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  1. Hi guys, so I finally got some time to check out the beta. I'm playing the current Steam version which is v20 stable I believe. Figured I would leave some first impressions. I am aware of v21x and that probably deals with some of the issues I'm about to list. Geoscape: - You should be able to change speeds on the geoscape while a notification has popped up. Sometimes I'm cruising along in max speed and something happens which pauses the game, but when I deal with the notification the game continues racing on and I don't have a chance to deal with whatever happened. Either that or simply add a "okay 5-seconds" button to ALL notifications. - Condors seem to be somewhat ineffective. If you play out a tactical battle against a small UFO with 3 condors they fire two waves of 3 missiles and the UFO will easily dodge roll away from them. This forces the condors to close to cannon range and I tend to lose 1/3 most of the time. Outside of combat their lack of range renders them obsolete too quickly. Condors should probably carry more missiles or have some way of staggering missile launches so the whole wing doesn't shoot at once. - The way I imagined it was that Foxtrots wouldn't be a straight upgrade. But I find myself using them that way because Condors can't even reach half of the UFOs that I see. - Aircraft range in general is too limited, especially compared to the radar coverage you can achieve. I think I remember in-flight refueling being a possibility? Perhaps aircraft could also land at bases in friendly countries? They would of course charge you for this, but some way of extending coverage is required. Alternately each aircraft could be given more hardpoints and make fuel drop tanks a useful tradeoff over firepower. - Foxtrots can get stuck in a circle pattern when facing a Corvette. I tried making my planes attack the corvette from behind, but what ended up happening is the corvette started a hard turn at the very edge of torpedo firing range and the foxtrots began to turn with them in an endless circle until they ran out of fuel. I'm not sure why this happened because the corvette WAS inside the firing cone, but the missiles were never launched. - Research in general seems a tad bit slow. Even with three working labs I only make a couple improvements a month and my list is a constant logjam of topics. - The lab and manufacturing screens need "assign all/remove all" buttons to make it easier to shift them around. - Your current stock of alien materials should be displayed on the manufacturing screen somewhere. - You should be able to hire more scientists than you have lab space for. This way you don't have to build the lab and have it sit idle for a while until the staff arrives. Being able to transfer scientists would also be helpful. - There should be a hide interface button for base screens to allow you to appreciate the background art. - Sometimes when I pull a soldier off a dropship I get a "this base has no soldiers" screen" until I leave that tab and come back. - The soldier equip screen could do with more buttons and less dropdown menus for stuff like class and assignment. Tactical: - Soldiers in general seem to have too few TUs. This is something addressed in v21 I think. - Rockets seem to be too weak in general, especially the pre-alenium ones. I hit a Ceasan dead in the face with one and it only wounded him. Damage to terrain is also lacking. - Grenades need to have different throwing arcs. A direct fast "pitch" with a flat arc, and a high angled "toss" for throwing over obstacles. - Flashbangs tossed into UFOs are highly unreliable and fail to suppress even if they land on top of stuff. They also don't deal nearly as much stunning damage as they should. - Tactical combat has crashed on me several times. This seems to be directly related to the scout car. Specifically when the scout car hits something directly with a single shot weapon (rocket/laser etc). - Hit indication has poor feedback. It's impossible to tell if a projectile that "hit" glanced off armour, hit the ground or just missed entirely. All you know is that it "hit" and nothing happened. - It seemed strange to me that you can't salvage or use alien grenades. Given how simple they are the ergonomics should not be an issue, unless they have some sort of alien only locking mechanism. - It would be nice if soldiers could pick up items in the tiles beside them. This would allow one soldier to drop an item and the soldier beside him pick it up, without him having to move. - Given how carry weight is at a premium and only gets more crowded as the game progresses, it would be nice if the scout car could carry some supplies into battle. Soldiers standing beside it could pick up the items as if they were "on the ground" but at a high TU cost. - Soldiers who walk into stun gas have a distressing tendency to burst into gibs. - Laser weapons don't seem to suppress enemies at all. I never had trouble doing this with bullet weapons, but lasers don't have any effect. Even firing into the ground beside friendlies doesn't phase them. - Scatter Laser ammo capacity is too low. All of the other laser weapons have around a 1/2 capacity compared to their bullet equivalents. But scatter lasers only have 3 shots versus the machineguns 10. I would suggest giving it a capacity of 30 shots, for 6 bursts. However when you reload the Scatter laser it would take two power cells instead of one. This would actually match what it shows on the paperdoll image. - Cover is a little wonky. Firing over something right beside you is simple. But even something one tile away jumps to a 50% block rate. This also makes it almost impossible to fire past crouching soldiers. Cover should scale depending on it's distance to you, and your target's distance from it's cover.
  2. I broke my hand last friday (damn icey, slippery walkway) and had to undergo a small surgigal procedure so I've had a lot of free time to play Xenonauts. I'm now a bionic man with titanium in my hand! I started a brand new 20.8 game with easy difficulty setting (as I've had a bit of trouble with earlier builds) I had much better time this time around and the game felt FUN! The game never felt underwhelmingly hard (as it should be on easy difficulty setting) and it progressed quite nicely until corvettes. Geoscape balance felt great and I had plenty of resources to found new bases and buy additional condors and foxtrots. Ground combat still suffers from map repetition at least on scouts and small scouts. I also felt I got too few industrial tile set maps. AI is super great(!!) but seems to suffer some kind of bug that makes aliens strangely passive at least in crash sites. They rarely move towards my units or shoot on their own turn, but rather pull back to reserve TU's for reaction fire. This wasn't the case in previous versions. Also one AI suggestion to GJ: when an alien unit dies in a spot that AI thinks is a good cover, other nearby aliens tend to move to that same position and take cover. If I happen to have a good line of fire in that sqaure, this often leads to a pile of bodies in same spot. So I think a dead unit should signal the AI that this isn't a safe spot for other units, so they would move somewhere else, even though this seems the safest place. While the start of the game feels almost perfect, the main problem atm for me was that the game plot stuck to "interrogate alien officer" I had the same objective until I quit the game in march (I fast forwared a lot as I found out the game wouldn't progress). I never once had alien bases or base attacks and the game started to feel tedious, as all the missions I had was crash/landing sites and a few terror sites. This is the first time I really enjoyed the game, so you guys are definitely going in right direction. I just feel that the game lost it's structure after first two months and started to repeat itself too much. One or two small and easy alien bases (with officers) and maybe one tougher after three months would have made the game progression perfect in my mind at least. Thanks for reading.
