frank_walls

I noticed this too, but still don't think they're worth it. It would be good if you could see a minimap/aerial view and target the zone you wanted to drop into.

I guess it depends on the build, lol. During Experimental 4 pushing them to the front didn't help because the volume and accuracy of the alien fire would take them out so quickly. I definitely push them to the front in base assualts and when entering UFO's, but I always load them up with ammo, grenades, med-packs, etc. so that my other guys (new recruits) never suffer TU penalties.

It would be interesting if predator armor was very expensive and allowed the player to function like a tank, i.e. high rate of movement and fire. As is I tend to use predators as ammo trucks.

By realistic I meant that a veteran soldier should be able to fire a weapon and have enough TU left to move or do some other smaller action. For example, someone who has been in enough combat should be able to shoot a heavy mg for suppression and then move or even throw a grenade.

I don't hate the change to using %'s. I've done a few missions, and made it up to laser weapons. I lost a few guys along the way, and have a handful of guys leveling up nicely. The % value only increases aimed sniper fire by a couple of time units, but really effects the heavy mg. However, I do find the 10 rounds per shot balances that. If I camp my mg's and snipers and use shotguns and rifles to scout the levels go pretty well. I'm curious, does the % mean that if a guy levels up to 80 TU the cost will still be 90% of that? If that's the case then the % model doesn't seem realistic.

Haha. Maybe the Xenonauts program is recruiting homeless people off the streets, putting a blue jump suit on them and throwing them out of the back of a helicoptor.

Haven't gotten home from work yet to play, but it would seem plausible to have one experienced/elite alien on each ship larger than the smallest scouts. Basically a high ranking commander that would require some skill to take out, but doable with enough soldiers and good strategy. It's fine if you blow through the first few aliens outside, but having a stronger opponent holed up inside or near the ship would require players to be more cautious. I think the ability to build your soldiers skills over the first few missions (losing 1 to 3 guys per mission out of 8 early in the game is ok) is imperative so that by the time you start developing Predator or Sentinel armor you have some high ranking bad-ass soldiers worth putting in that expensive armor!

Interesting. I'm excited to give it a try tonight. Maybe I can get past the terror mission I've been stuck on for 2 days now!

It seems random, but sometimes ESC doesn't work to bring up the game menu. Which basically leaves me unable to save, load, exit and all the other stuff on there. I have to end process to quit the game.

It's usually a reaction shot while I'm moving. On one mission I was moving into a farm field, and as my first soldier came around the corner of a hedgerow he got shot from across the field. The Caesan was about 4 to 5 squares out of my FOV in front of me. There were no other aliens in the field and all of other soldiers were behind the hedgerow.

Okay, started a new game on Normal. 2nd ground mission of the game, and lost 8 out of 8 guys the 1st time, 5 out of 8 the 2nd, and 4 out of 8 the 3rd. Problem, Caesans are shooting my guys from across the map before I can see them, still hitting guys behind cover, and shooting through the corners of obstacles where my guys have a 100% blocked icon. Update: 3rd ground mission against a Corvette. Just finished 1st attempt with all 8 guys killed. Now I understand aliens are a superior force, but what pool of slouches are my soldiers being recruited from? They can't shoot straight, most can't wear armor and carry more than a gun without suffering a TU penalty, and apparently they can't even hide behind cover properly because they always get shot.

I haven't tried the C4, and I didn't know it damaged guys behind the door! I usually have my guys behind cover, and have a pvt open the door. Then a rocket guy launches rocket/s into the room and the plasma snipers, plasma rifles, plasma casters pick anyone else off. It works sometimes, but I invariably run into the problem of not being able to get my guys into the room with enough TU's left for reaction fire, at which point the Sebbies run in from other rooms and blast my guys behind cover. That's what the tank was for, running in and blowing anyone up within range. The tank is usually taken out quickly though. Some of the problems I'm having may definitely be the strategy I'm using, so hopefully I don't seem like a total noob here! I did play both X-com's (UFO, and Terror from the Deep)to the end so I'm just using similar strategies from that experience. I do have to say Xenonauts is far superior though. As much as I get pissed when the aliens slaughter my guys, I always think, "Well, that's what I would do if I was them." So the difficulty is kind of a love hate relationship at the moment, lol.

Okay. So I tried 10 guys and a Hyperion tank on an alien base assault. Still did not go well. The aliens just seem to have a ridiculous amount of TU's, and my guys just don't have enough to make it from room to room effectively. I had six guys lined up in front of door, waited until the start of my turn and opened the door, and saw 3 aliens. All 6 of my guys were able to get shots off and only kill one alien. Everything else missed. It's about the only thing I can do because they don't have enough TU to open the door and run into the room and shoot. Anyway, after everyone missed I could only move 2 guys out of the way (by just a couple of squares). Alien one runs up, throws a grenade that blows up (not at the end of the turn like mine do) then shoots one of my guys dead. Alien 2 runs up and throws a grenade that explodes and kills 2 more guys, then snap shots another guy to death. Both aliens also had enough TU left to run behind the wall. Have you guys made it as far on this latest release? Just wondering if anyone else is having similar experiences.

Perhaps it's the numbers, but it seems like it shouldn't make a huge difference. If I have a team of highly trained and well armored soldiers they should be able to handle a comparable number of enemies. I'm not fighting 20 guys at once - we're talking a group of 2 or 3 aliens killing off 7 guys in 2 turns. If the only way to defeat enemies is by just having a lot of guys then where's the strategy in that? A proper balance to the game would be that a large group of inexperienced soldiers would be equivalent to a smaller well trained group. A lot of the problems are stemming from my guys constantly get shot when they're behind cover. I almost never hit an alien behind cover, but it's not the same for them. Also, the line of sight issue is a problem since they can get me before I can get them, and they always seem to have ungodly amounts of TU's. I've seen Sebillians stand up, walk 4 spaces, squeeze of 4 very accurate snap shots then crouch. Even my Commanders can't do that. Anyway, I'm going to start over now. I haven't beat a ground mission in days and I'm running out of money!

