(Mod Update) XNT Into Darkness V5.3 - "The Firebat" (DISCUSSION THREAD)

[ventuswings]

...So we're grounding little children into particles? I bet aliens didn't expect that when they decided to "recycle" humans - it's a whole new level of reverse engineering!

[TacticalDragon]

...So we're grounding little children into particles? I bet aliens didn't expect that when they decided to "recycle" humans - it's a whole new level of reverse engineering!

Is something like search the poison that make children into this monster.

A symbol of purify or identify the "Black Liquor".

[Victor_Tadeu]

Well, I kinda get used to fight gargols. They can be nasty if he just show up around the corner, but here is my tip for all the aliens based on my own game experience and preferences (until mid game at least):

First the basic: as always move slow and progressively. Dont rush troops into unprotected/unsupported/unexplored areas. Sometimes dont move at all if you think you can kill something with reaction fire. Dont think just what will happen in this turn, but in the alien phase and the next one turn. Aliens generally are much more powerful than you at close range especially at early game and when big ships starts to show up, but your Xenonauts excel at long range. Never cover the map with two flanks open to attacks: find one of the edges and keep it clear. If you control the edge, the attacks will always come for up or the other side, so you can split your squad in just two teams instead of spreading everyone to cover a lot of ground. If you do everything right, after the initials turns you will know from where the enemy will come from, so you can spot them from far away, and dealing with aliens from far away is the key, gargol or not. I almost never have a soldier in a place where at least three other soldiers cant support him. Keep your support weapons a little behind your troops, not because they have better range, but they have penalty accuracy if you move. So let the enemy try to shoot your riflemen while you support weapons spend all it's turn shooting. If you move them, leave them in a position ready to shoot next turn. If you are unsure what you will face in the near future, digin your soldiers and wait 3, 4, 5 turns if you want. Remember: reaction fire also kills and you will have a full turn of AP to fire if you spot an enemy during alien phase.

- All sebillians have crap accuracy. Engage them at long range and they will be powerless. The lesser ones will behave cowardly from far away, so you can take as many turns you like to kill it. When faced on that circumstances they are the easier aliens types, even the great ones, they would just last more.

- Ceasan have good accuracy but are somewhat cowards, especially when facing superior number and firepower. They wont do any dare moves and most of them die or will be supressed on the turn he is spotted or in the next one if he dont get out of sight. I have a small impression that they, well, shit themselfs if they are hit from far away and start to cry, but at close range they will have no problem to go around that corner and shot you in the face if they know you are there, so dont give them that satisfaction. And, ah, remember... they can be easily instakilled with a sniper.

- Androns are problematic but cant crouch and dont use to much cover, and almost dont move far away from where you spotted it as long he can still try to shot you, otherwise he may just walk half map searching for you. Stay away since almost no weapon can instakill it, so concentrate fire and dont advance (aka find more enemies) until you bring him down. He dont heal, so the damage stack, so be patient. If you keep him shot at you, you also have time to bring your big toys to shot at him, and snipers and missiles cut him like butter.

- Harridans are the worst, since they have good long range capabilities and high damage, but at least are fragile. This bastard are also very mobile, so dont expect him to sit behind a cover and wait to be flanked or a sniper shows up. Make they priority targets. Sometimes even the first sniper can instakill it or seriously cripple his heal. Unlike Andros, they are momentary threats, since they can kill a Xenonauts fast, but will also die fast. Superior caesans sometimes should be face like a harridan, do it if you must.

- Vipers... the first time I fought them I thought they was the most evil thing ever, but after I learned their behaviour, they scare me less than a sebillian with a good gun. Lesser vipers are a coward psycho. He will almost NEVER run directly at a group of xenos looking at him. He will try to flank you and move closer, but this all you need. If you see where he moved, you can shot him or just put some soldiers looking at that direction. When he came out reaction fire will trigger, he will run for another cover again. Some times you just turn around and he moved to less than 10 squares from you. With a full turn, he is dead. You dont charge a viper, you sit and watch he run to his death. Ah... did I mention snipers can instakill it?

