Is there a counter to "a feeling of dread"?

[Avesenchai]

The praetorians seem to be able to fill half your squad with a feeling of dread, halving TUs. The range on this ability seems to be unlimited, and not require any sort of LoS, literally being usable across the entire map. Is this supposed to be as powerful as it is? The praetorians (smartly) stay out of range of your squad while all the other aliens are fighting. Because there's no way to kill them before fighting all the other aliens, these guys effectively result in you spending the entire mission with three quarters of your movement points (and the poor guy with a machinegun and 78 TU's is hardly ever able to shoot anythig, because the machinegun costs 40 TUs and he always has 39).

Also, is there an option to disable the popups that occur at the beginning of every turn with a feeling of dread? Since it happens to half your squad, every turn, you spend a lot of time being informed of something you will ultimately be able to figure out just by looking at your squad's TU totals.

[Aaron]

This does probably need tweaking -what we will likely do is limit its targets to Xenonauts that are within alien line of sight, or possibly just limit it to one or two units max per turn. Once the frequency of it is reduced the popup should become less annoying.

[Anon_Spartan]

I was just about to make this thread. I'm playing the old stable version, and finally got late enough in the game that these guys are popping up every base and making it a nightmare (for some reason, the Andron bases lag really badly, and I don't think it's my computer.) It soon becomes apparent who is getting the dreaded feeling, perhaps instead of a pop-up it could be a suppression-like symbol that appears for a moment? Even waiting 5 seconds is too long, it's not like we can't figure out what is going on.

Besides mechanically changing it, were there any in-game solutions, like researching a live one decreases it's chances or working by 10%?

[StK]

I was just about to make this thread. I'm playing the old stable version, and finally got late enough in the game that these guys are popping up every base and making it a nightmare (for some reason, the Andron bases lag really badly, and I don't think it's my computer.) It soon becomes apparent who is getting the dreaded feeling, perhaps instead of a pop-up it could be a suppression-like symbol that appears for a moment? Even waiting 5 seconds is too long, it's not like we can't figure out what is going on.

Besides mechanically changing it, were there any in-game solutions, like researching a live one decreases it's chances or working by 10%?

+1. I think most of the battlefield pop ups are not necessary and could be optional (with a switch turning em on and of in the options menu).

[superbob]

IIRC there was some talk about players not being able to use psi attacks against aliens, but eventually coming up with some sort of defense against these powers. Was this scrapped, not done yet, or did I just make it up?

[Sapare]

IIRC there was some talk about players not being able to use psi attacks against aliens, but eventually coming up with some sort of defense against these powers. Was this scrapped, not done yet, or did I just make it up?

We need tinfoil hats, obviously.

[Aaron]

I don't remember anything like that, so it must have been ages ago. We used to have Godzilla Androns too and they didn't make it in

We are going to look at messaging this "feeling of dread" in a different way soon - one of the larger GC jobs remaining is to implement a status indicator to let you know what things are affecting a soldier; feeling of dread would just be added to this as an icon.

Here's a list of what will be on that indicator for those interested:

Is Commander

Commander Morale Bonus

Safety In Numbers Morale Bonus

Is Bleeding

Has Heavy weapon movement penalty

Crouching Accuracy Bonus

Crouching Dodge Bonus

Feeling of Dread

Overloaded Inventory

Insufficient Strength

Armour Damage State

Suppressed

Low Morale

Edited December 10, 2013 by Aaron

[ventuswings]

I hope the icon indicator don't become overused and end up creating a clutter. For example, icon for 'Crouching Accuracy Bonus' and 'Crouching Dodge Bonus' seem quite redundant (perhaps even 'overloaded inventory/insufficient strength') while current 'Is Bleeding' icon on the portrait seems quite sufficient. I guess I can't judge the rest as I don't know where these indicators will be displayed.

[crusherven]

I like the idea in principle, but I feel a little cautious about having a bunch of icons. They either need to be easy to read, or have a mouseover explanation, or both. I've played a number of games with status indicators like that where it is just confusing.

[Aaron]

We will of course do our best to limit the number on screen, and make them as readable as possible - we haven't started work on them yet so are open to other suggestions, with the caveat that they must be clear on-screen indicators of a unit status (we can't hid them in a tooltip or something like that).