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I've been itching to give Xenonauts a go for ages, but I've been waiting for a point of "reasonable balance" to make my first run. I know it's an enormous amount of work and crucial to a good strategy game. What's the condition of the latest build on Steam? Is it getting pretty balanced or does it still have a ways to go? Is there a new beta imminent?

A few fairly big changes to the Geoscape with this build: - Increased the initial funding provided by backer nations by about 50% - The value of recoverable alien technology reduced by 50% - Reduced speed and turn rate of Xenonaut aircraft torpedoes - Reduced aircraft evasive roll cool down to 1 second (from 4) - Increased range and damage of alien fighter missiles, but reduced turn-rate The air combat changes are obviously intended to make it harder to use an all Foxtrot fleet against escort UFOs; they probably won't be 100% exploit proof, but I am interested to see if they make it inconvenient enough to encourage Condor/Corsair use. The second big change is a rebalance of the economy to try and get players to rely on funding countries more than recovered alien gear for cash.

Not a huge number of balance changes for ground combat in this build: - Reduced AP cost of Hunter MG to 30, slightly increased damage and increased suppression significantly - Increased Hunter rocket count from 4 to 8 (the rockets are stacked like matroshka dolls, before anyone says anything) - Reduced spread radius of smoke grenades from 4 to 3, and reduced the longevity of smoke clouds - The alien heavy plasma rifle has been given 50 armour mitigation to boosts its performance versus later Xenonaut armours - Hypervelocity weapons have all been disabled; long term they may be re-enabled, but they were taking too much dev time right now - Sniper rifles have received a 25% damage increase (to counter the loss of HV properties) The biggest change is probably the resolution of the bug where aliens could cheat and shoot using more TUs while suppressed - basically what was happening was if an alien had enough TUs to perform even a simple attack, like a 15 TU snap shot, they could for "free" upgrade it to the highest tier (burst fire). Hopefully there aren't any more issues like that, but if there are I'm sure you will let me know Oh also, I'd be really interested to hear feedback on the alien base missions - aliens should now be better distributed in them (not all in the command room). Also the later UFOs should have the correct number of aliens (a lot).

EDIT: As of 19.1 Stable, this mod is redundant due to changes to the actual game. Download from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8nrent2z14exqo6/MeJmrrgI4J It's the one under Aircraft Balance Mod. To install, overwrite aircraftweapons.xml and gameconfig.xml with the downloaded files. Premise: There's been some discussion about how to stop Foxtrots from dominating the air game. This mod is my attempt to resolve that problem. Changes: - The evade ability is buffed considerably. It now only has a 1 second cooldown, occurs slightly quicker and moves the aircraft a little further. - Torpedoes are nerfed. Their speed and turning ability have been halved. - Missiles buffed slightly. Missiles (both Xenonaut and alien) have a higher speed and each weapon slot contains 2 missiles rather than 1. Missiles on alien fighters, heavy fighters and interceptors have also been doubled (from 2 to 4). Consequences: - Torpedoes are practically useless against any UFO which can evade (fighter, heavy fighter, interceptor and light scout). You *can* score hits with torpedoes against such UFOs, but this happens as a result of a UFO dodging one attack into another (and therefore can't be relied upon). As such, it is no longer possible to rely on Foxtrots to bring down all alien squadrons. - Condors and later fighter craft are now significantly better. They can take on alien fighters and win with little or no damage if played well. Against larger UFOs like Landing Craft, they still lack the firepower to take them down. - As such, aircraft diversity is now important. Feedback and suggestions very much welcome.

I can't use armor or carry much when I have one of these. A strong soldier should be able to carry one with armor on and have at least a pistol and a couple grenades. I think it could be lighter and protect from the sides a bit more. Real assault shields wrap around a bit and will protect you for about 120 degrees. I've picked these up at the prison and they're not that heavy. Mostly they just make it impossible to use two handed weapons. Additionally, some of the ones at the prison are electrified thus act like a Taser if someone charges you. That would be very handy against Reapers. Maybe when electro-shock grenades come in the shield could be charged too. BTW, I'm still have CTD's when using shields, so for now I've given them up.

So after mentioning this a couple times, I finally found a few minutes to set up and do a quick video of some air combat gameplay with my 100% Foxtrot style. This was done in a single, continuous session just trying to record a variety of encounters over a few minutes (and includes a few where I screwed up). There's no audio because I did this with a baby in my lap, and no cursor shown because I am bad and didn't realize Bandicam defaults to hiding it. My initial purpose for doing this was to demonstrate how overpowered Foxtrots are, but in the course of thinking about this I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't Foxtrots, it's just that torpedos are so much better than sidewinders they probably should become an outright upgrade after Alenium Explosives or Corvette Data Core and/or use a manufactured launcher (possibly in conjunction with an outright removal of Foxtrots), which would make both Condors and Corsairs (and sidewinders in general) useful again. Currently I build Foxtrots in the first two months, and can use them safely against anything other than battleships and interceptors (I'm assuming. Never played/fast forwarded enough to reach them). Anyway, here's the link. [video=youtube;7U706x0lTAM]

Well...the main effect this has had is that I have to shoot aliens 3-6 times to kill them now, instead of 2-4. Right.

