A couple things

[Harmor]

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 ^^

[Sathra]

Flares use grenade code, so they aren't actually thrown so much as fired. So they'll hit cover alot, unless the cover is in the tile directly next to the thrower.

Yeah, its due to the ships actually being made of squares. I don't worry about it, and its saved lives on a few occasions.

I've never noticed that. I think its due to the blast radius being so small, but I dunno. They can do it with grenades too and come out barely harmed. Was he wearing armour?

Sound locating has been brought up alot. Might be too late now, and the hidden movement screen should focus on points where you can see the shots.

[Harmor]

Oh, didn't know that about grenades - I think it's a bit simplified though, not sure I agree with that system as it could and most likely will cause issues like this down the line up until the full version and beyond. It's a bit immersion breaking when a trained, no wait, anybody really throws whatever kind of object straight into another object right in front of him, let alone a grenade >_<.

I figured that was the reason for the weird line of sight - doesn't really need to be changed I think, not a big deal at any rate and when you know it, there are ways around the issue.

And yes, the guy was wearing jackal armor. Was it you btw who said in another thread that jackal armor should (for some reason I didn't catch) rather be avoided? If so then why?

Gotcha about the hidden movement screen - they're bound to change that I read so let's see what they can come up with.

And a note about the difficulty settings which are not quite right just yet I read of somewhere else - I just hope they keep the amount of aliens as they are right now. The reason however why I'm currently playing on easy is not the combat (aliens only have less HP on easy but the rest is the same on any difficulty, right?), but the geoscope (scape?) which I'm not too down with just yet. I might have some thoughts on that eventually because it certainly has its quirks, but imo it's well playable right now. Also, for early alpha I've got to say it only crashed once in seven hours of play so far - not too shabby I think.

[Sathra]

I may have said that about Jackal. It does well against grenades and stray friendly fire, but alien weapons simply do too much damage for Jackal to deal with. It can saves lives, but they've got a big chance to be injured for a couple weeks. I use it, just not on everyone. It also reduces sight range badly, which with the low TU troops you start with can also result in deaths.

Aliens have better stats on the higher difficulties, and their weapons do less damage on Easy.