Ruthless Reuban
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Posts posted by Ruthless Reuban
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2 hours ago, Dermophile74 said:
1 -- Theme Campaign --
I am really not sure if Something like that is even incorporated but theme Campaign came to my mind when my second Campaign had almost Psion Caesans on every missions (the purple ones). On my current Campaign as I said I reached the first Week of October, and still never met a single Psionic user, Strange.
Again, I am not sure if it's related but on all campaigns except the current one I had unlocked the Asierus aircraft almost the same time the Foxtrot (very early yes). On my current Campaign, still no Asierus the first Week of October...[/quote}
That is called randomness. Alien crews are quite random and so some things happen faster than others depending on RNG. Playing - difficulty I just got my first Wolf armour manufactured and it's 1.st November...
Basically you are not Guaranteed to get virtually anything on fixed time. It depends on RNG and your actions.
Quote2 -- Game mechanics --
End of september I already researched the laser weapons, and I had enough alien alloys to build 2 sniper rifles, 2 pistols, a minigun and a rifle. I had as well a Defender tank with Pulse canon fitted. Hopefully I would say, because the first Terror ship appeared 1 or 2 days later, the 2nd of October… I really didn't expect that so early ! of course without Asierus, only some F-17s and 2 Foxtrot, no way to take him down. He finally land in Vancouver. I launch a Chinook from North Africa base, where my best men and laser weapons are. The chopper finally land in Vancouver...
Do you know that around 09:00 in the Morning in Vancouver … it's actually the night ?? Very very nice… my first terror mission, and at night… anyway the first part of the mission is really good, stress and everything as the dogs attack, and Andons with drones behind. I saved only 4 civilians but got only a single man injured. God bless my laser snipers and minigun… Now the second part of the mission, where the hunter becomes the pray… took my like one hour real time to cautionly advance during "night" and find the remaining alien forces. And what forces, this Hub thingy they called it, with his own bloody minigun almost killed another soldier.
How the hell my men are unable to throw a grenade above a car I will never understand, but now that I watched the video on the previous post I should make some tests. Yes I want to throw that grenade right on the guy that is stalking behind the car but no, the car block 90% of the line of sight… of course !!!
Watching those robot dogs running throught my men without a single one reacting just pissed me off. Description I got later from research dept says those dogs are running as fast as a trained man… It's even more pissing me off when they just kill a civilian next to you, then cross the street, kill another one, then run away… without a single move from my 3 mens (around 80 reflex)…
As a side note, I play on Ironman yes, but I changed the vision cone of my units to be more realistic, from 90 to 120 degrees. I changed as well the one from the vehicles. I couldn't find the Defender tank in the armor file… that's a little annoying, so if someone knows where to change it, I would appreciate.
First alien terror mission might happen when Ticker is high enough, and that is around early October or even late September depending on how much UFO's cause havoc. Generallu I try to play Luftwaffe tactics (so much airplanes that I can shoot down almost everything) but first terror UFO is nearly impossible one.
As for every crash site and terror sites too, X-Division has same mechanics original UFO had: targetting site with at least dropship mean site does not disappear. Quite easy way to avoid night missions on hardest battles. So theoretically that first terror site could be active forever, you just need couple of dropships.
If you want air coverage back after XXX turns, check xenonauts\assets\mods\Charons Changes, Psi, Sounds\config.xml
For reflex shots, remember weapon's Reaction modifier too. Heavy weapons suck on reaction shots (0.1 modifier). Also shield wearers have fixed modifier IIRC.
Defender: xenonauts\assets\mods\X-Division\vehicles.xml and VEHICLE.LIGHTTANK
2 hours ago, Dermophile74 said:3 -- Game speed --
I never use more than x2 speed, and it is sometimes even too fast, I would really love Something between x1 and x2. For a precise intercept I launch my aircrafts in manual mode on an intercept vector, as the base game use a dog curve wich is all but efficient. If there is a setting I could change I would appreciate as well. thanks
Geoscape speed: xenonauts\assets\mods\X-Division\gameconfig.xml
<!-- GEOSCAPE TIME SETTING CONTROLS -->
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12 hours ago, KOKON said:
Wow! Thats a great mod i should say!
I've played xcom since ~1994. Playing x-division for the first time. Installed 1.00.11 beta. selected NG+1 iron man. I liked when 2 of my f-17 were killed by a single alien scout on the first day. And first ground mission scared me a lot when alien hp was not going down after multiple shots. I'm determined to try to win without reading any spoilers. This mod feels really great.