- Gargol... gargols can be easy or a beast depending on his distance. Unlike vipers, who are always moving, gargols sometimes just sit and wait, and it is his strong and weak point. If you discover a gargol just at close range you may need to retreat your whole team, but if you do it from far away, sometimes he just run from cover to cover allowing you to shot from many turns without never trying to get close. Blow his cover with a bazooka and let your sniper and machinegun 'cause a good damage. When they advance they sometimes are kinda stupid. They wont charge mindless into a bunch of guns, but he will try to get close. Sometimes he end his turn in a small blind spot just in the middle of your squad, and if no other enemy is near, focus your whole team fire on them and they are dead. The problem is... their heal factor is insane and there is never a "dying gargol" after the alien turn. They also need a lot of firepower to die, and when they are close, if you dont focus or retreat they WILL kill someone. This is terrible when you need to shot another aliens or retreat from a good cover and know someone may react fire at you. Gargols to me are more a disruptor than a killer. He is a real threat when he is disrupting your team by forcing you to move and concentrate fire while other aliens are trying to shot you, alone they are just big meat sack. Keep it in mind.

- Reapers are something like a midpoint between vipers and gargols. They are not so mobile, fragile and coward like vipers, but they are also not a tanker like gargol. But STILL... it can be scared away if spotted from mid range just like vipers. The problem is when they are close, since they will charge. So, if you have one close to you, retreat you team or soldier to a save position, he wont be willing to get near and dont try to flank so much you like a viper would if you keep him far. Ps: caution! TD said he will add zombification back! He likes to see you suffer and drink your tears!

- Superior Androns... I put them in another category 'cause you MUST face them with caution. They usually have good weapons, tons of HP, good accuracy and almost always are supported by lesser androns. A good option is to flat the ground around him with rockets, even if it's inside the UFO (winning the mission is better than losing it trying to recover everything). This will 'cause a good amount of damage leave him open to fire and wont run far away seeking for cover since he is inside the UFO. Ah, and focus on the weaker androns first. Remember that they dont real, so play safe and dont try risky things. Superior androns DONT forgive a mistake, even from far away! To me they are the tough enemies of all, specially 'cause they are inside the UFO and never alone!

-Delta/Alpha Vipers... at first I thought they need a whole strategy around him, but it's kinda simple. Use a strategy that I call R.R.E.: Retreat, Regroup, Explode. When you retreat, they usually go after you, leaving other aliens behind. Your main goal is try to face him alone. Kill other targets if you can, otherwise just retreat until they cant shoot at you well. Explosion, not bullets, are your best friend against him, so throw everything you have. Apart from it they behave kinda like a regular viper. They wont try to charge your team up front, he will seek for opportunity targets. Dont give him any and he will feel confused. The Delta Viper will run for your flanks just like a regular viper would do and if you are far he wont have time to do damage. The Alpha one is annoying but dont do much damage neither have good accuracy. Deltas will kill you if you screw up, but Alphas dont have that high damage potentials, just dont keep you soldiers shoulder to shoulder.

When you learn to face each alien as it own and not like just "another ET", none of them are exactly impossible to overcome. A sebillian genarally can be ignored from far away, but not a caesan. A gargol wont try to flank you, a viper will. Androns keep pressure all the time, but dont do smart moves and can be easily flanked. Just consider who is the priority target at a given time and mark him to die that turn if you can. Of course not everything go as planned all the time, sometimes an alien behaves different from what you would expect, and that is the difference of a well positioned team and one who just stand there. A well positioned team can responde to anything and wont be left with no options after the enemy do something odd, and by it I mean they arent all clustered together meaning you have to move everyone and almost no one will shot just because a gargol rushed into you.

And remember... when everything else goes wrong, R.R.E. (Retreat Regroup Explode) can save you! Ps: RRE is not necessarily an order of actions, but a philosophy:

Retreat: get away from a threat that you cant beat now, you dont need to kill that gargol on that turn neither you can or should face three superior androns at the same time!

Regroup: focus your fire! Soldiers next to each other can shot at the same target, killing it faster, dont spread your firepower! Focus it! You can kill two gargols or two androns in two turns if you focus one in each turn, but it can take five turns if you try to kill both of them together!

