Muskrat

Go read the thread about the latest rules for auto resolve. It's in this forum.

It show's "Transport has arrived" when the transfer is complete.

Bomber's are coded with a static value that they kill per attack, whether it's Middle of Nowhere Kansas, or NYC.

Here's my problem: I did some digging into how the aircraft weapon's work. What I found is range and damage are linked to the weapon, not the airframe. So by increasing range and damage for the Corsair, you inadvertently make the Condor stronger as well. How does this impact balance of the autoresolve, or just balance in general? The logical, but time consuming, solution is to make at least the ammo variable a factor of the aircraft, not the weapon. This way you can balance out the two individually. Optionally, you could reduce the damage from missiles to make up for the increased damage of the autocannon. This might have wider ranging balance impacts, however. You could also just make the corsair the logical next step for the Condor - 1 gun and 2 missiles. It's a direct upgrade with more speed and durability, and can kill the same stuff. It makes going 1 on 1 much easier. I would also suggest, if you stick with the ammo increase, to keep the autocannon the same, since typically you have laser well before the corsair. This maintains the early game balance.

Aircraft times were reduced also, unless you changed it since.

I'm going to resurrect this, as it's still happening as of V21 Stable. Attached is a save with the invisible character (at the UFO entrance). He descended from level 3, from a position to the top rh of the screen. Buzzard invisible.sav Buzzard invisible.sav

Nice man. It's those kinds of moments that make the game even more enjoyable!

The xml file had an extra, blank column in. you can open it in excel and delete the column and it should work. I'd post the file I am using, but it's giving me an "Invalid File" error when I try to upload. So here's an update: I'm in month 4 now. Wolf and Buzzard armor has been built. I actually really like these changes. It doesn't feel super slow, and frustrating, to get the new tech, and you can now build more than 1 thing at a time and have decent build times. Basically you can dedicate 1 full workshop to producing 1 item, instead of needing 2 or more. This was highlighted when I build 2 addition Wolf and 2 new Buzzard unit's, having each base build a different armor type.

Is it possible to add a column or something to the transfer screen to show items in transit? Sometime I come back to a save, and start building item's because I forgot they were in the middle of being transferred. It make's it easier to keep track of everything.

Nope, you're right. I just played around with it. I'm playing in V21 Stable. The crouched soldier blocked 13% and the standing soldier blocked 16%. That seems reasonable for shooting past someone.

"He was lost in a failed Cruiser Class UFO assault mission on 3 Feb, 1980 along with 7 other Xenonauts." Much more concise :-) Did you write a script to do that, or make it by hand? All of the information to generate that is probably available in the game already. Looks really good.

I agree with what's being said here. My concern was from a my fighter being damaged stand point, as that's more likely to occur. Very rarely do I have the opportunity to re-engage already damages UFO's. So does the health penalty only affect the fighter chasis score, irregardless of weapon score? For instance: Foxtrot with 2 alenium torpedoes (300 Aircraft + 1200 Weapon = 1500). At 50% health is it's score 1350 (300*0.5 + 1200), or is it 750 (1500*0.5)? If 1350, I think that's ok. If 750, it seems like a ridiculous handicap - aka an easy fight where I wouldn't take any damage controlling the fighter myself could suddenly becomes an auto-loss for the auto resolve. And isn't the point of auto-resolve to be able to skip those "easy" fights? Canyou give us an example of how the system would resolve a battle between a Bomber and 2 Fighter's, vs 2 Condor's with Alenium missiles and Laser, and a Foxtrot with Alenium Torpedoes?

Well, that makes sense why ti seems to use less fuel. Is there a plan to add fuel consumption? Seem like a bit of a cheat: if I need to chase down another UFO, and I have a high or 100% auto resolve chance, I can avoid fuel consumption from combat by auto resolving. In that case, I'd just remove the health modifier, or reduce its impact.

The small line show's the tile pattern the projectile takes. If you mark this pattern out on the map, you see the projectile clearly intrudes in the crouched soldier's space, and doesn't touch the standing soldier. At least that's what it looks like to me. Do you have this as a save? Can you post an image where you moved the crouched soldier out of the way? I'll play with this myself this evening. Maybe it'd be better if the shot line just put a small block in each tile the projectile passes through, instead of the continuous line approach. It would make it more clear where you're shooting.

I'm pretty sure it's only if you are adjacent to the crouched soldier, which the shooter in the image is not.

If alien ships can land to avoid my fighter's, why can't my drop ship land to avoid their's? Obviously this doesn't work over water.

Which build is this implemented in? I'm not sure how I feel about this, as health doesn't have any impact on aircraft performance in game. So if I'm at 50% health, the fighter is 50% less effective in auto resolve? Which means it might lose auto resolve 100% of the time, but if I control it manually I could win 100% of the time. A better way might be to calculate the result regardless of health, and if the result kill's a fighter, recalculate excluding that fighter, or at that point, apply an effectiveness penalty to the fighter (so it still has an impact on the fight). How does autoresolve calculate fuel and ammo usage? I've found in V21 Stable Steam that fuel usage is typically less, and ammo usage is typically more, than if I manually control.