  3. Hi Guys, as I have put almost 80 hours into the game (yes, kind of addictive), I'd like to write down the experience I've had in a few points. In general, the game is great - and the following points are just my perception as a player (not OMG CHANGE NEEDED!)... I've seen all of those things talked about on the forum already, so bear with me 1. Standard Ground Missions tend to become somewhat tedious As soon as you get the hang of the relatively simple initial missions (executing them without big risk of any loss) they tend to become 'work'. The start of a standard ground mission has become my 'favourite' point of ending my playing session - since I usually don't feel I should 'skip' them (due to resource and experience gain). I'd prefer the difficulty level of the mission to be more unpredictable, but maybe thats just me. 2. Air Combat is extremely sensitive to your loadout and can wreck your game (Ground Combat tends not to) In my current playthrough I entirely skipped laser weaponry in order to save resources and go straight to plasma. And from my experience it works really well (with good tactics and liberal use of explosives). In Ground Missions you tend to have a fighting chance even if underequipped. I only had 1 mission where my squad was hilariously ripped apart - when I was forced of sending a bunch of rookies to an advanced terror site, full of wraiths and massives disks. (Yes, they were all running around screaming, mindcontrolled by the aliens or hiding behind a pot plant. Hilarious ) Nevertheless, I realised in most of my games (and I only play Iron Man, so they are quite a few ) Air Combat is the primary trap that can more or less wreck my game. The possibilities to 'outplay' disadvantages in Air Combat seem to be far smaller. And after manufacturing one advanced fighter, a second one would have consumed almost all my Alenium resources (so I hesitated, because I want my soldiers to be walking TANKS )... Oh and I often just cannot deal with Air Terror sites due to the distance involved. 3. Linear Upgrades More a matter of taste, I think too many upgrades behave exactly like their predecessor with an added boost in performance. (Weapons exempt here.) But then again I think there is no reason to change those around especially so late in development. Thanks for the great game!
  4. Just wanted to tell developers: you are doing it right. I've played V-19, frowned at graphics at first but then at a moment I realized it's morning already. I'm a big fan of UFO-1 and UFO-3 (Apocalypse), and Xenonauts deliver. V20-4 and V20-5 added almost everything I wanted to GUI and gameplay, so I'm sure devs won't screw things up. My best money spent on a game in 2013, please keep doing whatever you are doing there same way.
  5. I played through the game on Veteran, with minimal savescumming (reloading primarily as a result of getting shot through the floor). My opinion is that Xenonauts is, generally, well balanced and enjoyable through the early and middle stages, but, like XCOM, once it nears the end, it starts to fizzle instead of building to a thrilling conclusion. This trend was topped off (or bottomed out?) by the final mission, which was a total letdown. I ended up saving Earth on July 27th with $2 million, 2 large bases, 1 extra strike base with only condors, and a bunch of radar posts everywhere. Here is my feedback on some aspects of the game. Bankroll and Funding Relations I was never really in danger of losing a funding bloc. I had less than $1 million in funds up until April or so, when I started downing carriers and battleships left and right. I did opt for airstrikes much of the time, however, so I probably could have made more money. After April, my bankroll shot up to $3 million, and I probably could have kept playing forever at that point. Terror sites were often not completable, but it wasn't the end of the world. Ground Combat Weapons and armor technology progression Ballistic, Laser, and Plasma showed up at just the right time. Each technology was in use for 2-3 months, which seems like the right length of time. Mag was superfluous, as I had captured all technologies by then, although it was good to have it for the final mission. Nevertheless, it seems like MAGtech would be used for far less than 25% of the missions. Armor availability coincided with corresponding alien weaponry technology upgrades. Air Combat progression New craft were well coordinated with the alien spacecraft progression, although I saw no need for the Fury, and I didn't build a single Foxtrot, either. The Shrike shows up at just the right time, and it was a good idea to ditch the Valkyrie and the other fighter craft, whatever it was called. I think you're giving players too much for free. As it is, you don't NEED to build the new fighter craft, for several reasons: 1) Condors can take the latest weaponry. 2) Guns do HUGE amounts of damage to capital ships. 3) The latest weaponry is given away for free. If you put all of this together, it means that you really only need to buy Condors (lots of them), and you can skip everything else until interceptors start showing up in pairs. This could be fixed by limiting the weapon technology allowed for certain craft (i.e., Condors get up to alenium/laser, Foxtrots and Corsairs get plasma tech, and the Marauder gets everything), and/or by reducing the amount by which cannon fire damages large ships. Or maybe by making Condors unrecoverable . Vehicle progression I only built one Scimitar, which was destroyed, but it was made available at the right time. Like MAG weaponry, the Hovertank was available so late that it wasn't useful for me.
  6. Assigning Xeno placement in the dropship is very difficult (Aircraft Equipment-Dropship). Need to see each Xeno's class under their name in that screen. Very difficult to place the right class of troop where you want them when the Xeno's class is not shown. In the Soldier Equipment screen, the area that has the button to change the Xeno's class, it always states "Assualt Trooper" and not what class they actually are. Why is the 2nd Radar placed next to the hangar where it is? Don't most people use the top spaces of the initial base for a whole row of hangars? Maybe it's me or maybe we don't need six hangars in the initial base anymore. I think the 2nd Radar should be placed just south of the first one. In the Research screen it would be nice to see all the information up front instead of some of the info in "Manage Research" tab and some in "Hire/Fire" tab. There is more than enough space and fewer clicks is better UI. (it would hide the artwork, though...) Also, the font color of a tech being researched is light blue on white background and almost invisible. Maybe this is intentional but a darker shade wouldn't hurt. Thank you for all your effort making this game. Keep it up please. All the fans of the original and TFTD need to get this.