Explode: your focus is to survive and win the mission, not recover things! You wont recover anything if your squad dies! The time to save ammo and rockets to a emergency has come and there is no more "I will save it to a moment of need". Shot that rocket right inside that UFO destroying all its profitable components and lootable bodies if you must. You wont think that additional 100k worths much after two or three of you favorite and best soldiers dies just because you didnt shot a missile in that andron to recover that data core. You can make 100k later, but a dead soldiers is definitive. Recovered items is a luxury, survival is a must. If you keep your soldiers alive and leveling up the cost will pay off later, otherwise you will ragequit before the game ends. High level soldiers are your best and more expensive weapon/armor/technology/airplane/base/everything. You WILL pursue it and you WONT let yourself lose it if you can do anything to avoid it!

Edited September 9, 2014 by Victor_Tadeu

[ventuswings]

Some very helpful advices in there! Can you give advice for Wraith and Heavy Plasma (sic?) or whatever weapon that goes boom as well? Haven't figured out how to handle them yet. Also, for Gorgols, or in fact any other cases, always remember that you can drop the weapon to throw 2 grenades in same turn - some people surprisingly do not know this lifesaving maneuver.

Edited September 9, 2014 by ventuswings

[Alewalek]

rly? Never figured that out- same turn when u drop weapon or next turn?

[zenish]

Guys Thank you,

So much for all your opinions, critics and appreciation, specially for the AI that is one of the hardest, time consuming and well developed part of the game.

One thing I didn't explicitly mention is the art assets, especially the xenopedia images.

They are really well done, quite fitting with the dark themes of the mod. Cuddos to the artist.

I been working in some improvements for this issues:

They all sound like good additions and changes, great to hear the mod still is in active development.

With the zombies back on, just please.. please!!.. don't give the bastards armor. Its such an op and terrifying ability that to properly balance it they really need to be soft targets.

Wait until you face Insane difficulty Gorgols

Thanks, but no thanks. haha

I tried veteran and it wasn't pretty. Currently on normal and I still take a beating.

And this game when u used up all ur ammo. Isnt it awsome? Look at this in this game u never use ur ammo so its like infinite. And now look at ur game - a new extra thing to deal with. Limited ammo!!

BTW What i didnt like was for example huge amount of rocket (and aoe in general) equipped aliens.

It is! It really is. I never came close to this level of despair and exhilaration on vannilla. I find the difficulty to be quite brutal, way above my usual ceiling for these games, and yet I'm still playing it for that reason alone. It's really satisfying to come out on top of these constant dire situations.

I also agree on the rocket fellas. Maybe it is because I just crumble whenever a find a bunch of them.. I recently tried a terror mission where I encountered sibillians.. Plasma cannon and grenade bonanza, not to mention reapers and gorgons everywhere. I had to, of course, abort.

It was such an AOE spam, that I felt I needed a least flying armor to hide on rooftops to have a chance at winning it. Really outclassed on that one.

...but here is my tip for all the aliens based on my own game experience and preferences (until mid game at least):

Thanks. Took plenty of notes.

edit: Any tips for fighting drones? I find myself bleeding everywhere, running in panic, constantly suppressed and unable to retaliate or a good combination of these. That paired with any Andron in the vicinity is just abort material. Worst thing so far.

cheers

Edited September 9, 2014 by zenish

[TacticalDragon]

Thanks for your tips,

@Victor, yes your right about all of your tips, androns are the kings of the GC. I still believe that High Rank sebillians are fearfull. Sebillians has a unique type of behavior,in some maps they can be a nigthmare, specially when they use "Smoke + Gargols".

@Ventus, I love grenadiers, dual frag is a solid movement.

@Zenish, Light Drones are weak to shields, they take too long to take them down.

The release is pretty close.

[podbelski]

you can drop the weapon to throw 2 grenades in same turn - some people surprisingly do not know this lifesaving maneuver.

do you mean 2 grenades simultaneously? Could not reproduce that...

you can throw one after another in the same turn, but this does not require a weapon drop

[ventuswings]

Yeah, that's what I meant, was an advice for soldier using two-handed weapon. I try to find what LP of this mod there is, and I haven't seen many people do this when it seemed advisable to do so. Who needs grenadiers when everybody can become one in the fly?