The mod is ready for its alpha debut for version 1.0x of Xenonauts. This is a mod by Ron Losey, which I have helped test and distribute. It attempts to simulate some level of reality within the Xenonauts setting by tweaking the variables. Changes include weapon damage, weapon randomness, armour, vehicle armour, combat fuel consumption for aircraft, weapon and sight ranges, rebalance of weapon types (plasma, laser, ballistic) so that they each excel for certain uses (later guns still being better overall), economics, and many various other changes. A more thorough description: Download the mod from here: https://mega.co.nz/#!iBUBGLYI!eL9vj8gxTEki_QWILPl35oeYBWoWr47o9LUF2gO6-6s

Our X-COM inteligence defence unit discovered alarming trend in our fighting capabilities. 1- New directives from Above reduced the maximum number of soldiers in our default landing chopper to 8 (in v18.x). Those landing choppers are barely half full when they arrive to fight alien scum. Thanks to that, adding vehicles to our operations is contraproductive. Not only they are bigger and easier to hit, their guns are so inacurate we believe alien malware is corrupting their targeting units. What is worst, adding vehicles further limit the number of soldiers on mission. No missions, no training -> dead soldiers. Training fresh soldiers later is horrible pain, as enemies are more and more dangerous and our soldiers more and more dead. Few of our more brain-limited analysts recommend turning those dead soldiers into zombies and sending them first as cannon fodder. Not a bad idea if geeks find a way to do it. 2- Another sabotage was discovered in our own manufacturing labs, as plans for crafting Foxtrots were modified and half their missile hardpoints eliminated. They can't shoot down even small scouts without reloading at base! Here is hoping new explosive tech will change that, but we are sure enemy will adapt. Not to mention they are throwing more and bigger ships at us all the time. 3- We are not sure if this is actually sabotage or just normal geek behavior, but our scientists refuse to give us progress on the stuff their are researching. I mean, look at them - the more you add, the happier they are, but you have no way of knowing if they will finish the project in a day or a year. We are not sure if they understand the difference, really. 4- Our engineers are extremely lazy *and* corrupt - thats the only explanation we can give you why it takes ten engineers four days to build one laser rifle. For 40k. Look at the market, we can sell it at best for half as much, and it's unique class of weapons. Later on, we noticed some project that involve staggering number of engineers that took month or more. We are fighting a war here, aircrafts going down in flames and pieces and they are sitting there, sipping beer and taking huge salaries. 5- The prices we can sell our developed technology are laughable. There is no way we can support our horrible economical situation with manufacturing and selling for profit. I vividly remember whole bases dedicated to producing advanced weapons for sale in the first invasion, all those years ago. Militaries world-wide were taking all we could produce and then some. Good old days... 6- While everything we buy is ridiculously expensive, including buildings and I have to repeat the manufacturing problems, we have only two sources of cash - selling alien weapons that noone can use and monthly funding, if you can call it funding at all. We need to expand worldwide, but we can't even pay for hangars, living quarters and radar. 7- Aliens started sabotaging their UFOs, our only source of Alenium. Two months of shooting down every UFO that moves (again, sorry for that Boing, it looked really suspicious on radar) and doing every available mission even on planes that landed on their own and we managed to gather only ten units of Alenium. As awesome power sources go, its no use if we can't get our hands on much more of that stuff. 8- Our engineers are lazy, we already established that. Thats the only explanation why reloading and refueling takes so long. They are probably taking a nap or two while doing it. I am sure we will uncover more alien interference later on, but thats enough for a start.

Ok so December I got *five* base assault ships coming at me. I shot down 3, one got in and I easily defeated the squad it sent in, only to have another one pop up about 4-5 days later. (On a side note you should get the tech that the ship that invaded you had, unless it was only dropping off a attack squad)