One weird thing is i could not buy back a new awacs plane after selling it. This is stupid... You should make awacs available from the beginning of the game.
Great job guys! Keep up the good work! Very good xcom experience! I've even came back to forum to write this post (after 7 years or so)
Thinking to make a stream
As AWACS description says, it was "borrowed" and so cannot be bought. It's one of a kind. I agree it sucks but you can easily modify aircrafts.xml to make it bit more worthwhile.
2 hours ago, Dermophile74 said:Good afternoon, I have installed the X-Division Mod after a fresh install, and of course I followed all the steps. I am actually playing the game with no bugs or errors so far, but as I have an error message each time I launch the game, I am a bit worried. If you could just help me, I show you the message :
It seems you are using language (=character encoding) that Xenonauts, X:CE or X-Division (or all of them) has difficulties to correctly encode for some reason. May also help if you could change Windows language to English. May also be Steam based error.
However that doesn't look too serious error if everything works OK.
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On 3/19/2020 at 9:04 PM, kuhaica said:
So, I'm unsure where the requirements for the Jackle Armor and other items are in the mod folder. I like to make sure everything in the game is where I want it to be, increasing and decreasing stuff before playing a serious game. The biggest hurdle right now is looking through the files, I can't find where I'm supposed to edit the items.
All I've found is this
<Row> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">ManTech.Dummy.armour.jackal</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">XArmour9</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">999</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">9999</Data></Cell> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">1xItems.Charon;1xItems.Sfarrelly</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:Index="8"><Data ss:Type="String">StockItem( "armour.jackal" );</Data></Cell> </Row>
Which doesn't give me the option to edit the number of Alien alloys to make Jackal armour. Looking around in other files I've yet to find anything relating to the cost of items anywhere and I'm wondering exactly where that is.
There you go:
\xenonauts\assets\mods\X-division\manufactures.xml
<Row>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">ManTech.Jackal</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Armour & Shields 0</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">5</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">10000</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">3xItems.Alienalloys</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:Index="8"><Data ss:Type="String">StockItem( "armour.jackal" );</Data></Cell>
</Row> -
On 2/29/2020 at 1:53 PM, venom274 said:
Hey. In what file are the UFO crews registered?
\xenonauts\assets\mods\ufocontents ?
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5 hours ago, Steelpoint said:
Is it normal for a Terror Carrier/Ship to carry both a Terror and Assault operator on the same crash site? I just finished my campaigns first Terror Carrier assault and I was able to capture these two.
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Also, I removed the 'workshop support' mod from the modlist, and started my new NG+2 campaign and I was able to unlock the Wolf armour, so I'd wager that was the reason it was MIA originally.
It's normal. Terror ship crashsites contain "bonus spawns", perhaps to give some credit for shooting down craft as it takes some effort vs just raiding terror site. As said on
And someone commented earlier that terror ships also carry assault operators, cannot find where. Anyway that is intentional, not bug.
Great, enjoy campaign, this really kicks a**.
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5 hours ago, 720pee said:
Is there any way to turn down the overly loud sound effects of when the xenomorph spawn? It's overly loud and not affected by in game settings and pisses me off everytime.
No idea what sound you are exactly talking about but probably those sounds could be found on directory Xenonauts\assets\mods\X-Division\audio\sfx\Xenomorph
Just search what sound that is, then make backup copy of it, make copy of another "not so loud sound" and rename it into what that loud sound name was.
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13 hours ago, Steelpoint said:
Just some minor feedback on terror missions.
I think these missions are in a good place balance wise (by NG+2 standards), I was barely able to win my first Andron terror mission via some good fortune and the loss of a few soldiers (I was able to occupy a building to the south east of the landing zone and hold em off from there and I barely got mk1 laser weapons out before the mission started).
My main issue is that I dislike the removal of the '20 turn free vision' feature, where after 20 turns you get full vision of the map.
I feel removing that is akin to removing having full vision of an Alien base when you occupy the command centre. It really helps in clearing out the last remnants of the Aliens and speeds up the last leg of a long mission. If the feature is too open to abuse then I'd be fine extending the min timer to 30 turns, or maybe even setting it that you only get the free vision when less than X enemies remain plus 20 turns have passed.
