superbob

I've played it for a while, definitely better than playing OG in dosbox. I've yet to try the mods.

I usually go through San Mona and take over Chitzena first, then the SAM site next to it, then head back for Drassen and make sure to take over the north-east SAM before the counter attack. This gives me more gear and skilled up mercs to fight back enemy forces, also means they will come with better equipment because taking over sites and killing enemy soldierscounts as advancing game progress... I mean it makes the queen take you more seriously so she upgrades the army's gear after every massive defeat. Also, if you go west first without delaying too much, you're likely to run into a guy driving an ice cream truck on the road to Chitzena. You can liberate the truck or hire him for faster travel back to Drassen. Theoretically you could try and take over Cambria or Grumm at this point, but it really helps to have both the airport and the helicopter available on the northern part of the map, also it's the usual strategy to take a breath after the counterattack and train militia in the controlled cities/SAMs. Now I feel like installing the game again...

There's also an up to date version available here by the name of SCI (Single Click Installer), which likely has more cool features to offer.

You did it - you're the first to come up with a successor to the original xcom game that neither tries to copy it 1:1 nor strays too far to capture the feel of the old one. Many have attempted this, and while some have made great games in the process, none of them got it as right as you did. Congratulations!

I'm at a loss for words trying to express how awesome you guys are, pulling all-nighters all the way up to Christmas. The world needs more devs like you.

How about after release? Are you guys keeping a backlog of stuff to put into a 2.0 patch or something?

I could see that ammo count after picking up an alien weapon, but only on main battle screen. On inventory screen weapon capacity was normal, and so was the amount of ammunition loaded with each cell. Reloading on the main battle screen however gave me 999 shots, and then I was like BURST FIRE ALL THE THINGS and the aliens were like OMG WTF RUN and... Well those heavy plasmas probably got kinda hot by the end of that battle. So yeah, this had an effect that was probably opposite to what you were trying to do.

Turns out the money and salvage is still worth the trouble of doing ground missions, and with money being tighter than ever due to recent balance changes, I still feel like I'd be much better off doing every mission. If not for the short experimental version turnaround and saves becoming incompatible, I'd see no reason not to do every mission for the money it generates. Even though the relations boost might even be larger now for shooting down alien craft than it was for doing early missions, I still wish I could get a good rating at the end. Now I just don't care, because I know it doesn't actually matter, and usually there isn't much I could do about it. Besides, with interception rate being terrible due to air combat changes, even a score of -20 wouldn't mean all that much. I stand by my idea of giving the points after a battle/airstrike, which effectively works like the current system, but would feel more rewarding and allow players to improve their score by capturing aliens and saving civilians.

IIRC in classic xcom a significant chunk of the income was coming from what was salvaged from alien ships. I think this is even more prominent in openxcom, where I advanced using the money from selling dead aliens and their gear, while funding was mostly supporting monthly maintenance costs, with little extras left that didn't make much difference. Then again I could probably support myself with whatever funding I get in Xenonauts, the problem is that it would slow me down so much, most nations would sign pacts with aliens before I could expand there to improve relations. Right now the only way that seems to have a chance of achieving victory is to rush to expand against all odds, ASAP, and find ways to generate extra money to pay maintenance bills. If I lost $300k in funding since the start, that's what an extra base would cost me (not counting interceptors), so if that base could prevent that loss, it would be making me some money instead. At least that's how it worked before, when Condors could shoot down most things, now I need to get to plasma tech to even hope that an extra base will make any difference in national rating. So if the base will pay its cost back in funding, and its interceptors will earn their maintenance in what they shoot down, I may end up with a profit, with an added bonus of less alien trouble flying around. Most likely though, the interceptors will go down sooner than I'd hoped, earning nothing, and the region will hate me despite my efforts, making the new base a huge money sink.

