cb1987

Am I the only one who likes the crazy damage on the alien plasma cannon? It makes the weapon terrifying, a little bit like how the blaster launcher used to be in the original game, whereas before it barely did anything. I agree that the human rocket launcher should be toned down as its currently OP, but I'd like it if the plasma cannon stayed at the current strength. Grenades are well implemented in this build from what I've seen. The stupid spam of v6 is gone, but the higher ranked aliens will still punish you for grouping your soldiers within their throwing distance. I lost 3 soldiers in a small andron base assault from alien grenades, so they certainly are effective. I also noticed for the first time that the aliens in the xenonaut base defense mission were purposefully attacking the props in my hangars. This is great and makes the base defence feel much more interesting. Does sufficient damage destroy base modules? My hangar was fine after the mission despite extensive damage. One slight issue was that the aliens killed a significant number of their own troops by shooting at exploding props.

I think that the current Geoscape balance is vastly improved over v7. The speed distinction between light scouts and scouts is great and rewards players who go for early foxtrots, without crippling players who focus on other research. The slower turning speed and slower heavy projectile speed does make the corvette/landing ship seem a bit weak when they are alone, perhaps they could be buffed a touch. However, when they have escorts I think the difficulty is perfect so I'm not too sure, maybe just increase the number that spawn with fighters (could increase with difficulty if it doesn't already). I'm glad the maintenance costs and new base setup time are a bit more forgiving now. I can just about manage 3 bases with 3-4 interceptors in each if I expand early and don't lose too much funding. I'm not sure if its a result of the increased UFO attack rate, but the alien bombers seem much more effective now, inflicting a lot of casualties if they aren't stopped, which I like.

This is why I think, rather than using a long range UFO missile to balance interceptors, we should just increase the range of the short range UFO guns. This means that condors can still use missiles without taking damage, but if they want to use cannons too they'll have to take damage, which the corsair can survive more of. It gives the player more flexibilty to decide what tactic they would like to use. Rather than, "UFOs are now using swarm missiles, condors and foxtrots are useless", we get "UFO secondary weapon ranges have increased, we could use multiple sorties of condors and foxtrots to wear them down with missiles, risking their escape into space, or we could build these new tougher corsairs and go in with cannons for a faster kill.

The main issue with the condor currently seems to be that it has a higher total damage potential than the foxtrot when using the various cannons in addition to missiles, therefore making the cannon harder to use safely seems to me to be the best way to balance things. I always considered the UFO 'long range weapons' that can be evaded to be more of a counter to foxtrots and I like that skillful use of evasive rolls allows you to get in close with the condors and corsairs, so I think an auto hit UFO missile is the wrong way to go. I was thinking more like increasing the radius of the close range weapon 'zone' that surrounds the capital UFOs (ie landingship and above). Not so much that they could hit a foxtrot at max range, but enough to outrange a condor or corsair using a comparable tech level cannon. ie. a condor with a gatling laser could perhaps shoot at a landing ship without entering the 'zone' but it couldn't do the same to a carrier, and have the battleship 360 degree close range weapon zone outrange even the best interceptor cannon. I know evasive rolls can still dodge some of the UFO shots in the close range zone, but generally the rate of fire is too high to avoid them all. With this mechanic, the condor can still reliably fight earlier UFOs as it does now, but will not be able to withstand the damage from later UFOs if it wants to use its cannon, allowing the corsair, with its higher hp to be able to last much longer in close proximity to late game UFOs and use its cannon to bring them down. I think this approach would make multiple battleship waves more taxing for the player, as their corsairs/marauders would nearly always take some damage when they close to use cannons, making the battleships seem more deadly, rather than currently where you can kite a battleship around with one plane, then have another sit right outsite its close weapon range and shoot it to death with impunity. It would also make furies more useful as they would be the only interceptors that can guarantee to take down a battleship without taking damage.

Aaron, in order to exaggerate the difference in capabilities, could you not use hitpoints as the major differentiating factor? Perhaps if you increase the range of the close range/point defence weapons on the larger UFOs to better keep pace with the upgrades to aircraft cannons, such that interceptors with even advanced cannons (laser/plasma) have to take hits from the UFO to get in range, then the condor would drop off in utility as it would be unable to go toe to toe with larger ships. I think it would solve the issue of being able to shoot down battleships using plasma cannon armed condors without taking a single hit, and also mean that large UFO waves would inevitably result in damaged corsairs, adding to that feeling of being overwhelmed.

Thanks for all your great work, we appreciate how difficult it must be sometimes. Best of luck in your bug hunt

I'm also worried if the negative scores still take away from your country relations. Given that some terror missions end up with most civilians dead, I'd probably get a 'terrible' rating every time under the new system and take a big hit to country relations despite winning the mission.

