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The Good! Alien Reactions: Aliens don't have ridiculous reactions! I.E. In the last build if I so much as turned a Xenonaut Operative when he was behind an alien, he'd turn around and blast the poor Xenonaut away. Camera: Has been fixed! No longer does it track every single tile that a civilian or alien does when it's their turn (Was pretty trippy on the eyes). It's more like the original X-COM where when the NPC moves to the edge of the screen then it centres itself back on the NPC. Which is a nice feature. Androns!: A new alien species which I assume are alien cyborgs! They look cool and are pretty challenging foes in that they take plenty of shots to go down! Xenonaut Reactions: Finally the troops react more when an Alien tries to murder them in cold blood! So now troops will return fire provided they have the turn units. Female Troopers: Yup this makes me happy because the original X-COM had fem troopers... That is all. The Bad! Female Voices: I hope that there is still more work done to the female troops. Don't get me wrong I like that they share a unisex sprite because they can, but I can't stand hearing male yelps of pain as a WOMAN takes a plasma shot to the face. That could be me just nitpicking though. We got bugs: For some reason I could not hire any new soldiers on the Geoscape base management. This was quite frustrating. Also Xenonauts keeps crashing. Once during a battle, twice during the Geoscape. Also I literally have had no alien activity yet... Which is a little concerning for obvious reasons. The game is centred around stopping an Alien invasion on Earth, yet the aliens seem to have forgot where Earth is... Controls: Considering I do not have a scroll pad on on my mouse pad for my Laptop I am still having troubles with not being able to click and drag the scroll bars at the side of each in-game window (Predominantly the 'Personnel' tab) which can be a little problematic. Window Mode: I can't get the game to work in a Window, personally I prefer playing games in a Window mode. Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope this is helpful in your pursuit to making Xenonauts the best it can be. There maybe more to come but I'll report as I run into it.

