Falesh

Thanks for making and maintaining this mod. I'm having a blast playing it!

I don't think you are being fair here. Breaching for me is very easy, all you need are flashbang grenades then you can shoot as much as you like. If you don't kill everything you can always shut the door again and try next turn. I like opportunity shots as the make you use tactics, like using flashbangs, rather then just lining up and shooting the aliens with everyone.

There were no dead aliens around the door so it either triggered by landing on a soldier or, as you say, had something to do with the door which is could well have landed on.

Ah, I had assumed that flashbangs had a small percentage chance to fail to suppress something. I actually quite like the failure chance as it forces me not to get blasé.

There wasn't anything on the floor. Maybe it landed in on of my mens pockets and triggered his C4.

I was just breaching a UFO and had tried to throw a flashbang into it. The flashbang missed and landed somewhere in my troops at the door and instantly exploded with the results shown in the screenshot. I didn't end turn so I can't have thrown a frag grenade by accident so unless there is something I don't know about flashbangs this must be a bug.

That's strange, I have always breached UFO's by throwing flashbangs in from the outside and I haven't noticed them acting differently. How often does the bug manifest?

I'm still very new to the game so I can't compare most things but I can say that I really like the new lower AP cost. Previously I felt the game was too slow as it took so long to move my troops around making sure they were crouching at the end of the turn to present a smaller target. Now missions last a nice length of time, not too quick but not too long that they drag on.

The shields are there for the shot that you cannot control. When you see an alien, or multiple aliens, you can control the situation with smoke (and I don't mean abusing it like ccrunner1756 points out but things like using smoke to allow a soldier to get close enough for a flashbang), flashbangs, retreating and scenery rearrangement with c4. Because of that I think that an 80% block chance is amazing, it is effectively a second life for your troops. If you are getting shot a lot then your shields will melt and you will get the 20% shots through, but I think that is a good thing as the shields could be seriously overpowered otherwise. Having said all that my strategy works by using lots of men, I don't take a vehicle. I can't say if the balance is good when you take a vehicle. And I also can't say for sure if the game should be balanced for having multiple turn firefights with the aliens, as it stands doing that would be deadly.

On veteran difficulty I have found the best way for me to play with these changes is for all my soldiers to be riflemen equipped with combat shields. All use the shields as I sweep through the level which saves them from initial enemy fire if the enemy shoots me before I see it. When I encounter an alien I get the soldiers who are not in los to throw flashbangs to suppress the alien and then I kill it with the rest. If I do not kill it in that turn then I use smoke grenades. Using these tactics I generally don't lose anyone unless I make a mistake. When I was not using the shields I was losing on average roughly 1.5 soldiers per mission. One of the big times for the loss was when an alien was standing outside my ship when I started the mission. In that situation I had no cover and I couldn't get off any grenades without reaction fire killing men. Now if that happens at least I have the cover of my shields which have a good chance of keeping my men alive long enough for me to throw a grenade. I am a new player but so far I like the way the missions are played out. Having to rely on flashbangs and smoke makes sense because I am technologically inferior to the aliens so I need to try and prevent a firefight where possible. The combat shields are awesome, possibly overpowered as they have reduced my deaths to near zero, unless I make a mistake, so I don't agree with the comments in this thread about them being poor now.

I'm just wondering how many soldiers people lose per mission on Veteran difficulty level? At the moment I am mostly losing 1 but sometimes 0 or 2. This may improve when I get my armour but then again the aliens will probably be tougher at that point.