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Hi, Just some alternate images to use in place of the bright red ones currently in the alpha. Just unzip and place the ones you want in the assets>uitextures>roles folder. The game defaults are Assault, Commando, Heavy, Rifleman, Sniper The attachment includes the following, A – Assault Rifleman AC- Aircav B – Breach Specialist/ Shock Troop C- Commando CQS- Close Quarters Specialist CW – Chemical Weapons D – Demolitions (Sapper) G – Gunner (Support Weapons) Gr - Grenadier H – Heavy Weapons (Rocketeer) I - Intelligence Med – Medic (Field) M – Mule (Ammo) P- Pistolier Psi – Psi R – Recon (Scout) S – Sniper (Marksman) SP - Spotter SW- Special Weapons Unfortunately, only the ones already in as defaults are replaced. The others can be selected through one of the unused icons. Clicking that, and naming the new squad role will then give you the list of images to select. http://rghost.net/41640190

For all I know, this has been suggested before or is already in play, but I got to thinking the other night, how would humans react if they were shot down over enemy territory? They would send out an alert and await rescue, doing what they could to survive in the mean time. If there were enough of them, they would send out scouts to give some warning if the enemy was coming and from what direction. These would be encountered far away from the crashed ship. If numbers permitted, there would be some skirmishers in the middle ranges. These guys would find good cover and fire at range, but if pressed, would retreat. Close in, this should be a battle of attrition with the aliens digging in and doing whatever they could to keep the humans away from their ship. Just some thoughts.

This is more of a heads up than anything. I'm not sure this is supposed to be like this, but I feel it needs to be said. Standard assault rifles, in this game, are thoroughly useless. There is a range in which shotguns work great, there is a range in which snipers work great. Same for grenades, heavy machine guns, bazookas, stun prods. Assault rifles, though, seem to fall short in every category in some aspect: they use up too many TUs for single firing, are too innacurate in burst fire, their damage is too little, even at point-blank range. I mean, what is the tactical advantage of using one of those instead of shotgun, for example? I have no riflemen in my entire team (20+ soldiers), as I have replaced all of them. Worse, my tactics got all more efficient as I got rid of this kind of weapon. Another obsolete firearm is the pistol, which for whatever reason is more innacurate than shotguns even at medium ranges and use more TUs than most weapons, considering the fact that you have to shove your main gun in the bag and equip it. My feeling translates as this: I have never seem a situation in which the use of a pistol would be the optimal choice. WHAT COULD BE DONE: the main thing here is, there has be an exclusive advantage for each kind of firearm. I'll agree shotguns, snipers, bazookas and machine guns are all more powerful than assault rifles, but there is a reason most men in armies go with the usual AK-47 or similar: they are functional in most situations, as opposed to those specialized guns. In my view, this would translate into the game as the use of minimal TUs in either fire mode. Accuracy, while not great, should definitely be better than that of a shotgun after 10 meters/squares. Firepower doesn't have to be changed. For the pistol, I think there has be a different paradigm in using it: it really is weaker than all the rest, but soldiers use them because they are the quick option. In the game, that would translate in a sidearm which use almost no TUs to equip, almost no TUs to fire from the hip, and would weigh next to nothing. In fact, there are pistols today that weigh as little as 200g, so why not incorporate this into the game? That would give some use to the pistol. Tactics game get richer the more alternatives you offer. At the moment, the justified roles (in my humble opinion) are centered in 4 areas: assaulters with shotguns, sweepers with HMGs, pinpointers with snipers and painters with explosives. Add these tweaks to the assault rifles and you could have true supporters too. Change the way the pistol is used and every soldier would be two times as flexible. What do you guys think?

Mission 1: It's night time and a number of the objects have that black outline that's been reported. It's a farm map with plenty of hedgerows. I fan my squad out. Unfortunately, all the black object seem to be permeable to plasma fire. Cue numerous injuries in turn three, followed by deaths in turn four. Reload. Mission 2: Still night time, but I'm a little more cautious in creeping around. But I have to move into the open spaces to get to the ship. That's when I discover that a fair number of the plasma bursts are coming straight through the ship. Cue numerous deaths. Reload. Mission 3: Again in darkness, my guys try to sit tight a bit more and find a better solution to suicidal assault through see through hedges. They creep around a bit more. Some random fire, gives me some injuries. That's when I discover that my medpack has been advanced, but the old ones I have have zero healing capability. Reload after the first soldier bleeds to death. Mission 4: Wait to day time, after I noticed that the object bug isn't so bad in the day missions. Unfortunately, it still seems to apply to the landing ship. Cue numerous deaths, even though I found a way round to the thing. Reload. Mission 5 The day time. Sneaking round the ship to avoid fire. Everyone in place. Smoke grenades in use. Give it an extra turn. Move forward. Aliens open up right through the smoke (and their own ship again) with multiple casualties. Bah! Reload. Mission 6 A different map this time in the day, moving from farm into middle east town. Walls not providing cover, and more shots through the ship result in casualties. I persevere, out of interest as it's a new mix of aliens. My third last guy is shot through the wall of the ship, my second is targeted crouched behind a wall, and shot anyway and the last is taken out by a teleporter right behind him. Reload. There are WWI generals who cringe at the loss of life in Xenonauts 8 guys doesn't feel like anywhere near enough for this one, but there would be a lot of casualties regardless. Once the buggies are gone, I'm going to get such a good feeling when I defeat these things.

My troops were in Cairo, seeing the sights and being thumped by the aliens. In particular, I found that my standard 8 man load out was proving to be pretty ineffective in the two current build terror missions I had. For the third one, I changed things around and came home with only one wounded. My standard approach has been. x2 Shotguns. High resilience. x1 Machine gunners. x1 rocket launcher x3 Assault Rifles x1 Sniper (why not 2? no idea) I found that the large amounts of space with zero cover render short range weapons obsolete. So, the shotguns are now back up weapons and have been replaced with assault rifles. Likewise, lugging the rocket launcher around proves to be a chore and also accuracy seems to be an issue with it in my current squad. The machine gun accuracy seems less in this build, but it's pretty good for suppression. Jackal armour is now standard. On some UFO missions, I'll let the heavy support weapons go around in basic, just to be able to get the movement. But the terror missions are pretty lethal. Pistols remain useless (until assault shields?) The poor Hunter does what it can as a scout/suppressor before being invariably being taken out. So, I now have x2 Snipers x2 Machine Guns x4 Assault Rifles and they all have their place, which is something I find more in this game than it's predecessors. So, what does everyone else do in terror missions?