So I've compiled this list of the features I like and what I think could do with some improvement for Xenonauts (Alpha version). While I know Xenonauts is still in development and is all subject to change, I surely hope that this grabs the attention of Goldhawk Interactive and that this help contribute to the final product. So without further a do here is my list: Likes: Art style: At first I felt a little lost with the absence of 'Guile' styled jump-suited Rookies running out of the transport vehicle, but this is obviously your own franchise doing it's own thing and X-COM is it's own franchise and doing it's own thing. I really like how it's cel-shaded to create a cartoony effect even though the game has darker undertones. In a way it's doing what old X-COM done back in it's day (feeling a lot like a late 80s/early 90s cartoon!). The troopers look miserable and that emphasizes their lives could be over on the next mission, which they should be dreading. The pixel art is really well done and is looks great, obviously with some of the Alien portaits missing the pixel art really gives me some great imagining of what the enemies look like. Sebilian's (Pardon me if I spelled the name wrong) look like giant lizards, and it'd be pretty hard to mess up a portrait considering their sprite art is so well done! UFO Design: Great work on creating the UFO's I absolutely love the design on them where there is often multiple compartments to breach. The UFO's remind me of Halo's Covenant ships which were well designed and not your average flying saucers which create a different tone from the regular Science Fiction B-Movie putting it on par with some of the more modern and darker toned films. Audio: The music finds the middle ground between Halo Reach and the first Deus Ex. This is a great thing! I was pretty fond of the music so far but I do have concerns at the same time about the soundtrack. (I'll state that in my dislikes) The sound design is generally well done, with gunfire going off and sounding loud. Civilians dying can be a bit odd at times with them just letting out a petty sigh rather than a painful scream. Battle: Battling feels remarkably similar to X-COM, obviously with some changes however most of the core elements are there. Troopers do feel more agile in that they can vault over objects. Tiles can still be destroyed and troopers left out in the open will often die horribly due to sneaky Alien snipers! Which is another thing I like which is part of the Battling system: That no trooper is truly safe. Difficulty scaling: From a medium standpoint I really like how the first battles can feel quite easy to walkthrough and later on the battles can become a real pain in the kneck. My battles right now have been mostly Sebilians (which I can only guess are the grunts of this game). My first battle started with one enemy soon I was facing up to five of the blighters! I can speculate there will be more and from the Quick Battles I have played I have faced very unequal odds! (Quick battle is awesome by the way and I do hope it stays in the final game because sometimes it's good to kickback and just play some quick battles rather than worry if I'll have enough money to pay my troopers at the end of the month) This is also how I have met some of the other Alien forces! Improvements: Reaction Fire: At times reaction fire can feel a bit unfair. In the Original X-COM reactions were limited to where the operatives/enemy were facing however in Xenonauts I could send my troops behind the Alien and as quick as they begin to move they are gunned down by the Alien threat. Sometimes it feels a little unbalanced which, while the game is supposed to be unbalanced technology wise (which I am for), the reaction fire when the enemy isn't facing your troops makes the rules feel a little broken. Geoscape: The geoscape is okay; it has a pretty cool style to it similar to DEFCON II's. However when there are the messages popping up it makes you feel pretty cautious because you may miss the messages popping up (If you are zooming past), Night and Day is nice seeing the shade move over the world but with the sea being represented by such empty black space it can be a little confusing. Also I think UFO's need a different icon to represent whether they are grounded or not. Too many times I have sent my Chinook into a battle and recover a fully intact UFO only to realise that the UFO is still moving (even though it reads as being grounded) and my Chinook is taken down by a very (Pardon my language) pissed off Alien ship! And as you can possibly imagine it can cause great frustration. Audio: Like I said I'm mostly impressed by the audio effects with explosions and gunfire sounding loud and the soundtrack finding the middle ground between both Halo and Deus Ex. However right now the soundtrack is very limited, with only three tracks I have heard and some similarities between two out of the three, I found myself hoping for more variety. I do hope to hear more when newer builds land (as X-COM did have a lot of quite catchy tracks) but again I do believe that the soundtrack so far does well at creating a good atmosphere for a game of this nature. Research: The tech-tree is a bit confusing when I research a gun I do hope that it would be usable once it's been researched. This also ties with the current problem in most cases (I.E. when trying to get better armour) that Alien UFO's are mostly busted up pretty bad that nothing is really worth salvaging for the research team and is really just better to sell off for the extra money. This is slightly annoying because materials are often hoarded so that I can build better things (like better armour). But with technology being locked away in such away it can feel utterly pointless to hoard items. Controls/Laptop friendly: Right now I am having a little bit of trouble due to my mouse pad having the lack of a designated scroll pad, when I'm on the Personel Screen I often find myself thinking a mouse would be better for this due to the scroll wheel as without the ability to scroll I can't check out and assign my troops to where and what they need to be doing. (I.E. If I have a large amount of Rookies I can't send them all to training without great hassle.) I did check the options to see if I could designate a scroll up/down button. However I could not seem to meet great success in my search. Obviously I could use a mouse but it's a bit of a hassle considering I'm using a laptop. So in short, I'm loving the game so far. I do hope that this contribution helps Goldhawk with ironing out the small creases and influences them in creating a fantastic game! Keep up the good work Goldhawk!

Just pre-ordered after lurking here for months and thought I would scribble down some thoughts as I went through my first hour playing. I'm used to playing X-com and other x-com-like games. 1. Can't tick the tooltips option in the main menu (but they seem to be on anyway) 2. Geoscape is very X-com - nothing here really that seems different or that I can't grasp fairly much straight away. 3. Intercepting UFO's - no idea what to do here or what the options are. Tooltips for some things and not for others. What does it all mean? My Aircraft shoot the UFO down anyway. 4. First mission. Lovely graphics. Try to zoom but I can't - realise that's not possible with the graphics - not really bothered. 5. Great music - very X-com. 6. Hidden movement 7. Like the way of showing how far you can move and the path you will take - very clear. 8. Would be nice if there was a way of forcing movement or firing regardless of whether AP are reserved, rather than having to use the slider (shift click maybe?) 9. Burst/single shot button rarely works - doesn't seem to light up all the time when mouse is over it. 10. Mission over. Like the mission and kill counts, but the vehicles don't seem to increment - mine says 0 for both when it was the one that killed the only alien. 11. Want to build a new base - no idea how much it costs before I do though. 12. Mission 2. The same map (and UFO in the same place) - disappointing. I knew there was only one tileset, but assumed there would be more than one layout. Maybe I just got the same one twice by chance? 13. My men don't have their full AP on the first turn? E.g. one only has 49/57 but the green bar is full on the battlescape under their portrait - assume it's a bug. 14. Full AP on second turn. 15. Nice light effects for dusk. 16. Can't get in the UFO . Hope that changes. 17. Aliens don't appear to shoot back or even come after me (version 9.2). Pop round a corner, shoot one, pop back and then next turn it's still standing in the same place. I know it's only very basic AI but thought it might be a little more clever. Only an alpha though so no worries. 18. Mission 3. Same map - it is just the one layout. Not sure I can keep playing just that 1 map regardless of how good the rest of the game is Anyway, it's all looking good from what I can see. A lot of work left to do though - hope you can pull it all together in time for the release date you have planned (if it is still to release at the same time as Firaxis).

