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I'm not sure if this is a bug or a balance issue, but I've noticed that on a lot of maps, you can't trust intuitive lines of sight. I've got a slowly growing collection of screenshots where a random tree or bush is 100% blocking a shot despite the line been my soldier and the target being clear. On top of that, most larger graphical items seem indestructible (or at least capable of soaking up a full MG burst). Is this a concern, or is there a way add an option to show which squares have LoS on a target square when you mouse over it? It also seems a bit asymmetric, I've had aliens shoot diagonally through windows, but I'll be damned if I can find the magic square that allows that shot on the first try.

So this is one of the major mechanics that strikes me as unbalanced in the current game: the combination of squad sight and persistent LOS (i.e. a unit can look at a location and move away, but that location still stays "revealed" for the rest of the turn). This means you can game the system pretty effectively by sending your soldier into range of an alien to spot him, then run him out of fire range to keep him safe but still pick the alien off with your snipers. That only leaves you vulnerable to reaction fire during the entire process. It also leads to a problem where if an alien spots your team, they will all be able to shoot at you even if you then kill that alien. It's frustrating because there's nothing you can do about it. I'm therefore thinking we'll make these two changes: LOS is no longer persistent throughout the turn. The only areas revealed are those that are directly in the LOS of a unit at that particular time. Therefore if a unit is killed or turns away from an area, it is no longer revealed. If a unit is suppressed, it loses all LOS. This does more to address the second issue, as if you come across an alien in your turn you either need to kill or suppress it or you'll possibly get enemy squad fire at you during the alien turn (or retreat out of range). It only partially addresses point 1, but unfortunately that's always going to be a valid tactic so long as we don't decide to force to utilize their units sequentially without letting them swop between them - and I've no plans to change that. Thoughts and comments welcome.

So after finally getting to play uninterrupted for a few hours there were a few things I noticed I thought I'd share (and hopefully not repeating anything already said >_<). First of all, when you engage in a night mission you get flares which is nice - not so nice is that your xenonauts can't seem to throw them over cover. There's the throwing animation but that's that, the flare seems to sink straight into the cover object instead of being thrown over it. It seems to work with grenades but to be honest, haven't really dared trying after the flares did funky stuff. There's some stuff related to the game being 2D I reckon too as it's very obviously tile based when you're trying to shoot at something from an angle and the game tells you there's no line of sight. For all intents and purposes, this happens especially around UFOs because of their shape it seems (not so bad behind square objects I noticed). There have been those moments when I couldn't fire at an alien yet I should have been perfectly able to judging by the overhead look. I realize this might be tricky to get right, but just wanted to point this out anyways. I also had a rather hilarious moment with my RPG guy - he misfired (which is fine by itself) yet instead of the missile ending up wherever, he shot it into the ground one tile ahead of him. ... Facepalm! Now, the interesting part was he didn't actually die, but took very minor damage all told. Both these things need some correcting I think - I can fully see someone who never used a rocket launcher cock things up so badly, but please, no trained soldier. It just looks awkward. And secondly - if there were any such incredibly mishaps, I highly doubt anybody would survive it. And a question if you like - I get that line of sight for human soldiers had to be a little on the short side for the size of the maps, and there's nothing wrong with that. But will there eventually be a kind of system in place where soldiers actually 'hear' movement in the sense that they can 'guess' the location of an enemy? This could be based on skills, obviously - as it is humans and aliens alike appear deaf. This is one part of the new XCom I liked - and why not have the aliens in Xenonauts be capable of this too? Furthermore, there could be some aliens that make almost no sound when moving while there could be researchable 'stealthy' stuff for the xenonauts as well. I guess I'll end it there for now. It's a very fun game on a sidenote - I think once this gets some more updates I may finally be able to uninstall the old XComs and the Firaxis one ^^

Hi, I have played trough a bit of Xenonauts and noticed a few things that really bothered me. Line of Sight: Enemy and Soldier's LoS is impossible to see. This is VERY frustrating and coupled with some odd decision to prevent the player from moving in contact with some objects like the bush makes this a tactical nightmare for all the wrong reasons. X-Com has similar problems and was heavily criticized for it. It would be a good idea to learn from them. Your actions should be as clear as possible otherwise the higher the difficulty of the game the more frustration there issue will create. The LoS should not reset every time I end my turn. I am rather confident that my troops don't have conversion disorder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder Some tactical situations have my men shooting from a corner, however, instead of leaning, they shoot right at the corner itself. There is no reason, what so ever, in any universe, movie, or fantasy where shooting at your cover, 30cm in front of you has ever given positive results. Soldiers: There is no distinction of any kind among the sprites of my soldiers. They all look like the same copy of the same character with the same weapon. It would be wise to have a variation of some kind, or at least show the names above their head. My men, can't hit an alien the size of a refrigerator standing still in open terrain 20m away from them and are blind to anything past 30m. I am no expert but that's immersion breaking to me. Lose the blue uniforms, they have no advantage. Sounds: Footsteps are way too loud and having the alien phase transition to a loading screen is so immersion breaking that any ambiance the game created so far goes out of the window. TAKE OUT THE ALIEN PHASE SCREEN ! Tutorials: Your game needs them. Here is a good representation of how your soldiers feel in battle: [ATTACH=CONFIG]2192[/ATTACH]

I accidentally posted this in the wrong section. I'm re-posting it here, with a few edits. Suggestions I played it for a bit, and did two ground missions. These are my initial ideas. 1. (After editing based on feedback) When trying to shoot at or throw to an area, it'd be nice to know that I couldn't hit that area. When firing and throwing at the ground, I saw no accuracy indicator. Also, it would be nice if the cross-hairs went grey if there was no line of sight, or for grenades if you didn't have the strength, or had an obstacle in the way. Perhaps with some kind of indicator as to which was the problem. 2. Implement 2nd and possibly 3rd stories for buildings. I'm hoping this is already planned. I saw stairs going nowhere, but my soldiers could not climb them. They went through instead of up. There were two buildings on the map that had these stairs to nowhere. I used the camera level indicator. I would think it was just a bug if there had been second stories shown for these buildings. 3. I gotta rename my base! I made a thread about this earlier, but it bears repeating. Let me rename my base. 4. The Chinook has one extra space after my soldiers and tank are aboard. Why can't I load a ninth soldier? Make this more apparent in the load out screen that this space is occupied with something. 5. Some functions should be available from more than one base screen, like equipping soldiers from the personnel screen by double clicking the soldier's name. What would be really nice is being able to check a soldier's equipment by double clicking their green icon in the Chinook load out screen. That way I could easily ensure that whoever was near the doors had smoke grenades, and other such things. 6. When I pressed escape, it brought up a menu, but it wouldn't go away by pressing escape again. Make my escape key presses effective. 7. (This is already implemented, but it might be spelled out once tool-tips are implemented) I'd like a way for someone who's carrying a shotgun or a rifle to use a grenade without dropping the weapon, even if it kills my accuracy and/or time units. I'm used to the original, where I could just put the grenade in my soldier's left hand at the expense of accuracy if I fired the weapon. 8. When I click on a weapon, my soldier goes into a mode where I'm looking at stuff at the ground he can shoot at. I should be able to press escape to leave this mode. I had to select another soldier and then select the first soldier again. Some of these issues are small, and I can get around without them, but I still think they should be added to the game; they would make it better. Anyway, I still had fun. Even when my soldier killed herself by shooting the gas main or whatever it was. It was kind of funny.