Well that explains it then. I think the difficulty ramped up around the time I built my 2nd base. At that point I was doing well. I had a good stock of veteran soldiers, 2.5 million in the bank, and good country relations. After I built the 2nd base my first base (in the Middle East) would get 7 to 10 UFO's at once. Way more than I had the resources to kill. Combine that with the difficulty of the ground missions and I've lost 1/2 the world to the aliens, lose $500,000 a month, and barely have enough to stay abreast of the impending alien apocalypse. I love it!

Also, just got the Valkyrie drop ship. A waste of money! It provides no cover when sending in troops. I dropped into a downed battleship zone in the desert and had no cover to place my guys behind, so I just shrugged and clicked end turn. Well, my scimitar got destroyed in shot, then 3 out of 7 of my troops got killed before my turn started. Sigh, restart. 5 minutes later after the level loads I re-place my guys. Scimitar gets destroyed, and my guys kill the 2 aliens with reaction fire. Yay! I make it to the battleship with only 1 human casualty, so I think I'm doing good so far. I decide to teleport into the side rooms from those platforms outside. 2 guys on 1 side, and 4 on the other. I'll secure those rooms and meet in the middle. After I teleport in and end my turn an alien runs into the doorway and kills 1 of my guys then runs out and another one runs in and kills another guy. In the other room an alien runs in and throws a grenade and damages my other 2 guys. Then a second alien steps in and shoots them both to death with 1 shot each. I end my turn with the loss of 4 guys! When my next turn starts my commander has panicked and is useless while the noob in the Predator suit keeps it cool. I walk him a couple of steps and shoot an alien standing outside the door and kill it, finally! However, TU's are gone, he panics on the next turn, and the aliens kill him. 7 guys dead in 2 turns = no fun.

The farthest I made it before was to the MAG weapons about 6 months ago. At that time I was devastating the aliens on the ground with a 3 man team of Majors in Sentinel armor. I could thwart terror missions, infiltrate bases, and clear any downed UFO with those guys. Now it's just downright painful. A few minutes ago I just had an armored Sebillian shoot a guy through a window. Then when I tried to return fire at the same angle through the window my shots were blocked by the wall, so apparently only the alien can get that line of sight and not me. Then he ran out of the building, threw a grenade that exploded and damaged 2 of my guys, shot another guy dead, then ran back in the building. During that exchange only one of my 3 guys facing him reactioned fired. Ugh. Now I'll start over and wait for 5 minutes while the map reloads.

All the techincal stuff aside here are my casual gamer impressions of the ground combat AI at this point. I felt it was pretty balanced for the first 3/4 of my game (set to Normal). Then, upon reaching the abiblity to produce Sentinal Armor, Plasma weapons, and Fusion Explosives the aliens kick my ass in every battle. I went from losing 1 or 2 guys (usually new recruits) every few mission 8 man team to losing everyone or almost everyone. I currently have a 6 man team with 4 vets (Commanders and Majors), a scimitar, and 2 Privates, and they can't clear out a downed carrier, battleship, terror site, or make it halfway through an alien base. If I do make it there's only 1 guy that usually gets lucky and makes it out - of course I usually start over because it's even harder to make it through a mission with an entire team of Privates. My strategy is usually pretty effective. The scimitar scouts ahead for areas with cover, and my team moves ahead 3 at time with 3 always covering. The problem is that the aliens are now always crack shots and almost always score a hit - even on those behind cover. I was in an alien base and had 4 guys in a room (4 had already been killed), all behind some type of cover. Two aliens came in the room, and one shot the closest guy in predator armor 3 times and killed him. The second alien shot a guy in Sentinel armor on the other side of the room behind a crate 2 times and killed him. The private with them panicked and started out the next turn with 0 TU (so he was shot dead), and the last guy left was vet in Sentinel armor that was already weakened. I was just over half way through the base at this point so I just gave up. I haven't completed a terror mission, downed UFO, or base attack in days! I have 2 bases, one with 2 marauders, a foxtrot, and a condor, and another with a marauder, corsair, and 2 condors and there are so many freakin' UFO's I'd need 6 bases filled with marauders to even put a dent in them. I'm bleeding money and have to airstrike every UFO just to stay afloat. Basically the game went from a medium difficulty to overwhelmingly hard within a matter of 1 game year!

It was a Caesan, and it was not behind cover. Haven't had the problem since the latest update.

I've had the same issue on every Medium, Large, and Massive class UFO I down.

I've had this happen also. It was in a terror mission and the scimitar ran over a cement planter. Never actually saw it hit the planter, but that's what it was about to hit.

Was on the ground with my first downed scout. After a few turns I was shooting at my second alien with a shotgun guy. He fired the shotgun - I heard the noise but there was no animation for the bullets. The game then froze, but I could still click units and select where I wanted them to move. The green TU path showed up, but I couldn't make them move. I could access the game menu, and was able to save the game and reload. It worked fine after reloading.

I was assigning soldiers from my dropship and there were 2 bugs. 1 - When I clicked unassigned the screen said No More Soldiers in This Base. I clicked to the geoscape and then back and my soldiers were there again. 2 - When I tried do it again I received the same message but then the game froze and I couldn't click anything or bring up the game menu. I had to force quit from the windows task manager.

I re-installed and still have CTD's when ground missions are loading(very slowly). Doesn't seem to be any specific pattern to it. I've had it crash on small UFO's, medium UFO's, terror missions, and base invasions.