Overall -- I have to say, again, that I love this game so much. The graphics, background artwork, music and all the little touches like the news feed at the bottom of the geoscape screen, it all comes together to create one of the most immersive games I've ever played. Immersion seems to be a bit of a "lost art" these days, and I love it when I get to play a game that actually scares me or creeps me out, or makes me feel emotionally invested in what's going on. I find myself jumping every single time I hear a shot fired during Hidden Movement, and I get this "grim" feeling when playing the game, no matter if I'm watching the geoscape, managing my base or forces, or fighting in the air or on the ground. Tactical combat 1. I feel very strongly there should be some way of interacting with civilians to get them out of harm's way, if only simply receiving direct control of them when you are within x tiles. Just makes very little sense to me that operatives would just leave innocents to run around and get shot when they could perfectly well just have brought them into the cover of a building and secured them with handcuffs, per standard police procedure. A compromise of sorts would be the game giving you control of a civilian when a soldier or vehicle has visual contact and is within x tiles. The only thing you could do with the civilian, however, would be to move him. You would not be able to make him pick up weapons, and you would not see what he saw. If you ordered him to move into an area outside your visual range, you would lose control of him and he would disappear from view. In addition to this, any soldier next to a civilian could cuff him (you would do this by simply selecting the soldier, then right-clicking the civilian -- no cuff item or anything needed), making him crouch and stay in place until told to move by the player (or perhaps unless he came under direct fire). Civilians would also be subject to "low morale panic mode" when under player control, making them run off or refuse to comply, like your soldiers in X-Com UFO Defense when their morale dropped too low. 2. I like the idea of having the game automatically switch to showing walls and ceilings, and the interiors of buildings, depending on your visibility. Took a little to get used to, but I love it now. Only... I wish there was an option to override it and see the interiors of buildings (and your dropship and whatnot) for "battle planning" purposes. 3. Could you experiment with not "lighting up" tiles near the troops, but just keep all tiles the same bright/dark (depending on time of day/light level) lighting? I find that when I play games that do this, such as Ground Control and World in Conflict, I don't really miss the "fog of war" because it's really a matter of common sense what you can and can't see anyhow. What Ground Control did back in the day was letting you press the "R" button while hovering your mouse over a unit to see two circles denoting that unit's line of sight/weapon ranges. Xenonauts could do the same thing, where you could, for example, hold a button to "light up" the tiles your troops could see, whenever you were uncertain if certain tiles were covered by your men. Dogfights Really like the "twist" of having an actual tactical system for dogfights, rather than just the old X-Com style system where winning or losing was pretty much just a matter of who had the biggest gun. They're not realistic in any way, of course, because in reality fighters are engaged from beyond-visual-range, not in close-quarter dogfights, WWII style, but I find that doesn't bother me, the system works so well I'm very, very glad it's in. Couple thoughts, though: 1. I'm not really sure what I feel about the red-green colour scheme, to be honest. I know it's meant to look like a radar display, but I feel it looks a bit "simple" and clashes with the rest of the game. Maybe you could try shades of grey for the grid and UI instead, and leave the aircraft and whatnot green? 2. As it is, each aircraft has its own set of buttons, so that the "roll" buttons are a distance apart. Could the UI be rearranged somehow so that the various command buttons are right next to one another, if you know what I mean?