First terror mission is quite easy with right equipment. Lasers, Fox, Alenium rocket/grenades etc.
Hard to tell about terror mission balance overall. Currently on phase 3 first terror mission early second month is only terror mission I had so far. Just because that terror ship was first and only I wasn't able to shoot down. Another one got through once but that was base attack.
That issue is very easy to fix. Just go to directory ....\xenonauts\assets\mods\Charons Changes, Psi, Sounds
And locate Config.xml Edit XXX part.
<CombatWindow>
<RevealAllTiles afterTurns="XXX" /> <!--For Town, SovietTown and XenoBase tilesets -->
</CombatWindow>And put there 20, 30 or whatever you like. Affects on base defence missions too.
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7 hours ago, Steelpoint said:
I suppose I'll take this as an opportunity to start a new game on a higher difficulty, NG+1 or NG+2, since I've found myself doing very well mid way through Phase 2. I'll remove the workshop mod and see if it makes a difference, I'll try around with GC Editor and see if I can blitz through and see if I can get Wolf with that workshop mod removed.
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Speaking about the game, is there any practicality in taking Ballistic guns over Energy guns? Outside of ballistic Shotguns/Carbines and maybe one Ballistic Minigun, I've found the Energy Guns (Up to Phase 2 at least) far more versatile and effective, especially when it comes to Sebillians and more so Androns who are more resistant to ballistics than energy.
Good idea. I don't recommend lower difficulty than NG+2 for serious game.
Question is more "how many guns type X" rather than "only guns type X". Ballistics have higher suppression and some of them have shock effect (SMG, Carbine), so there are uses for ballistic guns too. For purely making damage, energy weapons are better choice. Best idea is to mix of both. I could tell more specifically but that would be some kind of spoiler
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Your save game says something about X-Division workshop support mod being used. That may be the problem if it somehow messed mod load order and wolf armour research is taken from other file than X-Division one.
You can test it quite quickly, starting new game and rushing those technologies. Just use Xenonauts_GC_editor.exe and autoresolve battles (V) and/or use editor (U) to capture technicians.
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What X-Division version you are using? Have you updated it since started new game?
Too bad you don't have older save game, that way I could check if problem is possibly in mod loader or something.
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Cannot see anything wrong with your save game. You should have Wolf. Could you pass very early save game and I could try to replicate that bug.
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Only I can think of is that you researched Andron guard disassembly but missed Andron disassembly.
I don't think Wolf is really needed later so basically you can copy Wolf armour stats/requirements etc to match Jackal armour that is pretty useless IMO as Fox is much better.
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On 1/27/2020 at 8:15 PM, DarkAngel_22 said:
So i cant see the download links at all. the entire top part of the site just dosent want to load in for me. so everithing above the "this is a picture. it tells you to chek if you istaled the latest patch" just dosent exist.....i meen if i start randomly clicking on stuf i can manage to click on the "Xdevision download pngs" but thats about it
On 1/29/2020 at 5:06 PM, Steelpoint said:Could the installation guide be streamlined? I only just realised that I had accidently missed out on an entire update due to the poor layout of the install guide.
I installed the mod, then applied the 1.00.01 update, but I did not realise that under that is a newer "unofficial" update that takes it to 1.00.10.
I only noticed this because I am watching a LP and I saw this person has a updated xenopedia that actually has full text descriptions of the projects whereas my version of the game has none.
Instructions could be more clear, yes. Here's clear one.
1. Install Xenonauts
2. Download and install X:CE 0.35 https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/files/file/34-xenonauts-community-edition/
3. Start game
4. Exit game
5. Download and install X-Division 1.00.00 https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/files/file/7-x-division-10000/
Alternative:
https://mega.nz/#!RNBxiYYR!bWJ4oWul3r4U1BKIEXk792pfMbGgVpW1aapmOcJucIY
https://mega.nz/#!sVIjXYSa!LeYJCOLqpXF4ebwx115wevT92QRmqEnea7tW8vGzMlA
https://mega.nz/#!QEx1RTAA!hZzHDpYEEpf0vru6FeOsWNhOgRsZ8LCiJm290Jk9IyQ
6. Install latest update https://mega.nz/#!dQQwCQRC!gzlksCzX9l91PAJfViyyAyXzd_VN0weUL1X5GZmeuvU-
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I tried to make this happen.
