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Greetings all, Seeing how active the development forums are, I'd like to provide some impressions so far on Xenonauts. For background, I'm familiar with the original X-COM, and quite so with strategy games in general. Some time ago I tried UFO:AI which is definitely a good effort, but ultimately falls short for me due to several concerns, some of which that game will not address. So I spent a bit of time with the current Xenonaut build. The best thing I can immediately say is that it feels like XCOM. It will clearly feel overwhelming to those unfamiliar with the original, but such is the nature of this game. I like how Xenonauts keeps complexity of the original in things like soldier loadouts or manufacturing, and that is in fact why I preordered. I hope the game says true to XCOM throughout development. Pacing I did find the pacing of the game to be somewhat off. In the first month, I did 15 or 16 crashed UFO missions. That is a bit too often and becomes a tad annoying. On the contrary, I went a week in the third month without any contacts other than alien fighters. What I would like to see is instead more of a ramping-up feeling where alien attacks increase in frequency and intensity. Early combat The initial impressions from the tactical combat were very positive. It feels a lot like the original game, though perhaps more forgiving - my soldiers were able to take a hit even in the first mission without any armor. Some UI issues, like how to take aimed shots, took a while to figure out. Generally though engaging in combat is nice and intuitive, with just a few exceptions. Like grenades - apparently my soldier was unable to throw a grenade over a hedgerow that visually appears to be maybe chest high, causing the grenade to explode right in front of him. Hmm. I may have failed to figure it out so far, but it seems like there's no way to throw items anymore. I also can't figure it out with the "quick grenade" slots. If my soldier carries several types of grenades, can I choose which one becomes the quick grenade? I was greatly annoyed by some reaction fire coming through doors and hope that's a mistake. Specifically, I've been taking reaction fire when approaching the outer doors of a UFO. Capturing live aliens seems to be too easy. After researching stun weapons, I get stun rods, stun grenades and stun rockets? Why would I even want to use a stun rod when I could capture aliens by liberally using stun grenades? I really appreciate the idea, but capturing a live alien should be a risky proposition considerably more dangerous that just shooting him. The original XCOM did this well (until stun bombs anyhow). And it definitely seems like the scout car is extremely good, to the point where you always want to take it instead of 2 people. It can scout ahead to reveal aliens and draw fire, and has acceptable weapons, too. It's not that vehicles should be weak, but they should feel like a tradeoff and not like a no-brainer. Geoscape observations The most immediate thing I could not understand is, what's up with the starting base layout? Leftmost and rightmost tile columns are empty but most useful buildings have a width of 2 so I can actually not add workshops or laboratories there? Aside from that, so far I've been doing well in combat but absolutely stuck on the economy. Not really sure how you're supposed to make money. It should certainly not be as easy as in XCOM, and that's good, but is the money you get after UFO raids really the only source of income? Research is actually very fast, I even managed to have some downtime with nothing to research. I love the way various alien-related events appear on the geoscape outside your radar range, allowing you to guess where aliens are. That is a brilliant addition to the original formula. But... what in Gollop's name is going on with resource management? Okay, I get infinite ammo for ballistics and the like. I can live with it, though it would not be bad to have to factor it into my calculations. But why do I, upon researching Elenium explosives, get an endless supply of elenium-powered grenades, aircraft missiles and rockets for the launcher? In terms of immersion, that's just silly, but it also messes with the strategy layer. The game needs to be about a careful balancing of upsides and downsides, but so far it seems like there are many things that are just plain upgrades of the earlier things. Sometimes that's good, like laser weapons should be superior to ballistics, but it would feel better if elenium weapons like aircraft torpedos were scarce at least initially, until some time when you're able to set up constant production. And it's not just that elenium issue. I liked having individual clips for my soldiers back when I played the first XCOM, but it didn't play a large enough role. Now it's even more cosmetic, I feel. What does it really matter that rifles have clips if they are, themselves, infinite, and a soldier carrying a rifle + spare clip is guaranteed to never run dry? Some more combat I understand this is likely a design decision but I am not a fan of the random allied units on the maps. In addition to not quite feeling XCOM to me, it's also immersion-breaking. This is an invasion by aliens, the scariest thing in humanity's history, these aliens wield weapons that melt humans, yet some random hunter or a typical cop calmly engage a 2-meter tall alien lizard? Seems like there's no way of getting rid of outdated ammo. After I have Elenium explosives, my rocket launcher's "quick reload" slot still expects the typical human fragmentation explosive which I no longer have. The aliens on most missions do not appear particularly aggressive. I know the AI is always a work in progress, but they seem to randomly alternate between shooting and running. I was not able to figure out how to "hold a UFO". I tried to on one mission, not wanting to hunt down the last alien, so I sent 3 guys into a Scout, occupying both of the UFO's compartments. Nothing happened 5 turns later. I am still none the wiser. The technical stuff I love the graphics. It looks hand drawn and very much in the XCOM style, and it looks great, besides, such graphics are far less prone to aging than 3D graphics. Also the sound is well done. However, oh my, the crashes. Just stating the fact, not complaining - I know what a beta is. But my game crashed quite a lot. Occasional crashes when loading missions, a few in the battlescape, and now I am stuck on a mission that appears to always crash when loading. And I can't even find any logs that would allow me to spend 2 hours uselessly trying to avoid the crash by changing different variables ----------- Just wanted to get this out there, but I'll keep updating as I keep playing. So far the impressions are very positive, well done!

I believe that v18.3 there wasn't any difference between the difficulty levels in terms of the AI opponent etc. Is that the case with v18.4?