Milestone 1 Balance Thread

[doubleskulls]

12 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

....make grenades trigger Overwatch BEFORE you throw - with a penalty to accuracy based on damage.

My standard breach tactic is to open the door with a shield and throw a flashbang. If I'm going to trigger reaction shots throwing the flashbang it significantly increases the likelihood of taking casualties doing it the 'safe' way. 

I agree that grenadiers seem underpowered, but I think within game balance grenades are pretty reasonable. It may not be realistic, but if grenades become better then the only reason to shoot would be either because of long range or to get the kill, and get the equipment/corpse.  

[Vojevoda]

A couple of points from after 160+ days in game.

Some background. I have played A LOT of original X-Com and X-com 2.  And even done a full playthrough for Xcom Hardmode Expansion(the best way to play original Xcom BTW). Also, played all Firaxis Xcoms(not a huge fan). And Phoenix Point Game of the year(after developers made game, well, a proper game). And, of course Xenonauts 1(though initial state of the game made sure I did not replay it more then once).

I play standard difficulty for now. To get a feel of things. I see a lot of references above for early missions being too difficult. Based on my normal difficulty I find it not the case. I`d say it`s a rather expected early game curve, while your soldiers are inexperienced. But I see how highest difficulty can become a problem. And since I played it, there was a minor nerf to those missions. So more comment on that after second playthough. 

Regarding accelerated\laser weapons debate, my opinion is that game should skip standard laser research, and make advanced lasers available a little further away. Like a couple month, give or take. I`ve been trying different research options and got my accelerated weapons way before lasers. And can 100% state that accelerated weapons are very good compared to lasers. And in no way those are trap, like many said before.  Lasers have only few advantages - an accuracy bonus for low level operatives and very good terrain destruction. In pretty much every other aspect, I proffered accelerated over non advanced lasers.

Overall, ground combat feels a bit too easy right now. I play semi iron man. And even with that, I`ve lost only one operative so far. Technically, I`ve lost more. Somewhere around five or six. But every other got "saved" by medical facility bonuses after return to base.

What feels very alien and confusing is air combat. Ar first, everything is fine. But once you get to abductors and interceptors, things get very weird. To be fair, I`ve lost one of my bases, so maybe that setback is what makes thing difficult but still. The main problem is right now game states that air combat is "in between state" and we should use auto resolve function. But after a while, I see that if I don`t use manual combat - i`m loosing hard. It takes forever for air crafts to repair damage. Ensuring that I let plenty of UFOs let loose a wreck havoc on geo map resulting in quite significant spike in panic levels. I`ve seen  some videos of other people playing. And what seems weird is that I`ve seen UFO fighters only once(I believe) as part of an escort of large ship. And now, all I see is Interceptors. And three of  those things just melts three of my Phantoms with Laser Lances. But again, the main problem I see is If you use autoresolve your crafts get too much damage and it takes forever to repair. And if your crafts are damaged, good luck killing subsequent UFOs without abusing manual air combat.  I may be very wrong on this, but overall, aerial combat feels like least fun part. And more importantly, least comprehensive. No tutorial, nothing. Just figure out things yourselves by loosing plenty of air crafts. 

[bonerstorm]

6 hours ago, DaviddesJ said:

That's not what I found.

What was the ending panic of each region in your last game?

If you had one or two regions over 80/90, then that's my point.

EDIT: Mine is 53/16/30/49/18/47 at Day 228.

4 hours ago, doubleskulls said:

My standard breach tactic is to open the door with a shield and throw a flashbang. If I'm going to trigger reaction shots throwing the flashbang it significantly increases the likelihood of taking casualties doing it the 'safe' way. 

I agree that grenadiers seem underpowered, but I think within game balance grenades are pretty reasonable. It may not be realistic, but if grenades become better then the only reason to shoot would be either because of long range or to get the kill, and get the equipment/corpse.  