  7. Is there a way to prevent my soldiers from promoting en masse? I found a way past the starting squad (which starts with an all corporal squad, which drives me insane. I modded the game to give me an extra 100k so I could dismiss everybody except one Sarge, and then hire 10 rookies. First mission, gameplay is fine, I actually enjoy it. I defeat the aliens and the debrief comes on my screen. EVERYBODY gets a promotion. Literally every rookie gets promoted to corporal. WTF! I know the original had a requirement for promotions. IIRC it had something to do with the total amount of soldiers f.e. if you had 20 soldiers, someone could be promoted to Captain. This is a good way to prevent an all corporal squad imo. I know this sounds a bit like a rant, but I can assure you, it's not. I love XCOM games, and XCOM remakes. I highly appreciate the time and effort put into Xenonauts. It's just positive criticism.
  8. So, I just played my first Xenonauts mission, and here are my impressions: Showstoppers: The font choice is terrible! It is too small, over anti-aliased, and generally hard to read. I am playing on 1280x1024 so I don't know if fonts get scaled down on this resolution. But if you look at the zoomed in variant, it shows the font is all smudged. Next to it is the same text written in an even smaller font in LibreOffice, which in my opinion is much more readable: http://i.imgur.com/rvDQQeb.png http://i.imgur.com/rvDQQeb.png' rel="external nofollow">But, why use a font for ants in the first place? It is not like screen space is a premium in this game, it just makes the game tiresome to play. Secondly, I feel like I never know what left or right clicking actually does and am afraid that half the time it will make me perform an action I don't want to perform. There is no clear inspect action vs perform action concept. Sometimes I just select a soldier and he/she leaves the crouching stance, wasting some TUs. And performing moves is done by double clicking, I think, while right clicking rotates. I fire on enemies by clicking on them, so misclicking by one tile moves my soldier right next to it and to certain doom. Also, clicking on the current weapon in the interface also plots a path for the current soldier towards the position behind it, and again makes me afraid that another click wastes a move. Other stuff: Hint at where the last enemies hide out so it doesn't become an overcautious map crawl to find them. Save soldier loadouts, so I don't have to load up everyone individually. And maybe add items to the inventory by double clicking, not dragging. Drag and drop should work beyond the inventory screen, e.g. for swapping items between soldiers next to each other or picking stuff up. Maybe allow moving forward while crouching, at greater TU expense? And sidestepping would be nice. I'd like a warning when I am wasting med kits on healing a soldier which is healed to the maximum already. Or an instant "heal to max" option. I shot someone in the back, twice! Maybe warn newbies like me? Faster enemy movement calculation, it feels as if there is time added to it for effects.
  9. Yey for positive press! http://www.newstatesman.com/killing-time/2013/10/xcom-enemy-unknown-xenonauts-dumbed-down-game-any-less-fun
  10. Greetings to all the staff and community! Congratulations on a job well done, as always! "Well done", but there are things I would like to express. According to me, the latest V19 has also made a number of small regressions on a few gameplay aspects. Overall, the "coloring" of this regression adequates to three words : "less mystery around"! I will put four small items here on this subject. Maybe only these items exist on this matter. 1) In tactical combat : The "hidden combat movement" that filled the screen before, is now taking only part of it. Albeit a very small change, it translates into a setback to me. Two reasons : XCOM (94), and ambiance. It is a matter of ambiance; fear, and being 'uncomfortable' to the player at this step, may seem quite non regular but is fully part of the tactical combat gameplay here. Having sounds with a picture hiding the whole screen (an interesting picture, as well) fits a purpose, the same way the sounds, and music fits an artistic purpose. It gives the 'fear' to the player. Having a small picture, instead of a fullscreen one, makes it become more technical and less ambient. Like "yes, this movement is hidden". Of course the camera doesn't move to the target, but for some reason we still have the impression that we still see something. I discovered that the "One More Turn" effect was much stronger with the fear and ambiance being stronger. Of course, this may seem maniacal to some people, but I believe I expressed how it felt and why it felt so to the best of my (french) ability. Solution : Please make the "hidden movement" picture fullscreen again! 2) In research screen: The summary of a technology (the short line describing it when it isn't researched) now seems to always provide a direct description of "what we will be able to do with it". Meaning: what other research it does unlock. While being practical to the player, the strong accuracy of it makes the choice of a topic to research being even more a "strategic" choice more, than an "ambient" choice or "choice by heart". A good example of the resulting gameplay comparison would be the following : In MOO2, when you researched a tech, you did not know which new tech of this item will be available next. It was random. I believed it contributed to the fun of MOO2, with many other things. In other games, you have to explore the whole tech tree, and see/calculate what it unlocks next. While it still makes the game fun, it's a different fun (and guess which ones ended up as cult titles ). To go back on topic with our wonderful game, providing more, and more accurate information before making a decision, is nice but you must never forget how the "mystery/discovery" of a research contributes to the gameplay, more than the strategic aspect of a given decision. I believe this accurate description has a hit on the gameplay and ambiance. Again, what I mean by this isn't the fact that we have a short description (it's wonderful and I want as many descriptions, and as long and unique ones as possible!) but the fact that it announces the next techs it will allow. I no longer do this or this because I want to know what will be revealed (as description, flavor, upgrade...) since what will be revealed is already "announced" or rather, "summarized". So, researching item #1 only becomes a way to reach the item #2 that was announced. In my player mind, I'll have item #2 then as a focus. Overall, I believe it makes research more strategic, but also contributes less to the "I want to play this game until I discover this item #1", since I kept the next topic #2 on head, and also contributes less to the "wow now that I had discovered item #1, I see I can now do this and this! nice surprise !". Overall, this means I leave the game earlier and shorten my game session. Yes, truly. Maybe I sound as an odd player, but that's my two coppers Waiting to receive the brief about a research discovery is really a nice gameplay feature, so announcing the next strategic component before making that choice, is forcing the player to make another kind of decision. You know, if in Civilization you did not have these "black unknown tiles to explore", the game just works differently, but the gameplay isn't the same. Making a step just to target the further one is just never the same thing, gameplay-wise. Gameplay-wise, the "one more turn effect" often relies on "a thing we want to wait to discover", more than a planned series of events. I believe these short lines need more to focus on flavour (or vague references) than on "accurate techs" to unlock next. 3) The new geoscape is really nice and "gamey" but has a bit less of this fear and ambiance aspect to it. But I don't believe this should be changed. Rather, we players should evolve along with it ; the new geoscape is a nice component. But if changes are to be made on the geoscape again, just keep ambiance as a priority ! 4) By fixing a number of oddities, the tactical combat is more accurate, but also sound to me more easy. I had no problem to avoid any disastrous event. Soldiers fire according to plan, there is less friendly fire even when I risk it, and the situation is "clean". But again, as such, I also end up having less funny things to tell to my friends about my Xenonauts mission. I don't think anything is to be changed here (I mean, it can't ?) but people must be careful with such changes ; having players "suffer" from a few situations, is also part of the stress when playing, and the pleasure of it. So removing some random situations will remove some things, and bring less flavour. With more and more things like this, the risk (overall) might be to lead people to think that "doing a mission" could translate into a chore, more than willing to see what will happen out there. I played on Ironman / Veteran, but on this second test run, I still haven't explored much of the features I explored a few months ago.
