KateMicucci

Equipment. The game cannot be properly balanced around soldier stats being the dominating factor. The player will certainly advance through tiers of equipment. However, a team of elite soldiers can quickly be wiped out from one bad mission. If elite soldiers are 4x more effective like you want them to be, then losing that team means you are only 25% as effective in the next one- which is likely to lead to most of that team being wiped out too since they aren't dealing with scouts at that point anymore. Upgrading equipment is also less important when soldiers are supermen, and reverse engineered technology is supposed to be a big theme of the game. Rambo commandos killing sebellian elites with 9mm is not.

MG accuracy doesn't need to be any lower. At 40 accuracy its already only hitting about 1-3 shots out of 10 on average, even when the soldier didn't move that turn (not like he could move much now anyway). A suppression weapon that can't hit anything doesn't make sense. People are suppressed because they're afraid of being hit. The MG couldn't hit anything when it was 30 accuracy.

That's another thing. Wiffed grenades and rockets against hitting adjacent walls that don't appear to be in the way.

Good point. The heavy weapon movement penalty is awkward and a little counter-intuitive, and now we have a good reason to get rid of it. The high TU% cost of heavy weapons adequately represent the time needed to stabilize them up before firing. As far as implementing any hybrid system, there's no point. The game can't be balanced with the exception that you will have elite soldiers to fight elite aliens. One bad terror mission can knock you down to privates. Demanding the return of exponential super soldiers and also expecting the game to be balanced for teams consisting of both entirely majors+ and entirely privates is unreasonable.

No. But you know what's ridiculous is berzerking. Some civies on the other side of the map get killed, and suddenly my guy is shooting his buddies in the back. Ok...

Does it need to actually have the directional thrusters item physically inside the ship to unlock?

The corvette didn't unlock directional thrusters.

Criticisms of the TU% system seem to be entirely in the vein of "it's different and I don't like it", not actual balance problems created by the new system. Balance-wise TU% is clearly an improvement. There is a strong human bias towards resisting change. I was also put off by the change when first reading the patch notes, but reserved comment until after playing for a few hours. Most people will probably accept that TU% is for the better after giving it a chance to sink in. Gaudlike's idea to reduce the reflex stat on overloaded soldiers is interesting, but I am worried that alien reaction fire will become even more powerful. The mechanics of the game mean that aliens already get to use reaction fire far more often than xenonauts do. Does the reaction fire system take into account the total TU's remaining or the percentage of TU's remaining when calculating the chance to take a reaction shot?

The other problem is that you need to make alien TUs cheaper too. Otherwise aliens are going to get 3 reaction fire shots a turn. They get 2 per turn right now and that's annoying already.

It doesn't make me think when I use the gun as much as it makes me think, WHY should I use the gun? The rocket launcher is already a niche weapon that isn't in need of a nerf. Is there a serious problem of players using nothing but rockets launchers? Is it likely that players are going to arm their squads with nothing but scatter lasers if the ammo capacity is increased? I don't think so. The player is expected to make a lot of sacrifices to bring heavy weapons into battle and has to work hard to use them properly. They require a soldier with high Str who could otherwise be hauling grenades or extra shields. They need to take up one of the few spaces on the battlefield that is both in strong cover and have good field of view. They need to be scouted for so that they don't trigger reaction fire. They need to be protected while they get in position. Heavy weapons are a pain. If those weapons also do a lot of damage, good! They better. 3 shots instead of 2 would hardly make the scatter laser too powerful.

There is a tendency in the game right now to take away the fun of upgrades by making them very expensive and have severe drawbacks. Scatter laser needs its ammo capacity boosted. Between costing more than a Condor and only having 2 shots they aren't worth it. Rocket launchers are free.

That encourages standing still to shoot at each other. More bullets fired per turn= less relative movement.

People die from having flashbangs land on them in real life. They're dangerous incendiary devices.

Yes. It was the same in the original game. The TU's represent only your soldier's speed now. I personally don't care whether things are "realistic" in this game as long as they're balanced, but the TU% system is more realistic. A major is no longer able to somehow make his machinegun fire twice as fast as a private's. The burst function on a soldier's AR no longer becomes inoperable because he's wearing heavy armor.

Says who? If you're supposed to have laser weapons for all of your troops by your first terror mission, good luck getting enough alloys to build them. Other ballistic weapons, except for pistols, work fine against androns. The damage on machine guns is low enough now that most of it is absorbed by armor. It's kind of strange that the MG now does less damage per shot than the AR. It wouldn't be overpowered if it did 30 damage instead of 25. None of them were killed by explosive weapons, or had explosives land on their corpses. The weapons they were carrying are in my stores but their armor is gone. So I've not only lost most of my experienced troops but most of my good armor.

Sometimes despite spending the maximum amount of TU to heal a soldier, sometimes 30 or 40 TU, only one hitpoint will be healed and bleeding wounds won't even be removed.

It seems like "dead" soldiers no longer have a chance to survive, period.

Even if it's a bug I'd rather leave it as is. Going over the weight limit wouldn't even be an option. A soldier with a machine gun, for example, needs to spend 90% TU to fire a burst, and so he wouldn't even be able to shoot if he was even a little bit over the weight limit. I just did an Andron terror mission. The new MG's are TERRIBLE at killing Androns. 30 damage instead of 25 wouldn't be out of line. Was armor changed so that you lose it when the soldier wearing it is killed now? In V21E4 I could recycle "used" armor. After the last terror mission I've lost most of my wolf armor.

When? I just got Alien Electronics, and I can research the Corsair but not the new dropship.

I didn't like it when reading the patch notes but it actually makes the missions play much better. Another side effect of the change is that TU and Strength are now basically the same stat. Good. The pistol was almost better than shotguns before when a high TU soldier could practically magdump in one turn. Low TU weapons are a little worse and high TU weapons are a little better, and that's fine.

Pressing the quick reload button on the gc control bar gives an error sound. Opening the inventory and reloading manually still works so its not a low TU issue.

A side effect of the TU change is that penalties from wearing heavy armor don't matter nearly as much. Xenonauts move slower but can fire just as much. Considering how ridiculously heavy early armor is I'm not displeased with this change.

I thought this was intentional. It kind of made sense. There's still no price listed though. $10,000 isn't much anyway, why not keep it free?

Some of these changes seemed a little strange, but my first impression is that they are an improvement. The LMG so far feels a lot more satisfying to use. 90% TU is probably too much though. 80% would be better. The scout car's MG should be changed to be in line with the LMG's changes. Sebbies are very inaccurate. They certainly feel like a race with poor eyesight now. Edit: Caesans can't hit anything either. I haven't had an alien hit my rookies yet even though I've been playing very poorly/aggressively. Aliens are now worse shots than Xcom rookies, no exaggeration. Mitigation is the same as before.

Why are you talking about problems in V20 stable? Aliens in V21 will pop out to attack you if you stack outside doors.