llunak

First of all, just to make this clear, it's a question if this is really a bugreport or a suggestion for enhancement. I understand the AI can never be perfect and that an intelligent human should usually have the upper hand, it's just that I think that in this specific case the AI did a horrible job and lost a battle that the aliens probably could have won merely by pointing their guns in the direction of my soldiers and spraying wildly, or something equally trivial. I don't remember having ever coded anything that'd resemble AI, so I have only a vague idea, but I'd guess that even rather simple additions to the AI could avoid the aliens getting slaughtered like this. As for your question, that's a bit harder to answer, as that has so far been the only mission where I was in this situation with having 3 soldiers pinned down in a corner by 15 aliens, yet eventually winning. I think that in my usual missions I sometimes see aliens doing similarly poor decisions, but there it's not so blatantly wrong. I usually try to flank aliens, pin them down somewhere and snipe them from afar, so if it sometimes looks to me like they just keep their heads down or run around like headless chicken, they can't really do much better anyway. In other words, in all other missions I've played so far, with the exception of this one, aliens don't do very well either, but that's because I do not let them. Here they didn't do well and they easily could have. So I can't quite say if it was a problem of just this map. Maybe let me explain a bit what actually happened. There were 4 aliens at the street facing Chinook's back, so I had problems unloading (and no smoke grenade, bah). On the side towards the park I could get only as far as the street, as there were aliens in the park. The only somewhat safe were 3 soldiers in the corner of the map, covered by the Chinook. Then one alien tossed a grenade into the Chinook, killing two, soldiers started panicking and running around, and aliens easily killed another 3 soldiers. That left me with just those 3 soldiers behind Chinook, and I expected a very definite failure of the mission soon. But, to my surprise, from my position I could kill few aliens at the street and the rest ran away towards the park, where more of aliens were, just sitting there, instead of advancing. So I quickly moved and took position on the street at the edge of the map. Few aliens (really only few, like 2 or 3) came closer, trying to get the soldiers, but I managed to kill them (that's some of those dead bodies next to where Victoria Gagne is in the save). After that, I moved to the positions where the soldiers are in the save, and noticed several (5 at least) aliens in the corner of the park. And the save is actually done several turns later, after me repeatedly shooting at those aliens and noticing that they don't really do anything, except for new aliens taking places of the ones I shot. I shot one alien in the spot right in the corner of the park, another one took its place, and every turn kept just standing up, looking at my soldiers, and sitting down again. Shoot it, another one will come to take its place, repeat. Things that I think the AI did (very) poorly: 1) When I had 3 remaining soldiers in the corner of the map, in the cover of the Chinook, those aliens in the park didn't advance. They didn't see my soldiers, but could have known (from my firing at the aliens towards Chinook's back, for example). 2) When I killed some of the soldiers towards Chinook's back, the one(s?) remaining there ran towards the park instead of those in the park reinforcing them. My soldiers were surrounded, but aliens opened a hole for me to run away. 3) By the time I moved my soldiers to the position in the save, most of the aliens were just sitting in the park, they could have flanked the soldiers, but they didn't do anything, they all kept mostly in their places. 4) (The definively worst one) The aliens stayed in their places in the corner of the park, they almost didn't shoot back, and just kept getting shot at. Which just didn't work and I killed them one by one. They could have run away, they could have tried to storm me, they could have tried to flank me, nothing. And I think at least some of these could be solved with (hopefully) simple logic. For 1), it can be "I know there is enemy that way, I don't see anybody myself, so I'll move closer". For 2) and 3), it could be something like "there are many of us, enemy is there, let's spread out and make a circle around them". I have no idea why the alien in 2) ran away or why they didn't shoot back in 4).

I actually did try to give them a break. Even after skipping a turn, so that they wouldn't be supressed etc., they still kept sitting there. 3 wounded soldiers simply shouldn't manage to win by just turkey-shooting 15 aliens.

Saved game: http://ge.tt/34XpLo71/v/0 During this terror mission, most aliens just sit in one place (in the corner of the park), shoot only rarely if at all, do not flank, do not try pretty much anything. I actually managed to win this seemingly hopeless mission by simply sniping them one by one (there must have been at least 5 dead aliens in the spot in the exact corner of the park). One alien eventually appears more to the north, but then keeps shooting from there. Two more aliens apparently stay at the other side of the map. Given that this is veteran difficulty, they could have tried at least a bit harder. With 3 soldiers left I was so badly outnumbered that they could have flanked them with ease, and would have probably managed to win even simply by storming them.

There are a number of issues related to Czechoslovakia (see below for patches): 1) Czech female surnames take a different form than male surnames (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_name#Female_surnames), so all the Czech surnames in soldiernamesfemale.xml are in the incorrect form. Fixed in a patch below. I believe a similar problem exists with Polish surnames (e.g. Kowalski should be Kowalska for female AFAICT), but since I don't speak Polish, I'll leave that for somebody who knows for sure if/how they should be corrected. 2) 'Alina' looks Russian to me, the Czech name should be 'Alena'. Fixed in a patch below. 3) Czechoslovak population was about 2/3 Czechs and 1/3 Slovaks, but all the surnames are either Czech, or neutral, there is none that'd be typically Slovak. I've added a few in a patch below. 4) (This is probably a nitpick, but for completeness) All the first names used in the game are neutral, so it doesn't matter if they go with Czech or Slovak surnames, with the exception of Jozef, which is Slovak, the Czech variant being Josef (z vs s). I assume the game mixes the names randomly, so given the number of typically Czech surnames, the resulting names for Jozef should be somewhat rare, although possible (mixed marriages, whatever). The simplest solution would be to delete the name, but it's very common, so technically it's about equally ok to either keep it as it is, add the Josef variant, or delete it. Your call , I mainly listed this one to be able to say that otherwise the names look ok to me (I'm half Czech, half Slovak, just for the record). 5) I believe it should be 'Czechoslovak' rather than 'Czechoslovakian' (similarly like today Slovak vs Slovakian), but as I'm not a native English speaker, I'll leave that up to you. 6) The region referred to as 'Soviet Union' in the game is clearly not just the Soviet Union but also its satellite states in the eastern half of Europe, therefore a correct name for it would be e.g. 'Eastern Bloc'. Similarly, the region referred to as 'Europe' is just the western half of it, so a more proper name for it would be 'Western Europe'. Patches for V20.7 for items 1), 2) and 3) are at http://pastebin.ca/2493573 and http://pastebin.ca/2493574 .