  11. Testing at its finest I’ve been playing the game for a bit now, starting with V14 and now riding on the newest V19. This will be the first time that I’ve actually started to document things I’ve noticed that really should be changed. I’m sure some of this will have already been reported but … Hell, I’m running a beta version of the game right? Might as well act like it  1. Careful I’m fragile! My biggest complaint so far would be the fact that at the start of the game (Even under easy) everything seems so easy to die. The units I deploy to the field are easy to kill but even more than this the fighter crafts I send out die in record fashion, I mean a Condor should be able to take out a light scout with no issues right? How about a normal Scout? Shouldn’t scouts be easy pickings? Sadly no…. I find that 2 Condors are needed just to take out a light scout and 3 for the normal scout. Perhaps these Condors are a little under powered? Once you get going and get a few fighter weapon upgrades then they start to get pretty easy, even with the larger UFOs. I’m thinking there is still a bit of balance work needed 2. Upgrade me! One feature that would add a TON of flavor to the game involves unit promotions, a feature that isn’t being used. Given the chance I believe most of us would rather pick what upgrades we would like when a unit is promoted. For example, my “Assault” class units are my front of the lines… “hit them with a baton and get out of there” units. I know I want them with the highest TUs and the highest HP … but sadly I can’t customize them for this role. Give us the option to choose how we want to mold our troops! LOL 3. Heavy and rolling with a pistol! What’s the point of the classes? What is the difference between a sniper and a riflemen? Do they get special perks? Does their aim improve when holding a sniper rifle vs. a machinegun? Do they need special training before they can use a machine gun or a sniper rifle? At this point it seems like you guys have an idea rolling around but nothing has hit the paper outside of the name of the class ….. I say get rid of the class name but make us go through trainings that give us bonuses for the particular role. For example, Joe Smoe goes through 6 days of sniper training and gains +1 to observation and marksmen while gaining the ability to use the sniper rifle …. Just a thought 4. My shells use teleportation! Yep! The ability to shot through the walls… or even more so… the floors can still be found on the map. I find that the teleports are the biggest offenders. I have 4 units surrounding a teleport and one on the floor above. An Alien doesn’t try to kill the guy on the second floor (same floor he is on) but rather shoots at the teleport and kills one of the guys down below….. hmmm that doesn’t seem right 5. Unit configurations are down at the moment! Hard to reproduce unless I’m not thinking about it but from time to time when I’m attempting to jump to the unit config from the geoscape the game crashes…. Or none of the buttons work. 6. Hunt the hunters! Maybe you designed it this way and I’m not complaining but it does cause a weird glitch. When the notification comes up for a terror site and I fly out to it…. Right before I reach it I get the chance of changing my target to the actual UFO that landed there. SWEET! I get to bag another UFO instead of doing the mission. Upon completion I get the “terror site” notification about a dozen times followed by “Countless lives saved” and then the terror site is gone. If you intend to allow us to attack the UFO instead of the actual terror site then I’d remove those extra mission prompts 7. Takin a break boss! The TU costs for most weapon actions are a bit high and many times cost more than the max TU the unit has. The Sniper Rifle is a popular one, without taking a single action on the start of a turn I cannot use the best aim… it costs 61TU and that’s more than the unit has. Or how about the “Auto fire”, 41TU to pump out 3 shells sounds great but considering I need to get in REAL close to actually hit something you might want to scale it back a bit. 8. Can you spare a dollar? Lets admit it, the game can be difficult at the start and with a whooping 700k in the bank your likely to go broke really quick. Perhaps giving us an alternative method to generate cash would be helpful…. Like selling those “Unlimited” rifles (another thing I vote for removing, in the real world you won’t get “unlimited” so why should you here). By giving us a set amount of stuff we have to be more careful how we use stuff. Man! I could just chuck that grenade in there but the grenade costs 100 …. May be I’ll just run in with a baton then. Selling stuff at the end of a mission kinda feels ….. well like “what if I want to keep it and use it on the next mission” 9. Who taught you how to shoot?!! There is something about the aim between a ballistic round and everything else that drives me nuts, my guys can’t hit the broad side of a barn when holding a standard rifle…. Give them a plasma or a laser and suddenly they are winners of a AAA completion. But … then again it could be me, without knowing exactly how much progress on aim those soldiers have made it’s difficult to say (goes back to #2 and 3) 10. Flashbang how I love you so, you make me feel safe when I run into a room. You make me feel safe but that’s all you do, as I reload from a previous saved game. You leave me wondering if 23TU was worth the throw, you leave me wondering if I should bring you at all. *poem over* so the flashbangs…. Not exactly helpful, I thought they were designed to get rid of the “reaction shot”, well if so then they ain’t working LOL That’s about all I have for now outside of the missing text here and there. I’ll keep writing down what I’ve seen and report back from time to time Later guys! Will
  12. As the title says, thanks for the game I'm having a blast. The two things that convinced me to buy the game: -The playthrough by jefmajor -The promise of mods, specificly the Marines mod. Marine Corps ftw.