Sup, this thread is here to satisfy my urge to share my story with the world, not much more. It is long, if you dont wanna read it, your loss. If you get any ideas from here and use them, great! If you dont like any ideas from here, go screw yourself. If I make you smile even for a second, then it was worth it. Here goes: Geoscape - UFOs appear in waves, which is not necessarily bad, but more randomness couldnt hurt. (this translates into corvettes coming back after Jan 1st or something) Ive read, that the income from sponsors should be the majority of your income overall. This is not the case(at least not on Insane) 50%+ of my income is from crashsites. With only 2 countries out(north and south America) the income ALMOST covers my monthly expenses, while the crashsites make ANY progress possible. I very much like the general idea of Air Combat in this game and would love to see it expanded into 5v5 or something. Ive no illusion about it though, seeing as already people whined enough for you to implement an auto-resolve. F-17 - ok 2 is enough Mig - All the way, even after only being able to carry only 2 torpedoes. With only 150k a piece you can dominate the skies. Corsair - useless... Marauder - a faster mig with a cannon? Hell yea! As UFOs stand now, migs can easily hit a run medium and large targets and totally dominate very small and small ones. Im not asking for another nerf, just wanna mention how cute and snugly they are... I just wanna hug them and rub them all over my body... Theyve also removed the alien escorts, which I understand is temporary. (thank god) Ground Combat - Many would say, this is what matters the most. Im balanced between the two and cant really lean toward either. There is much more bugs here though(obviously, theres much more potential for them). Lets get down to it. I find accuracy in 19.6 better than the 19.5. Not worth a hooray shout, cause you just go aimed carbines instead of burst rifles(cause bursts still cant hit shit, unless its an alien using them. Give or take, machineguns have a place in my squad too, so Id say a job well done. Soldier appearance is decent. I dont mind being blue and in need of a diet. The armors look great. The only ones I find repulsive are Buzzard and Sentinel. I dont build them and its fine. (I would adress the lack of jumping utility, or the lack of elevation at all, but I still hope thatll change) Portraits are very good, theres a bunch ugly guys out there, but theyre well drawn. Laziness is no excuse for no lady sprites however. Calling realism to help you by saying that the armor is bulky doesnt work, youre already pissing on realism too much here for it to matter. Im positive, that if you dont pick up this cup some modder still might. To combat itself(I cant believe youre still reading this.) Aliens dont stick to no rules, they stick to anything, even shit thats not there. I like the Idea of Caesians and Sebillians sticking around in stronger forms. Sebillians have like 100 TU? or 120? Theyre annoying as fuck, so dont ever change them! Might be cool to implement their regeneration. Androns are a pain, not because of being tough, accurate and mercilessly reacting. Because of their wall and floor piercing shots, theyre the only foe I found so far, that can kill you through a wall, without even breaking it. Harredan or whatever theyre called are nasty, they always react and always hit... or so it would seem. But they respect walls(to a certain degree, but ill mention the AI later). Wraiths caused me to jawdrop, the only thing I dont like about them is when theyre running, they jump between 3 or 4 places and I have to station people all over the map before they eventually die to reaction fire. (Mind you this cost me a lot of time in b18 stable, in 19.6 I only found aggressive ones so far.¨ Reapers only appeared in sebillian bases and 2 per mission, but you dont need commander Shephard to deal with these. They die to reaction fire. Thats all Ive encountered so far.(you might wanna go "OH HOW LITTLE YOU KNOW" right about now... dont) Wallhax! Aliens see you, wherever you are. I have nothing against them seeing 2 tiles further than my people, but their eyes follow the closest target without regard for any obstacles. This is exploitable as hell.. and also moderately gay.(apologies to any gay people for insulting them) Night missions and Alien base missions... again, i dont mind them seeing much further than i do, but do they have to see AND SHOOT, through walls? They dont do that during the day. (unless theyre Androns) Soldier advancement is adorable, the stats that increase regardless of the rank.. the medals.. I love it all. Except the promotion system, seriously? 12 colonels on a Shrike? It just seems a little too far fetched. Make it dependent on mission numbers, or medals... or make the player make the decision who to promote. (1 per mission? Soldier with 2 green medals is eligible or something) This would not change the stat gains, just the absurd ranking system. Vehicles are useless... its no joke, they do have more TUs than your average Pvt. but they die just as fast. Cost of an aimed shot is what? 60? You can move fast, but you cant shoot anything. I tried to utilize them by putting 6 tanks in a base for defense, theyre far too expensive and weak to ever measure to raw manpower. An Idea would be, putting your men into the vehicles and making repair kits in addition to medikits. This would make the vehicle level, because of the pilots.. and buff their ressilience for fucks sake, if a tank dies to a single heavy plasma burst, whats the point of the plating. (these brackets bothering you yet or what?) Random thoughts 1st base - THATS NOT WHERE YOU PUT A RADAR, if you still dont get it, ask me for an illustration. difficulty - Buff the enemy numbers, not their HP or TU. Dont make buildings more expensive to maintain and take eons to build, create a need to build more of them. (more UFOs... MORE bases, not less!, the challenge is in maintaining a much more macro operation, than in micro-ing 8 soldiers against 2 300hp sebillians. (thats fun too, but you can savewhore for only so long) Love the sounds. Period. Voiced soldier/pilot acknowledgements? More maps! I understand this is gonna happen, I can hardly wait. edit: Im actually still playing with alien interceptors, wouldnt have it any other way. Replace the Corsair with or add some ATS bomber? Perhaps to soften up the alien bases before assaulting them? Landing Shits keep sitting down and jumping back into the air once my migs run out of fuel. I actually puked a little, when they managed to found a base in between my 2 squadrons circling around. Id love some way to disable the scumbags while theyre on the ground. Make alien bomber runs over Xenonaut bases destroying stuff, killing personnel, or just disabling stuff for a day or two? Did soldiers get their stats limited to 101? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Human psionics? When? All in all Im enjoying every minute of this game (100hrs+). Bugs are annoying, but theyre not here to stay. Thank you for you goddamn time, I might add more, regardless of wether anyone actually reads this.

After playing for some 10 hours with 19.5 beta, I decided to go back to the stable version, since both the ground combat and the air combat have been changed too much in favor of the aliens, and the auto-air combat is useless because of too much damage taken. Sathra's mod looks good from the videos of Steelwarrior77: besides the weapons being improved (which I haven't seen much of having played only two missions against small scouts), the Foxtrot has 4 missiles instead of two, which should really help the air combat (I haven't got a Foxtrot yet). Personally I prefer too easy to too difficult, but that is just me, but having 16 aliens attacking my base including 9 in cover in the same room as I reported in another 19.5 thread is a bit much, as is a single Condor not being able to down a single alien light scout.

Over in a thread discussing Jackal armour, StellarRat said:- that got me thinking, what were the most challenging missions for everyone else. For me there was a big jump in alien numbers from 7-8 to 21 in my first Alien Base defence in 19/4. Not just the numbers but the alien rank increased by a couple of steps as well. As I'm using ballistic weapons, even the grenadiers were stretched at the time. I'm fairly sure that if the aliens had been slightly more aggressive, I'd have been overrun.

