Surrealistik

Don't forget to add grenade rolling/underhand throw modes as an option; that everyone has to throw a massive arcing overhand is ridiculous, and makes no sense, particularly in alien bases and other low ceiling environments.

Why do you imagine that retrofitting is such an insurmountable obstacle? It's a strawman to assert that they have to build new weapons from scratch to feature biolocking and self-destruct mechanisms. Further, you're also assuming that these systems wouldn't already be standard issue, especially for an armada that is seeking out worthy sentient life to take traits from and incorporate into its empire; such an assumption by itself doesn't make a great deal of sense to start. Further, I'm not ignoring reliability and cost considerations so much as I'm making the argument that they'd be highly unlikely per alien tech levels relative to the specific tech being discussed; biolocking and automated scuttling mechanisms. Of course reliability and cost are enduring concerns, but that's besides the point in this specific case where it can be reasonably expected that those particular pieces of technology would meet such criteria, particularly when we're not far from being able to implement similar tech which does. If you don't think that it adds anything to the game, that's cool, to each their own, and there's a subjective element to be sure. In my view it adds some sorely needed verisimilitude, tactical depth and tradeoffs/interesting choices (though I will grant that stunning at the moment is probably too easy via Electroshock nades).

Not sure why any of them would have their armour on unless its crucial to their survival per the Harridan, or literally integrated with their bodies and even then it might make more sense just to hook it up as necessary to life support and apply restraints. Other than that, these look awesome, especially the Reaper, damn.

Is the last mission supposed to loop infinitely after destroying the generators, hordes of Reapers, the high praetor (HP) and escaping to the pod room beyond the HP with everyone alive? If the best ending isn't finished, why not just have a splash screen congratulating the player on obtaining it, or did you not expect anyone to actually manage that? Also, is the last mission not yet complete? TBH it was effortless next to tackling a late game terror site or raiding a large base, or even a battleship. Negative nancy stuff out of the way though, this was a great game and a lot of fun in spite of the flaws.

Predator armour should make the Andron clomping noises when moving, or something like them; something ominous and intimidating. Agree about the need for radio chatter, not so sure about 'wise cracks'.

Why not just rock the riskless doorman strat and collect more loot though?

So, what I said.

That's fucking awesome; hope the devs add them to the game.

If RF is what's killing you, that is the solution. But yeah, that said, if you've blown that much on bases, you might be pretty far behind. I wouldn't go for more than 3 or 4 until the late game.

Why do you have to blow up a door? This is assuming a typical unlocked door; this standard operating procedure works perfectly for such doors, including the one in the screenshot. Combat shields of course work for spotting and soaking RF when you have to; just substitute the door shenanigans from my SOP with a combat shield spotter of choice; retreat him back into smoke after the aliens have been spotted and proceed to open fire.

How do you lose guys? Here is an EZ step by step method for clearing any room in an alien base with no casualties: Have one guy adjacent to the door. He is the door man. Have the door man open the door to spot. Have the door man close the door. Have someone throw down a smoke grenade just before the door. Have the door man open the door. Hose down the Androns (or whatever else), especially with autofire/shottie spam, and/or spam electronades or better. Win.

Wait, what? First, the self-destruct mechanisms would only ever be armed during periods of engagement. If a weapon self-destructs during an engagement after its user dies for whatever reason, that's exactly by design, working as intended. As for locker stashed weapons, they wouldn't be imprinted, but it's trivial for a weapons locker (usually in a heavily fortified area to begin with) to send self-destruct signals to its contents in the event of an unauthorized breach/handling/proximity depending on how paranoid the aliens are. I'm not sure what self-destruct mechanisms on the weapon have to do with mishandling having devastating consequences (again, it isn't a bottle of nitro strapped to the weapon), especially since that mishandling is unlikely to occur in the first place being as the non-combatant aliens are essentially puppets of leader consciousnesses.

The way you kill Androns is the same way you kill everything else in V19: blind fire/nade spam (using electropulse or better) through smoke. In V20 use the old blind fire tactics with explosives. For precision weapons, just scout with the upgraded tactical shield, soak the RF if necessary, then throw down with a shit ton of fire power.

Dread: I'm almost certain this has been brought up before, but dread that affects pretty much everyone all the time makes me 'dread' doing base assaults for all the wrong reasons, especially with all those tedious pop ups you can't click through. The range of it should either be _much_ smaller, or it should only affect those with LoS to the Praetor. Both me and the Xenonauts streamer I follow cannot stand it. It is impossible to describe in words how utterly annoying this is. Battle Rifles: Deals so much damage and has so much penetration it makes all armour but the Predator (and arguably the Sentinel due only to its flight capabilities) essentially pointless; it is a quantum leap up from the standard plasma weaponry, handily outperforming even the plasma sniper rifle on a per shot basis. Even Predator clad units with high Resilience can get one shot by this weapon while getting two shot is about guaranteed. The balance should be similar to Plasma Rifles vs Wolf Armour when it comes to Predator Armour, and Plasma Rifles vs Jackal Armour when it comes to everything else that's Wolf tier or better. As is, this weapon is ridiculous, especially since it's such a huge and abrupt increase in lethality.

@ Gorlom: Why would they be biolocked to an individual alien so they're not interchangeable? That argument doesn't make sense; assuming biolocking were to be in place, all aliens would be authorized operators, with authorization likely being verified via implants. Further, the self-destruct mechanism could easily be imprinted to the last authorized operator; when it dies, the mechanism kicks in. @ Sapare: Agreed, there shouldn't be much of a war at all if the aliens are smart, but it's about achieving the balance between realism/versimilitude and gameplay, so yes, while the aliens could be smart in some ways (self-destruct mechanisms), they have to be stupid in others (the entire logistics/execution of the war) for there to be a game at all. The idiocy of the latter doesn't mean that they should never exhibit intelligence. While I agree that self-destructing weapons would require a limited revision of how tech progression is handled, I believe it's worth it. Lastly, I also agree that X-Com's handling of self-destructing weapons was questionable in some ways (some meaningful technology could be reverse engineered from their fragments). To its credit though, you could not reverse engineer plasma technology from the alien weapon fragments, so in that regard, the scuttling technology was absolutely successful. Either way, the flaws of X-Com's specific implementation of the element does not mean that other, better implementations should be overlooked/dismissed. @Gauddlike: #1: Yes, military deployment of biolocking/smart gun technologies would require almost total reliability and would require them to be low cost for mass deployment outside of specialized peacekeeping and policing roles, agreed, was not disputing this. It's a pending technology, not a currently adopted one. #2: For the aliens not to be aware of the technological value and superiority of their weapons vis a vis humanity would require unfathomable stupidity in contrast to their leadership's obvious intelligence (its obligatory stupidity that allows Xenonauts to be a playable game aside). As before, I sincerely doubt whether either reliability or cost of self-destruct mechanisms are at all concerns for the aliens in light of their vastly superior technology and scientific understanding.