I take it back, the shield does work even if not rendered, the soldier in the original test was just unlucky and got shot despite the shield. So this is just a rendering problem.

The saved game is here : http://ge.tt/9Tgs6m71/v/0 It is enough to just hit 'End Turn'. An alien will appear on the road, soldiers will reaction-fire at it, but the 'Hidden Movement' screen will cover it. The alien is actually visible, since it's to the side of the screen (I play in 1920x1080 resolution), but the soldiers shooting will be covered. The 'Hidden Movement' screen only goes away after the alien turns to fire back.

I can confirm that V20.7 indeed is frustrating. It very often happens that when UFO appears, even close to my base, the pair of Condors I send out just can't manage to catch up with it. It wasn't exactly trivial even before, with UFOs running away from interceptors, but now that they have superior speed, the only somewhat successful way of intercepting UFO seems to be leading Condors manually in front of the UFO's flight path and hoping the UFO won't change course again. If any UFO keeps avoiding the interceptors, Condors won't get it, no matter what. I get decreased funding even from regions for which my starting base has good radar coverage, simply because even though I detect the UFOs, I often can't do much about them (also, it appears to me, if it lands on its own and I manage to get a Chinook there in time, it actually still seems to count as negative for funding, just because it wasn't shot down). Compared to this, V20.5 was a piece of cake (and as I said, it wasn't that easy either).

Screenshot: http://picpaste.com/bug3-lL2iZWKt.jpg If a soldier is standing behind an object (such as inside the Chinook in this screenshot), the object (Chinook wall in this case) is made partially transparent to make it possible to see the soldier. The same however does not work for the cursor. In this screenshot, the cursor points behind the snowcat, the '40' signifying the remaining TUs is shown clearly, but it's hard to see where exactly the soldier will actually walk. The object should be made transparent similarly as if the soldier was already standing behind it.

In a game there was an alien inside an object (70's computer, or whatever it is). The alien does not do anything, can be shot, but it's not possible to walk to the tile. Screenshot http://picpaste.com/bug2-nwFBukWG.jpg , saved game http://ge.tt/3S07jW71/v/0 .

It is possible to walk through certain objects, such as trees. See this screeshot: http://picpaste.com/bug1-jMXR9epl.jpg

Comboboxes (as such when assigning soldiers to a dropship) don't activate selected item if that item could be activated merely by mouse clicking (i.e. it opened right under the cursor and it wasn't necessary to move the cursor). Steps to reproduce: - Start a new game, place base. - In geoscape, enter the Barracks/Manage soldiers screen. - Click on 'CHARLIE-1' in the 'STATUS' column for 7th soldier in the list. - Combobox opens, offering 'UNASSIGNED' and 'CHARLIE-1'. The 'UNASSIGNED' item is right under mouse cursor (possibly may need a different soldier, the 7th soldier is where this can be reproduced with my resolution, if clicked in the bottom half of the 'CHARLIE-1' item). - Click (thus selecting 'UNASSIGNED'). - Combobox closes, but the soldier is still assigned to 'CHARLIE-1'. - If, before clicking, mouse is moved up enough to leave 'UNASSIGNED' and back, then 'UNASSIGNED' is selected correctly.

A shield is not rendered and does not appear to be functional when the other hand is empty. Steps to reproduce: - Start a new game, place base. - Change the role of one soldier to 'Shield'. - Start ground mission. - The shield soldier will have shield in one hand and pistol in the other hand. Note that the soldier is rendered as having a shield. - Go to inventory and drop the pistol. Now the soldier is rendered as empty-handed, even though the control panel at the bottom shows that the soldier has the shield in one hand. - It appears that this is _not_ just a rendering problem, as I had a soldier single-shot by a plasma pistol (on veteran) despite having a shield and facing the alien (unless it is possible for an alien to manage this despite a shield, but I've never had this so far when having a shield equipped "correctly"). This may possibly be a duplicate of http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/7987-V20E2-Ground-Combat-Assault-Shield-does-not-appear-on-soldiers-in-Sentinel or http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/7987-V20E2-Ground-Combat-Assault-Shield-does-not-appear-on-soldiers-in-Sentinel , but the symptomps described there don't exactly match.

Sorry, this bug still appears to exist. I've just had a soldier reaction-fire at an alien with the 'hidden movement' window on top of it. I'm afraid I can't quite reproduce it though (middle of a mission, it'd be probably quite useful for cases like this if the game autosaved to a special slot after every turn). EDIT: Or if it helps, I have a save right after the aliens' turn (apparently the alien was exactly at the edge of the soldier's vision, maybe that was the reason?). Should I report this elsewhere or it useless without a save done before it happened?