I'm losing about $100k a month, for the last two months, although this is hopefully going to improve now that I've started shooting down ships that lack escorts. By the time I'm done with enemy bases, I should have about $600k saved up, which will hopefully be enough to cover the monthly maintenance. If not for the heavy fighter wings flying about, I'd start hunting everything that pops up on the radar for extra cash. As things are, I have to be careful. Right now I'm $1,9M on maintenance, and have $1,5M funding. My second base will soon have hangars ready for two Foxtrots, which, with plasma explosives unlocked, should be enough to guard the area from landing ships and scouts. Next month I'll build some more hangars there, hopefully not long after the radar becomes operational.

I just got to plasma explosives and things are looking a bit better... Finally took down a Cruiser with 3 Foxtrots. Unfortunately I couldn't salvage the tech, since my Dropship is out of commission for the week. Charlie was shot down twice this month - once on the way to a distant enemy base I must clear this month somehow (otherwise South America will bail on me), once to a landing ship near my base, even though it had two Corsairs as escorts. Three heavy fighters laughed off the laser canons and turned my planes to scrap, then proceeded to wipe out whatever was left of my team. Now I have to deal with two medium bases with 5 rookies on my team. Then salvage a Cruiser crash site, if I can catch another one. And in the meantime, my main base got attacked and aliens bombed the hell outta Europe, not much I could do to prevent either with both Corsairs out of commission. This... Is kinda tough. While I play on veteran, this seems more like material for what the "insane" difficulty should be like.

I've been expecting things to get a bit more manageable after I rolled out Corsairs, but it looks like balance tuning since v20e5 was quite thorough. 2x Corsairs + 3xFoxtrots and I'm still struggling to maintain control around only one base. Cruisers still blow away anything I can send against them, provided I can even catch one, and heavy fighters are a serious threat at this point. I'm still at laser/alienium tech and things are looking pretty grim. I should get plasma warheads by the end of the month, but unless I somehow manage to kill something with what I've got, Xenonauts might not be around next month. This time I'm not doing every mission, not reloading when something goes very wrong or I miss an important opportunity. Ideally I could've advanced a bit further, but I'm under the impression I'm so badly outgunned from the start that another 10h of playtime spent trying to make the best of it wouldn't have made much difference by next ingame month. So far, IMO, alien progression should be much slower than it is now. Now that I've been effectively limited to one base for the first few months (and a new base becomes operational in exactly one month), there's less risk I'll get too far ahead too fast. But that's a why-not argument - my "why" argument for slowing down progression is that with only one base, at most 6 badly outgunned fighters, the current pace doesn't really let me taste the levels of alien progression. I once missed a wave entirely too - ended up with a few terror sites way beyond my reach and an alien base popped up on the far end of the world. Back when I was mostly in control by the time landing ships appeared, I had plenty of opportunities to fight whatever came in an alien wave - because by then I had around 4 bases and 12 interceptors. It still seemed like aliens progressed to massive ships a little fast, but it was mostly fine. Now however, I had maybe two fights with fighters, three corvettes, two landing ships, one heavy fighter ambush and now I'm at cruisers and landing ships with heavy fighters. By the end of next month I may very well see my first massive ship, after 2 bouts of air combat at the current level. And that's if I'm lucky, meaning I can actually catch something to shoot down and don't get instantly wiped out again, which would mean I miss another alien wave, and at best take down one scout. I feel that you need to give players a bit more room to breathe, maybe an extra month for each of the first three levels (scouts->corvettes->corvettes+landing ships) before sending in Heavy Fighters and Cruisers. I'll continue this playthrough until the Council shows me the door, then maybe try some different approaches before a new experimental version rolls out.

Can confirm, so far two of my soldiers were executed by a shot to the back of the head, by fellow team members trying to be helpful.

I think alien reaction shots need another look, specifically reaction shots after having the door to their room blown up. Twice now, the soldier with the rocket launcher got shot up, behind cover, by a plasma pistol wielding lizard. This might just be extremely bad luck, but in general, I think blowing up doors should not evoke reaction shots, or at least less than opening doors does, which right now should be zero. Also suppression seems a bit sketchy now, I've repeatedly seen these jumpsuit wearing sectoids cower in fear because someone over at the opposite side of the corridor was getting shot at, and I mean the main corridor in a landing ship. Unless they're supposed to be scared of loud noises, in which case it's fine.