On 5/25/2018 at 7:36 PM, Ruthless Reuban said:Feature request: could it be possible to put items on some kind of locker in craft? Just like original UFO did but this time items are for soldiers AND for craft?
Alternatively, some kind of deployment screen before ground combat just like on base defence missions .
It's somewhat annoying to waste first turn of combat for adjusting equipment that should have been done before landing.
On 5/25/2018 at 8:03 PM, Charon said:We think about this in the same way but unfortunately dont have any option to implement a proper solution.
Since even Charon cannot mod it, I tried to give some kind of "workaround" trying to make inventory management (especially regarding shields and basic ammo) easier without breaking game balance.
Tested settings that really affects these; NG+2 except: alien weapon damage 1.05 (1.0 on NG+2, 1.10 on -) @ gameconfig.xml
Basically your dropship have different "lockers" that can be accessed entering dropship (improvise on cases there is no physical dropship available, like on Alien base "dropship" is starting/exit area, Xenonaut base that is Command room...), imagine that dropship pilot (or something) supplies these items. Accessing any locker (except med bay) ends soldiers turn however (AP=0, mod it if don't remember soldier accessed locker) but accessing locker does not take action points (ie. all lockers can be accessed on single turn). If using locker requires more action points that soldier has (to switch items from backpack into hand for example), modding more action points is allowed. Switching equipment between soldiers (any soldier that has equipment can access locker) is allowed as lockers do not provide more items into battlefield. Also, if there is no aliens on sight for 5 turns AND soldier has "safe route" to craft, locker can be accessed without actually walking into craft. Basically locker is not available when there is active combat going on.
- Shield locker: To access shield locker, soldier must have had shield on left hand when battle started AND have shield on left hand when accessing locker. Shield locker provides unlimited amount of undamaged shields and even replaces totally destroyed ones (does not increase amount of shields on battlefield however). Naturally this does not apply to alien shields.
- Med kit locker: To access Med kit locker, soldier must have had some kind of medikit or first aid kit when battle started AND have that kit on inventory when accessing locker. As shield locker, provides unlimited amount of medical supplies for soldiers that enter craft.
- Ammo locker: To access Ammo locker, soldier must have had enough clips when battle started for weapon that receives unlimited reloads from locker AND have that weapon on inventory. Multiple weapons allowed. Applies to weapons that have unlimited clips available on base (NOT rockets, grenades, Alien weapons etc). Clip requirements are: 5 clips if clip takes one space (like pistol clip), 4 clips if clip takes two spaces (like Laser sniper clip), 3 clips if clip takes 4 spaces (like Laser battery for heavy laser weapons). Clip(s) may be dropped after battle has started, locker is still available. Clip requirement is only to "waste" inventory space from something more important, ie. balancing.
- Med bay: Any soldier that enters craft, receives free med kit that has unlimited healing power. Does not end turn. That med kit cannot be carried out of craft however and using it still consumes action points.
How these actually work? Start game using Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe select soldier that wishes to use locker and launch editor during battle pressing U-key. Notice that editor will show alien locations, you can hide map window using Task manager always on top or something similar (map is not really needed). You can see what soldier has on Left Hand or Right Hand. Press Reload and ammo/shield/med kit/whatever charges are restored. If shield is totally destroyed or soldier wishes to access Med bay, select appropriate item from drop down menu.
About balance. Even if soldiers have "unlimited" shields, they only get "unlimited" shields outside active battle. Also aliens hit so hard that soldiers are far from invulnerable. This is practically solution to "carry extra shields, drop them when battle starts and run to get them" -hassle. Ammo requirements are only to keep balance, so that soldier cannot take heavy weapon AND tons of rockets+other stuff. So essentially heavy weapon means much less other things even that weapon has unlimited ammo. Also it's not bad idea to keep spare clips on middle of battle, locker is for "quiet" situations only. For medicals, carrying medical supplies is advised, "craft" may be pretty far and single kit have quite limited healing power.
Overall I cannot see this breaking balance any way. While basic items are "unlimited", special stuff is not. This makes game much more enjoyable though IMO. Feel free to improvise.
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1 hour ago, fxluk said:
Anything can be done with hangs up on alien turn?
It started to happen on first Terror mission.
Its quite regular, at the moment I have to alt+f4 third time when it happened...
I got Steam version + steam CE and X-Division, nothing else.