Which is a lot better than you might think. There are techs that will not unlock if you don't get specific things intact by using HE vs bullets that do not seem to spawn on every enemy, and besides the difference in money value is hundreds of $'s per ground mission. That stuff adds up.

But yes, I would greatly prefer if they didn't nerf grenades by doing the overwatch thing I suggested. I'd just rather have that if it's the only way grenades get a buff. Also I would much rather be able to do the same thing to Wraiths chucking plasma grenades before they turn three of my guys into chunky salsa in one move.

Also I prefer using shotgun and MARS for breaching. Opening the door - rather than walking through it - doesn't trigger overwatch. Once I see the lay of the land, I use another shotty or MARS to break through to a safe place and start deleting them. If shotty can make it to med cover and delete with a couple shotgun blasts, you don't even need flashies. Worst case scenario if you screw up, just fill the room with smoke from rifle/snipers waiting behind and pray.

3 hours ago, Vojevoda said:

Regarding accelerated\laser weapons debate, my opinion is that game should skip standard laser research, and make advanced lasers available a little further away. Like a couple month, give or take. I`ve been trying different research options and got my accelerated weapons way before lasers. And can 100% state that accelerated weapons are very good compared to lasers. And in no way those are trap, like many said before.  Lasers have only few advantages - an accuracy bonus for low level operatives and very good terrain destruction. In pretty much every other aspect, I proffered accelerated over non advanced lasers.

OK but why?

EDIT: The only advantages of accelerated are higher ammo capacity and +5 armor pen, which comes at the cost of -8 armor destruction. Accelerated weighs more too. Perhaps accelerated wouldn't be a trap if lasers came a month or two later... but y tho?

Like I  said before, options include:

1. Making all gun options equal, but with varying strengths/weaknesses
2. Reduce alloy cost to zero.
3. Make accelerated a flat upgrade to all ballistic weapons. Heck... you could even charge PER weapon class and take a pound of flesh in terms of alloys that would more than make up for it.

3 hours ago, Vojevoda said:

What feels very alien and confusing is air combat. Ar first, everything is fine. But once you get to abductors and interceptors, things get very weird. To be fair, I`ve lost one of my bases, so maybe that setback is what makes thing difficult but still. The main problem is right now game states that air combat is "in between state" and we should use auto resolve function. But after a while, I see that if I don`t use manual combat - i`m loosing hard. It takes forever for air crafts to repair damage. Ensuring that I let plenty of UFOs let loose a wreck havoc on geo map resulting in quite significant spike in panic levels. I`ve seen  some videos of other people playing. And what seems weird is that I`ve seen UFO fighters only once(I believe) as part of an escort of large ship. And now, all I see is Interceptors. And three of  those things just melts three of my Phantoms with Laser Lances. But again, the main problem I see is If you use autoresolve your crafts get too much damage and it takes forever to repair. And if your crafts are damaged, good luck killing subsequent UFOs without abusing manual air combat.  I may be very wrong on this, but overall, aerial combat feels like least fun part. And more importantly, least comprehensive. No tutorial, nothing. Just figure out things yourselves by loosing plenty of air crafts. 

Yes.

Like I alluded to before, the best midgame setup is to have one base with 3 Gauss Phantoms and two bases with 3 Torpedo/Laser Angels each. Then never use autobattle - always use the pre-fight setup to surround the UFO and kite/avoid the main gun + missiles if you can. Even so you'll lose a big chunk of health.

It is literally impossible to survive the 3-interceptor fight with any strategy and up-armored Gauss Phantoms. NONE. Maybe the dev responsible accidentally put "interceptor" instead of "fighter" which would have actually made sense for this stage in the game.

