Surrealistik

Love the mod and look forward to its completion.

This is excellent! Amazing work, and it should come standard with the game.

Personally I find that the interception music seems... inappropriately jaunty and upbeat, even whimsical. Instead of being filled with the dread that TFTD's inspired, I always find my shoulders shifting about in tune with the melody. I guess it's warranted in confrontations with small scouts and the like, but something ominous and menacing is definitely in order for larger, more dangerous ships and formations.

You have yet to justify why it is implausible. Are the Ceasians disposable? Sure. Is human interference with their operations desirable? Definitely not. Are the Xenonauts a nuisance the aliens wish to destroy, negate or otherwise marginalize? Absolutely. The aliens clearly do not want their activities resisted or impeded. This is why taking such steps to prevent or at least impede reverse engineering is definitely a reasonable idea and makes all the sense in the world, and is worth the surely small modicum of resources those efforts would entail given the alien tech level; plasma equipped Xenonauts clad in heavy armour are an unwelcome pain in the arst if not a legitimate threat. See, you've got me wrong; I'm actually down with biometric imprinting too which locks out unauthorized users for the sake of versimilitude/believably and consistency, but I figure this violates the balance between realism and gameplay. In otherwords, you want to reward taking the added risk of stunning an alien by allowing the humans to use the weapons looted from one. #1: Some players may be annoyed that they don't get to keep the weapons for killing aliens just like some players are annoyed by psionics or friendly fire. They are things that will appeal to some and not appeal to others; in your case they don't appeal. #2: Actually, as repeatedly stated and demonstrated, the existence of such self-destruction mechanisms make vastly more sense than their absence. You have yet to forward an argument to the contrary that is logical in a narrative sense. #3: Emphasized stunning is by no means a 'forced playstyle', it is a playstyle with tradeoffs; advantages and disadvantages. That is entirely the point. Killing the aliens outright is much easier, faster and safer but affords less loot, and denies usage of alien weaponry. In practice, most players will opt for the former most of the time unless their financial situation dictates otherwise, or they have a specific need to capture alien tech. #4: I have yet to come close to running out of ammo, and in the unlikely event that seems to be a pending issue, you obviously attempt to stun _before_ you run dry. Foresight doesn't become less important in tactical combat.

I use smoke grenades and flashbangs like they're going out of style to great effect, but I'm hard pressed to find a meaningful tactical niche for frags in V19 at least, much as I'd like to. Yes, the alienium upgrades make them better, but they're still awful, and unupgraded they're terrible to the point of uselessness. Blindfire LMG spam behind a smoke screen > frags. The only real value I've ever been able to squeeze out of them is as a reliable finisher on an already badly weakened alien (and even in this case it's better to use a flashbang when possible)

But you have it exactly backwards; even if they don't expect to be defeated, it only makes sense to take that precaution in order to minimize casualties and impediment from the natives in the conduct of their activities. The only way not using such scuttling technology would begin to make sense is if human adoption of alien technology is specifically intended and integral to the plot per ventuswing's spoiler (and if so, that's fine); anything less is unbelievable hubris to the point of outright stupidity, a complete and utter failure in risk/damage control and assessment. Seeing as the invasion is lead by an advanced and presumably vastly more intelligent species, this strikes me as being incredibly unlikely. Further, in the unlikely event such an intelligent species did note Xenonaut reverse engineering, guarding against it would be about necessitated, not 'possibly plausible' because not even moronic arrogance remains as an excuse then. I do agree that there is a gamist argument to not changing things part way into the game, but that's in part why I think it's preferable to be consistent and start out with the self-destruct mechanic. So the devs specifically want to make field looting less powerful while retaining it as a viable option? Great, because that's exactly what my solution permits since you can stun some aliens and take their stuff. You get rewarded for taking the extra risk (and really, it's not that hard between smoke crawling, ballistic shields, stun batons and flashbangs) with extra reward (powerful alien weapons that don't have an aim penalty).

Why isn't it plausible for advanced alien technology that has an ultra-advanced understanding of genetic manipulation, nanomaterials and plasma physics more than a century ahead of our own to create self-scuttling smart guns when firearm integrated biometric controls are already attainable? From a gameplay perspective, I personally like the tradeoff of risk / reward. Take the risk of capturing alien, be rewarded with the interrogation + gear. Oh I get the reasoning, but if we need to find a way to make field looted alien weapons less potent, mine works pretty well.

I was talking about two distinct concepts. One is the weapon's actual self-destruction; stable microexplosives, nanites, alienium battery and/or circuit overloads with a reliable, death activated trigger could all plausibly achieve this without posing significant collateral or accidental danger. We're not talking about a bottle of nitroglycerine slapped on to the side of a rifle. The second is biometric security measures that yes, prevent unauthorized firing; that is not to imply that we have yet developed and implemented self-destruct mechanisms or that this is what the wiki page I linked details, but to demonstrate that: A: We have the capacity for such technology in the present and/or near future, including derivatives that would result in death actuated self-destruction of a weapon. B: At a bare minimum restricting weapon use to cleared operators is plausible, achievable, realistic and desirable, and is seeing actual implementation in modern militaries/law enforcement agencies today due to its obvious advantages. In no way does this imply reading 'too much science fiction or comic books' as you've so derisively stated. I also find it at least a little cognitively dissonant that you can criticize the relative plausibility of self-scuttling guns on one hand while simultaneously and uncritically accepting the plentiful soft-scifi in this game on another (but that said, I like that it does try to justify its science, and does incorporate hard science a lot more than the vast majority of similar games). This would be unbelievably stupid of them (not merely prideful/condescending, _stupid_), and even if it were true, after seeing evidence of reverse engineering, something that will come to their attention rather quickly, this stance should change at once. It's simple. In V19, that humans could use field salvaged alien weapons against the aliens to great effect was presumably considered to be a gameplay issue, hence the kludge of imposing an accuracy penalty in V20. I propose solving this perceived issue with self-destructing weaponry (or alternately personalized/operator locked weaponry at a minimum) instead, which has the added advantage of adding to the game's realism and believability. Tech destruction on death also works from a gameplay perspective on the basis of risk/reward, making captures and the increased risks undertaken to achieve them all the more rewarding.

Why aren't they realistic exactly, particularly with advanced alien technology? Hell, we have the tech to do it even now, in addition to biometric security measures on firearms. There is no good reason for the aliens _not_ to implement such scuttling technologies with their weapons; doubly so when you consider the game is basically won off the back of reverse engineering.

Lol agreed, frag grenades are pretty laughable in Xenonauts against even the weakest, most basic aliens; anemic damage combined with a hilariously small AoE.

I'm surprised to see how one of the main things that the X-Com remake got right is not included in Xenonauts, particularly since the latter seems to be bigger on realism and hard science than the remake: namely weaponry that self-destructs when its operator dies (and that conversely remains intact when its operator is stunned). Besides the obvious narrative sense of scuttling weaponry (i.e. don't want those damned dirty apes using our own weapons against us in combat, and we certainly don't want them to be reverse engineered!), this would also nicely address the gameplay 'issue' of soldiers EZ moding tactical combats by retrieving and utilizing alien weaponry instead of applying an aim penalty as was proposed for newer versions.