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I've only been playing for 4 days now, a full 4 days I've played all day each day. However I have been watching xenonauts for a long time and was a huge fan of the '94 xcom, not so much a fan of the new one. Heres a few items I feel would improve gameplay. 1. Increase the range that I can see the terrain. I understand from a gameplay point that I can only see so far to keep it challenging and terrifying but I think from a game play point of view the ability to see only the terrain for an additional distance would be very good. There are a number of situations where combat in the game feels like this: I'm behind a rock/anything, I can see out in the distance a rock/anything. I'm being fired upon from the total blackness past that. I charge to the rock in the distance and now I can see... look a barn. why couldn't I see that there was a barn across the field before i started crossing? I'm not suggesting uncover the whole map but add in an addition sight radius that stays in the grayed out state, fogged over essentially so that it only shows the terrain. I think around 10 tiles of fogged view being seen would be good enough to be able to say were taking fire I think it came from the house or in that alley, instead of always saying I'm being shot at from out there in the unknown blackness. Additionally when you land you should have terrain awareness of the immediate surroundings in all 4 directions of the drop ship. after all it has windows. In fact the drop ship should serve as a unit for vision. it has pilots in it right? i know they are not graphically represented but someone had to fly it there and should have seen if there is an alien standing 3 tiles in front of the windshield when they landed, It irks me when i find them there, just annoys the heck out of me that the guy flying didn't bother to tell me hey theres a baddie right in front of us, keep that in mind when you step out the side door. 2. side arm equipment slot. or make pistols 2x4 and vertical for belt placement(yes im picky) have you ever worn a pistol on your belt? In my regular clothes I can pack a pistol and 2 mags concealed. yet thats all my soldiers can fit on their belt in combat gear. I don't equip my troops with pistols because theres no need for a sidearm unless they carry a shield or a rocket launcher at this point. now you might think this is just pointless to worry about but if we had a side arm equipment slot we could make the game more interesting with my next suggestion. 3. weapon malfunctions Add in a small chance for a weapon to malfunction when fired then slightly increase this chance with each shot fired through the weapon on a given mission. soldiers carrying assault rifles, or shotguns (or the equivalent higher tiered weapons) can automatically transition to a sidearm when the weapon malfunctions. (explanation is those weapons are typically used in a sling so the soldier simply drops it and it hangs in front of them while they draw the side arm) then they can clear the jam when they feel its acceptable to spend the tu's to do so. Soldiers carrying machine guns, rocket launchers, or precision rifles on the other hand would still work the same way having to unequip the weapon and pull a side arm manually. Ideally this would require the addition of a lot of artwork (8 images per soldier, per slung weapon, per side arm) a lot of that is just cut out x weapon and replace with y weapon and theres the new image though. Realistically it could work without any additional art as like a weapon swap mechanic when the main weapon jams you equip the sidearm automatically (only for assault rifles and shotguns) Consider it this way, the most memorable thing about a game like this is the fact it keeps us sitting at the edge of our computer chairs nervously wondering whats going to happen next. This is why we play, this is what brings us back again and again. Take that and add to it, a new terror, a new chance for a dramatic comeback or defeat. 4. more crops we don't eat cabbage as much as we did back in '94, its no longer the base of the food pyramid. Seriously though I never understood why the '94 game had cabbage everywhere, corn fields are far more terrifying. I really think #1 would be a great addition, and I imagine a simple one when compared to #s 2 and 3. the next 2 would go hand in hand with each other and I feel greatly add to the suspense and replayability of the game. And lastly #4 is just me being sick of looking at cabbage fields, had enough of that in the '90s. Thank you guys for making a great game, I've been looking forward, for a long time now, for a new version of xcom. One that kept the spirit of the original and the suspense I still remember from it alive.

So...the whole 16 (12 on a diagonal I guess?) square sight range thing is...not doing it for me. X-COM had a sight range of 20 squares, which meant that you could see a fair ways. In a terror mission, I can barely make out the building across the street. Much less the Androns there. The game is encouraging me to use spotters, which means they end up dead. Androns miss a whole hell of a lot more than I do. So I was thinking that there should be binoculars, that change your vision mode to a much narrower cone, but twice as long? Maybe the same thing for a sniper scope? My current solution is to saturate the area with alenium missiles.

So....I'm being picked off by Sebillians from like 30 squares away in the dark through smoke. And it's moronic. If this is how it's going to be, I will be more than happy to quadruple the range of grenades. Because no.

Hi all, been a while since I tried Xenonauts, been a bit busy in RL, anyway so i downloaded the new steam version and had a bash. and I don't know if its just me not being used to the latest version, but I noticed a few things. Firstly Aliens can fire from epic, Epic ranges. I'm talking about 2-3 turns movement range away. (also seems like xenonauts sight range has been reduced?) secondly they seem to have mad amounts of AP. I watched a suppressed alien fire 3-4 shots and KO a guy. Thirdly seems like their Damage and Accuracy has increased a fair bit? other than that everything I've seen seems a looks more positive and it looks like the team have made some great moves forward.

I increased the base sight range to 60. Now, when it's daylight, you can see across the map, as you might expect. The dynamic of the game changes quite a bit, my machine gunner and sniper both have become more key to victory. For some maps, this also gives the feeling of dropping into a hot LZ during Vietnam... If a number of aliens are within sight of your chopper, you'll need to make a run for cover or fight your way out. In general, cover becomes far more important, and you find yourself dashing between it since the fog of war isn't all pervading. For sight penalties, I tried setting the range to 52. And for bonuses, I tried 68. The person who suggested this to me was using a base of 56, 52 for penalized vision, and 60 for improved vision. I recommend that you all try editing your vision ranges to something like these numbers, to see what you think of it. I feel it has really improved the game for me.

I noticed the troops are only able to see a short distance compared to the aliens. My troops end up getting blue balls of death from aliens that aren't really that far away, yet cant be seen. I end up more often than not having to move a person towards the direction of the fire until they find the alien, which never seems to work out good for him/her. I completely understand this at night, but during the day it would be nice to put a heavy gunner on a road or something, and he actually be able to see down the road for example. Also, it would be awesome if you could put night vision goggles in the squads backpacks that they could equip during night missions to increase the visual range. There could even be upgrades for these later on just like grenades. It fits in with cold war era tech as well. Just a thought.

Are these working at the moment? They don't seem to be limiting my sight range or the aliens. Was playing around with how to use it in the new version and I'm getting sniped right through a solid wall of smoke about 15 squares deep.

I updated to the last version and could not help but to notice that I was being shot at from the fog of war. It seems that aliens could see me from 50% further than I cold see them. Is this working as intended ?

A little short, isn't it? It seems like the xenonauts are pretty near-sighted compared to X-Com operatives. Comparing xenonauts alpha gameplay footage to X-Com gameplay makes it look like X-Com operatives can see almost twice as far away as the xenonauts can. Is it possible that xenonaut sight range could increase before final release?