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  1. I was wondering if the first couple of bases could be a little bit smaller than they are now. I'm running into bases in November that are staffed with a dozen light blue Androns and a couple other critters, and I don't think this is completable with laser weaponry (at least it shouldn't be). Perhaps the first couple of bases could be shown as "alien outposts" or "small alien bases" on the Geoscape? They would use the same alien base tileset and everything, except they would be smaller and staffed by Corvette-tier aliens.
  2. So...that was the first and last flashbang I'll use in this version. Dude throws it, it literally does nothing to any of the three caesian non-coms in the UFO. Promptly gets autofired to death. Might as well take them out of the game. Useless. Rocket time.
  3. Hey.. I hate the lousy little Chinook a lot. But anyway, anyone else find that it takes *forever* to get the Shrike, and when you do, its a much much shorter wait to the Valkyrie? Which isn't nearly as necessary as the Shrike is. Anyone else think it would be nice to get this thing a bit earlier?
  4. 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).
  5. 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?
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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]
  9. 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)
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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?
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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
  23. I've been playing a lot of the new XCOM and one of the things I liked about it was the way that it did smooth the difficulty curve a little - such as you getting high-level soldiers as mission rewards and later in the game they joined as Squaddies instead of Rookies etc. I think Xenonauts could benefit from some gentle smoothing of the difficulty curve in places to make it a bit less unforgiving. I was wondering if people had thoughts on these two ideas: 1) The quality (stat point average / rank) of the soldiers available for recruitment in the pool should gradually increase as the game goes on, up to a cap. This will cushion the blow of losing soldiers a little, though new soldiers should always be worse than what you already have. Perhaps the new soldiers would max out at Sergeant at the end of the game. 2) There's an issue with aircraft ranges and game balance at the moment. I want to encourage players to build multiple bases in the game, so the range of interceptors and radars can't be that large at the start of the game or there's no need for them. However, this leaves a situation where at the start of the game the player quite often is not able to intercept many UFOs because they don't enter their airspace. Which means very few crash site missions for people to play. There's several ways around this - making early UFOs only spawn near the base is one thing we can do, but I don't like that level of "cheating". I like the events popping up across the world, showing you that there's a world outside your radar range that the aliens are attacking. I propose that each UFO has a % value set for it, which is the % chance that it will generate a crash site instead of escaping to space if it successfully completes its mission - the logic being that that local air forces managed to shoot down the UFO. This would initially be set high, but would rapidly tail off and would be non-existent by the mid-game. This would nevertheless give the player some breathing room. There'll always be a supply of crash sites early game (and thus stuff to research), even if the player is unlucky with their interceptors. The main change here would be that the dropship will have to have a much longer range in order to be able to deal with the crash sites, but I guess I could live with that. I did want other bases to have their own troops etc, but I'm not sure it's going to be possible to force that without gimping other aspects of the game (not being able to reach terror sites etc as in the current builds) at the same time.
  24. New Mod. This one took a few hours. Since the game is being balanced I may have gone a bit crazy with the changes. https://www.dropbox.com/s/skhs4r4oiztk3sb/Sathra%27s%20Mod%20V4.zip Changes: -All the various weapon changes. Accuracy has dropped in general. Includes vehicle weapons. -Heavy Plasma Rifle now has single-shot option. This is due to large numbers of aliens (especially Sebillians) only having the Heavy Plasma as a weapon option. -2 Plasma missiles will kill a Heavy Fighter (this was done by increasing the damage to 195, and the HF armour to 20) -Costs and build times of Corsair, Shrike, Marauder, Valkyrie and Foxtrot reduced. -Jackal, Sentinel and Predator armour build time reduced. -Advanced missiles and torpedoes must be manufactured (a single unit is unlimited, but they have hefty Alenium costs) -Advanced grenades and rockets need to be manufactured (fast and cheap though they do cost resources). -Things that were missing a resource cost now have them. Weapons cost alenium to manufacture as well. -String fixes (Battle rifles, stunned Reapers, Drone autopsies and Scimitar) -Alien Electronics can be unlocked by capturing a Corvette. -More aliens in ships up to Landing Ship (Cruiser spawns are still bugged). -More cash per alien weapon. -Score changes (50 from secure, 25 from capture) -Aliens have armour, with support variants having more, except for Harridans -->Caesans have low base armour, poor chemical defense and poor incendiary defense. -->Sebillians have good base armour, poor chemical defense and good incendiary defense. -->Androns have heavy armour, good chemical defense, and excellent incendiary defense. -->Harridans have good base armour, poor incendiary and excellent chemical defense. -->Wraiths have good to excellent armour, ok incendiary and poor chemical defense. -To go with this, Nervegas and Toxin grenades have been added (well, added and filled in, including silly Xenopedia entry). To unlock them, well...(hint: You should capture live aliens for testing). They also need to be manufactured, but use no resources -Vehicles got armour upgrades. Its directional too. They also got an AP boost (but not as high as they used to be) -Its called Weaponry in the research screen now (it annoyed me). I think that's all of it. Give me a shout if it causes crashes, and some feedback would be nice. Remember, play the vanilla game first and give Aaron feedback on vanilla balance! Also, you'll probably really need to get a manufacturing base up pretty quick.
  25. 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!
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