I've just downloaded Build v9.0 and played it a little (first time I've played Xenonauts but big fan of Xcom). I thought I would share my first impressions (mostly tiny niggles) as I went through each phase. I'm sure most of these have already been reported and I'm not expecting a full blown answer from the dev(s) but hopefully it might give a few pointers on making the game a little easier to use, especially for new players. Oh, and the first few points are real nitpicking so I doubt anyone will pay much attention! I ticked "windowed mode" but it still went to fullscreen. Restarting the game didn't remember my settings. Clicking the first ok button had no visual clue that it had been pressed. In today's GUI I would expect visual feedback (ie. show the button being depressed) ALT-tabbing back to Windows shows a default icon in the toolbar - needs a Xenonauts icon. ALT tabbing back the game is mostly blank until I click somewhere. Starting a new game - can't select Explanatory Tooltips Base screen: Construct new building - the icons on the right are 'squished' compared to those already built - makes it that bit more difficult to tell what's what. I would suggest having the building icon at the bottom (where there's more space) and show it as the mouse hovers (not clicks) over the type of building. This gives an immediate feedback to the player what they are looking at. Perhaps a right-click could take you to the Xenopedia about the building. Just found some tooltips in the base - they seem very slow to appear. They ought to show more information about what each building does - ie. tell me whether it's worth building something new now. For example: Stores should show how much is used and available. Just realised the other tooltips (eg. Labs, Living Quarters) DO show their used/available capacity! Maintenace Costs: I assume these are per month? Might be worth stating that. I don't seem to be able to rename my base. Starting constructing a few new buildings. Seemed painless enough! Research screen: Definitely should have something to research to begin with. Either looking at improving some Earth based weaponry or even just digging out the old archives of the Iceland incident (could just make it available in the Xenopedia). Workshop screen: Also nothing can be done - although this matches X-Com so probably not much can be done here. Having said that, I always thought it odd that X-Com could manufacture alien weapons but couldn't build a normal tank or whatever... Stores screen: Nothing to see. I assume this will come into play later. Personell screen: Start training doesn't seem to work. Trying to assign another soldier to the Chinook gives no indication it's already full (perhaps just the text showing (8/8) next to the name would be useful) Soldiers screen: Initially selected is the unassigned soldiers - seemed odd. I'd suggest selecting the first troop transport craft by default since these are the soldiers I'll first see when we get to the battlescape. Weapons list wasn't immediately obvious there were more if you scrolled down. A little up/down arrow on the scrollbar might be a good idea. Carried Weight - should have something to indicate the maximum weight this solder can carry before he starts to be encumbered. I changed weapon and the weight went red (I assume he'll get less Action Points now?) Just realised all my existing soldiers are already Corporals! Hiring a new Private fixes the Start training button. Hopefully once the tooltips are implemented this would say the reason I couldn't train my soldier. I've not changed the default equipment as I don't know enough about what's good and what's not. Vehicles/Aircraft screens - I'll leave these for now. Back to the Geoscape: Just noticed it might be good to have a Xenopedia tab in the bases screens rather than having to go back to the Geoscape. Tick box for "Radar Ranges" is nice - but it should select/deselect when clicking the text too, not only on the checkbox (makes it much easier to hit it) I've set an F-17 to go to a waypoint and sped up time. Geoscape feels quite sluggish when moving the cursor around and highlighting different areas. Time seems to jump occasionally. Just realised I can slide the map by dragging. VERY sluggish behaviour here. I could really do with seeing the fuel level of my F-17. Hovering over it doesn't show it. Clicking it does, but that would get awkward when several things are going on at the same time. Ah, zooming in shows it! But that would be useful on the zoomed out map too. How about a toggle near the "Radar Ranges" instead? UFO Detected! Nice, I can select multiple aircraft - but that wasn't obvious from the UI (I already knew about it from the forums). Checkboxes on the left might make it more obvious. Like X-Com, the planes seem to be flying directly towards the target rather than an intercept course. Seems odd for the best pilots in the world As my planes get closer I want to zoom in a bit more to see how close they are to the UFO. Any reason the zoom stops where it does? Planes are chasing the UFO all over Asia. The ability to right-click the map and centre on that point would be useful at this point to keep up with things (a la X-Com) First UFO engagement! Why can't I zoom out far enough to see the whole play area? Yay - crash land! Feels like I could do with being told a bit more about what's going on here though. I remember there were key assignments for this screen in the initial Game Options, but I can't remember them. Still, I'll be back on this screen later I'm sure. Back to Geoscape - trying to intercept the crash site with my Chinook. Awkward to select the crash site because my planes are there (and I can't zoom in as far as I'd like). The option to choose from multiple similar waypoints (a la X-Com) would be useful here. Zooming in on the mousewheel seems to zoom in on the centre of the map. It would be far more useful to zoom in on the cursor. The white text of the intercept planes is almost unreadable over the North African desert (where my base is). It should probably have a dark-ish background. Just thinking an Options tab (or even a 'Menu' tab) might be useful on the Geoscape screen. Not everyone will know to press Escape! Just saved, quit and re-loaded. There was no warning about quitting the game (maybe it doesn't bother if you've just saved? But otherwise that could be a very nasty mistake!) - When loading the buttons only seem to work when I press the lower half of them (like the cursor is being displaying slightly offset). Maybe it's something to do with selecting Windowed mode? I'm running 1980x1080 resolution. Try non-window mode. Nope, same issue. Aha, just realised it's probably using the top left of the cursor not the middle (as it does in the rest of the screens). Confusing. Personally, I don't like that cursor at all anyway (I find getting the middle of the cursor over my intended location is more awkward than getting an arrow point there - especially when the cursor blends into the background sometimes. What's wrong with a normal arrow anyway? - it would avoid all these issues and be easily customisable) My first mission: Initial screen - might be a good idea for a "Start mission" button or something. At first I thought it was still loading but realised I just had to click anywhere! It loaded far quicker than I expected, especially considering the warning message about slow load times The Primary objectives - I assume either one will complete the mission based on what I've read on the forums? It's not obvious from this screen though - I think I would have thought both had to be completed based on this screen alone. Just the word "OR" in between the primary objectives solves this. Ok - I've got 9 men and a tank. Any reason hotkey "0" can't be used for the tank? Seems odd. My initial reaction was to try and zoom in with the mousewheel to make it easier to select a soldier. Tank finds the first alien. Fires a rocket (ok I wasn't actually trying to fire yet, need to get used to the controls!) and kills it! Also just found that CTRL-1 selects the tank. Some parts of the dropship I can't see the square I'm aiming for. Either need to be able to rotate the camera angle, or change it's angle to be closer to a top-down view or perhaps just show the circle 'through' the dropship (perhaps slightly transparent or something). I'm going to pretty much ignore the layout of the bottom UI for now since I've seen there's a thread on a revamp for it anyway, so it'll be different in the next release anyway. When I've currently got the tank selected it's a right PITA to select a soldier at the back of the dropship by clicking on him. Oh cool - walking through fire actually hurts! Just realised the tank is 3x3 not 2x2, so it doesn't fit down the route I was trying to send it. Well duh! Definitely need the button from X-Com which says I've finished with this soldier, select the next one and don't choose this soldier again. (Although a feature missing from X-Com was the ability to reset this flag if you find an alien and need all available soliders to try firing at it!) Aha! The alien ship DOES offer some transparency for the cursor to make it easier to select the square you want. Something similar is needed on the buildings/dropship. Killed second alien with the tank. Didn't like how I can't tell how many Action Points it will take to fire until AFTER I've found the alien and target him. Unless it changes depending on how far away it is etc? Otherwise I think I prefer the X-Com idea when you can see the AP it takes to fire BEFORE you move your unit. In any case, mission successful (although possibly because the aliens didn't move as has been reported elsewhere). All in all, very impressive and definitely the most Xcom-like game I've played since X-Com! Can't wait for the final version. I'll play more later and probably follow up my impressions here too, although now I feel I can re-read some of the forum suggestions with more of an idea what they're on about