  13. Today I started playing this game first time in a semi seriously manner. Here are a collection of thoughts I had in my first 5 hours or so: Whoa, I'm impressed! The game has really changed in the last 6 months or so. Superb improvements in every department. AI is really aggressive and deadly. Great job there. Music is nice and the game is surprisingly stable. I had only one crash and two or three strange behaviors in ground combat. I think the game could use a bit more tutorials in the early game. Atm I really don't know what I should be doing in the early months. Different mechanics should be explained much more clearly. The game is full of numbers, statistics etc, but the game doesn't give me enough information to make anything useful from it. For example what I should build in base and why, how my success is monitored, how my income is calculated etc. I could also use a bit more information on how different things effect country relations. There could be pop ups for every missed ufo or ground combat on how it affected your relations to that country? Okay, here's some random thoughts thus far: Please Chris and GH, don't take this in any bad way or as a too harsh critisism. I only want to make this game better. I might also be missing something so some problems might just be LTP (learn to play) problems. I would like the global map and air combat to edge scroll in the same manner as ground combat. Air combat doesn't even scroll with arrow keys like global map. A bit confusing that some parts of the game scrolls differently than others. If you zoom in the global map and try to build a base in a certain city, you can't do it. Cursor hot spots are too small and too low. (probably a known problem that is fixed with the new UI?) When reqruiting new people, they are referred as items when arrived. Some notification sound would be nice when alien is spotted in ground combat All invertory sceens should support click and move as well as drag'n drop. My first mission was an automated crash site with 9 sebillians. A bit steep learning curve as my ass was handed to me in a way I was never thought was possible in this game (6 xenonauts were killed). Cool I guess, but for a first timers I think it might be a bit too harsh... Some xenonauts death sounds are bad Unit getting gibbed doesn't have any sound effect. Some DooM'esque splatter sound effect would be nice! Some way to know which first aid level is the maximum so I wouldn't need to scroll them three times around every time... Are you going to fix the mirrored art in the global map screen? Seems a bit lazy... Why cant I start building a foxtrot if I don't have a free hangar? Seems a bit silly especially if my hangar is ready before foxtrot Research projects in the list at the right side of the screen shouldn't show projects that are already under work. or at least it should show its current state of progress and that the research is underway. How can I open UFO door without walking through it? I'm getting slaughtered by reaction fire whenever I try to breach the UFO's. Small Scout's layout is maybe a bit too annoying and lethal to breach as a frist UFO type that should be more like a tutorial for a noob player...
  14. Some impressions with current release. Played first mission. Local forces have downed a UFO. Geoscape time speed not slowed when "Local Forces down UFO" popup occurs resulting in instant Charlie arrival and "Engage Enemy" screen when selecting "Send Forces" popup. Very jarring to go from Geoscape full speed to Charlie landed and ground combat started and no option to equip soldiers if the player has not already done so or even see where the UFO is on the Geoscape. Love how aliens seem much more mobile in ground combat. !!Hidden movement screen showing during soldier reaction fire and hiding the action.!! LMG's seem really weak. I pair a LMG and sniper together and LMG was not able to connect with any shot while sniper connects consistently. I also frequently see a lower chance to hit when crouching with LMG as opposed to standing. I'm never sure when to crouch them or when to stand them. LMG doesn't seem to suppress very well or destroy cover very effectively or hit the alien, so seems pretty weak. Very hard time infiltrating Light Scout UFO. 3 Ceasans inside. I saved scummed a dozen times to try to take the UFO without a slodier loss. Flashbangs not suppressing very well at all. I've thrown up to 3 in before aliens suppressed but lose a soldier each toss due to reaction fire. Tried smoke outside UFO and alien reaction fire targets my soldiers in smoke but I cannot target out of smoke. Tried smoke inside UFO and can stand next to alien and not be able to target them. Tried hiding my soldiers around the corner outside the UFO door and tossing flashbangs in from farther away but still no suppression and get reaction fire on each toss. Very difficult time cracking the Light Scout this build. One save scum the aliens came out of the ship! Very awesome to see them kill me that way, haha! I did not have shields this mission. Perhaps they are necessary. I also love the increased difficulty of infiltrating the UFO. The previous build it was simply open door, toss flashbang, run up to suppressed alien and shoot them. I also love, love, love the aliens coming out of the ship that one time. That was awesome and resulted in 2 soldier deaths and 2 alien deaths from my soldier reaction fire. Not acceptable losses but very cool!
  15. On the 6th of the first month, I had three consecutive missions. I was being careful with the ammo towards the end of the second, knowing the Chinook would be making another stop before returning home. Boosts to shotguns and sniper rifles seem to be making a difference in this build. I even took out an alien with 0% chance from a pistol shot. I do think that the aliens are a little easy at present. Certainly compared to earlier builds. I miss the tougher Sebillian in particular. Perhaps light scouts, with fewer and tougher of those, to differentiate them more form the Ceasians? Just a thought. Plays very well so far, and it continues to improve each release.
  16. One of the first things I want to do with my new forum account is to thank the developers for making another "X-Com clone". I'm not being sarcastic, or trying to demean the game by calling it an "X-Com" clone. I've been playing these games since 1994, and I NEVER get tired of them. This is one of my favorite genres/franchises/whatever you want to call them. I'm always excited when a new one comes out even if turns out to be mediocre or terrible. I've tried most of them; the good ones and the bad ones. I have to say that so far you are doing excellent work. Thank you, and keep making it better!