Edited July 26, 2023 by bonerstorm

[bonerstorm]

And while I'm at it, here's the optimal base set-up:

5 hangars

3 Radar

4 generators

4 Lab

3 Workshop

2 Training

1 Medbay

5 Living Quarters

1 Storeroom (because you should be selling all your loot anyway - once again, all useless loot should auto-sell after a mission regardless)

2 Base Defense

 

For the two extra bases: (Keep hangars in a big line that ONLY connects to your access lift, so base assaults are bottlenecked) 

4 Hangars

2 Generator

2 Radar

1 Living

1 Training

1 Storeroom

1 Medbay

 

It does not make sense to have any other base setup than this, though honestly missile batteries are completely optional if you have 400k to burn and nothing better to do with it.

Practically useless/trap engineering projects include:

• Guardian armor
• Electro rifle
• Assault shield upgrade
• Actuator module
• Alenium/Fusion Rockets (Vehicles)
• Gauss/Laser Autorifle (Vehicles)
• Alenium Generator
• Upgrades to Missile Battery

If you're playing the game right, you never run out of alenium because many of the things that cost a lot of alenium are traps. You never need more than 3 Phantoms because they have extreme long range, in the event your Angel wings can't handle a particular fight.

Looking at my latest save, I was surprised to see that I hadn't even bothered to do the worksup/lab upgrades because, with the setup I described, I had more than enough research/eng capacity to handle all my needs.

[Kirk]

I'm playing on 'normal' and am a veteran of Xcoms from Microprose days, Firaxis, and the Altar series.

The difficulty is way off. 

From the outset aliens one shot soldiers that are behind cover, its right to lose a good few in the early game meatgrinder but the chance of a wipe is too high and the benfit of cover too low and the likelihood of a soldier surviving is way too low - damage reduction in cover might work, or just less accurate enemies overall by a fraction but getting a good start means too much save-scumming, and load/save times are high which is offputting.

Once you progress (I'm currently burning thru aliens with Gauss + 3rd tier armour) teh aliens skills or armour or accuracy dont seem to scale well, and you quickly overtake them anbd teh game gets much, MUCH easier.  Having enemies later on scale in some way scale better with the survivability / survival rate of squads might help & also encourage people to allow a few cannon fodder to die without endless tedius load/save loops.

[Kirk]

6 hours ago, bonerstorm said:

It is literally impossible to survive the 3-interceptor fight with any strategy and up-armored Gauss Phantoms. NONE. Maybe the dev responsible accidentally put "interceptor" instead of "fighter" which would have actually made sense for this stage in the game.

You just send two squads...  One engages from each side (manual figth mode) to trim off one each then barrel rool your way to freedom. Second squad you can autobattle and wipe up the last.  Sometimes you kill only one in the first battle, then do the second one in manual mode.

Or, arm yer Phantoms with rockets not cannons...

[cman1983]

On 6/24/2023 at 4:51 PM, SoftwareSimian said:

The problem is that research takes far too long (or the game progresses too quickly) that by the time I might even consider researching Accelerated weapons I can already research lasers, so why should I bother with Accelerated?

In xenonauts 1 you could research more than 1 topic at a time would maybe upping the research topics form 1 to 2 or 3 maybe make the other less need stuff get up the tree quicker before the quality

Saying that I prefer xenonauts 2 research as I think the way u choose I would say is the key  to how ur game pans out 

[Chris]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll give the full thread another read when I do my first balance patch, which is likely coming next week.

@bonerstorm you've got some interesting suggestions but a lot of your posts seem to be claiming that your tactics are the ONLY possible way to play the game, which doesn't seem true at all from both my own experience and what I've seen of streamers playing it. Going for the Dragonfly early and not researching armour is certainly a valid tactic, but plenty of people do fine with the basic dropship and better-equipped soldiers. What difficulty level are you playing on?

[bonerstorm]

8 hours ago, Kirk said:

Once you progress (I'm currently burning thru aliens with Gauss + 3rd tier armour) teh aliens skills or armour or accuracy dont seem to scale well, and you quickly overtake them anbd teh game gets much, MUCH easier.  Having enemies later on scale in some way scale better with the survivability / survival rate of squads might help & also encourage people to allow a few cannon fodder to die without endless tedius load/save loops.

