You got something wrong with the difficulty level

[mark321]

I have a few days off and I thought I'd play Xenonauts for fun. I played a lot of X-Com 2 a long time ago and this type of gameplay is very familiar to me. I chose the lowest difficulty level and it was quite enjoyable until around day 150 of the game when I got the Terror in the City mission. My soldiers die after one alien shot. Armor and hiding behind covers do nothing. I can't throw a grenade because it's too far away. These covers are a mistake. A soldier kneels behind them and dies after one alien shot, while the cover stands still. Something is wrong here. I also have reservations about the movement of soldiers. There is no possibility of reserving movement points for kneeling and shooting. Also, stunning all the aliens should end the mission, but it doesn't.

[Chris]

39 minutes ago, mark321 said:

I have a few days off and I thought I'd play Xenonauts for fun. I played a lot of X-Com 2 a long time ago and this type of gameplay is very familiar to me. I chose the lowest difficulty level and it was quite enjoyable until around day 150 of the game when I got the Terror in the City mission. My soldiers die after one alien shot. Armor and hiding behind covers do nothing. I can't throw a grenade because it's too far away. These covers are a mistake. A soldier kneels behind them and dies after one alien shot, while the cover stands still. Something is wrong here. I also have reservations about the movement of soldiers. There is no possibility of reserving movement points for kneeling and shooting. Also, stunning all the aliens should end the mission, but it doesn't.

Stunning all the aliens should end the mission. If it doesn't, please attach a save game so we can check if there's a bug.

You can reserve TU for firing / crouching by right-clicking on the buttons for the fire mode / crouch. We'll eventually add this to the tutorial.

Do you have a save game from the Terror Mission you had trouble with? Ideally a save from the very start of the mission. I'd like to test it and see if we've made the mission too difficult, but as part of the test I need to know the type of weapons and armour you're using, and how experienced your soldiers are etc -  so a save game would be great.

[mark321]

I uninstalled the game and I don't have any save games. My soldiers had the first armor I could produce. I also marked heavy armor. The damage they took from the aliens was 70. They weren't recruits.

I tried stunning in another mission with flashbang grenades. In a ship with a teleporter. There was only one alien left at the top. I teleported up and threw a grenade. It said he was stunned. I went down and ended my turn. The next turn I teleported with another soldier and the alien was standing without stun. I threw a grenade again, stunned him and went down. The next turn I went up and shot him. Then the mission ended. 

 

Edited August 13, 2024 by mark321
mistake

[Chris]

30 minutes ago, mark321 said:

I uninstalled the game and I don't have any save games. My soldiers had the first armor I could produce. I also marked heavy armor. The damage they took from the aliens was 70. They weren't recruits.

I tried stunning in another mission with flashbang grenades. In a ship with a teleporter. There was only one alien left at the top. I teleported up and threw a grenade. It said he was stunned. I went down and ended my turn. The next turn I teleported with another soldier and the alien was standing without stun. I threw a grenade again, stunned him and went down. The next turn I went up and shot him. Then the mission ended. 

 

Thanks. OK, I'll bear in mind your feedback about the Terror mission.

As for the units not being stunned - it sounds like the issue is that you're using the Flashbang, which suppresses enemies (removing all their TU and giving them reduced TU next turn), rather than a weapon that stuns them. Suppressing them is good and makes them easier to stun, but you do need to use a Stun Baton or Stun Gun on the enemy unit to actually knock them unconscious afterwards.

[mark321]

Now I understand. It seems there is another translation of this grenade into Polish.

As for the difficulty level, I think the lowest level would be good for players who want to learn the storyline of the game and not have too many challenges in the tactical layer.

Thanks for your help. I'll try to get back into the game.

[Chris]

23 minutes ago, mark321 said:

Now I understand. It seems there is another translation of this grenade into Polish.

As for the difficulty level, I think the lowest level would be good for players who want to learn the storyline of the game and not have too many challenges in the tactical layer.

Thanks for your help. I'll try to get back into the game.

No problem. I'll flag your issue with the flashbang grenade to the Polish translators then, and see if they can improve that.

You're right that the easiest difficulty level shouldn't be too difficult, so I will be looking into that in Milestone 5 too. I've got some ideas about what might be causing the problem already.

[Bajas]

I see this has not been addressed... I'm at day 157, on a terrror mission, and all the enemies are suddenly way tougher. I get immediately swarmed by chrysalid-equivalents and some big lizard guys with 150 hp. I'm on custom difficulty, but very easy settings. That stopped that campaign in its tracks....

[Bajas]

Attached save file.

user_day_157_terror_site_manual_save-42.json

[Chris]

On 7/22/2025 at 5:45 AM, Bajas said:

I see this has not been addressed... I'm at day 157, on a terrror mission, and all the enemies are suddenly way tougher. I get immediately swarmed by chrysalid-equivalents and some big lizard guys with 150 hp. I'm on custom difficulty, but very easy settings. That stopped that campaign in its tracks....

Our QA guy has taken a look at the save file and it seems like there's two issues going on here:

1) There's an AI behaviour on Terror maps which causes the aliens to be very aggressive and swarm you at the start of the map. This was actually fixed a while ago, but the fix isn't in the current version of the game (it'll be included in the Milestone 6 builds). This should make these missions easier in future.

2) It seems like you're some way behind the tech curve in your game - if you're fighting that Terror mission with Warden Armour and Accelerated Weapons, you're probably going to find it tough even on the easiest difficulty setting. Hopefully with issue 1) fixed it'll still be manageable, but having Lasers and/or Guardian Armour would definitely make it a lot easier.

It sounds like the issue is that you're on day 150+ (which is maybe 40% of the way through the game) and you haven't built any extra labs or workshops. Projects do take less time to complete on easier difficulty settings and maybe we can tweak that a little more, but I don't think we can reduce times to the point where you can survive with a single laboratory and workshop for most of the game (as otherwise anyone that does build them will rapidly run out of research). So you'll need to build some additional labs / workshops if you'll want to progress into the second half of the game!