nailertn

Thanks, I'll make sure to check it out!

Can you recommend a let's play done by a very skilled player, preferably with some commentary? The best I could find was Pinkpeep's insane ironman and while it was entertaining, I didn't actually learn anything new. Is there something better out there?

I concur, there is some very weird behavior going on when firing from corners. Heavies are the worst offenders, they usually end up just destroying their own cover. I will see if I can get a decent save that illustrates the problem.

Whenever I try to go down the elevator with my assault troop crouched on the top floor I trigger reaction fire from the andron facing her which freezes the game. The projectile seems to be aimed at the tile where my soldier is supposed to arrive at and not where she actually is at the moment of the shot. freeze.sav freeze.sav

If you sell your scientists an engineers on the last day of the month and buy new ones on the 1st day of next month at the desired base you achieve the same without losing any money. You lose out on a few days of research till they arrive but I imagine transferring them would also take time.

In the attached save file I have two riflemen crouched on the first floor of a building who have a reasonably high chance to hit the crouching sebilian in the middle of the scout yet they always miss. I tested this for about 20 turns, 4 shots per turn, all misses. I don't know if it's related, but I submitted a vanilla bug with the same save because the scout's roof won't disappear no matter what visibility setting I use. los bug.sav los bug.sav

Like the title says, a scout's roof won't turn transparent which makes combat inside very difficult. Although the attached save file is from CE, I have seen the bug happen on stream with the vanilla version too so I am reasonably sure it is not CE related. los bug.sav los bug.sav

That's correct, tested it just yesterday.

"Unlike Workshop projects, scientists at different projects can work collaboratively on the same project with no penalties." I assume this was meant to be "scientists at different BASES can work collaboratively".

The game is using humanAirplaneSpeedNormal = 1.1 and humanAirplaneRangeNormal = 1.1 in gameconfig.xml as multipliers to determine actual speed and range for human aircraft on all difficulties, it entirely ignores the other difficulty settings. I set these two values to 0.1 to verify and indeed all interceptors slowed to a crawl regardless of the difficulty setting.

Turns out the game is always using humanAirplaneSpeedNormal and humanAirplaneRangeNormal for the multiplier. I set the values to 0.1 which was correctly reflected in xenopedia and it slowed my interceptors to a crawl. Going to report the bug, thanks for the help.

I am playing on veteran, humanAirplaneSpeedVeteran = 1, humanAirplaneRangeVeteran = 1 according to gameconfig.xml. In other words it should not affect these numbers at all. After your suggestion I checked all four difficulty settings anyway and it didn't make a difference, xenopedia always showed the same values so there seem to be multiple disconnects.

I was under the impression that xenopedia and the weapon cards take numbers directly from the xml files but a cursory investigation already revealed several discrepancies, for example the top speed and range of the F17 is 1500 / 12000 in aircrafts.xml while it is 1650 / 13200 in the xenopedia, and the MIG31 is 2500 / 18000 and 2750 / 19800 respectively. Outside sources seem even less reliable. Am I right in assuming that xenopedia is wrong and the numbers inside the xmls are what the game is actually using? And that as of now the only way to get reliable item stats is to poke inside the game files?

Not a huge fan of the reduced TU cost and cover bonus. Ground combat has always been a ponderous chess game, there is airstrike or the Firaxis game for those that have no patience to play the way the franchise has always played. It feels way too easy now to just rush through big open grounds without having to solve the puzzle of how to advance from cover to cover with minimal risk while maintaining cover fire. Diminishing the importance of cover is also problematic, this issue is very prominent in the Firaxis version: playing ironamn in a game where RNG is king is not much joy.

Don't deduct monthly maintenance cost for buildings still under construction. Cancelling manufacturing should return at least some of the production cost of already started items.

The alien just walked through the wall and is now standing on an invalid tile. Seen this happen twice at this specific spot.

According to weapons_gc.xml the two shields have the exact same stats whereas the xenopedia description says it should be an upgrade in terms of durability. Currently there is no point researching assault shields.

Shields aren't meant to be manufactured manually, they are listed with the other freebie items in manufactures.xml at 0 unit cost.

They have a 0,5 suppression multiplier atm, it is in aiprops.xml. Also you should throw from cover so there is no reaction fire, I usually position my grenade lobber 2 tiles behind the guy that opens the door.