  17. hi guys i have played until november with the current vs 19 .6 this is some my impressions (only personal) 1) accuracy increase seems to me more credible and give some salt to the missions, i like it now a player is more careful with covers and tactics, not a pure hack'n slash assault with granades and missile as primary weapons to mitigate the terrible accuracy of the troopers..good 2)the money..much better! a bit stripped but better than the past economic atrocities..now i can build and manage a less rusty war machine the only lack is with the maintenance..still a bit expensive..eat about an half of my earnings.. 3)political impact is still hard..at the end of the first 2 months some nations have cutted the founding in a too harsh way..and the superpower of the age pays like all other "minor power" such as Africa and Europe..a bit more would be more realistic.. still not to bad however... 4)the heavy fighter patrol/escort and the air fight in general is my real and main source of frustration and problems..i like the randomness of ships(seeing small and very small for all the times not joust in the first encounters)but the escorted ships is a enormous problem to me..the only medium ship i've seen were all escorted..and almost unstoppable for me..i've never seen even a small scout without an escort!! the game would be more funny and less frustrating if at least half of the ships were unescorted..( I'm a little tired of having my ass regularly bloody kicked by alien escorts :)and a little reward to shooting down fighters would be well accepted..if no money but(and better)political value.. 5)i can't nominate some bugs...(like attacks to xeno bases that freese all) at the end this version like me much..
  18. Just played my first hour of the game, and while it is VERY buggy (which is expected, cause its alpha) I really enjoyed the Xcom feel. Not only does Xenonauts retain the same gameplay mechanics that made Xcom great, it expands upon them in ways I felt Xcom lacked and that the community yearned for. Overall I think the Xenonauts team has their finger on the pulse of the Xcom fanbase, and that makes me very happy. However with that said, there are a few things that I felt were lacking. First of all weapon management. Early game weapons appear to be infinite, and this really feels off. I really miss the purchase menu of the old Xcom games, and I would like to see a return of that. Xcom was all about base management, and I think taking out resource management of early game items detracts from that. Secondly, the user interface... and overall layout. A lot of things, such as the combat interface, work beautifully... and are very intuitive. However other things, such as the base menu screens, and even the post-combat analysis screens, are rather clunky and confusing. The menu is nowhere near as graceful as Xcom's, I think a lot could be done to streamline and simplify the base management screen. In addition, after a battle... the analysis said 45,000$ total sales. What do sales have to do with combat? Did I just automatically sell the equipment I recovered or something? These are really the only two gripes I had about the game, and I understand that its an early build (however that only gives me more reason to voice my concerns now =P) so ultimately all I have to say is good job! and keep up the good work! I think we only have up to go from here =)
  19. Still loving it. I like the LMG's and the hunter HMG's for ripping aprat those damn reptoids. Maybe David Icke was right, Reptilians are all around us!!! Seriously I just wanted to pop by and express my joy. Also I didn't know the ironman setting was working properly. Now this is fun heart thumping gameplay!! Cheers team!!
  20. ***************** This is A V2, corrected and adjusted to V 19.4 ******************* I hope i m much more clear than V1 which was crap. Well i bought xenonauts some month ago. I was "alfaing" and "betaing" and quite happy. Then IRL+another game + bugs drawned me away from Xenonauts. On steam i saw there was a beta version option so i decided to try. 1th: I hated is the new world map, night and day aren t that diferent. Easy to mistake night for day, when you are managing various engagements and landing in nighttime (I hate night combat in this game) by mistake. IMHO, the old radar like console (green and black) fitted better the game, and the timeframe it is supposed to occur. 2th: The soldier are bad, are those civilians or the elite soldners of the world? Since our weaponry is inferior let those at least be good. Missing a Supressed alien point blank twice in a row(adjacent tile) kills patience toward the game. Its like missing a frozen person that is 1 meter of you, it can be accepted by a civilian but not on a by regular grunt. The first armor (jackal). Since its made of terran material, shouldn t it be free ? I mean, give it to terran forces and let them produce it "em masse", it make sense. The managing of soldiers inside dropship is at the wrong place, it should be on the soldier arming management, not in the ship management tab. It make wayyyy more sense that way. The management of wounded soldiers is also bad, it should appear in the arming management tab. Put that information there (change the color of the soldier name, put a red cross upon is portrait, whatever.) and indicate is actual HP number over is full HP, so we know how much he is wounded for game purpose. Maybe stats should be decreased in % of the wound, so player wouldn t jeopardize so much their wounded ? But thats very optional. The role sistem: Good idea bad implementation. Modders done it right, why not adopt ? Training. I know it will come back, but i hope it has something similar to: Training specific skill up. Higher the skill higher the time to improve. fictional example: Throwing nade 45 to 46 1 day; 65 to 66 2 weeks. Max skill stat achievable via training ex:75 3th: There should be an economy tab. Right now its muddy clear, i had to remember i am not allowed to waste all my funds looking at numbers here and there. Imagine a new player. Consolidate all Economical info in one tab. 4th: Aerial combat. I know the icons are just representative. But Right now the weapon range / plane size is too weird, looks like missile can travel only a hundred meters, and cannons max range is pissing distance. 