That's a good point. I did look for one, but I don't know how often this situation arises. My motivation was because I wanted to have weapon/armor/aircraft manufacturing capability at the new base, but didn't need 45 engineer's total - waste of upkeep $$. This is the first game I've ever done this, and also the first game I ever moved my main base of operations (although usually I start in North Africa/Europe anyway).

Well, I'm into month 3 now. No wolf armor yet, but was able to build full laser squad by end of month 2. I was delayed due to alloy shortage more than anything. Started in NA, 2 lab 2 workshop 30/30 scientists/engineers. Expanded to Europe/North Africa - built work shop, fired 15 engineer's from NA and re-hired in Africa, and moved soldier's to this base as much more activity here. Expanded radar range +1. Just started up 3rd interceptor base in Indochina/Russia. I'll keep posted on how the game plays out, especially once squad 2 joins the fray in a month or so.

It looks like the soldier blocking that shot is the crouched soldier, not the one the cursor is on. I which case, it looks correct to me. Can't read block % though.

Thought it'd be fun to share some "epic moments" you've had while playing Xenonauts. Here's mine: Full Dropship on way to 2nd mission is passing by my base. 3 Fighter's I hadn't engaged yet - due to my condor's being out of commission - start chasing. Dropship can't get back to base in time. I have 1 Foxtrot functional in my base. I wait, watching helplessly as the fighter's close in, then as they pass over my base, I launch a desperate sortie with my Foxtrot. 3 Alien Fighter's vs 1 FoxTrot with 2 Alenium Missiles. Foxtrot tails for a second, then engages. Closes in and turns on the afterburner, flying ring's around the fighter's. Get's in REALLY close, and launches 1 missile. Bam, 1 fighter down. Continue to circle and evade the fighter's, waiting for an opportunity. Close is again and fire missile 2. Bam, 2nd fighter down. Out of ammo, must disengage. Retreat and hope for the best, when the smoke clear's, no more fighter's on the map. Woohoo!!! My guess is I killed the "lead fighter", and the third one, as a support ship, "ran away". Was quite a thrilling battle, and I really felt like I accomplished something miraculous. Great moment in Xenonauts.

I will be trying this out starting today. I don't think reducing build time of ground vehicles and aircraft is necessary, however. I actually think it's pretty well balanced where it's at for those. Possibly it could be longer, but right now foxtrot comes up with an acceptable padding to when larger ships start showing up. Edit: I actually restored the vehicle and aircraft build times to see how just the weapon mod works. I have never had a huge problem outfitting my first squad with laser - yes it's slower than I'd like, but the progression of enemies scales up gradually as you get your squad equipped. It's the second squad that is a lot tougher, due to needing to build other things at the same time when you equip them - plus the disappearing equipment bug causing some additional heartache which highlighted this (basically trying to equip 2nd squad AND re-equip 1st squad) But because of the way the enemies ramp up, I also don't think allowing for a faster build time will significantly impact gameplay balance. You might, for a time, be slightly better to deal with your enemies, but no more so than later for the same type of craft (Scout, Corsair).

Why not just default the door open? Let the aliens inside react to you as you approach, instead of giving you time to get perfectly set up. It could even be a variable with a chance of being open vs closed. I did have a Sebillian scout come out at me in the latest build...once.

This is my belief as well - it comes down to resources as the limiting factor, which makes sense. The frustrating thing is that typically when you need to build this stuff, you're also needing to build a bunch of other things, so it delays everything and you suffer, but it doesn't feel like it's for a good, or believable, reason. Keeping build times high does increase workshop usage, but it still ebbs and flows. the motivation to build more should come from wanting to do 2 or more things at once. It doesn't make sense to have 30 guys all working on building 1 small thing (given the scale of manpower for the game). I'd actually be in favor of instituting a minimum build time, along with shortening it - basically limit how many guys can work on different projects. This forces you to consider how you need to divide your resources, and puts you in a position to build more at once - further allowing the player to put more strain on money and alenium - which increases the meta-game of managing those resources.

There's a lot of people arguing the realism point, and a few saying they don't have a concern with build time. My question is this: How would decreasing build time for weapons and armor affect game balance? Ideally, once the bug is fixed, once made it never goes away, so really it's an alenium/money issue - and for a short period of time your unit's aren't fully equipped with the latest and greatest - but does that matter in the grand scheme of things? The bigger issue is when you create a second squad, and need to outfit them. Suddenly your facing late game enemies, with basically equipped unit's - which is severely unbalanced toward the player. Or you plan ahead, and build the equipment early and it's a moot point anyway - Engineering in my experience isn't working 24/7 - it's really the money concern that holds me up - there's so much to spend money on, you have to balance what you need and when.