I don't like the idea of airstrikes giving more or the same of anything an assault would. Ground combat is more work so you have to incentivize people if you want them to do it because as you say fun is not an in-game commodity. Consequently you either reward ground combat or you don't penalise players for letting a site time out, you can't do both. But this is not even a problem. The problem is that the opportunity cost of not doing a site is enormous. Shooting down a light scout is a measly 4 relation points that equates to 2000$ a month. In contrast the ground mission for that same UFO is say 24 relation points AND 45k cash AND research items AND combat experience. Way too top heavy, more of those benefits should come from downing a UFO. If you manage to strike a reasonable balance with the distribution of rewards between air and ground combat - thereby reducing the opportunity cost of not doing a crash site - people won't feel as obliged to do each and every mission. Of course if somebody still chooses to do everything and build a death squad by all means let them, but as long as the game can be finished with the number of missions you targeted plus some leeway you are good. After this you might find that airstrike is not even needed, although auto resolve does have a place in the game. But if all it does is give cash or relation points then you just slapped a new name on timeout and shifted some of the benefits - which is basically what I am suggesting - because who in his right mind would let a site time out ever again. If it gives more cash than assaulting you discourage ground combat which is of course not desirable. So the benefit has to be unique but must not deter players from assault. Some ideas: - Let host nations handle a site for a cut but tie the option to a minimum standing requirement thus allowing players to shift their focus to other parts of the world once a region is sufficiently secure. This way you have finer control over the minimum number of missions a player must do so they can't just grab items for research and ignore ground combat from then on, and auto resolve remains distinct instead of outright replacing timeout. - Make auto resolve a gamble. After a certain type of UFO has been assaulted a set number of times and the team has accumulated enough combat experience and the know-how for recovering artefacts offer the option of a less experienced officer handling ground combat for that particular class of UFOs. Let players earn SOME of everything they would otherwise but make the choice carry the very real risk of serious injury lasting several weeks. Same benefits as above, you retain fine control over the minimum number of missions before auto resolve kicks in and you introduce a real distinct choice instead of giving timeout a new name. You may exclude soldier experience from the rewards but personally I feel this is the single most important reason why people keep grinding so you have to accept a compromise if you want a real solution. - Introduce a distress beacon mechanic: Grounding a UFO gives no reward anymore. Instead crash sites activate a distress beacon asking for extraction thereby attracting more air traffic in the area. This can be stopped immediately via airstrike for the - rebalanced - reward grounding used to give, by assault for the usual stuff, or the player can choose to let the signal run for a certain amount of time in hopes of it luring more UFOs in. But with every hour the risk of it getting away increases so eventually dealing with it one way or another is a must. This way you can significantly lower the number of UFOs by default but leave the door open for more so that players can overcome the tech tree difficulties you described and nut jobs wanting their 100 all death squad can have their fun too. More freedom for players and no need for hard coded safeguards against dead ends. One last point regarding light scouts for rookie training: Makes no sense, the same solution that worked in UD and TFTD are still viable here. Rookies may have crap stats but their starting gear improves as the game progresses so the relative difficulty of light scouts diminishes. Of course this will lead to boredom eventually. If you want to maintain interest you have to scale the difficulty over time. I don't want small UFOs throughout the game for the sake of rookie training, I want them because an army without foot soldiers isn't authentic.

The same way active is associated with bright and inactive with dull. It is a design choice based on what you want to emphasize: rolling active or cooldown active. Only in this case the two happen concurrently so it is a bit ambiguous.

Considering the short range and low ammo capacity of early fighters, the long refuel times that don't even start while the craft is being repaired and the fact that UFOs come in big waves rather than one by one, finer control over interceptors such as this is an absolute must. I'm sure the lack of this feature makes sense from a coding standpoint because it certainly doesn't in any other regard.

Sounds nice, or at least increased scroll sensitivity. I also wouldn't mind the same speed controls we have in the geoscape; with different values ofc.

A distinction should be made between suppression range and androns being immune to it. The first is as much a basic mechanic of the game as line of sight or time units; part of the generic set of rules we play by. Those should be made as clear as possible with no obfuscation what so ever. After all I doubt your elite soldiers haven't held a gun before, they should be about as aware of suppression mechanics as of the loud bang guns make when they pull the trigger. On the other hand humans haven't seen an andron ever before so not making their immunity obvious in advance is perfectly fine and in fact goes well with the story of the game.