Troublechuter

Found an issue with the current build; I had an Andron simply freeze up on me and do nothing. Most of the enemies in the mission were behaving normally, but this one Andron was stuck in place and just refused to do anything at all. It had a clear line-of-sight to two of my soldiers and could have attempted to move to flank, but instead it just stood there in the open doing nothing. On the alien's turn the camera would keep switching to the Andron several times, as if he was thinking about doing something but couldn't quite decide what to do and just gave up. Will have to see if this is an issue just with Androns or all aliens, possibly this has something to do with the "passive" AI change.

Looks pretty good so far! My only remaining gripe is that there are still some tiles that seem like they should be walkable, but aren't. I.e, the flowerbeds you get around some houses.

Of course when you use it on your own men it becomes the "discipline stick".

Fun fact; thermite is really really easy to make, and pretty much nothing will put it out. There was a show in the UK called Braniac where they put Thermite into a big tub of liquid nitrogen to see which would "win" and it burned straight through to the floor.

Personally I never used gas much anyway, I would just spam electroshock grenades. Opinion seems to be mixed on them, but I love electroshock nades. I see them as a sort of "all-purpose" grenade. They stun, they suppress, they damage robotic enemies, but don't do either as well as a dedicated flashbang or gas grenade. But I don't care. It means in a pinch, anyone can chip in with the stunning/suppressing without me having to worry about which soldiers have flashbangs and which have gas. The only problem I have with this strategy is Sebillians, who are incredibly stun/suppress resistant at the best of times.

If I were a dev I'd be flattered to be compared to Ubisoft.

Agreed, my only issues at this point are: 1. Crashes in ground missions, which seem to have increased significantly since the last patch (will try to upload a save if I get one that's reproducable, they seem to happen semi-randomly but always on the alien's turn which makes me think its either something in the alien's AI code, or one of my guys is attempting to reaction fire at them and that is what's causing the crash) 2. Psionics balance is largely unknown, since these don't come out in full force until the end-game. Chris, since I know you're watching this thread, how hard would it be to implement some cheats into the game? All we really need is: 1. Ability to advance the hidden invasion "ticker" that controls which alien ships show up 2. Ability to give ourselves cash 3. Ability to have all of our lab/workshop jobs complete instantly With just these three, we'd be able to skip to the late-game very quickly and get a better idea of how things are balanced there. I just feel like the 30 tile range on mind control isn't going to be enough to balance it sufficiently (although it should make base raids a little more bearable), but I can't actually get to that part of the game to test it in a timely manner.

I'm getting a lot more crashes in ground missions than I used to. I can't figure out what's causing it though, it always seems to happen when an alien is taking its move, so it could be related to reaction fire. I had it happen twice consistently, and I was about to get a save to upload to demonstrate it in action, but then I re-did the turn again and it didn't happen this time. The only thing that happened differently was that I hit and killed a drone that had previously survived, so it could also be related to drones. The crash happened when an Andron guard was moving, however.

I'm happy with the MGs as they are. They're lethal at close range, and inaccurate but good for suppression at mid/long range, as intended. I wouldn't mind if they had an extra fire mode though, maybe a short burst of 5 rounds with a slightly lower TU cost; it seems a little odd that its 10 rounds or nothing at all.

Have definitely seen the aliens suppress their own side. And outright kill each other, in fact.

Alright, I'm happy with this answer. I would ask that you consider the following however: 1. If I remember correctly, this was also possible in Terror from the Deep, and if it happened you'd get a popup at mission start saying something like "All extraterrestrials in crash site deceased, initiating recovery process" rather than letting you take your turn first. Could we maybe have something like this? 2. If I kill 0 of 0 aliens in a crash site, it shouldn't count as a "terrible" performance, as with surviving civilians. Minor gripes I know, but hopefully we're approaching the point where there are only minor gripes remaining.

Any kind of fold-able shield would sacrifice its own structural integrity somewhat, making it less resistant to damage. Its mentioned in the description of the assault shield that the scientists actually asked the Xenonauts if they wanted a lighter, more mobile shield or one of the same size/weight that offers more protection. Perhaps unsurprisingly they all went for option B.

I just had a mission start, let me take my first turn, and then end successfully. Hard to tell if its a bug or not. Is it possible that there was only one surviving crew member and they died on the first turn somehow?

As in the hotfix is already live, or you've fixed it in dev and it'll be in the next version?

Completely agree. I really want to see how Praetors have been balanced; 30 tiles still seems like a pretty long range for a power that works through walls, always hits and can instantly kill a soldier, but its going to take me about a week of playtime to even get to the point in the game where they show up. Also several people* have asked how this 30 tile range works through floors, can you comment on that Chris? * Well, me and one other guy at least

I raised this as a bug, actually but I guess its really more of a missing feature.

Am I going to have to start my game over? All of my existing saves crash when I attempt to load them. Which is fine, I think I'd screwed myself by neglecting research anyway.

Argh, that's a shame. It sounds like there's a lot of good fixes in there.

I figured since grenades and rocket launchers are free I'd just load them up with explosives and hope for the best

Well for my primary base I don't bother with any defences; its where I keep most of my soldiers and I have plenty of interceptors standing by as well, so in the event that the interceptors can't stop the ship at least I have the A-team on standby for the ground defence. My secondary base on the other hand has twelve privates with a few laser rifles and sets of jackal armor. Given that they're a last resort, ideally I don't want them doing any fighting at all, so I've packed that base with laser batteries. I should really rotate some more experienced soldiers in so that the defenders aren't all horribly inaccurate weaklings who can barely lift a rifle...

There's also the issue of the Navy Seals not accepting women, particularly not in 1979, but to be honest that's probably best classified as an acceptable break from reality.

Its certainly completable, but as others have mentioned the end-game balance is a little wonky. It'll take you a while to get to that point though, so I'd say there's no reason not to start a game on the stable branch now just so that you can get the hang of the mechanics. Hell, I've always gone into the XCOM games expecting I'd need to restart a few times to get it right, and Xenonauts has proven no different. Protip: Fighters are important. Very very important indeed.

I think we're going to need a hotfix for the hotfix.

Yeah, there's really no other choice. Somewhere around Greece / Hungary / The Middle East gives you coverage of all of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and a big chunk of the Soviet Union. Second base goes in either Central America or southern China and can eventually cover the rest of the Soviet Union, all of Indochina and most of Australasia.

Some good fixes there. I'm curious how the limited range on mind-control is going to work though, especially regarding Z-levels. Will a Praetor on floor 2 be able to MC soldiers below it on floor 1, for example?