momerathe

I think I prefer the old module system. My issue is that the automed module feels pretty much mandatory, so I would probably never use anything else if I’m limited to only one.

Very rarely. It happened to me just once in my last play-through. I think it only happens if the alien doesn't have LOS to one of your guys, i.e. if it can shoot a gun it will choose to do that instead.

Yes please! (although really, it’s just the position of the starting radar that really bugs me)

Honestly I think the Stalker armour looks weird in general - like your guys are going out to fight in their pajamas.

I think OP’s got a good point In the old UFO game I used to put radar bases at the north and south pole. Because the geoscape was a globe this worked nicely, but wouldn’t work in this game.

So I think the performance of non-advanced lasers and mag weapons are broadly similar. My feeling is that because you have to research aircraft laser weapons anyway, it’s not an either-or proposition: it’s lasers or both.

It would never have occurred to me to try this

10 pounds is the weight of a late-medieval zweihander, and a chonky one at that! Even an arming sword is only 2-3lbs.

Yeah, I slept on that (or rather, the cleaner base mission) for way too long.

I've been grenaded... once.

tl;dr: looking good so far, could use a few tweaks (as expected for early access). Being able to rotate the battlemap is worth the price of admission alone. For context, I was an avid UFO'94 player back in the day, and I played through X1 a couple of times (this is normal for me) about ten years ago. Judging by other comments I may be alone in this, but I really enjoy the air combat. I like the fact that with some smart tactics (and liberal use of the space bar) you can minimise the damage your fighters take, without it becoming trivial (i.e. you'll almost always take some chip damage). If I had some suggestions, I would buff the magnetic and gauss aircraft weapons, as lasers clearly outclass them right now. I also don't think torpedos have really found their niche - but that could be coming along with larger ships. The other thing I'd mention is the ramp-up when alien fighters start to appear is quite abrupt, and the player may find themselves sitting on a large stock of now nearly-obsolete angel interceptors, without the wherewithal (cash) to rapidly switch over. In general, actually, I don't think the game conveys to the newer player how important it is to go hard on base expansion and air interception - I've seen one streamer sitting on day 100 with just his starting base and wondering why he's starved for materials and his funding is turning red. Speaking of magnetic weapons, these feel like a trap right now. Given that researching lasers is mandatory (for fighter weapons) and I seem to be constantly backlogged on research, the opportunity cost of spending X days on a skippable weapon is too high. I'd recommend cutting the research time, making the weapons cheaper/faster to produce, or both. other random observations: Gauss weapons: mechanically they work fine, but I think they could really use a VFX glow-up. Coming after how cool lasers look, they are a bit underwhelming (to repeat: in appearance, not performance). You should be bringing down Thor's hammer on the aliens with thunder and lightning Please let us transfer engineers/scientists between bases. I wanted to shift my fighter production to a different base due to hangar space, but was disappointed to have to re-hire engineers at the second base. The dialog box for decommissioning aircraft says something to the effect of "are you sure you want to sell this aircraft" but you don't get any money. I assume one or other of these is a bug. (If you did get a refund for selling, then that would smooth the Angel-> Phantom transition though) That's it for now I think. Keep up the good work! EDIT: knew there was something else. Tier 2 shields please!

Can someone explain to me how the trajectory for grenades works? On the top floor of a landing ship, three of my highly trained commandos fail to throw stun grenades through a doorway.

They're useful on industrial maps for sweeping areas with lots of cover; sweeping farm buildings etc. In open spaces where they're less good, I usually have a backfield Heavy to take the shot if the Assault spots someone.

question re. Bounding Overwatch: how do you approach corners - particularly on farm maps with those impassible hedgerows? As I understand it, the idea is that the guy at the back stays put to cover/shoot at anything revealed by the guy in front. When you come to round a corner, though, the guy behind won't have LOS to any aliens revealed when you do so. How do you position your guys to get round this?

There's more than one way to skin a cat. I think it's a good sign that the game supports different playstyles.

that's probably your answer, then. As an old UFO:EU player, I'm paranoicly careful about saving TUs are setting people up with good fields of reaction fire. Often, if I can't guarantee a kill I'll hold fire and wait for the aliens to break cover.

I'm somewhat with the OP on this one. I generally find that a single riflemen cannot be relied upon to kill.. well, pretty much anything. A single aimed shot, even if it hits, usually fails to kill. Sure, they're dangerous at close range, but their advantage over shotguns is meant to be engaging at medium ranges, and in relatively open spaces MGs are far, far killier. TBH I only really keep them around for reaction fire. Snipers, OTOH, I've pretty much stopped using altogether. While they were useful for capping low-ranking Caesans in the first month or so, they can't reliably kill tougher stuff on their own; they're bad at reaction fire, and they're useless up close. EDIT: FWIW, my current squad is 4 assault, 3 rifles, 3 heavy.

I just wish they wouldn't hide in cupboards so often.

In the old game, they found their niche for me as time-savers: they could sweep the far corners of the map much quicker than a foot-slogging soldier (particularly given my TU-saving habits). But then, you were a lot less resource constrained in that game, and transports were higher capacity.

I've always had something else I wanted to research - and even more so, something else I wanted to manufacture instead.

Only Assaults get wolf armour - mainly due to production delays, admittedly - but as they're at the sharp end it seems to work well enough. They also tend to be my best guys. I ended up with a reasonably deep roster because of rotating out injured soldiers; I think I only had to recruit three new soldiers when I set up my B-team and one of them went to the A-team regardless. (I did subsequently recruit 4 more so I had a bit of a bench at each base). I move my troops in fireteams of ~3, so I can carry the odd rookie here or there. CQB training, I'd say. Might need a 2x1 facility, but you should be able to set up a mock building in the same sized space as a hangar.

My A-team/B-team is more of a geographical split. I try to assault as many UFOs as possible per wave, 3-4 if I can manage it, and it take so long flying over the Atlantic.

IIRC when they come out of the med bay they pick up the default equipment for their role. On the equipment screen there's an option to save a set of equipment as default, though that will everyone with that role. As for your first question - I really hope so, because I try to do as many mission on the bounce as I can for each wave. I haven't checked tough..

How many workshops/engineers do you have? I've got two fully-staffed workshops, and I can't remotely keep up. I haven't even finished equipping my B team with lasers - let alone armour - and I've just unlocked plasma weapons. I've just seen my first Landing ship so I want to get some Corsairs up and running, but I don't want to put soldier upgrades on hold.. I'm considering opening a third workshop in my US base and dedicating it to aircraft production, but those salary and maintenance costs add up..

Sounds like how I normally play