gshuford

I'll just put this out there, then. I spent six years in the American army infantry. I've spent about 2.5 years of that in combat. My numbers are pretty accurate. If I engaged a still target within 300 meters with a standard assault rifle that I was trained with, I could hit the target in the head (100)% of the time. If it was moving, it would have to be within about 150 meters. Call BS all you want, but I know for a fact that I'm not citing anything that myself and others in my unit have not produced less than a 1 sigma repeatable results on, and that's being generous. The hit ratio for military becomes skewed when you examine the support by fire teams whose job it is to lay down suppression fire. That suppression fire is highly accurate. With an m240 bravo, I would hit (100)% of the time, anything within 600 meters with a 3.5x magnifier. That is, should any thing be stupid enough to move from cover. Furthermore, your law enforcement citations do not represent trained military. I've also did about 2.5 years in that field. Cops are nowhere near as trained in firearms - especially assault rifles - as military men, and even less so, combat arms and infantry. I can respect your opinion of what you would like in a game and I will be civil in this forum. Simply put, do not call me a liar. Please do not attempt to slander me unless I have truly stated something obtrusive and offensive. Now, you've raised some issues that I believe everyone is aware of. However, this is still a game. It would be nice to have an accurate depiction of real soldiers, but I believe doing so would unbalance the game. On top of that, you contradict your own statements. First, you state that it is unrealistic that trained elites miss so much and that they can carry so little. I provide supporting facts that restate this and then you give me your statistics on how poorly people engage in real life. [Q] Understanding that in a 0 to 100 scale 50 in the average untrained, and should be considered unqualified, citizen. Such people wouldn t even qualify at the end of basic infantry course. [/Q] [Q] Now put soldier on the move and alien on the move and you got a city firefight situation where people miss themselves at 10 meters (30 feets). This is FBI/SWAT statistic. [/Q] [/Q] i wonder about the game design qualification of the team and future of the game. i m sorry, but this scream incompetence in my and many peoples book. You can t throw an old bone to the public and hope not to get bitten anymore. [/Q] I think that in the spirit of this being a re-imagining of the original XCOM: UFO unknown, I think this is the most highly qualified game design team I've seen. I've played XCOM clones that come nowhere near recreating the original. Nor have they possessed the spirit of putting this game together the way the developers have. In the spirit of an XCOM: UFO game style which many people were hoping for with XCOM 2012 (which was a great game), this is an amazingly accurate game with updated graphics and game play mechanics. As for their incompetence, part of the reason I bought into this game early on was because I was impressed at how they were handling the attempt to stay true to the game and not crap it up by making drastic changes in the game play. Many people have been screaming for this sort of game for a long time now. I'm sorry if it doesn't fit your bill. I'll be sorry if they change it too much to compensate for what you (and others - yo're certainly not alone in your thinking) desire. However, I will not begrudge them should they do what's best for them. I'm not even opposed to your idea. I just don't think it feasible for what I understand the game is meant to be. In the end, no matter how realistic you try to make it, it's a game which is run on turn-based tactical simulation. 90% of that alone makes it fairly unrealistic. However, I've found general military tactics work very well. Support by fire to suppress and an assault team to flank is still a very viable textbook strategy. EDIT: I apologize for probably comparing too closely to xcom, but this game does tend to capture that spirit very well.

That's really the big reason I've let it dangle. I have played through the game on classic with save spamming. But after I beat it, I needed to get through it on iron man classic to be satisfied. I feel like winning at the base was pretty much end game. I was sitting pretty on countries - only 3 backed out and the rest on blue, except maybe 1 which was only yellow. That game is as good as won. Xenonauts, however... Well, I had a good run with a crew. I liked playing iron man veteran (though had to start saving due to the now uncommon crashes). Had even built up a couple of colonels. Lost a man here and there, but overall a pretty built up team. Had a fully functional second base, two interceptor squadrons, 3 charlies (2 loaded with infantry and one with infantry and "tank"). I was feeling good. Then the tank with my best infantry crew on a terror mission and the tank ran out of ammo, the crew got killed, and I retreated the vehicle to the chinook and abandoned my team. Lost about half of both of my fighter squadrons to an escorted corvette due to rookie mistakes. And my almost all rookie team went to the alien base, saw what they were up against, and got the hell out of dodge. Fortunately, that save was killed by a game crash so I don't have to own up that I was probably close to throwing in the towel on that one. I think my throwing in the towel moment for this game comes when I've realized that I've not followed the right research branch for too long. Probably because I get intimidated when I start letting UFOs go or ignore terror missions because I know my guys aren't ready. Up until this point, the game has always crashed eventually and since I had it set to iron man, I had no choice but to start over. Although now that I'm saving to prevent corrupt files, I think I'm still going to try to see it through. I need to know just how bad it has to get before you reach Hell's gate.

