Beltorn

I've finished playing 2.21 experimental on Normal Difficulty yesterday and before that I played on version 1.24 and would like to give some feedback Overall I liked my experience, it felt better compared to the previous 1.24 game I am not sure what to think of the current air combat balance, though so wanted to outline it further: From previous experience n Xenonauts 1 and Xenonauts 2 - 1.24 , Xenonauts are won on the airspace level first and foremost as UFO fly-bys can induce a lot of panic, so I was planning to build up secondary air-defense bases really quickly and expected to need many fighter jets to fight off the UFOs I went into the game without checking balance changes and turns out current planes are really costly - 500k for Angel and 800k for Phantoms. I barely managed to have 4 Angels and Eventually 7 Phantoms by the end. All Angels were eventually retired, while Phantoms were distributed to one for each base except of two for my main base Later I discovered that Phantoms actually have enough fuel to fly around the world and engage the UFO there. Frankly, this feels like an amazing way to counter far away UFOs if only we could spot them. Could you please consider adding a Radar payload and upgraded variant for it for planes so that we could send out long-range Interceptor parties to spot for UFOs in far away regions to compensate for lack of radar coverage there. I know there was an AWACS mod for Xenonauts 1 with same idea. On combat level - One fighter planes easily wins against current UFOs if they are equipped with latest armor and two cannons I'm not too worried about fine balancing, but I'd like to point out that, right now, the feel of the air game is very much reversed - a heroic lone fighter plane shoots down Alien's air superiority squadrons and escorted UFOs easily. Especially if armed with two cannons and some armor. It doesn't show humanity outmatched or on the defensive at all and I hope there will be further changes and considerations to this. I have one request - please consider expanding air groups to more than 3 by 3 participants. A proper fighter squadron is after all two by two planes. I would imagine, Aliens would be sending multiple UFOs groups to attack if we are winning the air combat hard. In connection to this, in XCOM 1994, we could send one fighter, have it tail the UFO without engaging and then engage with another 1+ fighters. Allowing simultaneous combat of up to 4 XCOM fighters against one UFO. I remember managing to bring down a larger UFO with 4 Interceptors armed with heavy missiles. In Xenonauts 2, only the engaging fighter can attack despite the number of tailing Fighter planes. To me. the feel of UFOs in combat is really wooden - they turn slowly, and actually don't show that high speed in tactical combat that they are showing in strategic layer. Alien fighters are relatively easy to bring down, but Alien Interceptors feel actually powerful if one doesn't switch to gauss blasters to win against them, My last is concern is how quickly Angel fighters phase out as they are not able to even catch the Medium sized UFOs. Would you please consider adding an engine upgrade increasing their max speed, range and maybe Payload by 1? I imagine similar upgrade would make sense for Phantoms when Ultimate Fighters (Marauder? Fury? or maybe a new name) will become available. On balancing side, I wanted to suggest a radical idea- in XCOM 1994, upgraded fighters used elerium as fuel. And right now, we are getting more Alenium than alloys, so why not make Alenium a balancing item instead of straight cash for planes? Something like 5 Alenium for 100% fuel for Phantom and maybe 2 for alenium upgraded Angel? and respectively fuel tanks would add 1 alenium fuel, increasing the range by respective amount? If Alenium is in short supply, we already can make some after Nanofabrication research. And the cost is appropriately high - 20k per one unit. One last request, could we please have Pilots be actual people and not tied to their planes? It feels a little wrong to lose a pilot just because we have to replace the plane.

This unlocked Fusion Missile and Grenades for me. What's needed for rifles and such? Update: Finally met an Alien Bomber after Day 200

Bring back overwatch point usage. Before in Xeno 1 it made the remaining of your TU yellow indicating that those points are reserved for overwatch. This is actually in the game - right click the desired firing mode and it will show the reserved portion in Orange color on the TU bar and give warning that the TU's are reserved when you try moving past the limit Burst fire is just about useless as the % is not per bullet in the burst but the entire attack. Agreed here. MG is unfortunately a useless weapon right now. Too low base accuracy for shots further reduced by Recoil penalty Shields feel to be very underwhelming as I used to basically run shields for cover back in Xeno 1. Disagree - shields save from at least one shot, thus they are highly useful against extreme damage - they are free HP more or less. Pistols are extremely good once your accuracy and TU go up. The damage spread in the game feels too high though, would make sense to reduce a bit

Strafe earlier? To continue - "terror" and base assault ships should maintain their priority tasks - going for the terror mission or base assault. It's the "wondering" UFos which bugger me. Also, this little mechanic gives an incentive for the player -while the UFO is tailed with adequate planes, no losses to realtions score. Fleeing UFOs could go orbital to drop out (say, after 10 seconds, so that the player could have a chance to engage) somewhere to continue havoc till their timer runs out. If some more "realism" is also a target - UFOs can enter at poles and go to equator. On the other hand, technical expertise of aliens would trivialise such considerations as pointless min-maxing of fuel "in-setting" terms.

Chris, thanks for including the status updates on planes. I have a question - are there any plans to change UFO flight behavior? Currently they just fly around and randomly strafe things. I suggest a change to UFO behavior: when a UFO detects an X-com interceptor on their radar, they don't strafe targets and would decide - take the fight or flee

And Androns don't get suppressed. And on Andron Battleships 9 of aliens have this weapon, so it goes into fake difficulty territory. Also plasma cannons goes right through bushes on farm maps (it ignores them). Same about Alien battle rifle - 80 damage and 30 armour mitigation. If damage is randomised as 150% it becomes 120 and sentinel absorbs only 35 points, so most of soldiers will die in one hit. Predators won't survive a burst, but possibly will survive a shot.