OK, fair enough. I understand the need to balance airstrikes with ground missions in terms of overall reward. However, surely this change leaves no incentive to avoid civilian casualties, if the performance in the mission has no impact on country relations? Or are negative scores still deducted from national relations? If that is the case, could you consider allowing positive modifiers to negate negative ones to bring the score up to 0? Otherwise terror missions might not be worth doing given the number of civilians that usually die!

I'd like to start by saying I support the updates to air combat in spirit, condors were too useful in late game previously, however I'm struggling with the severity of the changes. Has the distribution of UFO spawns around the globe been widened this build? I ask because I played the first 3 months of a new game in v20e6 on easy and found far fewer UFOs spawning near my base in North America, while also having many more "ufo activity" reports from areas not covered by my radar than in v20e5. The nerfs to condor range and speed mean I can't really catch small scouts if they maintain full speed. I don't mind being slower than the UFOs and only catching up when they turn or go to land, but the lowered fuel allowance means that catching a small or medium scout with enough fuel to fight it seems to just be down to random chance. All this combined meant I was only able to shoot down 3 UFOs in the first 3 months, and was getting over $100,000 in budget cuts each month due to the unchecked alien activity. I considered restarting and building a second base immediately to increase my coverage, but the 20 day build time of the command centre plus another 10 days for hangars and radar, means a full month before I can do anything to stop the huge drops in funding. I realise that some changes in strategy are expected with large changes like this, but the combination of higher UFO frequency, poorer interceptors and increased maintenance feels too punishing at the moment.

Thanks to Chris, Aaron and the team for another rapid update with significant attention to bugs Unfortunately, having played about 2 hours of the new build, I have to report that its pretty unplayable in its current state. I've submitted posts on the bug forum, but I thought I'd flag the issues here as well. List of issues from my first impressions of the new build: - Aliens throwing grenades in preference to shooting, even when they are far out of grenade range and firing their guns would be better. - Aliens having unlimited grenades in their inventory. - Aliens throwing grenades from inside UFOs as soon as xenonauts come within range, despite no line of sight (makes UFO assaults impossible except via sniping). - The post-mission debrief screen doesn't credit you for UFO recovery, aliens killed or civilians saved. Currently only tallies negative modifiers. - Changes to air combat have drastically changed the flow of the strategic game. I understand some adjustment to strategy is probably intended, however with the changes to new base build time and maintenance costs, I'm finding it difficult to avoid an immediate budget deficit: Its now quite difficult to catch even small scouts with condors, due to reduced speed and range, and the distribution of UFOs in each wave seems much more spread out around the globe than in previous builds. This combined with the reduced range of condors means I'm fighting far fewer air and ground battles, and consistently losing $100,000+ funding each month due to lack of interceptions. I tried building a second base as my first action, but the 20 day build time for the command centre means its takes almost 2 months to get a base with 2 hangars and a radar built, by which time I've already lost a lot of funding.

Following completion of a UFO crash site recovery mission, no points are awarded for UFO recovery, aliens killed, civilians saved, etc on the mission debrief screen. Only negatives, such as civilians killed by aliens are taken into account, meaning the best rating I seem to be able to get is 'poor' despite killing all aliens and securing the crash site with only 1 civilian death. This happens for both UFOs shot down by my airforces, and those brought down by local forces. Not sure if this is an unintended consequence of the boost to nation ratings being removed from the ground combat missions.

I just tried the new build and in the first 3 small scout crash site missions several of my soldiers were killed by aliens throwing grenades from inside small scout UFOs while the door was closed and the aliens had no line of sight. I also saw aliens firing from inside the UFO through the UFO hull at my soldiers outside, however the shots didn't seem to penetrate the hull. Needless to say, this makes approaching a crashed UFO impossible, as the aliens seem to have unlimited grenades and throw them in preference to shooting. As a slight aside, I've also noticed the aliens consistently throwing grenades at extreme ranges, where the grenade has no chance of landing near the target, instead of shooting.

I'm having the same issue as OP in v20e5, however the old workaround you describe (from v19) no longer seems to work. Reloading the autosave takes me back to the deployment phase, which then freezes again when 'end turn' is clicked. I've submitted a report on the experimental build bug forum and they were apparently working on it last week, so hopefully it will be gone in the next release.

After clicking end turn to finish the deployment phase in a large alien base assault, the game freezes indefinitely. I'm aware previous builds had a similar problem that could be circumvented by reloading the autosave and skipping deployment, however this does not work as the autosave now seems to reload to the deployment phase, which causes the bug to happen over again. I have 2 large bases on the geoscape, and both cause the bug. Changing troop loadout and composition has no effect.