I agree 99% but one quick note: remember that ideally you should be able to recover from a party wipe or half-wipe later in the game. Otherwise the entire game becomes save-scum and ironman is pointless. So buffing the aliens too much in midgame just because a full-strength party would steamroll them would come at the expense of being able to eke out a meager victory with an under-strength party.

Also IDK if you've ever played past a point where you lose multiple guys in one turn... but it gets wild as everyone panics and flees with their weapons dropped all over the place. There is a definite "cock-up cascade" effect in X2 that makes party-wipes a danger to even high-powered low-difficulty parties.

No judgies! I've savescummed like a mofo, especially in the early game.

8 hours ago, Kirk said:

SNIP

Wow that is good to know but, honestly, if it's going to be like that I would rather wipe out alien invasion by formatting my hard drive 

7 hours ago, Chris said:

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll give the full thread another read when I do my first balance patch, which is likely coming next week.

@bonerstorm you've got some interesting suggestions but a lot of your posts seem to be claiming that your tactics are the ONLY possible way to play the game, which doesn't seem true at all from both my own experience and what I've seen of streamers playing it. Going for the Dragonfly early and not researching armour is certainly a valid tactic, but plenty of people do fine with the basic dropship and better-equipped soldiers. What difficulty level are you playing on?

Thanks, Chris! I appreciate your hard work! I'm playing on Soldier.

I tend to get wordy (hazard of being a writer), but I didn't exactly mean it's the only way to play and continue the game. I'm saying that, if you play any other way than the one I described, then you're going to very likely (not 100%) be on the verge of losing at least 2 regions to panic by end of content. So the game as a whole isn't broken - just the air combat is janky and the panic mechanic is a bit unbalanced. A critical factor in how screwed you are is how often you get the Global -10 Panic from the hostage rescue mission.

I did my first run with gradual base-building up to three, with three wings of 3 angels. Reached end of content with 1 region collapsed and 3 in danger of collapse. I had almost saved my collapsing region from 100 panic, but it got knocked back to 100 by an undefeatable end-of-month 3-interceptor killing spree.

I did my second run with a second base at the end of the first month, with three wings of 2 angels, one phantom. Reached end of content with 2 in danger of collapse.

In my third run I built BOTH secondary bases at the end of the first month, building up to 1 wing of phantoms and 2 wings of angels. 100% focused on interceptor tech. I'm close to end of content and none of my regions are close to collapse: 53/16/30/49/18/47 at Day 228.

So I didn't technically "lose" the first two games, but I would have certainly lost if panic had increased at the rate it was already going as the game continued. Especially when [spoiler]UFO's start nuking major cities[/spoiler].

If somebody else did better, then I'd be extremely interested to know how the heck they did - considering that AFAIK the only panic reductions aside from dogfights are from hostage rescue.

Edited July 27, 2023 by bonerstorm

[DrazharLn]

On 6/24/2023 at 11:09 PM, Chris said:

As for the pacing - there's a couple of ways to potentially mix this up. Just kinda rambling out loud here, but I could just tweak the timings so there's longer between missions, which makes the pace more sedate.

Or I can try to shuffle the mission order round. But that's not particularly easy, as there's lots of conflicting things to juggle. The first "proper" mission needs to give Alloys and Alien Magnetic Weapons in order to set up the early game choices in the tech tree (e.g. either armour or weapons), and as the Cleaners have ballistic weapons it therefore needs to be an alien mission.

I guess it would be possible to add in another mission before that which is just a straightforward Cleaner deathmatch mission of some kind, and then I can make the second mission an abduction mission with aliens about 10 days later so it unlocks Warden / Accelerated weapons and it's obvious to people that X2 has some new types of mission in it. Then I guess mission 3 can be the intel hub, and 4 be the first scout.

