Rallige

So, any other mod aside from map packs will screw this mod up. But what about Khall's More Portraits and New Cars? Are those compatible? Or this mod changes portrait and car art as well?

I find that fast-paced scientific advancement quite believable. As far as I know, theory in science FAR exedes what we can test practically today. In other words : our ideas are limited by not having equipment, that is needed to test and use them. I might be wrong here, that's mostly what I feel like. remember Tesla? Dude had some crazy ideas, but had next to nothing to work with. And then BAM - alien juicy craft gets shot down, giving you power sources, advanced electronics, etc ( read: instruments to fulfill those "impossible" ideas ) Moreover, some kind of "martial law" would be declared upon alien invasion - potentially freeing scientists from burdens of bureaucracy, paperwork, "immorality" and government anti-advance lobbies, all of which, I imagine, contribute greatly to length of modern research.

It DOES make sense. Not just because "aliens didn't know he's friendly", I imagined that alien was told to do so by the officer ( they're all brainless grunts, remember? ) to terminate that xenonaut after "using" him, which is quite a smart thing to do. Btw, it wasn't ragepost, I am once more amazed by quality AI this game shows. Not that it makes MC less frustrating, lol.

One of my first MC'ed soldiers had shield and pistol. Not only he did shoot on the same turn, despite not having TU even for a snap shot, but he actually moved INTO the UFO I was breaching only to be grenaded by alien during the SAME TURN ( while technically being "friendly" to aliens.). Now THAT'S strange.

Hey everyone, I've been playing this game for some time now, and learned quite a lot (figuring out cover mechanics did cost me some trashed games lol). AI is especially charming for me : I'm not sure I've seen any other AI using cover and ( amazingly ) LOS to their advantage so effectively, moving out of sight if they have TU left ( those flying discs are amazing harassers, I was equally impressed and frustrated when I first fought them). But there is one problem with AI that I would like to discuss: Keeping it short: Alien AI - absolutely amazing, fighting every species feels entirely different ( Unlike X-COM: EU, where fighting different enemies feels more or less the same to me). Civilian AI - headless chickens. It is almost physically painful to watch civies doing stupidest s...tuff, including : - staying in the same area with aliens, despite having LOS with them/being under fire from them. While it's ok if they're suppressed, they often stick around hot areas for no apparent reason. - refusing to go into/stick around dropship, despite knowing about it ( either having LOS on it or "hearing" it landed) - armed local forces refuse to fall back after xenonauts arrive. While it's understandable if those are military units from nearby base, seeing policemen and farmers charging aliens is... disturbing (although hilarious) - etc, I'm sure you can name a couple more situations yourself. Understanding that development has ended, I wont request some complicated stuff like local forces ( policemen/military) attempting to de-blockade trapped survivors and escort them to dropship, I still somehow believe that something can be done to make civ AI more believable. Because right now it's lacking. While not the most important thing in the world, in a game that invests so much into lore, where pretty much everything is believable and immersive, even that little detail shows and counts. Thank you for your attention. P.S TBH I was inspired to write all that mostly because Gijs-Jan took his time to describe enemy AI in another thread ( http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/11718-The-AI-is-cheating-but-I-guess-that-s-ok/page6 ) Maybe (just maybe) he will be so kind to shred light on Civilian AI, even if it's somewhat simple ( As to me - they seem to be constantly panicking, lol)

I believe AI always "knows" if it will suffer a lot of reaction fire by going somewhere outside their eyesight. But to make gameplay seem more "natural", it still gladly send some troops to take 1-2 reaction shots. So, if you're blocking the UFO door with shieds + shotguns behind them ( read : a lot of concentrated reaction fire ), enemies are EXTREMELY cautious. But if you park there a couple of soldiers with their TU depleted - you watch your ass. P.S I believe that some enemies are programmed to always stay inside UFOs no matter what (higher ranked ones, which makes sense)

Can someone explain it to me? I was able to understand pretty much every other game mechanic, but not this one. How do I know how good I'm protected by this brick fence? Example: 1) I park my soldier behind a brick fence (half - human height). 2) I aim at alien, who is sitting behind tiny bush. 3) What I see is: fence doesn't block my shot (thankfully), but that tiny bush alien is sitting behind has chance of blocking my shot between 36 and 46% 4) I shoot, and hit the bush (bush totally stops sniper rifle bullet, alien is unscratched) 5) Alien shoots, and snipes my guy. Can I draw the conclusion, that tiny bush, which I didn't even consider a cover element BEFORE I aimed at alien is better cover than solid brick wall? I somehow doubt it. Most probably I got xcomed. Again. No, seriously, is there any way to know how good your position will be (both aim - and protection - wise) BEFORE you send some cannon foddler to recon it, only to notice that alien changed position next turn and I have to re-calculate? Do I have to literally memorize every prop in battlescape and it's size/block ratio/shooting angles? IMO we should get an UI element, telling us at least SOMETHING about our environment. Some way to show, from which angles a shot will be blocked and how good/bad this piece of cover is. Even simplistic XCOM2012 "half-shield or shield" mechanic would suffice - everithing with block ratio below 40% would be half shield, everything above - full shield. Maybe it could be improved y some kind of terrain grid overlay, I don't know. All of this could be disabled at higher difficulties, ofc. Please share your thoughts and tell me, how do you tell if some piece of cover is better than other. P.S Shields are whole other story. Sometimes they rock, sometimes somehow manage to pass frontal shots, despite having 100% frontal block ratio. Could use some explanation of them as well. P.P.S Wiki info on cover system is abysmal, I checked that. TL:DR There is no way to know how good your cover will be protection- and aim-wise, BEFORE you send someone to take a look OR you memorize every single battlescape's objects stats, while in reality you could draw some conclusions on cover reliability just by looking at it. IMO, we need an UI upgrade to tell player about cover efficiency.