Serker

Research alien biology(you need to see two types of aliens in combat to get that) and then stun weapons. It will give you gas grenade and gas rocket to play with. These simplify things a great deal. You can gas em to death without getting hit once, just ask to throw someone who is not in LoS to aliens. You don't need to throw grenades right under alien's feet. You may as well look closely what enemy holds in their hands. Heavy plasma is basically a shotgun and won't deal any damage from 15 squares, and plasma cannon can't reaction fire at all.

Not cluttered indeed, but, to be honest, I like old documentary look more. Also, awesome art at the background gone..

I figured that out. Just thought it may be worth fixing. Another minor bug: praetor interrogation data does not open up automatically on completion.

Alien base destruction give 120 points. It is working as intended, it is just scoring system being a bit revamped. Old loading screen got stuck for some time, but it will get replaced soon.

1) I wrote about this strange research called ##### after capturing a live praetorian, along with alien leader interrogation. I assumed this was bugged praetorian analysis, but I was wrong. After researching leader interrogation, praetorian analysis finally emerged. This ##### research is still on the list, so I can only guess what is this. 2) When alien leader interrogation is done, Xenopedian opens up, but does not show research data. It exists in xenopedia, just will not open up automatically. 3) There is no xenopedia entry for heavy drone autopsy. If one can manage capturing its corpse, it will end in Xenopedia open in few hours with no new data. How can you capture heavy drone corpse? I got mine from severely damaged battleship. Wreckage was on 2nd floor.

And to have your perfect strategy messed up because of totally random berserk of some rocket guy? No thanks, random is only good in limited quantity. Current dread mechanics does this perfectly: random and interfering, but not game breaking. As the side note about praetorians: I think that palm blaster don't look natural. It would be cool if they used random unresistable psionic effects as their attack instead, even for reaction shots. That would be awesome, even if require some intricate coding.

I don't even bother storming this room. Make a hole in the wall, throw C4 there, make another hole, throw another C4... If you can't make problem fly away, put more explosives.

Yup. Alenium from medium scouts, reactor from corvette(or landing ship? Forgot that part...), fusion reactor from carrier. And then singularity from battleship, but I'm not quite there yet so can't say anything about it. Condors(or corsairs) can easily kill light scout regardless of loadout. They only can kill medium scouts with combination of plasma cannon+alenium missiles or better. It puts them at disadvantage, because single Foxtrot can kill any scout and you can't tell one scout from other in geoscape until you attack it. Also, condors are slow and run out of fuel fast, so keep two of them for escorts/air superiority and nothing more. How can you kill light scout with foxtrot? Fly straight on the UFO and shoot torpedo right in its face so it could not dodge. If torpedo misses, you will be in position to shoot another torpedo in its flank. It surely helps, but is foul play. If you have two condors and four foxtrots in this base, they will clear the skies, eventually. You may break even in terms of relation from this wave, perhaps. Just pray they won't stick something like terror or alien base(Base, large, andron? Boo.) when you don't want it. However, cleaning them helps with local relations a lot. It is much worse when they all spawn somewhere in greenland or in the middle of the ocean.

1) I guess no. 2) Why would you want to capture a live reaper? If I was commander and some scientist approached me with this idea, he will find himself in next mission against reapers with only shock baton as weapon. 3) E-shocks do some health damage and a lot of stun damage. My only guess is you tried to grenade heavily wounded alien. Other than that, note that killed and stunned enemies look absolutely the same. You need to step on top of one and investigate to tell from another. Or wait till the end of mission.

Enlarge entrance with explosives and shoot at them from 16 squares away. Heavy plasmas won't really work from that distance.

Yes, they come a bit late. But Condors barely have a chance against interceptors and you don't have much chance to get marauders, so corsairs are useful.

Research stun weapons and gas em up! Rocket launcher is especially effective when firing into UFO from far away. But even gas grenades usually do the trick, you don't need to throw them right below alien feet. Other than that, electroshock grenades are very useful, because they cause huge amounts of suppression. They do explode at the end of your turn, but suppression seem to add up on unit; so suppressed unit in previous turn may be easily scared again in current turn, by flashbang or weapon burst laying next to him. P.S. You can finish off uncoscious enemies by clicking your weapon and aiming at them. This is war.

1) Standard moving range begins from ten squares and goes up to 25 now, I think it is a lot already. 2) It will just favor standing behind corners and outranging more; as well as using stacks of flashbangs and electroshocks and making holes in walls. I won't say it is bad, but IMO cover system could use more subtle balancing than just making it more annoying than important. Perhaps make it that cover right in front of target would keep 50-75% efficiency, with everything else on the line going down to 20-25%? Maybe making cover more brittle and adjusting shooting system so missed alien shots would ruin xenonaut cover real fast. Maybe some change to plasma cannon penetration value, because Xenopedia says it burns through fifteen inches of steel, when on battlefield it barely even damages anything except for civilians. 3) And who will want soldier with 30 accuracy? But other than that, it will be great. But soldier progression speed need a lot of tweaking imo. Besides, I think it'll need some extra programming to introduce some sort of soldier overall points cap, to make sure there will be no bums with 30 points in everything and no supermen with 70 in everything. 4) With cover reduced, it won't end well. Like, everyone will hit all the time. See p.2 about out-ranging and flashbangs. 5) Smaller saucers definitely could go with less aliens. 6) This is always most welcome. It will be very interesting to look at how things will work with fixed AI. About running close more frequently: with cover efficiency reduction, these attacks will be much harder to stop. It may even be exploitable when putting some men close, but out of line of sight, and placing entire team further in clear view.

Makes me wonder how much damage is "overkill". I downed quite a few medium scouts with two fusion torpedoes(each will damage UFO for 90%), and they don't seem to mind. Most had minor damage. Besides, in OG chances of destroying UFO had nothing to do with state of this UFO in ground combat. To destroy UFO, you had to deal twice UFO hitpoints of damage or more. When ground mission begins, there was a chance for every power source that it will go boom with very wide damage range. So by saving/loading right before the mission you could get all kinds of UFO states, from absolutely intact up to not a single wall standing or even without a single live alien, ending battle right on your first turn.