In first place, Congratulations, the atmosphere and graphics cannot be better, but a I am worried because, if you take the correct direction, I could be the game that we are all expecting and the best game ever built, but since I played V9 there are several things that will finish this game without getting out: 1. The ground battle ground does not offer any challenge. The original X-COM was succesfull because once you landed, you could loss all your crew in several minutes, and you could feel fear with a game with poor graphics. In V9, a battle ground could be predictable the most of the time, the sebillans just waiting their death, also I step in front of one several turns just to prove that they are just part of the background, they do nothing, just stand till were killed, coming back to XCOM, those alien were very frighten, once you saw one, you wanted run back, because they were very devastating. 2. The rate of UFO sighting is so hight(It could be part of the free will, in this case I step back), so you have to fight so frecuently battlegrounds, wich as I wrote in part 1, this combination will burn the game, because you can be bored so easily. I am very excited about XENONAUTS, and I trusht that will be over its problems once you advance, as a recommendation, is preferable just few sightings but very more challenging, unpredictable battle grounds. Remenber, X-COM could be considered the best game ever created, and not for the graphics, also now I am tempted to play it, so, do not miss the real essence of XCOM, the playability, the challenge, the free will, the desire to kill those aliens, the curiosity, to have a different experience each time you begin from the start, to do not know what is going to happen at all, the fear. Dear friends, you have a hudge community supporting you, you have the chance to improve XCOM, please do not miss the opportunity, not disappoint us. Regards