But the problem with that is what the player is meant to research before / after that first mission where they're fighting Cleaners that don't really unlock any new tech. The only starting research is the Combat Vehicles one and that won't last all week. I could make Defender Armour something you research, but then I can't make it part of the starting loadouts to make it obvious to new players that certain types of soldier should use it while others should not (and then Warden Armour would come along to replace it literally a week or so later anyway).

I think it would be nicer for the story to be fighting cleaners first, it can build suspense, I think, and the smash-and-grab mission feels like a scrappier start (as well as demonstrating that there are more mission types than in X1/X-COM). You could keep your preferred research order by contriving a mission that drops some of the required materials. Here are some ideas:

• the existing data mission, but have a crate of alien materials somewhere in the building that is added as an objective after you open a couple of computers (one of your soldiers notices something on the computer screen) (I think this option is most fun)
• or the cleaners are in the process of cleaning up a UFO crash site (there are no aliens left and not much UFO, so suspense is maintained)
• or without new art assets you could have us catch the cleaners as they're transporting some alien materials (a normal map with a big truck on it)
• or the existing data mission but have a message after the mission saying that the data identifies a small cache of alien materials that you automatically collect

[DaviddesJ]

On 7/26/2023 at 8:52 AM, bonerstorm said:

What was the ending panic of each region in your last game?

If you had one or two regions over 80/90, then that's my point.

EDIT: Mine is 53/16/30/49/18/47 at Day 228.

I thought your point was that it’s “impossible to survive” without playing one particular way. That’s not true. If your new point is to just brag about how fantastic you are, I’ll pass on engaging with that.

[bonerstorm]

1 hour ago, DaviddesJ said:

I thought your point was that it’s “impossible to survive” without playing one particular way. That’s not true. If your new point is to just brag about how fantastic you are, I’ll pass on engaging with that.

It's game over if two regions collapse from having 100 panic at the end of a month.

So, yes, it is "impossible to survive" if panic gets unsustainably high and there's a type of UFO squadron in the midgame that is impossible to take down without daisy-chained attacks by two full squadrons in sequence. And, even if you manage to do this obscenely difficult feat, it will likely still create net higher panic anyway because the panic reduction from taking it down is lower than the panic it will cause while it's up.

If Milestone 2 were released tomorrow, practically nobody could play it to the end if they didn't follow my exact advice. Not because I'm "fantastic", but because the panic mechanic is broken.

[cman1983]

12 hours ago, DrazharLn said:

I think it would be nicer for the story to be fighting cleaners first, it can build suspense, I think, and the smash-and-grab mission feels like a scrappier start (as well as demonstrating that there are more mission types than in X1/X-COM). You could keep your preferred research order by contriving a mission that drops some of the required materials. Here are some ideas:

• the existing data mission, but have a crate of alien materials somewhere in the building that is added as an objective after you open a couple of computers (one of your soldiers notices something on the computer screen) (I think this option is most fun)
• or the cleaners are in the process of cleaning up a UFO crash site (there are no aliens left and not much UFO, so suspense is maintained)
• or without new art assets you could have us catch the cleaners as they're transporting some alien materials (a normal map with a big truck on it)
• or the existing data mission but have a message after the mission saying that the data identifies a small cache of alien materials that you automatically collect

Guys I am at day 168 and  have only just put my 2nd base into commission as if you do the research correctly the nxt fighter can travel the whole Map but yeah I do agree with the weapons need to be sorted especially for the planes and vehicles and probably the stun guns etc as using the smoke bomb probably has made the research tree quicker in its advance

*also can we not recruit aliens or cleaners for example the ones that we stun and capture put into a jail then wen they break there morale be recruited to us as this would give a stronger unit for the early harder cleaner missions 

* any chance of making the flashbang and smoke bomb a combined bomb since we have moved from cold war to newer times 

[cman1983]

Sorry forgot 

* what about for us to put a new base in the certain region we need to fight a cleaner faction or a psyoned military group from region eg a random  pick from that area/continent like "SA choice from Brazil to columbia"  or even a gangland contributed fight to keep them in controller of there area  and could then in theory bring in the black market weapon research

@Chris any thots

Edited July 27, 2023 by cman1983

[bifohe6676]

On 7/26/2023 at 3:33 PM, bonerstorm said:

Practically useless/trap engineering projects include:

Alenium Generator

What are you talking about?

