dmholt

Yay!

First alien base ... you guessed it. 3 Caesans. I'm sort of tempted to play this versin through to the end game mission just for luaghs.

On the plus side, my first terror mission on this version had only 3 Caesans. :-)

Just done my first terror mission on v22 exp b3 - no civilians, 3 Caesans.....

Chris, I don't want "a way to completely prevent your soldiers being affected by psionic attacks", but I do want a strategy that can be used to mitigate them. I can't stop aliens shooting at my soldiers, but I can be careful about moving my soldiers, seeking cover, etc. In other words, I can apply a strategy. I cannot apply any strategy for psi powers in Xenonauts - that is no fun in a strategy game. My recollection from the original game is that psi attacks were a big challenge at first - but through research you could determine which soldiers were resistant to psi powers, and you could build a squad that was resistant enough that psi powers became a minor annoyance. You could apply a strategy in response to psi powers. In Xenonauts now, there is nothing I can do, no strategy I can use. Psi attacks affect my bravest soldiers often enough so that it doesn't seem like there's much point in building a "braver" squad, and I find myself reduced to doing things like dropping weapons at the end of each turn in order to be able to complete a mission without several deaths. This is no fun.

In my opinion, the big problem is not so much the actual mechanism, but the sheer unpredictiability of psi attacks. There is no strategy for dealing with them, and they seem to occur quite frequently on some of my braver soldiers, so I can't even build a resistant sqaud. I may be in a minority here, but for me the psi attacks are quite simply NO FUN. I can't recall all the details of how they worked on the OG, but they weren't as far as I can recall so game destroying as thyey are now

Is there any chance that we will at some point be able to see the species for a crash site (assuming we knew the species prior to downing the UFO)? Or is this not a minor fix?

I have the same problem - not sure when it occurred, most of the "missing" base facilities were available to be built and were built previously. Might have happened after "Base Upgrade" research topic was completed? Hard to tell. Save attached. x.sav x.sav

Seen this bug mentioned in the release thread, but not in bugs forum (for this release anyway). I have a save that produces a reproducible CTD using the medkit, and another save made at a slightly different point where it doesn't crash. MK1 is the save with the reproducible crash. Soldier 3 should be selected: open the backpack, and drag the medkit into the soldiers "hands" to replace the rifle. Use medkit on soldier in front: CTD. In MK2 I have started with MK1, dragged the medkit across to replace the rifle, then saved as MK2. Open MK2 and use medkit with no problems. There is no difference in any of my actions between the crash and non-crash except that saving and reloading once the medkit is in the soldiers hands seems to stop the CTD. mk1.sav mk2.sav mk1.sav mk2.sav

Got this too, seems to be quite a general problem.

Personally I like the stun grenades - they're another option to use that's different from other attacks. Also, I find that I generally end up using stun rods instead once I get to needing to capture officers, leaders, and praetors. The stun grenades can be quite useful in reducing the numbers in enclosed areas - and it's really fun to hear aliens expiring at the start of their turn becasue they have run into the gas. But grenades generally won't get all the aliens, except maybe in a small scout, and the leaders seem to be more resistant. So it may be just a habit that I've got into, but I feel I need to use the stun rods to capture specific high level aliens. That means I end up using stun grenades on occasion, and other time sthe stun rods - which seems to me to be the ideal balance. Also, are you going to take away guns, because people are shooting the aliens too frequently? Makes just as much sense to me.

I'm getting this a bit recently, and I think it is happening whenever I try to load a game where some of my soldiers are under alien control. Not sure if that helps at all.

It certainly seems that way to me. As I think I have mentioned in another post, it's hard to be 100% sure that no alien can see you, as they can see you when you can't see them. However when I'm playing at the beginning of a mission and I'm still a long way from the ship, I have at times made soldiers run away from the aliens, into a building and hide inside it out of view of all windows ... and still get mind controlled. That's why I wondered if maybe the mind control attack might occur within the game mechanics when my soldier is running to their hiding place , and but only show the effects at the end of turn. Once I'm in sight of or inside the ship, mind control attacks happen almost without fail on 1-3 soldiers each turn. Again, I understand there may be some "holes" in the ships that the aliens can see through, but the occurrence of mind control attacks fits much better with the aliens not needing to see you at all - unless the entire ship is completely transparent to the aliens. Really, I do not believe that squad-sight is working for mind control in the way that it is "supposed" to as described in this and other threads. Limiting mind control to 30 tiles isn't going to help much if the psion or praetor can always see you once you are near or inside the UFO.

Definitely seems strange to me - would be good to hear if anyone has managed to resaerch MAG weapons on V21 stable. I'm running out of things to research, and I'm researching the singularity cannon, but still no MAG weapons. Just checked my Xenopedia - it has the alien battle rifle, which I seem to recall led to MAG weapons in V20 stable. Think I resarched alien battle rifle earlier, but it's certainly not available research now.

I won't say too much more about the psychic powers, as I've probably already said enough in the thread Max_Caine linked to in his first post, where I complained at some length. :-) Hoever I would be interested if anyone could explain to me how squad-sight works . One of the things I found so frusttrating about the new psychic abilites was that they seemed to operate without any aliens being able to see the soldier affected. If psychic abilities currently require squad sight, does that mean that if a psychic attack occurs tehn I must be visible to at least one alien that I am not aware of? Or can they "guess" where my soldiers are and aim a speculative psychic attack that way, in the same way I might pump a rocket into a building if I think an alien ran into it? If the aliens really can't use psychic attacks unless at least one of the aliens can see the soldier being attacked, then I can imagine tactics that might help cope with this situation. I certainly felt that I have had psychic attacks without the soldier being visible to any aliens, but it's hard to be certain -or have I mis-understood what people mean when talking about squad-sight?