Actually he more like passes through it, doing some glitched walking animation, and then the game just freezes forever. I can alt-f4 out of it though. Should happen after finishing the turn in this savegame: http://share.cx.com/GzMh6v I'm not sure if it's his fault, might be aliens getting confused about what I've been doing in this mission... Anyhow the first image is where I found him, he then ran to where he's in the next image (animation was fine when crossing the coupler).

Just caught one of my soldiers doing that. This [edit]also happened sometime before in previous build, didn't end so well either - some poor dude walked through a wall right into an office building and crashed into a copier, remained stuck there until the rest of the battle. I suppose the salvage team had to cut him out of there afterwards. Seriously though, I think this is related to how some stupid aliens end up stuck in various farm equipment. save files: http://share.cx.com/KpYkzg

I found these in my screenshot folder, can't recall how I did that. Anyhow, it happened and maybe looking at it will lead the coding team to some bugfixing breakthrough.

I think it has been reported before, but I'm posting these screencaps as they clearly illustrate the issue. note: chance to hit, line of fire, alien visibility icon, movement path

Because back when aircraft were too effective, it was decided a longer recycle time between flights was needed as a balancing mechanic. Now it's still there, even though early game fighter jets were made significantly less effective. Either way, the best way of dealing with this is to build moar aircraft.

Stun gas grenades seem to work now, especially well against xenonaut soldiers. This... Actually saved a bunch of my guys. Accidentally I knocked out most of my team after unloading on the aliens and the surviving ones didn't shoot back. I've yet to test this a bit more, but potentially, making a cornered soldier knock themselves out with gas might result in better chances of survival than trying to escape or throw grenades at the enemy.

IIRC there was some talk about players not being able to use psi attacks against aliens, but eventually coming up with some sort of defense against these powers. Was this scrapped, not done yet, or did I just make it up?

I agree you have to come up with some way to reward players for intercepting terror/base/bombing missions before they happen. My quick idea - higher flat rate for ships that do these missions - penalty once they start the mission (or build a base). Results in closer final score on doing the mission or preventing it, which makes it preferable to shoot down the craft instead of doing the long and risky mission. A somewhat more in-depth idea - generate a crew count for enemy ships once they appear, reward players a flat rate for shooting them down + body count on airstrike / ground mission. This results in same net scores (unless players mess it up and let aliens escape) for ground combat/airstrike. More important missions have larger crews thus give larger rewards.

The monthly cost for Condors should be at most $75k, if it costs as much as a new one then I could very well scrap all of them before the end of the month and use the money saved to build something better. Actually, I did, and it feels cheap.

I usually take down scouts with Foxtrots now. If it's one of the big ones then it's easy, if it's a light scout then I set it up so a torpedo is fired at near 90deg angle to the alien craft. Usually it cannot dodge it then and ends being up blown outta the sky. I'll try to get to Corsairs ASAP and see if that changes much.

Gotta say, things got tougher pretty fast I wonder however if it isn't a little overkill right now. I just lost a battle against a bomber escorted by fighters, had 2 Foxtrots and one Condor. Even though I successfully unloaded all four alienium torpedoes on the main ship, it didn't go down. Also, the Condor is now unable to deal with both fighters, even using a gatling laser. I mean, I've tried, and have pulled off many crazy stunts in the previous playthrough, but this just seems too difficult to accomplish. Also, since two torpedoes do more damage than one Condor can do, doing this with only one Foxtrot is outright impossible. So... Is it by design that I have to let aliens go ahead with aerial terror missions and terror attacks with corvettes (couldn't take down an escorted Corvette either) at the start? I kinda like it this way, after all it's not gameover for me yet, and with all the landing ships I've been taking down, I'm starting to get in a somewhat better position. Losing for a bit at first just to recover later on will certainly add variety to the game.