Prior to 19.4, the furthest I'd gone in the game was the carriers-wave. However, with some time off work, I've managed to plough through a 19.4 playthrough up to the start of the final mission, which I gather is as far as you can go at the moment. As much of the discussion - particularly on the 19.x unstable builds where saves get wiped out quite regularly - has focussed on stuff from earlier in the game, I thought I'd offer a few thoughts on late-game ground-combat balance. I won't talk about Geoscape balance, as I'd been using hacked .xmls to reduce production costs/times to accelerate my pace on this playthrough. - Even with experienced (Major/Commander) soldiers, weapon accuracy still feels too low in general. I'd hoped that I'd be depending less on grenades as I got more experienced soldiers, but in many situations, using a gun when you could use a grenade is just too risky. Close range accuracy with rifles and carbines really needs examining. - The way the aliens are deployed at present doesn't really make use of the larger UFO types. I've only ever once encountered an enemy on the middle floor of a Carrier. Meeting an alien on the middle floors of a battleship is likewise rare. Those floors are actually fairly well designed for ambushes, but at present, they just feel like time-sinks that you have to move your soldiers through. - For the Buzzard and Sentinel battlesuits, it would be nice to have some option to force them to stick to the ground (short of moving them one square at a time) when the situation demands. There are times when I don't want them to pop up to a higher layer and expose themselves to fire, but the UI isn't very accommodating of this at the moment. - Alien TUs really do get excessive in the end-game, with aliens capable of making 5+ single-shots in a turn. I might just be noticing this more because of the line-of-sight issues in 19.4, which mean that many aliens fire their full quota of shots harmlessly into a wall even if they don't have a shot on any Xenonauts - making the alien turn take forever in the early stages of late-game missions.

I'm in the middle of January. So far I've not invested a cent in armour or weapons for the troops. At first this was so I could get bases up and running (not so much a choice as a funding necessity). However, now I find I've simply waiting for the top tier equipment. The reasons are the magical grenades and missiles. Once the research into the "Explosives" topics has been completed you get infinite grenades and rocket launcher missiles of that tier. I nearly caved in before plasma tech came around, but I'm glad I didn't. The soldiers are extremely accurate with the grenades and the plasma missiles wipe out anything that's a threat. As long as I'm cautious, there's no technology imperative to upgrade as the game does it instantly and magically for me. I'm also not having to ration the grenades or missiles, which was always a big thing for me, as they are free regardless of any alien components. It's a far cry from the builds where every weapon was taken along as each had it's place. Now, I wonder why everyone doesn't carry a rocket launcher. I also find that in larger ships I don;t really need the breach trooper very much. The aliens are either coming out of the craft or are falling back far enough in the ships that there's not the immediate threat there was in the smaller craft.

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?

So experimental build 4 instaled, new game. First small alien spoted, one interceptor launched, alien combat pops up and here i go. My Missiles seem to have terrible short range now, so i am forced to go in for the kill agressively. I shoot missiles and the alien dodges, closes in and goes to slaughter my interceptor while i try to dogfight with no clue whats happening. Fortunately it seems my interceptor is miraculously returned to base, so i launch my second interceptor and basicaly same thing happens, whatever... A few days later Brazil downs an UFO and asks for my help and i go to ground combat. My xeno soldiers managed to fire around 60 shots at the 2 aliens outside of the downed aircraft and hitted 4 times, 1 of those shots were friendly fire in a seemingly impossible shot. Later i have 6 soldiers on the door of the alien craft with 2 aliens inside and i managed to fire 74 shots with 2 hits, and lost 4 soldiers. Yes i understand a grenade would solve most problems but realy... ? I honestly believe that the game is terribly unbalanced atm. Not even on the original X-COM i found that things were "that" ridiculous in therms of balance. Sure it was hard and sad to see a trooper die without even seeing the alien first but that would make some sense, firing with less than 10% acuracy is just frustrating. In sum, you are making air combat extremely frustrating and ground combat is just atrocious with this level of terrible acuracy. This is not dificulty this is just banging the head on the wall expecting the wall gets softer later on and i can have more fun. I'm realy sorry but i'm not happy at all. If you think this post is abusive then please delete it, but i had to let it out.

New version, at present only for the Stable build. I'll add one for experimental once I understand the changes to resource income (alloys/alenium, or if someone posts them it would be faster). It doesn't include the air combat rebalance of V5X.2. Changes: -All advanced human infantry and vehicle weapons use components of broken down alien weapons. The manufacture project to break down an alien weapon unlocks after the weapon is researched. Also provides some alloys. -Manufactured weapons cost less cash to build. -Scimitar and Hyperion use alien weapon parts (as they are built with pulse laser as standard) -Aircraft cannons now need alenium to build as well. -Slight drop in sale price of alien weapons, to vanilla standard due to -> -Alien Corpses are sold for money -Alien weapons now need to be manually sold, or broken down for parts. -AK47 has a new image (Thanks to WalrusJones). Minor damage boost. -New projectile images thanks to Lightgemini -Alien Analysis mod thanks to Max_Caine and A333 Link here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rr5joukaewfx8qz/Sathra%27s%20Mod%20V6.zip Probably best to start a new game with this. Might not crash if you don't, but stuff won't unlock properly.

