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For example a light scout might be plinking away at a steady rate, dealing 10% damage each for the first three hits then out of the blue the fourth hit just outright destroys my condor as if the scout scored a critical hit. The bug seems to be intermittent, sometimes I go a full month without experiencing this, other times I see it happen every other skirmish. If there is indeed a critical hit mechanic implemented for air combat please ignore this report, I wasn't aware.

In around 25% of my air skirmishes UFOs disable missiles / cannons on my fighters. For example cannons disappear mid-fight from their weapon slots the same way missiles would at launch. They don't turn red or anything like that, they are just gone immediately after one of the UFO beams hit. The same is happening to missiles that are set to manual fire but are never in fact launched. I can provide a save if needed. Standard loadout condor against light scout, cannon gone. Standard loadout condor against light scout, unfired missile gone.

Thanks, I'm submitting a bug report then.

Not talking about what factors into the calculation but how the bullet is actually traced. As in the game has a full fledged 3D engine and uses hitscan to trace bullets. At least that's what I was trying to say.

100% sure I didn't accidentally toggle the cannon off. It doesn't go red, it just disappears from the weapon slot the same way a rocket would after it is launched and no amount of mouse / hotkey clicking brings it back. Happens in around 10% of air skirmishes, and the one shot thingy in like every 4th engagement. At first I just assumed it's some new critical hit mechanic but it is getting silly at this point.

@Ol' Stinky: Well the trajectory indicator changes from green to yellow so the UI feedback is there but you are absolutely correct in that nothing hints at this having to do anything with suppression so the release version must educate players on the subject. On another note, do you happen to know details about falloff? Is it the same for kinetic / laser weapons, linear or exponential, etc?

That about sums it up yes. On another note, as far as I can tell the Firaxis game uses actual 3D bullet tracing yet I find it less consistent and predictable than Xenonauts. UD and TFTD are even more reliable but that is mainly due to a simplified ruleset. The best implementation I played so far is Fallout Tactics and that game uses a system similar to Xenonauts in the same sprite based 2D layout.

Are light scouts supposed to sometimes disable my cannons or straight out one shot condors now? I don't seem to recall this happening last time I played. Is that a bug or a part of the new recovery system?

Burst fire is for suppression mainly so restricting yourself to damage / TU calculations ignores an important part of the equation. Not saying I would mind a little accuracy boost or better yet more bullets fired so the trade-off is more pronounced, but it fulfills a unique role reasonably.

A similar issue - and the worse offender IMO - is hedges / fences and the likes being able to block the same shot twice. Below 4 dimensions two straight lines can only ever intersect once, that's basic geometry. At the very least, if a trajectory crosses a group of homogeneous neighboring tiles, only the first one intersected should be able to block bullets. Following existing game mechanics this means if that tile is adjacent to the player, there is no blocking at all. Ideally this rule should be extended to non-homogeneous chains of non-empty tiles so that only objects higher than the entry tile can block and even then only proportional to height difference instead of absolute height. Not sure I'd want to be able to fire over barrels two blocks away though, that seems kind of arbitrary. The way I see it adjacent objects don't block because the soldier can lean on them while aiming.

In the above configuration any time I drag the shotgun to either hand slot the action fails yet the TU cost is deducted.

Well this one is definitely there. I can kill it just fine and it does reaction fire on every turn. If it shoots at me it turns visible and stays that way (doesn't work the other way around).

Sometimes I spot an alien with a scout, take turns with other units to shoot at it, but after each shot I lose sight and have to move the scout one tile closer to regain vision even though the alien hasn't moved anywhere / crouched down. I don't know how the two are connected but since the enemy indicator on the side also disappears and the cursor doesn't turn into a crosshair when hovering over the tile where the alien should be I assume this is not a simple rendering bug. I have only ever seen this happen in night missions.

I could clearly see a Caesan on my previous turn out there in the open. This turn the visible alien indicator shows up on the side, the cursor turns into a crosshair when I mouse over the tile but the Caesan is invisible and occupying the same space the log does. For what it's worth, this is from a small scout late October, not the first time I see this happening and reloading doesn't solve the issue.

<soldierDevelopment> <!-- Soldiers develop their attributes by using them. Each time the soldier performs a certain action, he will gain a "progress point" in that attribute. Once he reaches the "pointsToProgress" value, the attribute will increase by one point. These progress points are cumulative and are stored from mission to mission. --><APProgress pointsToProgress="150" maxPointsInSingleBattle="150" globalMaxProgress="99" comment="A progress point is earned every time a soldier spends a TU on a mission" /><strengthProgress pointsToProgress="20" maxPointsInSingleBattle="20" globalMaxProgress="99" strengthCoeff="80" comment="Points are given when soldier moves one tile while carrying more than strengthCoeff percent of its maximum carry weight" /><accuracyProgress pointsToProgress="1" maxPointsInSingleBattle="1" globalMaxProgress="99" comment="Points are given when a soldier attempts to fire at a valid hostile enemy within weapon range * 1.5" /><reflexesProgress pointsToProgress="1" maxPointsInSingleBattle="1" globalMaxProgress="99" comment="A progress point is gained when a soldier performs a Reaction Fire test (it doesn't matter whether he passes or fails it)" /><braveryProgress pointsToProgress="1" maxPointsInSingleBattle="1" globalMaxProgress="99" comment="A progress point is earned whenever a soldier panics in battle" /><resilienceProgress pointsToProgress="5" globalMaxProgress="99" comment="A progress points is earned every time the soldier gets a skillup in any other attribute" /> </soldierDevelopment>