Alenium Generators are super useful if you put thought into proper placement, because not only does the single-generator-power-rating go up, the bonus-adjacency-rating goes up too, freeing up base slots for other buildings!

I disagree with your post in several other points, but your claim that you found an optimal base structure considering your generator oversight stuck out.

[thedjstu]

On 7/27/2023 at 2:31 PM, bonerstorm said:

....there's a type of UFO squadron in the midgame that is impossible to take down without daisy-chained attacks by two full squadrons in sequence. And, even if you manage to do this obscenely difficult feat...

You say this alot, but I can down a 3 interceptor flight with 3 15 armor gauss phantoms reliably... 1v1 a Gauss phantom will beat an interceptor, split the engagement into 3 1v1s and it's simple.

Killing 3 of them with 2 5/15 Guass armor phantoms is... harder... but can be done.  I suspect you are not dodging their missiles and that is what is causing you problems.  Granted.. the game doesn't really tell you they have missiles, but they do.

Edited July 28, 2023 by thedjstu

[Wont Tell]

Felt pretty good on the Soldier difficulty level. The default explosives to get rid of cover are a really good call. Maybe consider adding a Grenade Launcher solider to the default line-up to give Newbies the option to remove distant cover without having to setup a soldier for it. I found having one of these in my squad supremely useful to increase hit chances of the other squad members

[GreyICE]

Grenade Launcher does shitall.  Needs higher damage, for Alerium and Fusion explosives to upgrade it, needs to fire in an arc (shallower than throwing a grenade, but still an arc so it doesn't fly past). 

Combat knife weighing 10 lbs is so ridiculous it feels like a typo.  Should be 1x2, take 1 lbs.  Kabar combat knife is 0.7 lbs, a friggin claymore is 5.5 lbs. 

Heavy weapons are good.  Like... really good.  Like exceptionally good.  They might need a little less damage per shot or something. 

Grenades and explosives in general feel weak.

Fire is... terrible.  Just terrible.  We need some XCOM fire.  I want this: https://imgur.com/WIwoefu

Smoke's stun damage is really solid.  Like, really.  It's basically a stun grenade.

[DaviddesJ]

On 7/27/2023 at 5:31 PM, bonerstorm said:

If Milestone 2 were released tomorrow, practically nobody could play it to the end if they didn't follow my exact advice. Not because I'm "fantastic", but because the panic mechanic is broken.

Wrong.

[bonerstorm]

On 7/27/2023 at 5:42 PM, cman1983 said:

* any chance of making the flashbang and smoke bomb a combined bomb since we have moved from cold war to newer times 

Well, we're in newer times and that's not a thing because they serve two very different purposes. The closest to what you're talking about is tear gas, which would indeed make sense for this, especially if there were an optional "gas mask" checkbox like there is for jetpacks.

Nerve gas would be even better, though I guess I understand why that's not a thing.

23 hours ago, bifohe6676 said:

What are you talking about?

Alenium Generators are super useful if you put thought into proper placement, because not only does the single-generator-power-rating go up, the bonus-adjacency-rating goes up too, freeing up base slots for other buildings!

I disagree with your post in several other points, but your claim that you found an optimal base structure considering your generator oversight stuck out.