Probably not as problem is within Xenonauts, not X-Division. I usually either reload earlier save or auto-resolve battle.
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On 7/20/2019 at 1:54 PM, Changeling_wil said:
This is going to sound stupid but:
How do you edit weapon damage? Say if I wanted to make it so the stunsticks did a lot more stun damage at once, or the basic rifles did +10 more damage then they do?
I tried just editing the xenonauts weapon file, but even after a save, the changes didn't apply when I loaded up the game.
You did edit file from right folder? That is, \assets\mods\X-Division
And yes, weapons_gc.xml should do it.
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Unzip 3 parts, all of them. Then click installer.
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What can I say? Today many games are casual bull*hit. X-Division is real Hardcore. Unfortunately game engine is what it is but makers of X-Division took everything out of it and I hope we see something similar with Xenonauts 2.
Major props to Charon and everyone else involved in X-Division project!
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7 hours ago, Dagar said:
From history you could e.g. make the analogy to the soldiers in WW 1 hunkering in their ditches when encountering mustard gas. I bet many of them had fighting experience prior, but the new element made rookie and trained soldier react in the same way.
While I partially agree with this, aliens are not using any new elements. Except perhaps PSI but everything else is just better version of earth technology. When it comes to reapers, Xenomorphs etc melee units, not hard to guess even without experience those should be killed.
Also on WW1 soldier quite well knew after first attacks what chemical weapons were about. First chemical attack worked just because officers were too stupid to realize that coloured gas was harmful. Officers thought that was only to give some kind of signal to troops. Of course it was utterly stupid as nobody would use tons of gas for just giving signal. So in this case it was not what soldiers might do, it was officers that gave orders to hold positions or even move into gas cloud.
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15 hours ago, PALU said:
We can expect to lose all soldiers at the base, as they'll be tasked with protecting the civilian evacuation, which means they have to be at defensive positions as the evacuation craft takes off.
Engineers and scientists will be evacuated in a flight to the base that can make the most of them, i.e. have available berths and free lab/workshop space, while the remainder will seek shelter among the local population, but we can't forward them to other bases even if there is free space in them.
Our guess is that the lost base will be converted into an alien base rather quickly, but we hope that if we can retake it reasonably quickly we may be able to recover it to a larger or lesser extent, and that hope extends to stored equipment, as they have little use for our equipment. The only way to know for certain is to actually lose a base and then try to retake it, and that's a proof I'd rather not get."On another thought, there is slight problem with bold part. Soldiers lost are NOT considered as MIA unless they are inside command center. And so soldiers outside command center do not appear on casualty list. So I would say soldiers inside command center are tasked to protect base controls until civilians are safe and so they basically sacrifice themself. Soldiers outside command center have no role on helping with evacuation and manage to escape or something.
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@PALU I would add following two things:
- Soldiers: Any soldiers that are inside base (but not inside command room) when attack begins are lost if you abort mission. You could tell those unlucky soldiers throq away their weapons and armour, then disguise as civilians and lurk out of base, since Aliens are not really interested about personnel but base itself. After that they return to normal life because of traumatic experience, fear of alien revenge or something.
- Stuff in storeroom: Aliens are unlike to be interested about your items because they have much better gear available. This is good if you plan recapture.
@Charon Thanks.
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Feel free to do that. I just cannot see how capturing alien specialists could be repetitive game mechanic. Capturing live aliens may be but capturing specialists first time not. Considering certan specialists are "must have" and failure could mean long delays on research side, it basically forces to take even huge risks sometimes.
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1 hour ago, Borak said:
Thanks for the comments.
a) My point was it's tedious and reduces aliens to color-coded Pokemon gotta catch them all powerups. The fact it's trackable with effort doesn't make this effort fun.
b) I never said you use alien technology directly. You didn't in vanilla either. This is not the point I was making. I said in order to utilize alien technology, that you may have 1000 examples of, to any degree, you need to have it explained to you by an alien.
c) Just in my opinion, it's more annoying than it is dangerous.
d) See a).
Soldier stats - The caps are too high, starting values too low, therefore range too wide imo.
Spiritual successors are not obligated to refrain from improving on the original.