5th the main part ground combat. Alien shoot walls cause they see you trought it, and don t aknowledge them, so freak up the smoke grenade concept. Weapons clip not reloading between missions: pistol and shotguns, others seem alright. The 2 above are beta problems, so things this caliber are expected. Lack of weaponry diversity: Submachine gun for CQC would be a nice addition, Shoot like machine gun , low acuracy (for gaming purpose) Anti material snipping. Slow but extremely powerfull shot (ie: Move or shoot) would also be nice. Right now the xenonauts weaponry looks like a USA/NATO Branch, no wonder the RUSSIAN/Varsovian pact dislike you. An AK74 to balance the M16 would be nice: Full auto instead of 3rb, Greater damage, lesser range. A Desert eagle to appease the Jews: .50 caliber, 7 round, slow fire, absurd damage, can only be used with both hands. (yeah i know some freaks can use it 1 handed). Variance in ammo would be also cool. Normal Piercing (high penetration low damage) Mecury filled (Low penetration high damage) But maybe this require a soaking sistem and i don t know if its in the code. Problem: Since our soldiers are miope, long range shooting don t exist. So, even being bad at shooting, i have yet to waste an entire clip of firearms even in a terror site. With laser things go faster cause clip size is shrunk. Fact is: Missiles and nades are much more eficient and so, used. something must be adjusted A 3rd stance: lying down, would also be nice, increased aim, increased cover, waste a lot of TU to get up and start moving. Right now smoke bombs are useless, aliens shoot trought it as daylight, probably due to the "see throught wall bug", but i already sayd that didn t i.. must be pissed at trying it and get shot just fine. Shooting times are unbalanced, 3rb should be must faster, at least as fast than snap shot as they are totally deprived of accuracy, or it should have its own snap/aimed/etc. Right now Spray and Pray is only an option when you don t have option: Machinegun. Daylight Sight range and shooting range: Right now daylight sighting range is too short, it could be doubled. Seeing the terrain don t mean seeing the ennemy, but if it it means it because of engine, then at least increase it 50%. So we can have firefight at more than 20 paces. Right now it feels a duel of blind peoples, close range, everybody misses. A hit is an event to be comented at the pub for a week. Nighsight: Nightsight range is also wrong. This appear when you use Flares, flares drop at the edge of your sighting range and dont increase it. So why the hell bother with them. Right now they are more a placebo than anything. Or you make them increase the sight range for 3 or 4 tiles beyond the actual sight range( would say 3 becauseof the brightness), or you inverse the process (decrease our actual sight) so they become usefull. 6th: Interface. Well, the actuall implementation of the Hidden movement is crap at least at 1080P It creates a rectangle in the middle of the screen. You can t see what your soldiers see, but sometimes you can see what they can t (as it doesn t fill all the combat screen)... Beyond that, in this version when the "hidden movement screen disapear" your still frozen until the engine do some more stuff and free you. All in all its useless and enerving. i would suggest, since its beta, remove it altogheter. Shield have come back!! i m happy !!!
  21. I preordered the other day - been playing when I can. I love it so far, Ive been waiting for another "xcom" game to come out. I did try it out again (the old one) on dos box ... but it didnt feel the same, besides the game needed some new skin and this one looks nice so far. I have gotten a few months into it in the game and im at the beginning of my first base raid. so far it seems they are shooting through my walls and killing my soldiers - note: I have found that you can manufacture precision laser rifles for a profit. If anyone else has any wealth building tips that'd be great. deuce
  22. First allow me some disclaimers. I've been playing the game only for about a week. This means I've not completed it yet, nor tested end game or advanced options. I'm not playing the latest versions, and I some things that I'm posing as problems might actually be in the game or solved, in which case you should read it as “the game's interface is obscure enough for an average user not to be aware of this”. Finally I've been perusing the forums for a while and I'm aware that some of the horses I'm about to flog have been dead for a long time, and comparisons with X-COM 2012 will be inevitable. In any case, if I'm making your eyes roll too much now, I suggest you leave the thread. Overall I found the game reasonably fun and addictive. I see potential in it as long as the main issues I found are resolved. In no particular order: - Repetitive maps - Overly mechanical and artificial combat - Unintuitive strategic combat and too much emphasis in air battles. I'm sure the issue of repetitive maps have been adressed, so I won't comment much more on it. Only that a game of this kind absolutely need randomized maps or at least maps with random elements that potentially make each battle different. It's underestandable that x-com 2012 had a small number of maps, since the amount of eye candy and 3d modelling was perhaps too high for random maps, or the game isn't deigned to have so many missions that maps start repeating themselves, or is not meant to have that much replayability. Those factors don't apply here, so random maps are a must. About the second point, there's the factor where xenonauts is meant to clone the original game as much as possible. I admit that if that's the intent my complaint doesn't make much sense, but certain elements simply lead to weird gameplay. I'll elaborate. I started running the squad as I'm used to do in other strategic games, in fire teams that use cover. This lead immediately to disaster, as fire teams didn't have enough firepower (or I should say accuracy) to reliably kill aliens quickly enough, and aliens always could usually shoot first having superior sight ranges. So I remembered how I did in the original game, using one scout with just a pistol and grenades to discover enemies, and the rest of the squad to kill it, rinse and repeat. As far as military operations go, it's quite hilarious o see one heavily armored guy in front running froward and backwards like an overly excitable dog, and a ball of guys with heavy weapons and snipers (quickly replaced with just snipers, as they were the most effective) advancing slowly behind. The point is, I liked he original game because it had the right blend or strategic and tactical turn based combat, but that doesn't mean I liked some particular examples of how that combat was developed. Copying those accidents and mechanics because they were there, just for the sake of nostalgia, is IMHO a mistake. If you're not introducing bugs like being able to throw grenades through ceilings, I don't see the need to copy the least interesting aspect of the original game's mechanic. It leads to repetitive and uninteresting gameplay; either you repeat the same sequence of actions every turn, or you lose soldiers. Plus the hit rates are so poor, even using leveled soldiers that you absolutely need the whole squad to kill just one alien. More than strategy, it's an exercise of patience where tactics that intuitively you think should be used like flanking, positioning and using a variety of weapons for specialized roles lead to worse results than repeating a sequence of actions; advance with your scout, discover alien, everyone shoots, move the scout back, preferably behind opaque cover. I should add, if doing this during daylight can become boring quickly, night missions are an absolute pain that I just refuse to take part in. It's more or less the same, with the added task of the god forsaken throwable infinite lights. I let cities to be nuked rather than fighting at night. Continuing with the issue of supposedly realistic mechanics leading to unrealistic behavior. I quickly learned that in order to increase strength you have to carry a big load in battle, so every soldier goes with as much useless stuff as they can, I make them run in circles to make sure they get their TUs and spend a couple turns shooting at aliens with their most inaccurate shots, so they train accuracy. That's just one example of many. About the geoscape, I found it mostly ok, but for the life of me I can't figure what strategy to follow. No matter what I do, I always