I haven't done the math in a hot minute - what is that worth... one extra space? - but, nope, not an oversight. The layout I dropped covers all your needs and then some using all available adjacency bonuses... an additional space or two would be superfluous. And it would come at the cost of... IIRC... 50 alenium and half a mil? Which could get you a Phantom or two MARS or an armor upgrade...

Damn it, I'll just check... Huh... for some reason, none of the buildings in my main base can be demolished. Don't know if bug or WAI. Regardless, I have 220 spare power so Alenium Generator would save exactly ONE space and leave 40 spare power to work with.

You could do one extra battery, workshop or living quarters.. Whoop de doo?

I do get Alenium Generators eventually, but that's when I've got money to burn. And when you do what I did, you have plenty of money to burn after the early midgame. Maybe I needed them to install the defense batteries, but I forgot. I know they were useful for adding extra radars to my secondary bases.

6 hours ago, thedjstu said:

You say this alot, but I can down a 3 interceptor flight with 3 15 armor gauss phantoms reliably... 1v1 a Gauss phantom will beat an interceptor, split the engagement into 3 1v1s and it's simple.

NICE! I'll try this on my next run.

I had tested with 3 up-armored Gauss Phantoms, but maybe I only dodged the first salvo of missiles? Or maybe I fell victim to the zero-armor bug and forgot.

But still: if you have to shuffle and jive that much to beat them... that's not reasonable at this stage. IIRC the 3-interceptor flight comes up far sooner than the phantom armor upgrade becomes available.

2 hours ago, GreyICE said:

Grenade Launcher does shitall.  Needs higher damage, for Alerium and Fusion explosives to upgrade it, needs to fire in an arc (shallower than throwing a grenade, but still an arc so it doesn't fly past). 

*SNIP

Agreed. Explosives should be better than guns because:

A) They are in real life

B) It's a balancing mechanic to sacrifice loot for lives saved, which provides meaningful player choice

As it stands, grenades are only useful in the early game for when you're trying to shave the last bit of health off an alien/cleaner or your ACC is so low that a grenade is the most reliable way to hit.

Disagreed on heavy weapons: that's how LMG's work IRL. It's a strong defensive and suppressive weapon usually with a higher caliber than infantry rifles. It should be doing crazy damage to anything that's not in hard cover and even some stuff that is.

1 hour ago, DaviddesJ said:

Wrong.

What's the ending panic on your last Soldier run?

Spoilers: in the next stage of the invasion, the aliens start nuking major cities. Do you have enough wiggle room in your panic numbers to handle that?

But also seriously stop sniffing your own farts. I didn't tell you guys this crap because I wanted to show off my e-peen. I'm trying to get a broken mechanic fixed. Get over yourself.

[thedjstu]

@bonerstorm

Dude, I took out a flight of 3 interceptors with 2 5 armor phantoms.. which you should definitely have long before they show up.  I think I have 6-7 phantoms up at that point of the run.

You need to chill out a bit, judging from your posts I played completely differently than you in terms of tech progression and my panic levels are stable.  What you see at day 166 in those screenshots is where it stayed in the run because I had the air war won, UFOs couldn't run up panic anymore.  It's just not as broken as you think. 

FWIW @Chris I would note missiles as a whole seem woefully underpowered compared to X1, but I withhold judgement as the game makes it very clear an air war pass is coming.

[happystrawberry1]

@Chris

Whoever made and directed the tutorial, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Especially the shift/shot preview thing. Wonderful job.

 

However I do believe people should know how to right click to interact with the enviroment such as doors or the Cleaners base, based off of the reviews in steam and some of the recent threads here in this forum.

Edited July 29, 2023 by happystrawberry1

[bonerstorm]

11 hours ago, thedjstu said:

@bonerstorm

Dude, I took out a flight of 3 interceptors with 2 5 armor phantoms.. which you should definitely have long before they show up.  I think I have 6-7 phantoms up at that point of the run.