This game has a great atmosphere, the moody music, serious faces and cold war aesthetics really make it an immersive experience. When an alien shot one of my manz during a night mission I nearly jumped out of my seat!

I'm extremely excited about Xenonauts. Looks like it's the bests game since UFO: Enemy Unknown to me. But is it developed to the point were it can be played? Or is it more of a tech demo?

Hello all, my game always crashes around january 22nd any tips to get past this? also i don't think my premium badge displays when i post, how do you set that up? dig the game, looking forward to the flamethrower and power armor. You think the flying suit will come back? cheers, b

Hi team I am a long term XCOM fan, infact from the first day I played the floppy disk demo of ufo eu in 94/95 I loved the crap out of it. Nowdays i'm still playing eu and tftd with all sorts of mods and junk installed and was holding my breath for a remake to come along. I had heard the xenonauts name banded around the net for a bit but assumed it was another multiplayer remake. But reserching myself has brought me to believe that this is what I have been waiting for all these years. Is this true? Can this be a true xcom clone. I have had a little search around but can't seem to find out what sort af enemys there is going to be. Are they gonna be sectoid and muton like creatures or are they ganna be more like in ufo et. Silly question anyway I can see from the hype generated from this forum alone that this is gonna be a awsome remake and i'm gonna deffo pre-order at the end of the month. If anyone has any good video referals of this game that will make me quiver, link me up dude I need my fix.

I'm ancient enough to fondly remember UFO Enemy Unknown and am always excited when someone tries to recreate that game. So I just played Xenonauts for a while (8.5) and it left me with high hopes for the final realease. More so than any other attempts so far - and yes, I played them all. I noted down my thoughts and after eliminating the things already mentioned in the sticky post I'm left with the following so far: - Tactical Maps. I'm sure someone must have mentioned this before. It needs more and different types. - Tactical Combat. Scrolling is painfully slow, I'm not getting any younger here while trying to go to another part of the map. How about a Mini-Map with click-centering functionality (and color coded dots for units)? - Equipping. Right-Click for automatic equipping and un-equipping. - Beginning Research. Nothing more frustrating than having a Research Lab and Researchers but discovering that you cannot research anything. And the first thing I got to research was Plasma right away. I much preferred a Human invention first like the Laser. An improved Rifle with special Ammo would do the trick just as nicely until you start with the Alien Tech. - There need to be items you manufacture that can be sold at a profit. Not having this takes the whole economic playstyle out of the game. I'm looking forward to future builds - keep up the great work!

Love. Animation: The animation is really cool, both for your soldiers and the aliens. Soldiers especially feel as if you are controlling a person and not a robot. Sound effects: Great sound effects, I would go as far as to say they are near perfect. The aliens sound sooo alien it gives you the creeps. Interceptors: I love the new way in which the interceptor part of the game functions, it really beats all of the sorry efforts other games of this type have to offer. Immersion: It speaks for it's self, when even at this early stage in the games development it can grab you by the b******s and will not let go. Artwork: The artwork is really nice and fits the era perfectly. Hate. How I cannot play the full game yet, but I can wait. Dirty, smelly, horrible bugs. I want them dead.