Okay, I had an idea for V6 of my mod, but not sure if its a good idea. The basic plan is that Plasma and MAG weapons would require the alien version of the weapon to build i.e a plasma sniper would need 1 alien sniper, and a MAG rifle would need 2 alien plasma rifles. Heavy plasmas are basically machineguns already, and Carbines can just use rifles. Pretty similar. Might add laser weapons to this too, but at the moment thinking no. There's a problem though, alien pistols and rifles become extremely rare around mid-game. The workaround I'm thinking of is to have a greater mix of alien ranks in the larger UFO's so you always get a few of the various kinds of weapons in nearly any ship (well, not snipers but Harridans are common enough if you don't try to equip half your team with sniper weapons). The thing is, it would make the later ships much easier due to the number of Guards/Soldiers I'd have to replace Warriors with to get a good number of plasma rifles to spawn. Especially noticeable with Androns and Sebillians. You could save the rifles from early game, but I don't like to work on the basis of players knowing stuff like that. Also just tons of Heavy Plasma. You'd also not get much or any income on the end mission screen, but I can just make corpses saleable and reduce the income from weapons to vanilla levels to compensate. And players would have to sell the alien weapons manually. So, thoughts.

So I've been playing for three months ingame now and I've noticed a certain discrepancy/imbalance when it comes to UFOs attacking with the potential of being game breaking. I either get fighters, which simply get destroyed, or medium UFOs my Condors and Foxtrots can't do jack about (the Foxtrots might, but with a total of 2 torps and 2 missiles each this is a futile attempt because you can only have 3 planes per squad. I researched the X-37 but lo and behold, I can't build it because I'm out of alloys. This also means I can't upgrade my soldiers' equipment, and I have a pretty bad assumption of where this will lead down the line. Now, obviously there is the possibility of me doing something hideously wrong at the start of the game, but err, this was on easy because I wasn't all too comfy with the strategic part of the game just yet. Furthermore, it's not like you get to do a whole lot with the starting funds. In all honesty, it should not at all be like this on the lowest difficulty and imo needs fixing asap.

I think the balance might be a bit off there eh? First month in, I had my base in israel (perfect place, beautiful country ) covering europe, africa and the mid-east.. After a month of very intensive ground missions, both russia and indeo-china or whatever it is quit the xeno project, the USA reduced funding by about 60% and south america as well. I don't think this should happen after just one month.. Also, I figure now, if I had devoted all my resources to getting up another base in the USA on the first month, I'd have been hella rich when it got operational, because almost all of your money comes from ground missions, and I'd have been able to do more of those EDIT: I think I might have understood wrongly, russia didn't quit, it just didn't change its funding. Maybe. I'm still totally unclear about it from the interface. it shows as white and has 0$ written under it in the screen, while other countries such as the USA show red and two numbers- the ammount reduced and the total new monthly founding pay I don't understand from the interface. I think it quit tho

New day, and a new version! This mod is for the Stable version of the game (so not the experimental version 19X), and while it might work with it, it won't be designed for it. Changes are as follows: -All the stuff from V4.1.3 -New Xenopedia reports for Nervegas and particle weapons. -Changed the various explosives entries to account for manufacturing. -Added Power Cores. These are use for aircraft and advanced vehicles in varying amounts (more advanced craft, more Cores). -Changed the entries for the aircraft to account for Cores. -Higher alien ranks are less resistant to suppression (depends on race) -Machineguns suppress more. Power Cores can be made from scratch, or by converting an alien power core into one (or two or three). They can also be sold for a reasonable profit if you are so inclined. EDIT: My bad, here's the link for V5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q5i9kmylhrabj61/Sathra%27s%20Mod%20V5.zip Version 5X for the Experimental branch: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bj1uhpdd6...0Mod%20V5X.zip Changes: -All the stuffs from V5 -All weapons cost the same amount of alloys to manufacture, but now have increased alenium costs. Laser weaponry got a slight increase to alloy cost to the same as the rest. -Power cores cost less Alenium to make now, and should now actually be somewhat profitable. Only a small profit though (~10k) -AK-47 added. Its basically a Carbine for the ballistic era. -Shield 'ammo' increased. They can block more shots (roughly a full plasma rifle burst for the Combat). -Some damage rebalancing (MG's do rifle damage but sniper penetration mostly) -Grenade base range increased to 6. -Damage text lasts longer before fading. -Teleport cost increased to 30, so Wraiths don't jump around so damn much. Further changelogs for the various updates are later in the thread. Now includes both Lightgemini's Projectile Images mod, and Max_Caine and a333's Alien Analysis mod.