Unfortunately, game balance is key. 1) We get super-elite soldiers, they should be able to hit anything within 300 meters and within 150 meters if it's moving (for standard rifles). Pretty much 0% miss chance for even well trained basic infantry under those conditions. So, the aliens have nice armor and you whittle them down. Except, some of them don't. The Caesans (sp?) are pretty much greys. For some of them, having high hit chance and increasing alien armor would work, but then the 'nauts would go through the Caesans like a fat kid through a cookie shop. 2) So we get the dregs of the military. This would explain the combat, but if they're giving us the crappiest soldiers, why are they giving us the smartest scientists and engineers as well as a virtually unlimited military surplus of m16s, grenades, etc? 3) From personal experience, soldiers can carry upwards of 120 lbs on the battlefield. The weight gets dropped for combat, but they can easily maneuver with 60 lbs or less. This sort of group would travel light anyway. Just guns and ammo. So, we're talking a light machine gunner having about 600+ rounds at least. Riflemen would have at least 7 mags if they wanted. But once again, game balance. This is just one of those areas I don't think should have an explanation. Yeah, it might piss a player off for unrealism, but to make it realistic would crap up the actual gameplay. And the gameplay is what's most important. Of course, if some very insightful person could come up with a decent explanation, that would be awesome.

Yeah, I used to be a save scummer in those days, too. I was playing Xeno only on iron man veteran, but had to go without the iron man lest I get a corrupt autosave. With XCOM EU, I managed classic iron man and got past the alien base. So far that game is yet to be finished. I think I'll get back to it after I retrieve the save from my old computer. It was funny because it is so far my most successful attempt - and also my first attempt at documenting it on facebook using my friends list. I guess I have valuable friends!

Try rotating your monitor and mouse 90 degrees. Here's a thread from something else about this sort of problem. Not sure if it will help. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1374895.html

HA! Well, it's kind of easy to get caught up in this stuff. And I think the pages look good. I'm glad to actually see how much love is actually going into this project. It would have been a good game if it was released a month or two ago, but to see how much effort is going into perfecting this thing is pretty amazing.

In the foxtrot description, you changed it from "its" to "it's"? Should be "its" as "it's" is only used to denote "it is". "It" has a unique possessive in that it doesn't get an apostrophe. True story.

Done. EDIT: I also just threw something out there that sounded about right for the type of autocannon. It may be complete bs for the time frame.

EDIT: Apologies. I didn't realize you had posted a correction under the original.

No worries. I've studied math several levels beyond Calculus 2 and I can only give you my word that Cal 1 is child's play to me. That being said, I was showing a friend the fundamental theorem of calculus. I suddenly realized that nothing I was doing was making sense and I couldn't figure out how I could possibly be wrong. After thinking on it for a minute, I realized my equations were spot on, but I forgot how to multiply 2*5 in the practical example.

I don't try to confirm or explain since I lack experience and evidence. Well, I try to explain, I suppose. There's some great documentaries out there that look very deep into how perception, culture, and other stimuli can explain some of the more common scenarios - especially abductions. However, there's still things unaccounted for. The England incident, for example. I find it all very fascinating to hear and imagine what it's like to be in that situation. And then try to rationalize. If it can't be rationalized, I like to imagine the why of the scenario. It's pretty unproductive, but my brain enjoys it. Also, that would be called a rhombus or diamond. A trapezoid only has one pair of parallel sides.

[video=youtube;-OYaZRPjTHY]

That would be genius!

@Gizmo: I actually like that. Just one slight change. Rather than mention "detecting a ground base", I would change it to say, "They will likely try to establish hidden staging areas on the ground." Or refer to them as Forward Operations Bases (FOBs), TOCs (Tactical Operations Centers), or something a little more realistic sounding rather than B movie sci-fi sounding.

The Last Starfighter is another good one. I love how the underlying theme of the story is "College isn't for me. I don't plan on doing anything with my life, but I just KNOW something great will happen for me!" Those themes inspired an entire generation of lazy. I've got nothing on your movie though.

Well, I did say "aliens AND the paranormal", but let's break this down, anyway. As stated, they do tend to fall into the same demographic interests. However, paranormal ghost hunter people very well may have no interest in aliens while scientists may spend years looking for ETs while outright dismissing ghosts as bull. Just a couple of supporting cases for your statement. On the other hand, "para" is of Greek origin generally meaning "beyond" or "to the side of". I hope we all understand what normal means. So, something that is "beyond" or "to the side of normal". I would lump aliens in this category. Now, the actual definition of paranormal is more like something that science cannot understand. And here is the grey (no pun intended) area. Science can certainly UNDERSTAND aliens, but only to a degree. It kind of goes without saying that this thread is focusing on alien encounters that science cannot understand. However, I purposefully included the word "paranormal" to mean things not alien as well. Such as ghosts, telekinesis, etc.

True. I just feel like the "they don't consider us a threat unless we come within a km of them" explanation sounds hokey to me. Maybe just because as I stated before, a space-fairing race should be immensely experienced in long-range combat and would prefer to do things that way. On the other hand, if we stopped and really thought about how a space race would REALLY conduct an invasion, we wouldn't be playing Xenonauts. Now that I've looked at it that way, the explanation doesn't sound so hokey.