hit the same wall: lack of money. The thing is, most of your money comes from selling stuff you get on missions. To get missions, you need to down UFOs for raiding, as they either rarely land or they take off way before the chinook arrives, and terror missions are comparatively rare. To down UFOs you need expensive planes equipped with expensive stuff that need expensive hangars to house. This means that losing air battles halts progression immediately. Even if you don't lose the crafts, or if you lose them you have enough cash to replace them, you're not getting the needed cash and tech from the UFOs not downed, plus you get reduced funding and the game enters a death spiral where your lack of tech and money leads to not getting tech and money. I understand that measures are being taken about this, like reducing the cost or planes or increasing their survivability, but I'd suggest just making more land missions that not require you to down an UFO first. Compounding with this, air battles are plainly not really good. They rarely hit the sweet spot where the fight is interesting: either it's a sure win (boring) or a sure loss (frustrating) depending on what planes you have and the strategy. Right now, as far I've discovered, is “as many foxtrots as you can have in the air, with missiles or torpedos depending on craft size, reduce speed to minimum and fire them in the right sequence, then flee”. If you don't win with this tactic, the you don't have enough tech and therefore you lose the game because you are never going to have the required tech. The point is, the aerial battles have to improve a lot before launching to justify having it rather than a simplified version like in the original game. It also needs a smoother transition between "1 condor can kill anything" to "the whole squadron is wiped out". Some transition where your planes are damaged or you start struggling with keeping them alive, encouraging research into better aircraft. Why should I bother improving my fleet when I'm doing so well? Part of the strategy is economic management: using your resources where they are most needed. If the game punishes you so harshly for doing well, in a realistic sense, but bad in a metagamish "I know from past playthroughs that, in X days medium sized UFOs are going to appear, so I have to hurry with those hugely expensive hangars and planes" way, then it's not a very good game. I'm also finding base strategy hard to grasp. If I concentrate my attention in one base, then I barely have enough money to keep up with alien tech in terms of armor, weapons and planes, but quickly lose funding in unatended regions and lose them. If I try to build even a second base, then I don't have the money for the planes in them or build more laboratories/workshops. I find myself in a lose/lose proposition no matter what I do, which leads again to a new game. I might seem overly critical, but don't forget I said first I liked the game. I think it has potential, as long as some outstanding problems are solved.
  23. First of all thank you for continuing game development! But I'd like mention several points which look not good. 1. In Strategy map. I'm not sure but it looks like I can not send fighters to patrol clean terrain. Just to search for alien activity outside my radar circles. 2. In Strategy map. What about sending fighters and drop ships back to combat without full fuel tanks? Is it possible? If not I'd ask to bring that ability back! 3. In Strategy map. Geoscape color. In 18th build it was better! Can you bring it back? Now it seem to be too funny. 4. In Strategy map. In Air Combat. No it is very unstable. Usually comes to game freeze and falling down to desktop. 5. In General. Is it seriously, 2 missiles per Foxtrot? WTF? :-) 6. In Tactical map. Now I can not see Alien movements which are not hidden. All is covered by 'Hidden movement' screen, which does not cover all the screen... but. I hope it is possible to do something. 7. In Tactical map. Can you bring back in mission inventory screen? In 18th build that was very good! Now I can see it is too small on my 1920x1080 screen! Thank you.
  24. Another Company failing big time doing a real xcom Remake. I played my 5th Ufo Mission and had to play the same map the 3rd time in a row. same landing position, same Ufo position, and even the same location for the aliens. I was like WTF and registered here and learned they did not implement random maps! WTF? Last time I visited here half a year ago they stated that they will have random maps! And now AFTER I bought the game I find out that I got cheated! They bullshited me! I am so pissed now! I want my money back!
  25. Personally and firstly a big thanks to you for getting this game going and out there. Having played the original XCOM games, all those many years back and having played every half decent version since, I had to have your Xeno version and it dragged me back into the fun filled days of 94. But, to your game. Firstly...terror attacks! OMG...having encountered a handful of these I just have to ask...is it intended for me to land surrounded by nasties and have my squad obliterated in three turns? If this is the case, might I bring up an old idea me and my friends had when playing the original. Calling in Artillery cover. Or better still we had the idea of a mini game where you pick your landing site and have the option to bomb a given landing site before landing and thus clearing it and enabling your troops to secure a perimeter. Even smoke rounds would help! Secondly...research in the steam version is waaaay slower than in the demo. A few more shinies would make up for the slow progress. This is more important when you start getting corvette class UFO's which your planes don't even scratch. Troop characterisation. All I can say is MORE. The great thing about all the XCOM games (yes I know this isn't XCOM, but you get my meaning) was the fun and odd sense of loss attached to having a certain element personalisation. Love the aerial combat mini game btw. So much better than the standard linear exchange of fire from the XCOM games. Gameplay and LOS. I'm guessing that the latest version hasn't had this sorted yet. The fact that a soldier behind cover when firing will simply shoot the cover in front of him most of the time must be on your 'to do' list. Please. The same goes for cover and throwing grenades, which as above, just explode in the soldiers face. Come on guys, they're trained soldiers, I think throwing over things is on page one of the combat manual. I would moan a little about friendly fire, but on retrospection, it makes you pay attention and so fine. Vehicles. Think they need to be a little tougher. Well, a lot tougher in fact. A soldier in upgraded combat armour seems to be able to take more damage than an armoured car. I'm sure the vehicles get better, but as with planes, without the research being sped up a little, they are just sitting ducks. Maybe an option to upgrade their armour, while keeping weapons. Maybe with a movement restriction or something. This would also enable them early on to be used as troop carriers to get your soldiers out of sticky landing sites and to somewhere safe before heading out into combat. Well, thats it for now. Ive only played the steam version for a day, so will update this as I go. like I said, awesome to play the game and thanks you for making it happen
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