Depends on the player and the way aircombat works. We could add some variablity to that

Multiple smoke layers are extremely useful, don't hesitate to drop more than one. It even works against harridans and Androns(though i personally think it shouldn't)

the surest way to train strength is to always overencumber your soldiers by 2-3 additional kgs of weight. It will raise str automatically every mission. To train accuracy you only need to do one shot. To train reflexes you need one reaction fire occurence To train health you need a total increase by 4 points in any other stats

i'd like 4-6 planes per combat so i would like to see this happen too.

I would like to remind about this post as nothing ahs changed for me in 1.07 and 1.08. Also when a soldier with a shield panics, he only drops the shield. Shouldn't it be both weapons? Researching Alien Fusion Reactors changes backround images for the base same as researching "Base upgrade" but doesn't improve research and manufacturing times.

remove this please

Teloporting isn't a valid action for reaction fire AFAIK, can you look into that? I like wraithes teleporting in packs idea. Can we have that too?

Why so much dislike for Corsair? It is reasonably fast, highly maneuvrable, has good HP and powerful weapons. With plasma casters it downs a landing ship singlehandedly. Besides it eats alien fighters for breakfast, which isn't something a Foxtrot can do. It isn't a Marauder, but then, it doesn't need to be.

Solver, any new ideas?

Sniper rifles was one variant. Than there also was p90, i think and thanks to "hard" damage type they ripped aliens too. The game was full of OP on all sides, but i liked it most for its immersion and strategic layer - it had its own and very well made charm. Besides it was the first XCOM-themed game to make Foundry-like upgrades - i.e. one-time engineering researches that improved something for the player. I haven't played further games in the series - UFO:afterlight and UFO:aftershock, but i heard they had some great concepts but lackluster execution.

oh, come on- you could create most advanced ammos and most grenades were in endless supply. Besides most of the game was won via heavy sniping (aliens or more precisely reticulans as they were called were vulnerable to its damage type. All other "aliens" were the results of bio-mutagen affecting local fauna and flora, including humans) from afar and grenade spam from corners. Oh, and there were collapsible turrets (which didn't work until a fan-made patch AFAIK), but were death to anything from any distance.

On second strike teams - as far as i see the biggest trouble is equipment and a dropship - it takes a very long time to construct both kinds of items with 2 workshops. So either some reduction of mandays or an increase in workspace for engineering workshop (say 20 engineers per workshop) and respectively make living quarters more cramped(40-45 space). In addition this could be combined with some chagnes to cost of items - increase how much alien alloys are required for most/all items,especially planes. Alloys are very plentiful as you all know and if more of them were used it wouldn't be that difficult for average player, who stockpiles it in hundreds. On armors - if it loses more than 50% of Armor it is not eligible for free repairs

I've modded the modifier to 0.8 for both DMRs and MGs and feel fine. Their real penalty for reaction fire is high TU cost per shot and as such low amount of shots/aliens the soldier with those weapons can react to.

Currently, i would advise to focus on breaking the tedium of crash-sites with alien missions and putting in several object requirements for late-game tech - like the aforementioned anti-gravity generator for the Marauder(btw, if it is a req for the marauder it should be same for Valkyrie too). Though in current game you can build marauder only with hardened alloys, no cruiser-related tech required. Also alien reactors look most certainly to be another viable item too. In this vein - please make "hyperdrive" a requirement for Operation:Endgame - otherwise it seems rather disconnected how they can make an anti-hyperdrive device without studying hyperdrives first. About second strike teams - i suggest looking at the solution by long war mod - combat fatigue mechanic - i.e an increasing penalty for using a soldier in more than one combat mission. My current longest streak is 5 crash sites and one terror mission during 30 hours. I suggest to consider 2 missions as reasonable amount to complete in one go, especially if there is a rather long time (10-12 hours - a travel between continents basically) delay in-between. To compansate the player we can increase the starting roster to 15-20 soldiers.

AFAIK you can't transfer them. In hire/fire screen opposite when you hire scientists/engineers there is small arrow pointing left which will reduce the number of scientists/engineers, then you have to click the respective button which will show fire "scientists/engineers" instead of "hire scientists/engineers".

As i've already described in general discussion thread - the player can change the loadout of a dropship while it is in flight including teleporting people and items from and to your base and other dropships i.e. dropships loadout isn't locked while it is in flight. Second thing - medals do not give their bonus to bravery or at least it isn't shown on the three coloured lines table. Good thing from this is that we can train some Bravery from psi-attacks by Caesan psions/officers/leaders. Third thing - could you please increase heavy fighters turning rate and PD cannon range on Landing ships/cruisers/carrier and battleships? Currently it is too easy to destroy those alien crafts because Corsairs with Plasma blasters can stay out of their range and simply murder them.

Nope, i'm exploiting this to its maximum and it works well. Soldiers appear immediately. Same for equipment. Its nice to teleport some predator armor suits straight from the engineering.

That's for Endgame

One interesting thing i discovered - you can add/remove soldiers and their equipment while the dropship is in flight. So if your soldier has just healed enough to get from med-bay into combat or you got some new items from manufacturing, you can freely change your dropship loadout, including switching soldiers between dropships. Maybe teleporters should be a separate research for that?