[blackwolf]

the reaper's Zombify ability is turn on again

TD i love you xDDD

and about the "double grenade trick" i also done it and he refers to this:

if you use the grenade quicklost you get a TU's penalty for every throw...making a grenade using like 70~75% of your TU's in that turn but if you DROP YOUR GUN(getting into the inventory and manually putting your gun in the floor wich cost 0 TU's) and them moving two grenades to both hands slots...you can TROW both grenades in one turn (one after the other of course), this would be really effective in the early game when your rifles arent so good killing stuff...after you get allenium grenades this will be deadly to almost any low-mid tier alien (except with androns and some sebillians).

[podbelski]

my installation allows a double throw from a quickslot, one ofter the other, w/o dropping twohanded weapon. This consumes near 100% of TUs, you can't walk at the same turn at all. Though it is not pure XNT, but one of earlier Xenophobia versions...

[ventuswings]

@ blackwolf

You don't even have to move grenades to your hand slot, since cost of throwing grenades using quick-throw button adjusts to account for the fact that your hand are no longer occupied, at least that was my impression.

@ podbelski

Ah I suspect that is reason for the confusion. You cannot do that on vanilla XNT. Xenophobia understandably has to alter XNT balance & mechanics a bit, so it can lead to misunderstandings when user of the mod posts here without exactly specifying which version of the game they are using.

Edited September 9, 2014 by ventuswings
clarifications

[TacticalDragon]

In theory, in any XNT build a soldier with single weapon (Pistol, Warhawk, even a single shield) can throw 2 grenades per turn by the quick slot in sacrifice of 100% of his TU.

Thanks for the support Ventus ^^

[Tom Sawyer]

Guys Thank you,

So much for all your opinions, critics and appreciation, specially for the AI that is one of the hardest, time consuming and well developed part of the game.

I been working in some improvements for this issues:

Gargols dont give any reward in ground combat, in XNT:HG (XNT 5.4 "Hell Gate") gargols will give you a plus interesting feature, extraction procedure of each Gargol Corpse let you build some special type of grenade to compensate the nightmare of combat this unit in combat without explosives.

Weapon progression,

Some intermediately tools and weapons are added to the game, specially Basic Ballistics upgrades. Research tree is easier to reach and to understand. I hope that this help the player to develop equipment to stand alien invasion without unbalance the game.

Damage, wounds and Aliens

I improve the general overall of all xenonauts weapons and rebalance some issues with soldier stats and armors. My objective with this modifications is let the player make more mistake without compromising the entire mission. Some of the stats and armor value for some aliens are modified or changed to bring more tactical elements to the game, specially the reaper's Zombify ability is turn on again, Viper's Speed reduced, Gargol Defenses reduced but maximum life increased.

You will see the changes in time, Im pretty sure that you will love it.

TD you are like Willy Wonka tempting us poor kids with all this delicious candy. GIVE US 5.4 before we bite off your leg!

[Victor_Tadeu]

I dont have any tips for late-mid and late game 'cause I always stop to play and start over when a new update comes around... hahahahaha! When I smell a update even from far away and try to play without it I just try to play and think "what's the point!? I want the new stuff!". Plus I'm not having to much time to play, anyway...

Currently my Europa Universalis IV game is also on a hold 'cause I'm waiting for MEIOU mod update (last hotfix came out bugged). I kinda feel "I have nothing to play" but I have! I just cant!

And, man, didn't know that about the grenade stuff! Always good to learn something new! Now I can call RRE tactics RRE&E... Retreat, Regroup, Explode and Explode again! Hahaha!

*Victor income from recovery falls 30%*

[ventuswings]

Huh I must have not noticed with keeping my troops mobile. It definitely cost less TU though! Also I also hate pestering for deadline but you're asking for it with all the hype!!

[Gothyc]

Hey guys - is there any estimation for when the new version is coming out?

[TacticalDragon]

Hey guys - is there any estimation for when the new version is coming out?

The corepack is uploading right now.

[TacticalDragon]

NEW VERSION UPLOADING

CLOSING THIS TOPIC

XNT V6.0 Hellgate

Thanks guys for all your feedback here.