Yeah, that disucssion. My main thought after playing around a bit with Xenonauts is what squad sizes are aimed for in game balance. In the OG the great stuff was that you could stuff your skyranger under the roof with soldiers when you got the impression your equipment sucks and you have to take a quantity over quality approach. Usually there was a efficiency curve for your missions since beyond ~12 men you were nearly ensured to have far higher casualty rates due to stray bullets and grenades since your men always bunched up somewhere so it wasn't a desired tactic beyond bringing more firepower to the fight since you lack the pewpew gun that concentrate that firepower and the armor to survive in smaller numbers. However the Charlie only has space for 8 men although the craft clearly has 18 tiles space inside which would mean 12 men if we assume troops are sitting alongside the sides of the vehicle. Since you can load a tank with 6 soldiers on it, it clearly isn't a weight issue but seemingly intentional? Additionally my impression from the starting weapons on normal is that particularly the basic armor and Jackal armor is essentially useless in combat. If your soldier gets hit he will be dead and to top it off his visual range gets restricted meaning more instances where aliens will be able to shoot the soldier beyond his visual range. If that's intended the limited recruitment capability, crew space in the base and squad size in the Charlie seem a bit strange. If the preferred strategy in the early game is to throw bodies at the problem one should be able to throw bodies at the problem. I saw that the game sprites go up to 16, not sure if that's for later transports. However bigger squad sizes and more space to recruit soldiers is more necessary at the start than in the end when fully powerarmored soldiers don't need to be in big teams to bring along tons of firepower. More importantly there should be flexibility for choice to have standard teams of 6-8 for small UFOs and possibly 12-24 for terror missions/big UFOs. In the terror missions I essentially got 3-4 men dead sitting behind cover in jackal armor but getting shot out of nowhere or hit from stray bullets. Since I don't see any ways in terms of tactical choice I'd chalk such things up to accidental deaths, however feel that if I have to cope for some attrition rates I'd rather have more people to bring along. Losing high exp soldiers is usually bad enough and starting over with a squad of rookies kind of makes it necessary to bring two of them for every veteran to stand a chance. I'd say in XCom:EU the main problem is that from midgame on you cannot afford to lose soldiers since your rookies are essentially worthless. This was even worse in the Altar games where you had no recruitment capabilities beyond special events. You can't afford to lose soldiers, which in turn supports save spamming. I have no problem losing men, but the essence of strategy gaming is the capability to establish a strategy to deal with the enemy and this includes on how to organize your manpower so you can afford losses. If the structure of the game makes it necessary to win every battle then you subvert the intention of dealing with losses and use strategy. E.g. in Total War games losing a battle or having half your army ravaged in a bloody clash so it is unusable for years on that front isn't an issue since you can plan your strategy to cope with those losses. Most UFO clones have the problem of making all tactical missions, mission critical to continue the game and so I'm most worried about this game aspect. Somehow I can really say up to now only the OG managed to give you good options to soldier on after your interceptors are shot down, your squad slaughtered and the skyranger blown up. And that's what made it a great strategy title with cool squad based combat!