You need to chill out a bit, judging from your posts I played completely differently than you in terms of tech progression and my panic levels are stable.  What you see at day 166 in those screenshots is where it stayed in the run because I had the air war won, UFOs couldn't run up panic anymore.  It's just not as broken as you think. 

FWIW @Chris I would note missiles as a whole seem woefully underpowered compared to X1, but I withhold judgement as the game makes it very clear an air war pass is coming.

It's fair to say you're a better player than me and my path isn't the ONLY path.

But I'll stand by the contention that the mechanic is broken. If stabilizing panic (which I'm going to arbitrarily define as below 80) is contingent on either doing my thing OR being very good at the janky air combat system, then that's something that needs to be addressed.

I will also concede that more panic reductions in the gameplay are not necessary if the air war is un-janked. But I will add that adding more opportunities for panic reduction in ground missions would open up more styles of play - especially for less experienced or skilled players.

[Skyfire]

OK, hit day 180 myself now, so some thoughts (playing on Veteran difficulty):

• Accelerated weapons research is in a better spot than the forum gives it credit for. I rushed one accelerated rifle for the first cleaner mission (delayed starting it slightly for the project to complete), then built two more for subsequent missions. Never felt the need to build any of the other accelerated weapons - three accelerated rifles and a bunch of ballistics carried me through to ~day 100, at which point I started upgrading to improved lasers and then gauss. Key here was hitting the 40-damage breakpoint to oneshot cleaners with an average damage roll.
• Panic is controllable using the old Xenonauts 1 strategy: get extra hangar/radar bases and planes to fill them ASAP, and then everything else is just about keeping pace. I researched Phantoms early-ish (did two or three other techs first, so not a hard rush), but didn't particularly push any other air techs. Skipped the upgraded dropship completely as a test, and didn't really feel the loss. Finished the current content with all regions below 30 panic and two on single digits. The triple-interceptor wing that has been discussed may have been a problem if I'd faced one before getting gauss blasters (it was fine with them), but everything else was a comfortable fight on alenium rockets and accelerated cannons.
• I don't understand why mission loot doesn't auto-sell the way it did in X1. Is there any situation where it ever makes sense to keep corpses etc in storage? If not, why is the player being forced to go through dozens of extra clicks every mission on a false choice?
• I want a 'light airframe' upgrade/module for Angels in the mid/late game. I still want one in most of my intercept squadrons as an armour-breaker (it can bring three torps vs the Phantom's two), but it drags down the speed and range of the Phantoms. I'd be happy with literally reducing it to zero armour and 1hp if I could bring it up to the speed/range of the Phantoms in exchange - all it's doing is volleying the torpedoes and GTFOing anyway.

[bifohe6676]

I think others have said this before, but I want to repeat that the knife really needs a weight decrease I think.

While I find the idea hilarious to bayonet-charge at advanced aliens really hilarious, the weight-cost is far too high considering it goes in the secondary slot instead of a medi-kit or a pistol.

 

2 hours ago, Skyfire said:

• I don't understand why mission loot doesn't auto-sell the way it did in X1. Is there any situation where it ever makes sense to keep corpses etc in storage? If not, why is the player being forced to go through dozens of extra clicks every mission on a false choice?

Personally I don't mind going to the storage menu and sell things when I need the cash, in some primitive caveman way it is satisfying to me to actually hit buttons and the "you sell alien kidneys to shady dudes for cash and can afford stuff! again"-counter goes up with each click, it kinda makes loot feel more "real" to me beyond the pure cash increase.

To be fair, I am trying to think of a reason get they money right away but I can't think of one, maybe they are considering making loot into crafting materials, e.g. spend engineering time to bypass the DNA lock of an alien rifle, grind up Reptilians into health-goo-injection-kits or something?

That being said I am not sure I would like loot-based crafting, because the alien types you fight are random and if you are unlucky you will not get the corpses you need.

But yeah kinda odd at the moment that there isn't even any indication if you can sell something safely or not.