I haven't had a reproducible error so I'm just going to say it was magically fixed. Good job, devs! EDIT: To keep the freezing from happening, I had to disable stat tracking.

http://media.io/

I wanted to post this idea myself. I liked in xcom eu how the more deaths there were, the whiskey glasses started appearing and all. I'd like my vehicle and pilots to have names as well so they can also be remembered. I love the fact that your guys can get promoted posthumously. It seems like there should be a way to remember them. Especially when they're noteworthy enough that looking back at their name, you exclaim, "Oh, man! Barbara Sanchez! Man, this one time we were up to our eyeballs in x-rays and she comes rushing in, out of ammo and shot up like Keith Richards! She just starts lobbing grenades and grabs an alien's plasma rifle! Didn't even know how to use it, but she cleaned house!" Yeah, I love when your characters end up doing insane stuff worth remembering. But it's easy to forget when "out of sight, out of mind".

Winning a winning battle is hardly noteworthy. Winning a battle in your darkest hour is the stuff of legends. EDIT: It sounded more epic that way.

Is the Crimson Dagger story to be considered canon? If so, I want to point out that the craft was shot down at long range. I want to propose something: In space, having eye's-on would be almost pointless. There's a lot of nothing out there, so spotting a ship in a relatively large emptiness (light years of space) would be near impossible for relatively close ranges (millions of miles). Therefore aliens would rely heavily on sensors. And a race of warrior aliens would rely heavily on cloaking from those types of sensors. But maybe their tech isn't perfect. Maybe to fully cloak from sensor detection, they have to shut down their main engines and work on secondaries. However, it doesn't work so well in atmo. Kill main engines = crash. So, they are detectable in atmo, but when shot down, their emergency protocol is to go ahead and start jamming. This technology would also help (to some degree) explain why alien bases are harder to locate. Since they start jamming as soon as they're shot down, it's damn near impossible to plot a crash trajectory. Remember, these craft are extremely durable and often still largely intact which means they can probably glide using their secondaries making triangulating with sensor-dar near impossible since the flight path is unpredictable without being able to track it with computers. So, the 'nauts don't want to lose an alien craft and certainly not let the crew have their way with the civvies. They need close-range engagements so the pilots can get an eyes-on of the crash location or at least to report a trajectory. EDIT: Although this doesn't really keep pilots from engaging with long range and then doing a fly-over to spot the crash sight, the relative range of fighter to UFO engagement should remain the same. That is, if we can shoot at them with long range, they can shoot at us with long range. Making this aspect realistic would entail changing the numbers in the game to reflect actual ranges of missiles, but allowing the aliens the same ranges. In effect, the air combat would remain unchanged, really. But to say we can't engage them at long ranges because they do X which prevents it doesn't really make sense. Remember that these things are designed for space combat. That means they should be nothing short of engaging at extreme ranges. Alternate possibility. They have extreme long-range capability. Our fighters are equipped to jam that ability, but in so doing, they jam their own long range capability, putting us on par with them rather than way under par.

Reminded me of the x-files episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space where Jesse Ventura as a MIB assures Mr. Crikenson that he only saw the planet Venus.

This may get to be a heated discussion among the demographic. It's a real off-the-topic thing to believe. I'd like to encourage everyone to keep an open mind and accept the perceptions of others should it get a little weird. This is sort of a "gimme your story" kind of thread. I have not had any personal experiences to share, but the documented evidence leads me to believe there is some sort of cover-up or, at least, government knowledge of something that exists beyond earthly realms which is not released to the public. In essence, This is a campfire story thread. I would very much like to hear stories from anyone experiencing close encounters. My room mate once told me how she and her father went to the mall late in the evening and she remembers a "black object" blocking out the stars. Her father, in something of a trance, went and stood out under a "light" beaming down from it. At the same time, she remembers very little of the incident other than that they were in the parking lot when it happened. They "came to" a few hours later, the mall being fully closed at that hour, and never really speaking of the incident. On the same subject, I think ghost stories and campfire stories of the supernatural also are plausible. Such as an old sergeant of mine telling me how he went somewhere (unimportant) with his mom when he was a child. He saw something dark from his peripherals. He "came to" with his mom shouting at him. Apparently, he tried, in complete fear and insanity, to escape the vehicle. He lashed out for the door and clawed at the window, all the while ignoring the fact that he was seat-belted in. This, according to him, occurred for 2-15 minutes (fuzzy memory on my part), of which he had lost conscious recollection of. Only to say that his mother was extremely frightened and he was soaked in sweat and very tired. I'm sure many readers will attribute my curiosity to watching too much x-files, but I'm honestly curious. I believe there are things within the government that can hardly be dismissed so easily and things within our universe that will not be dismissed so easily. Sorry for the long post, but I would love to hear (and without judgment from myself or others) any paranormal stories people have to offer.

I'm glad I didn't have to justify that. But I actually had a reasoning to it. You see, I wasn't sure if the game "auto-collected" battlefield goods at this point or if I had to "escape" with them. Also, because you can. I've stuck friendly bodies in my backpack as well. Only because it was morbidly amusing. I have trouble making friends.