So, I've recently finished the game on easy. 'Finished.' I'm going to start with the few game-breaking bugs I encountered, and my fixes for them: Due to the slightly convoluted research path I haven't been able to research the final mission tech. I got the leader (alive) and everything, but I haven't researched 'alien leader interrogation' before I got it, so I basically killed that tree. I've researched all other things and was in march 1980 - mag weapons, all armors, all craft (except for the fury - is that even in yet?), anyway, everything. I've killed about 8 alien bases and so on and so forth. Seeing how I couldn't progress I began playing with game files. After going through the research XML I tried modifying my save through HEX (to no avail)... so, after searching the forums a bit I found out that I can call a function with a script - UnlockFinalMission();. I added the line to the assets\scripts\enterbasename.lua and made the cancel button call it. If anyone is stuck, open the file up in notepad (or notepad++, it's much better ), and edit the following part (added line is colored red): Button { name = "cancel", x = 120, y = 60, command = function() [color=#FF0000]UnlockFinalMission();[/color] PopModal( "enterbasenamedlg" ); end, To activate the final mission, click 'build base' on the global overview and then cancel it when it asks you for the name (in case this wasn't obvious). So I embarked on the final mission, killed everything (the large drone killed the praetor leader for me, when it was shooting at my troopers on the other side of the room, also the wal north of the final room's door is invisible - I got shot through it), ran from the reaper masses and finished it with only 2 deaths (due to not knowing where the reapers spawn). I also killed the reactors. What bugs me is that I got no victory text/game over screen afterwards. Is it not in yet or did my meddling with files disable the proper sequence of events? Winning simply takes me back to the global screen, and I can redo the mission, too. Whatever, not that important. The game was fun. I played on easy, and ended up tweaking some numbers in the gamefiles, due to the difficulty being too harsh (no, it's all doable, but I wouldn't manage finishing the game in under 30h with default difficulty). There were a few bugs, like terror missions not working and landing ship desert and middle east missions causing a CTD - I managed to fix the terror missions, the CTD was caused by too few spawn points for the aliens, so I fixed that by adding about 16 in the editor, in a nice square in front of my spawn (could have placed them around, and only 4 were taken by the aliens in missions), which presented my soldiers with a turkey shoot in the beginning of every terror mission (there were still aliens spawning in the usual spots, just a few spawned in the square I added). I also had to remove all civvies and friendly AI in the terror missions, as they caused the never ending hidden movement bug, again, fiddling with the game files. I didn't manage to fix the alien.landingship bug, dunno what is causing it, it ain't spawns or placement of terrain - speaking of which, there's some rocks placed in the UFO spawn square in those maps, I tried moving/removing them but it didn't help. I've also noticed that a desert house in battleship_desert map doesn't have stairs going to the second floor - weird home these people live in. Balance: Easy is way too hard. I don't mind hard being hard, as I love a challenge, but with easy I want a fast 'run' through the game - not having to save every turn, not having to be really careful in air combat and so on and so forth. Tbh, looking at the difficulty settings, easy is the same as insane, except the aliens have less HP. There's a thread discussing that and I'm sure it'll be sorted out there. Alien 'rocket launcher' - I forgot the name, but if I understand correctly (I do read the xenopedia, if available), the weapon is supposed to be devastating. My predator-clad soldiers received multiple direct hits with it and it only scratched off like 10 HP, while 2 shots of heavy plasma do more than 20 HP on the same soldier. I think you should either change the description to - suicidal pea-shooter (the miss rates are so high the aliens tend to eventually blow themselves to bits shooting at a wall in alien base assaults - and yes they try to shoot me through walls due to buggy vision). In any case, if I understand this correctly, this should be a weapon on par with ye olde blaster launcher in Ufo1-Ufo defense, without the 9-point aim mode. It's pathetic compared to that WMD. Grenades - Aliens don't have/throw grenades. I hope this will be added eventually. Grenade explosion range is 3x3 tiles. No, no, no. Should be 5x5 for regular nades, with a 1x1 increase with every tech level (8x8 for fusion). A fusion grenade should level a building, and all forms of cover 2 tiles away from the landing point, not the paltry damage it does now. Yes, it does destroy some cover, and yes, it does quite some damage, but it just seems pathetic for end game tech. Also, compared to explosive grenades, stun gas is a lot more powerful and a lot more useful. There's really little point in throwing regulars if you have stun grenades, since the gas envelops a larger area, and enemies caught within it might pass out in the next round. Stunned units - do they ever wake up? I never tried waiting for them to do so, but no units ever woke up in a mission. Will we be able to wake our soldiers up with the medkit/by waiting, will the aliens ever wake up? Especially the sebillians, reapers and all aliens fused to an armor (it pumps them with alien adrenaline or something comment added to xenopedia)? Drones - they used to be really scary in other ufo games - lots of armor, took a lot of fire to take one down, killed the whole team, exploded in your face; now they die to a few shots of laser/ballistic fire, have weak attacks, etc. The heavy drone seems the only worthy enemy, but it's still easier to take one of them down than a sebillian elite or similar enemy. Also, have I mentioned that they do not explode as described in the xenopedia (yet)? Explosives- why no plasma/fusion bombs, like the block of C4, just with more firepower and a larger radius? On that note, mines would be a nice addition (especially in front of the larger UFOs the aliens seem to like running out of so much). Manufacture and selling - manufacture of items and selling them was a major line of income in the other ufo games. In that lore, X-com became a huge manufacturer of weaponry and tech and later became Marsec. I'm not arguing you should clone that storyline, but, honestly, you're making advanced tech with extremely advanced materials and the world is like: Yeah, I'll give ya 1000$ for it. Are we trading with Rick Harrison or something? Due to engineers having an upkeep and items costing so much to manufacture, I think we should at least be able to sell them for a good profit, as you can still balance the game so that we don't build sweatshop bases where engineers keep working on an assembly line building laser cannons (+1 if you know where that is from). I'm sure the numbers are going to be tweaked eventually, just adding input here. Speaking of items, I stopped getting alien ammunition after the aliens switched to heavy plasma and other lategame stuff. The ammo should at least be sold in the score screen (though I prefer doing all the selling manually, but whatever). In any case, the only time when I actually sell something is when I upgrade to the better version of it, like selling the laser aircraft cannon when I get plasma. I just feel that the engineers should be busy all the time instead of waiting on the next big project and then taking ages to build that. I think the amount of time that it takes to build things is ok in terms of manufacture days in the game files, but we should have 30 or more engineers and scientists per factory/lab building - of course more should be able to fit into the living quarters. The low numbers and lack of economy reminds me of X-COM:EU too much (that game was... bad, to keep it civil). Research - I love the fact that there is a lot of research available, but we should have some indication what the research will provide - I thought single fire weaponry was the research path for aircraft weapons, and got a crappy vehicle