Terror missions - Elite soldiers have little to do with it. Equipment effectiveness and enemy resistance to your current technology do. If avoiding doing the terror missions is the best option, this doesn't seem good game design. Here you have a game element that requires effort to develop that the best strategy in-game is to avoid. As mentioned, having an airforce capable of shooting them down takes at least a couple of months, and then you need luck to have the ufo within range of multiple bases so you can hit it with several waves. Until then, you need to contend with boring slogs through terror sites (and save scum, lets be realistic). Once you have the airforce necessary, you get to avoid this bore.
Difficulty - As I said, I find the difficulty well balanced apart from the terror mission insurmountable spike that is definitely not worth doing without save scumming.
a) Not everything is supposed to be fun, this is for hardcore gamers. Capturing live aliens fits lore well and is present on UFO Enemy Unknown too.
b) It would take years to reverse-engineer even single alien weapon technology, no matter how many samples. However when alien tells how it works, it's much faster.
c) Terror mission without air coverage is annoying. Capturing live aliens is just part of game. And if playing NG, it's not even necessary to capture many aliens. On NG+2 is more necessity.
d) See a) and c)
Soldier stats: I don't think same way but you can very easily adjust soldier starting and maximum stats so that is very small problem. So basically: mod game way you like it
Xenonauts is improvement from UFO: EU in almost every aspect. However Xenonauts must have something from original (soldier stats is one thing), otherwise it's not spiritual successor.
Terror missions: Elite soldiers have much to do with it. For first terror mission, you should have team of "elite" class soldiers. Avoiding terror missions is one possibility. Unless you have good soldiers and equipment, it's better to avoid it. If map is truly "bad", then it's better to retreat. Not every mission is meant to be won. I pulled out from two terror ufo crash missions because I had not very good equipment and map was quite bad. One reason was that developing air force took much resources from weapon development.
As stated earlier, building airforce that can bring down terror battleship takes less than 40 days. So even first terror UFO is possible to shoot down (unless it has super escorts, of course). And even if you cannot shoot it down, ignoring first terror mission is not big problem at all. You just have to accept that you are fighting against superior enemy with superior technology, so not everything hoes smoothly every time.
As I said, even first terror mission is doable without save scumming. You'll need team of elite soldiers and equipment I mentioned earlier. What really sucks, is phase 2 first terror mission if it comes on second ware and so are phase 2 enemies. That is still doable with proper technology. As some phase 2 tech can be acquired during phase 1...
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54 minutes ago, Borak said:
Just some general feedback on aspects of the mod from the point of view of a new player. This will apply only to the first 3 months as that's where I am so far.
Alien resources system for production - It's ok, but I think there's too much detail. Having to go back to the workshop all the time to build/deconstruct something else gets tedious.
Live alien / specialist based research system - I don't like this better than the original system. Obviously it's a big part of the mod so not going to be changed, just giving my opinion. There are a few problems with this system -
a) It necessitates stunning specific aliens who may or may not show up conveniently (or alive). There are so many variations, it's hard to keep track of which ones you still haven't got. If you get unlucky, an important line of research can be severely delayed / not available, even if you've been familiar with the particular technology for a very long time in-game. This is not interesting difficulty in my opinion, just annoying.
b) From a lore perspective, I find it very contrived. You take these aliens back to your base and 'torture' them for information? You need a lot of technobabble to explain how you're supposed to communicate, why these lifeforms would respond to torture, and why, faced with 1000 examples of a laser rifle, for example, you still can't have any chance of using that technology until an alien in a certain color shirt or armor configuration explains it to you. None of this makes much sense to me, and lessens the psychological impact of the aliens, turning them into so many different colored power-ups you need to collect.
c) Setting up to stun a particular alien takes time, but not a whole lot of skill. It seems like fake difficulty to me, and fairly boring. I agree that there should have been more necessity and opportunity to stun in the base game, over and above a few command units. But I think this mod swings the pendulum way too far in the other direction.
d) Stunning aliens is less satisfying, for me, than killing them with your cool new weapons. This may be personal preference.
Weapon /Range rebalance - I like most of this. The weapons are cool, and the combat range adjustments have enhanced the tactical game. I don't like so many similar variations though. Mk1, mk2, mk3, and different ammo for all of them. Just clogs up your weapons screen for not much gain. Also assault rifles seem much worse than any other weapon type, at least in ballistics/lasers which is where I am.
Soldier stat / Experience system - This has improved but introduced other problems. While accelerated stat gain has the effect of making rookies useless for less time than before, it makes them more useless out of the box. Also I'd like to see the stats capped and the range of possible stat differential between professional soldiers reduced. It makes no sense to me why a veteran could ever carry more than 3 times as much weight as a rookie, or move more than twice as far in the same period.
