Troublechuter

I don't want to sound too negative, but I thought the same thing when v22 stable came out, and then the LoS/LoF changes brought about a whole new set of problems. Provided there are no more high-impact changes we're definitely close, but there are still a number of very noticeable (although mostly harmless) bugs to fix before release... which is really soon! I would be more than happy if we pushed the release back by a week or two to fix these, you only get one chance to make a first impression after all. Even forgetting about bugs, there's a bit of balancing work left to do. The LoS changes seem to have made the whole game significantly harder, as I can no longer move a scout up, spot an alien, move the scout back and have the whole squad open fire with impunity. I'm totally fine with this as a system, but the whole game has been balanced based on the old, "easier" LoS system so far, and this has effectively cranked the difficulty up a notch. In addition, the appearance of fighters early on means I'm getting a lot more "airliner shot down" events, and with the bug that used to make these events provide a funding increase fixed, this has also made the geoscape game harder; I'm losing a lot more funding in the first month than I used to. Personally I'm fine with the increased difficulty as I felt that Veteran was getting a little too easy for me, but then I've been playing for months now; I'm not sure how a newbie would fare. I'd much rather the game be too hard than too easy for sure, though! And finally there's psionics, which I can't really comment on, as I haven't gotten far enough to encounter them in their new form yet and probably won't for a while, especially if there's another save-breaking patch.

Hmm, so the menu looks fine on my laptop. I guess that makes sense if its a hardware-related issue. I don't think its related to this patch specifically, I think its just always been like that now that I think about it.

My main menu looks much the same as legit1337's. It seems as though background.jpg doesn't always load, I hadn't considered that this might be a bug until now, its always been a toss up whether I get an empty geoscape or the background jpg when I start it up. At the moment its not appearing. And yes, the actual jpg is present in the correct folder.

Yep, this has been broken for a few patches now and still is...

Also all of the maps would need to be modified to handle up to three dropships.

This one isn't new, its been happening to me since the beginning and honestly I figured its so noticeable they just never got around to it, given its annoying but doesn't really impact gameplay.

"It looked like a UFO, I swear!"

The dev team we need, but not the dev team we deserve.

Yeah, the "shooting around corners" feature is completely broken; the game has a funny idea about what constitutes a "corner". Someone posted some helpful screenshots illustrating the issue better in the bug reports forum.

I hate to say it, but day 1 Corvettes are definitely not a very fun addition to the game. I know we're aiming for a "fighting a losing battle against a vastly superior alien horde" atmosphere, but having ships you don't actually have enough firepower to shoot down appear on day 1 would be a terrible introduction for a new player. Could we at least hold off on the Corvettes for the first week, to give the player time to research Foxtrots at least? And I'd also like to add myself to the list of people asking for the auto-reveal thing to be an option you can turn on and off in the menu at least. I understand the idea behind the feature is to streamline gameplay, but a lot of this game's target audience are going to want to be able to turn it off for an "authentic" experience.

The thing that makes Mind Control so much more powerful than in the original is that the MCed soldier gets to act immediately. In the original, they would only act after a turn had passed, giving you time to either knock out the soldier in question, or just have your remaining soldiers run away and take cover from their newly MCed ally. Is this something we could try? Having a whole turn to deal with the problem soldier would give us time to decide if we want to shoot, stun, suppress, or run away from the affected soldier. It puts some agency back in the hands of the player, rather than MC = almost certain death for somebody, as is currently the case.

I'm not sure about Corvettes appearing from day one. I'm happy for them to show up earlier, but having light scouts, scouts and corvettes all show up together seems like the feeling of progression will be diminished somewhat.

This is also the case with rocket launchers.

Alright, its definitely reproducable, save attached. Even if I autoresolve the combat, it still crashes. Just load up the save and the interception causing the problem should happen pretty much right away. I'd also note that even though the UFO has lost one of its fighters, the icon for it on the map still shows it as having two. [ATTACH]3440[/ATTACH] Air combat bug.sav Air combat bug.sav

The outcomes are definitely not binary; I had an interception with two Condors and a Foxtrot vs a Corvette and had one of the Condor's downed, the second Condor took heavy damage, and the Foxtrot took minor damage. So there's definitely the possibility of a pyrrhic victory where you win with some losses on your side, it just seems that the autoresolve formula is a bit off at present and doesn't always reflect what would happen if you actually fought the battle yourself.

Was this against Caesans by any chance? My own personal theory is that this has something to do with the psionic AI, which was changed recently.

I think this was a stretch goal on the original kickstarter campaign, but they didn't hit it, unfortunately

"Alright lads, open the windows and let 'em have it!"

I should also add that there seems to be some significant overhead in whatever code deals with psi abilities; I've noticed the alien's turns take a lot longer than usual (30+ seconds rather than the usual 5-10) when there are Psions on the map. If I'm fighting a non-psionic race or I've killed all the psions, everything behaves normally.

Will see if I can reproduce later on, but here are the details I have: - I intercept a Corvette with two heavy fighters as escort with two Condors - I lose, taking down one fighter and putting the other on critical damage - Air combat ends fine - I intercept the remaining ships (undamaged corvette, heavy fighter on critical damage) with another two Condors - Heavy fighter is destroyed, Corvette is shot down, both Condors have minimal damage - Instead of returning to the geoscape, the game crashes I'm at work now, but will try to get a save later if I can reproduce this. I should note that I had upgraded from a previous version.

Alright, after some more investigation I'm fairly confident that the AI's turns sometimes taking way longer than usual has something to do with psionics. In my latest mission I was up against a landing ship, so not a huge amount of crew, but with two Psions. Turns were really slow until I killed the Psions, who fortunately were hanging out together so I was able to kill both in one turn. The AI's turns immediately went a lot faster afterwards. All anecdotal, I know, but hopefully this helps.

Only once have I ever seen local forces kill anything, for the most part they're a nice distraction for the first couple of turns while I get everybody into defensive positions.

I like this idea. Otherwise its going to be a sort of "exponential" thing where fast soldiers get faster quicker and slow soldiers struggle.

I'm also getting an AI freeze it seems, and it was Caesans for me too. So potentially its a bug linked to some kind of Caesan-specific behavior, possibly psionics.

I've had a Caesan spawn on water before, but he was still able to fire at me at least. This is the opposite; he was right out in the open in the middle of a road with nothing obviously blocking him, yet he didn't fire at me at all except for reaction fire.