weapon instead. All in all, I think the rapid fire and single fire branches should be unified into 'advanced laser/plasma/MAG weapons' giving you the soldier heavy gun, aircraft cannon and vehicle cannon at the same time. Branching it out seems like purely filler research that doesn't really add to the game much. Alien officer interrogation should, once researched, enable you to instantly interrogate every captured officer and elite for alien base info - 10% chance on revealing every alien base. That is, if there are 10 bases on the planet, one is usually revealed. Either that, or the officer giving you info on which continent a base is located. Captured leaders should reveal at least one base, if there is one on the planet. Capturing aliens is really pointless after you capture the first specimen of the kind. Radar research - there should be some kind of range increase/chance increase with these buildings. Having multiple arrays in one base should make for higher detection % (with diminishing returns - 1=100%, 2=170%, 3=230% etc. of base detection). I'm also missing a hyperwave decoder, but it's not really necessary. Air combat - too hard/too much impact for the minigame it is. Air combat should be an additional bonus minigame, not a make or brake it mechanism. Losing a plane is way too expensive, and without proper control you can lose quite a few. Missiles should fly faster - most alien craft are able to outrun the missiles in the later stages. I'm not saying that the first tech should be super fast, but missile speed and range should scale with their damage level (fusion missiles should cover half of the air combat map and go 3x as fast as their lowest tech version). Battleships seem unbeatable and dreadnaughts are in the files, but not in the game (yet?). I think you should have mag cannons and fusion torpedoes to bring down a battleship, but I wasn't able to bring one down without attacking it at least twice and getting most hits with fusion torps (2x foxtrot 1x marauder in each squad). It just seems overpowered. I'm not saying we should be able to bring one down with two f-17, but since I can absolutely massacre the land forces, I should also be able to swat the biggest UFOs like flies, once I get the appropriate tech. Speaking of which, there is no 'epic omgwtfbbq' weapon, like a singularity missile - we do get similar tech, and firing an exploding mini black hole at the bigger UFOs would certainly feel great. Armor - no floating armor to make the reapers obsolete :*(, reapers 1-hit-zombie everyone, regardless of armor (well, I haven't tried it with predator, but they should have to bring the HP down to 0 before zombification occurs. That is, 3 or 4 hits with predator, 2 or 3 hits with sentinel and instazombie for anything less. Otherwise I find the armor tech and balance quite fine. I'd add another armor between wolf and predator, acting as support to predator - predator is kinda endgame tech while wolf is early midgame tech, I feel like there's a huge gap there. Predator soldiers are invulnerable while wolves are easy to kill, I think there should be another armor developed with predator tech, that has less stopping power than predator, and same or better mobility as wolf. Tbh armors have a huge unexplored area, which is vision. I agree with early armors limiting your vision, but predator and sentinel should allow the user to view further than without an armor (cameras), and eliminate or extend nighttime vision hindrance. It even says in the xenopedia that the sentinel armor can see the whole EM spectrum, so the soldiers in it should see a lot further - 24 tiles or something extreme. Armors should also add accuracy - a basic HUD can have a reticule showing where the current weapon is pointing, so it makes sense the soldiers would be able to fire more accurately with one. Also more strength equals less recoil, which equals accurate burst fire. While burst seems the best option to use anyway, at least at short to mid ranges, there should be a difference in accuracy depending on the armor of the soldier. A predator should be able to burst with 40% acc compared to a 10% acc without an armor. Soldier weapons - I love the fact that there are three researchable weapon varieties. I am slightly disappointed though. While offering more damage, the better the tech, the less accurate the weapons seem to get a.k.a the accuracy always seems more or less the same, although my soldiers have almost 2x the rating. Imho it should be slightly different. Ballistic weapons are, and should be utter crap. Low accuracy, low damage. Laser weapons should have only 20% or so of a damage boost, while being extremely accurate, to the point rookies can shoot at aliens in cover with them. Plasma should have less accuracy but a lot more damage - say 200% ballistic, same acc as ballistic, and MAG should be terribly accurate AND have a lot of damage - laser rifle accuracy, 300% ballistic damage (yes, overpowered, but I'm exaggerating and it's endgame tech). As for weapon variants - imho the sniper should have max accuracy at the end of it's 1st max range, that is 28 tiles atm (I'd change it to 34, tbh, after all it is a sniper, not a shotgun), then a falloff to 50% at the end of the second range (yellow range). It's usually better to fire a rifle twice than firing a sniper once as it stands now. The sniper seems to have lower accuracy than a rifle at long ranges. The shotgun should have a 'spray' animation, not a single bullet. Psionics - though it seems psionics are far from fully implemented, I've noticed that some seem to be included. Mind control will eventually be part of the game according to the files. I've noticed the 'feeling of dread' in missions where the praetor is present. My two cents: they should only be able to panic you if one of their forces can see you. Either that or if you take into account they can see you everywhere in their base, remove fog of war from xenonaut base maps, since you can have cameras around the base and stuff - you should be able to see where the aliens are at all times. I seem to remember that psionics will not be available to humans, is that true? It does make sense, but it's kind of lame, not being able to play with the aliens like they (will) play with your soldiers. I'm getting the feeling this is due to having less work, not having to implement alien stats and inventory. TL;DR Damn that's a lot of post... I'm sure only three people have read it. Ever. All in all, I think this is the first game after the three x-coms released in the ninties that deserves to be called a spiritual successor, and actually improves on the concept, adds great features and has the potential to be a legendary game, just like the old ones. There are some pretty annoying bugs left, but it's a beta, barely out of its alpha diapers, so I expect it to be a brilliant bug free game when it's released. I've enjoyed playing it a lot, and I can only imagine what improvements future updates will add. Great game and best 20 Eur I've spent for a game ever

This is certainly an improvement on the new XCom which I can only describe as horrible but gameplay in this title is not well balanced making it overly difficult and frustrating when it should be fun. The core of the problem having played for a few hours is: (1)There is not enough time to develop new fighter tech before aerial combat simply becomes absurdly hard. As a result it becomes a crude numbers game where you have to slug it out hoping your fighters have enough clout to do the job. Worse still when you do outclass your opponents with a mix of tech and numbers the enemy craft are destroyed most of the time making it impossible to gain skills for your troops and money to advance your cause by visiting the wreck site. (2) Why even when your troops become officers do they have the weapons skills of five year olds? Most of them are the worst shots I have ever seen, so much so you resort to the use of grenades 90% of the time to take out or disable the enemy. It would have been nice to, to apply points to build core skills like these to enhance gameplay. For myself I gave up in frustration and walked away from this game. I wont be back unless gameplay improves markedly. I had high hopes for this title but to be honest I'm still yet to see any title that comes close to the two originals I played and still love from way back when.