give up and start the game over, but I was getting annoyed at having to reconfigure my class loadouts and assignments every new game. Instead, I went into my next mission with only 6 people, with 2 of them injured. You know what? That has been my favorite mission so far. I had to consider every move very carefully and at the end I came out without injury and captured more aliens with flash bangs. Now I'm about to hit October and I'm on track to perform as well as my more "perfect" games. I'm really glad I kept going despite the rationale that an early re-roll would waste less time. So Dranak, what do you consider an unrecoverable Death Spiral? I'm sure for 10 different people you could find 11 different definitions.

http://www.xenonauts.com/background/ And in-game under Alien Invasion research the head scientist mentions "not many of us left" (paraphrased). Indicates there once were more personnel, but got downsized. EDIT: Nevermind about the Invasion research. Was at work and mis-remembered the text.

Are you one of those people that doesn't quit a game until the game itself tells you you've lost, or do you cut and run when things are looking bad? How bad do you let it get before you admit to yourself that you've lost and that it's time to start the game over again? In my case, I quit earlier than I need to. A few relatively replaceable soldiers die and a few air battles don't go my way and I'm ready to throw in the towel and start again. I did the same thing in XCOM 2012 if I couldn't finish Classic Ironman without losing countries or soldiers. Might as well just start over, it's not good enough. What about you? Do you quit because you're overly perfectionist, or because you have a realistic expectation that you're going to lose? Or do you fight until your last breath with the aliens knocking down your door shouting "From these cold dead hands!" like Charlton Heston? PS: I didn't make this a poll because I wanted discussion about indicators that you've lost, so that perhaps I can use them as metrics myself. PPS: The other option: you were actually doing well, but then the new build came out and screwed your saved games

Poor word choice. "Less convenient" would be better, as I tend to be one of those relatively inflexible people that doesn't adapt to change well. In fact that's why I play these kinds of games, so I can learn to be a bit more flexible in changing situations. I got so comfortable using Foxtrots in all circumstances that I became a bit stagnant in my thinking. My biggest annoyance is actually early game with Scouts and Light Scouts both being detected as "small". I send 1 Foxtrot and 1 Condor to each contact just in case, so the foxtrot gets its time wasted on light scout encounters. Not saying it needs to be changed or anything, just that I am sad when all my aircraft are on missions when more contacts are detected.

I got lucky and manged to take out 3 fighters with a single Condor (before the cannon range was upgraded). This was a huge fluke because the two I didn't kill with missiles rolled into the same profile, so both were in the cannon envelope at the same. This taught me the valuable lesson that condors are not as completely useless as I once thought they were. In order to get your missiles to hit, you should fire in the middle of their roll right about the time you roll to avoid their missiles. 2 Condors should be able to take out 3 fighters. Unfortunately, you will usually have to repair the planes afterwards. Foxtrots are useless on smaller ships unless you want to nearly ram an unescorted light scout. It's unfortunate that we can't rely on them like we used to. Repetitive/tedious air battles do tend to occur more often now.

Nothing beats... beating. I also like the stun baton risk/reward over the relative ease of stun grenades. Now that stun grenades require a greater time investment my impatient nature will definitely lead me to unleash Xenonaut Brutality in nearly 100% of cases with recalcitrant aliens. I reserve summary execution as punishment for recalcitrant soldiers.

I believe the points about Xenonauts using out of date technology are on purpose. The Xenonauts project lost powerful political backers and most of its funding since its inception, so the inroads to some of the more advanced Earth weaponry are gone. At least not without possibly pissing off funding nations, which isn't a viable option. Once the Invasion occurs, it's more pragmatic to reverse engineer Alien tech than badger nations for weapons and materiel they need to fight. Army surplus on the other hand...

I'm one of those people that purposely overloads his troops to make them stronger. Under my regimen they all have 80 strength by the time they hit commander. I also value flexibility; I don't want one soldier's death to mean I'm without a medic/grenadier. 1 Rocketeer - All rockets all the time. Sub in 3 or 4 Stun rockets if I feel like less collateral damage is in order. 2 LMG - LMG, 2 clips, 2 of every grenade type, Stun Baton, and maybe other misc to get as close to weight limit as is viable. No Medkit. First class I give Wolf Armor to. Tend to sub as Beaters. 2 Sniper - Sniper Rifle, 2 clips, 2 or 3 of every grenade, Stun baton, and Med Kit. I may drop 'nades to not be overweight, but I'll be right under the limit. 3 Riflemen - Rifle, 2 Clips, 3 of Every grenade, Med Kit and Stun Baton. I'm considering dropping frags because I don't ever use them and replacing them with more awesome smoke 'nades. I assault ships by switching to stun batons, smoking the entrance and then flashing the aliens in preparation for my headlong charge to beat down them down. Bases are more complicated, but smoke is still key. When I upgrade dropships, I make the newbies strength/endurance train in a cleared corner. Until their strength and/or TUs are up, they're useless to me.

I've been using Smoke Grenades relgiously since 19.7 (every soldier type except rocketeer brings 4). They're too powerful NOT to use. Once Stun Weapons are researched, I have a Stunner class that just has a stun baton and smoke/stun grenades: 1. Toss Smoke 2. Run as far into smoke as is safe 3. Repeat 1 and 2 until close to alien(s) 4. Beat alien(s) about the head and face 5. Profit! As far as game balance goes, this may not be what true X-com fans want (I didn't hear about the originals until EU came out last year), but it's a lot of fun for me. However, if it gets rebalanced again, I'll adapt to whatever the change is. Guaranteed safety certainly seems a bit OP.

It's like you knew that all last game I purchased only Foxtrots until Marauders became available. Now I'm going to have to become flexible and actually control my tactical air combat instead of time missile strikes and run away...