It also seems now that soldiers are more or less interchangeable because experience is the only relevant factor. I no longer say 'well this guy has good reflexes, so I'll make him an assault specialist' or 'this guy has good accuracy but low strength, so he'll snipe'. It's just 'This guy is a rookie, so he sucks at everything, this other guy is a veteran, so he's great at everything'.
Difficulty Balance - Terror Missions
I like the difficulty and I think it's well balanced for ironman apart from terror missions. Continuing on the theme of previous posters, I think there is a balance issue with these.
Firstly I agree with Charon that they take far too long. It's just a slog. I am enjoying the game a lot, but it's getting to the point now where I can't be bothered doing another hours long terror site. This is regardless of the difficulty.
The missions themselves are not just hard, it destroys the balance of normal missions. As previously mentioned in the thread, in some instances it is not even clear if it's possible to bring enough ammo to complete a site.
I have to laugh at the 'rewards are based on how many civilians survive, engage the enemy in the field!' tip. As if when playing a terror site at NG+2 you would have the luxury to care about civilians. You are pinned near the dropship at pain of squad wipe for several turns, by which time civilians are dead. That's it, in fact it's the best case scenario. There is no 'advancing tactic'.
The missions are so long (hours) and there are so many enemies that inevitably you'll get bored and make a mistake, or just get unavoidably unlucky, lose a couple of guys, resulting in possible squad wipe. This heavily encourages save scumming. In fact I'd love to see a successfully completed terror mission with no casualties at NG+2 ironman that doesn't use exploits.
There is not even the, admittedly arbitrary, reprieve of 'air recon' on 20 turns. Now, after miraculously surviving a grueling 3 hour mission, you need to take your squad (extremely slowly, or you're dead) fishing for random stragglers. Blow up that building, or you'll be sniped. Rinse and repeat. It's not fun.
That the penalty for failure is the same whether you kill 90% of the enemies or don't attempt the mission at all makes these missions absolutely not worth attempting unless you're save scumming.
Lastly, they cannot be avoided by shooting down the UFO, at least for the first couple of months, unless you happen to have multiple bases in the spawn area and can throw foxtrot waves at it.
Basically terror missions are starting to ruin the game experience for me and feel like a chore.
Well that's it for now, will have more complaints soon
. Not to sound negative - think the mod is very good. Would be interested in writing some lore.
Some points from long text:
Live alien:
a) For keeping track what you already got https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/13414-165xce-v0350-x-division-100-beta/&page=134&tab=comments#comment-172625
For unlucky part: it's part of this game, You have to survive with what you have got. There are even some randomized researches btw.
b) As explained on Xenopedia entries, you do NOT use alien technologies directly but you make something similar based on what you have learned from alien tech. So Aliens use Phaser tech, you create Laser tech since you cannot duplicate Phaser tech. And so on.
c) In addition, it's also dangerous.
d) You only need one alien specialist, after that you can blow up similar specialists.
Soldier stat / Experience system: Stats are capped already.
Xenonauts is spiritual successor for UFO: Enemy unknown (1999). On Enemy unknown, rookies suck everywhere and veterans rock everywhere. Same atmosphere on Xenonauts
Terror missions: Exactly. For terror sites you basically have three choices: 1. Ignore them. Yes, quite heavy penalty for funding but nothing disastrous unless you ignore them all the time. 2. Develop team of elite soldiers that can handle terror sites. 3. Create air force that can shoot down terror UFO's.
As for difficulty, is supposed to be HARD difficulty. You did read NG description? This NG+2 is so hard that I didn't see much point modding it much harder. Usually when I play turn based games, I take hardest difficulty and mod it around 10 times harder to get enough challenge. No need on this mod to do that.
You can very easily mod that 20 turn air recon back if you want. I consider that after 15 turns terror mission is either basically won (few aliens camping) or lost (you pulled out), so removing air recon is more annoying than creating more difficulty.
[1.65/X.CE V0.35.0] X-Division 1.00 Beta (1.00.11c)
in Completed Game Mods
Posted
Yes. If you want air coverage back after XXX turns, check xenonauts\assets\mods\Charons Changes, Psi, Sounds\config.xml
Affects on Base defence missions too.