Big Z

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the (currently dummied out) Hypervelocity code ever fixed enough to jerry rig it back into the game and be usable at this point, or is it still a giant heap of catastrophic bugs like it was back in late 2012? It might warrant another look at this point if people are willing to tackle it.

Is that description still in the game? They've usually been pretty good about cutting out cruft in the Xenopedia that leads nowhere. I remember all sorts of weird little odds and ends that have been pruned away, something about alien officer's carrying ritual knives, the Fury being the first-ever A.I controlled aircraft, talk of upgraded medical centers, etc.

That wouldn't surprise me; absolute obliteration via plasma rifle burstfire from 20+ squares out has comprised about two thirds of the fatalities of my current run. Casualties dropped off precipitously once the alien armory became more varied later on, amusingly enough.

Oof, that would explain a few things. Anyone know how long this issue had been floating around?

Thanks for the quick response on this; the recent patch killed my saves (instant CTD on load) and nothing but reinstalling Lore+ would fix it; a new version of Lore+ kills two birds with one stone.

I can't answer with any particular detail, but the underlying code of Xenonauts is legendary around here for jankiness and improvisational nature. It's built on a drastically sub-optimal engine that they only realized wasn't up to the task until it was too late in development. Whatever concessions and bizarre tricks made to get the game running are going to stay there; it's far too late, if not bordering on impossible for anyone, ever, to overhaul the core game code at this point. tl;dr - Xenonauts is barely held together with duct-tape and the wishes of innocent children, this is likely the cause of the strange programming choices you're seeing.

Has the potential for the power core to explode and kill additional aliens prior to a mission been dummied out of the code, or does it still work? Between the pre-mission screen which explained how badly damaged the ship will be having been removed, and my own anecdotal evidence that I don't think I've ever seen a ship since official release that didn't have an intact core, I'm inclined to believe it was pruned. Also, if it does still work and I'm just getting an unfortunate string, does the variable "<killCrewOnPowerCoreExplodedChance" overwrite "<killCrewOnCrashChance" entirely when triggered, or add the additional fatalities to those already calculated?

I had a shotgun-toting farmer best two Reapers across 3 turns on a recent mission; I'd have conscripted him into the Xenonauts immediately were it an option.

I can't say I agree with the assessment at all; hell, half my combat strategies revolve around spotting enemies with a Shield-using scout, and then hosing down the target with machinegun fire from 25+ squares away. Way too much silliness with Aliens having phantom LOS and constantly shooting from the dark to engage them with a standard rifle, and the sniper rifles feel rather anemic.

If shrubs, bales of hay, signposts, and plastic drums provide cover, so should a good three feet of drywall, glass or no.

I'll admit that I miss them, it was nice knowing what level of resistance to expect based on how the RNG rolled their landing.

This brings up a fair point; considering this hasn't been the case in eons, why is it that the end of battle state screen still bothers to list non-Xenonaut casualties? They mean absolutely nothing anymore as far as I'm aware, and I was under the impression that the old stat screen with the nifty background art was removed because it was too cluttered. What is clutter if not completely useless, arbitrary information?

Throwing my two cents into the mix, I was around about the time that the whole Airstrike concept was hashed out and implemented 10~ish months ago, and the entire point behind it back then was to prevent players from feeling as if they need to do every single ground mission. Looking at the state of the game now, particularly after the Airstrike values were halved a few patches ago, the entire original intent seems to have gone out the window. The implicit loss of experience gained, alenium, alloys, and 4/5 or more of the monetary value of the crash site no longer renders the option even remotely palatable. The sheer gulf of value between doing the ground mission or not is staggering nowadays. In earlier versions of V22, I was content to hit 10 ships a month at a leisurely pace, now I'm right back to V19 standards of raiding every godforsaken wreck I can get my grubby Xenonaut hands on. Any significant rebalancing is off the table at this point as far as the devs have stated, so I think this is going to largely end up a community-solved problem if anything.

I'm sure you've heard it all a dozen times already, but your work here is amazing. The detailing on the Jackal gear is fantastic, and if I ever see another bucket-headed default Wolf uniform I might scream. Thanks!

Makes sense. The only time it would really matter in any meaningful way is if one decided to bring out old hardware that theoretically should be useless later on; it'd just do unacceptably low damage rather than none, like showering a Praetor with enough 9mm rounds to chip it to death.

Excellent. I've been mulling over taking a shot at overhauling the values for weapons and armor in general to add a bit more variety and depth in the near future. All those null and repeated values floating around are giving me an OCD fit.

Quick question for those who've had a handle on the balance and coding changes of the last year or so; is the current system by which higher tier aliens are simply given astronomical HP totals rather than increased armor a concession made to simplify balancing Ground Combat difficulty, or is the coding for alien armor actually buggy/defunct in such a way that it can't be reliably used?

Try running the game with "disable stat tracking" switched on from the launcher. I had the same issue at first, turns out the game isn't crashing per se, it's just going completely non-responsive for 5-10 minutes at a time due to some quirk of the statistics reporting code.

Between their newfound sense of battle tactics and the delayed implementation of EMP damage, I consider it a relief once Wraiths start showing up to replace them.

This was my first guess, but neither before or after making the change were Assault shields part of my manufacturing list either; that, and wouldn't the Assault shields still be visible in the inventory, but just with a 0 availability rather than gone at all? All the other Xenonaut equipment that must be built remains in the list even if there aren't any made and ready to use. That, and if they are intended to be a produced good rather than an infinite upgrade, why deprive the player of the old, infinite shields? Perhaps this was an only half-implemented change, leaving the item in a limbo state where it doesn't work in either new or old format.

After researching the necessary technology to upgrade Combat Shields to Assault Shields, neither shield are available from the Base Inventory; Already existing shields in Xenonaut personal inventories are properly replaced as expected. [FIX] I did some sleuthing around in the various game files to see if I could identify a cause and found that weapon.assaultshield in items.xml is mislabeled under the "Type" header as a single use item rather than an unlimited resource such as the regular Combat Shield, preventing it from populating the inventory list properly. Setting this to "Unlimited" has restored normal, expected behavior for the item.

I definitely agree that mixed-unit UFO crews would spice things up a bit. As it stands, each of the alien races have a handful of preferred tactics best suited for combating them, having to switch up your approach because multiple types are complimenting and covering each others weaknesses might make for more compelling combat once the Medium sized UFOs and begin appearing.

Hmm, wasn't aware there was that kind of drama floating about in the fandom (aside from that one guy who keeps accusing the devs of preventing Russian troops from populating the recruitment lists, lol), I meant only that it would make sense for a militarily modest nation to be less enthusiastic about the prospect of having to take matters into their own hands versus one that was historically armed to the teeth during the height of the Cold War, further modified by how sensitive of an area the crash itself occurs. I'll make sure to keep any further ideas involving geopolitical differences to myself henceforth.

Hmm, I wonder if the map type and region could be directly keyed into the weight of the values involved in letting local forces handle things? Letting the Russians take out a crashed ship in the Siberian wilderness? No problem. Telling the Japanese to deal with a crashed ship in the middle of an urban center? They wouldn't like that much.

Seconding this, as of last night I've seen two separate missions featuring intermittently invisible Light Scout Drones. They seem to be invisible if spotted during the player turn, then become visible if they move on their own turn while under surveillance. "Alien sighted" indicators are unaffected, and the shadows underneath the invisible drone show correctly as well.