Difficulty level is through the roof... seriously.

[jonny211]

I generally go two Fox, two Condor per base for the early months. Although I'm really considering just going pure Fox again for my next playthrough (keeping my initial two Condors).

I'd be interested in knowing how you'd deal with enemy air superiority flights (3xheavy fighter) with mostly Foxtrots. Would you just launch a bait Condor and fly away on the map, then burn away on the air combat minigame?

[Dranak]

I'd be interested in knowing how you'd deal with enemy air superiority flights (3xheavy fighter) with mostly Foxtrots. Would you just launch a bait Condor and fly away on the map, then burn away on the air combat minigame?

I normally either suicide a condor into them and autoresolve, or send a single Foxtrot and just have it disengage immediately after entering combat. Either way the Heavy Fighters are neutralized, and at worst trigger 1-2 events which is still less less expensive than investing in Condors solely for those groups.

[silencer]

I am at month 5 now, and boy do those ufo needs some firepower. I think that reloading / refueling should be extra fast. Maybe I am wrong but IRL those F-22 Raptors during invasion on Iraq were rearmed and refueled in very quick time rather than half a day.

When I see UFOs it's just spam of 5-6 + 2 escorts and those escorts are mean SOBs. I think also that Gattling gun is just plain broken as it's damage is non-existant - it should replace autocannon, but I think it is just autocannon with changed name.

The Interceptors - level 3 alien fighters need 2 plasma missiles to the face and since they are all dodgy dodgy you need 1.5 condor / corsair for 1 interceptor and since all the escorts are in pair of 2 you need 3 of them and if you have 5 ufos to catch, that refueling / reaming system is just plain tooooo slooooow. Also rearming should be more important than refueling.

Oh and the massive sized ufos need 5 plasma torpedoes so yeah you also need 3 Foxtrots.

Also had a terror mission with total of 26 aliens... yeah head to send my super elite forces and even they had trouble keeping the pace. Stupid Androids.....

[Msvknight]

quick question, is it posible to break the game with the changing of stats?

[Dranak]

Define "break the game". Do you mean crazy balance, or crashing?

@ silencer - Cannons used to do more damage, nearly double their current damage in fact. That (plus UFO speed at the time) led to pure Condor being a viable strat for the entire game (or Condor -> Marauder if you wanted to play safer). The gatling laser is pretty underwhelming as an upgrade, doing a whole 100 points more damage than an autocannon. The only real cases that stand out to me as the additional damage making a difference in a fight is that it allows two Condors to kill a Corvette (laser cannon plus alenium missiles), and it cuts 1.6 seconds off the time to kill a Heavy Fighter (with alenium missiles)... if for some reason you chose to fight them instead of just outflying them with Foxes. There are no doubt edge cases where killing things marginally faster has value, but overall it looks to be the least important aircraft upgrade.

[silencer]

You might be right, BUT if I see a Marauder with plasma cannon fighting Interceptor and failing because all that 50 plasma bullets doesn't do enough damage, then I think something is wrong here. And Interceptors plasma god gun, just rips through Marauder like it was a toy.

Now I know how to handle dog fighting, but a slight boost to cannons would be appreciated.

[Dranak]

Yeah, the current balance has missiles pretty much required to kill later game fighters. If you buffed cannons though, you'd also be making them better against larger UFOs. Maybe go with lower health on alien fighters, and possibly change missile damage accordingly.

[Gauddlike]

More ammo in the cannons would also be good, at least the low damage would be balanced out a little by longevity.

Sure it will take you a while but you will get them eventually if you manage to stay behind them long enough.

A remix of the alien craft weapon systems would be all that is required to make sitting behind a big ship for a long time a less desirable option.

I think Max had a good go at that in his mod.

[Msvknight]

You can change the ammo amount of the guns on planes I.in The xenonauts folder

[Darth Draken]

I like the learning curve.. Same as eve-online. Every choice has serious results long term.

Do you go heavy research for ground missions. Weapons or armour first. Or push air defence. Weapons or craft...

Who knows what might happen... :-)

[jonny211]

I like the learning curve.. Same as eve-online.

Are we being invaded by Goonswarm then? If so god help us.

[Commissar Pancakes]

...this is when Goldhawk reveals that we've been invaded by nothing more than an Extraterrestrial Construction/Demolitions corporation who are armed with engineering tools.

...and that they've called in the military to protect them while they work...

[Darth Draken]

The game can be very cruel but thats x com baby !!! :-P

I like the learning curve and difficulty being hard, the aliens are not going to play around and wait for us to be ready.

I know time and time again i will be overwelmed by alien ships and time and time again i will have to try and stay ahead of the ball.

I hope a larger tech tree for research will be added.

I just hope scoring is sorted out and all the extra maps are added as once i have a map down i can kick arse every time.

Please release more maps asap and keep it fresh

[platypusmcdandruff]

I had a long break from this game due to a broken laptop - in fact I think it was V17 last time I played until a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm on V20 (with a hotfix applied tho I can't figure out which one), and a lot has improved. Previously I was on the verge of giving up anyway due to a alien ability to shoot through cover across the map, now I've progressed to the stage of assaulting large alien bases with praetorians - in fact I guess I'm not to far from the end. So well done.

My take on the game now:

Geoscape - still a bit too unforgiving, I know governments aren't renowned for behaving rationally but could they cut funding a bit less drastically. This is particularly noticeable at the start when you only have the potential for one base and so simply can't get to half the alien incursions as both interceptors and chinooks are either in the air, repairing/fefueling or just can't get to the other side of the world with their limited range. I picked Mid East for base 1 and C America for 2 because both of them can cover all their own regions and half-ish of their neighbours. Even then I lost N America and Oceania within 6 months, and only kept Indochina and USSR because I cheated (I own up) by drastically increasing sale price of alenium and alloys to be able to afford a couple more bases that I limited to essentially interceptor bases with a few defensive troops - although actually the enemy only seem to assault those I use for launching my own missions. I do like the option to simply launch airstrike at crash site.

Could the government keep funding fixed for the first 3 or 4 months? Could it be a bit easier in general to make money and, without rebalancing the game to the startegic side with some more options - what about an option in the barracks to commit experienced soldiers to a sabbatical from active duty to train national millitary forces (or their colleagues) - this could both shore up relationships and make an extra income at the cost of temporarily losing good troops. Pehaps research knowledge could also be sold on although possibly selling knowledge to one but not the other of say USSR but not N America might have its own costs.

Air combat - I still find this daunting, although I think it may just be me being a bit rubbish I'm mostly autoresolving and just not being that brave which is hurting relations. I don't really know what to suggest tho.

Tactical - Again so much has improved here, enemies seem smarter and have much better starting placements AND they no longer shoot at infinite range often ignoring cover. Now the combat early on works brilliantly and progresses in difficulty at a good pace, some of the higher level enemies though still cripple play.

Reapers - these are a huge threat (as they should be) and when I've been careless have often wiped out half my squad in 2 turns. Can they take suppression but less than other enemies, these are all about rapdily closing for melee combat and don't strike me as likely to have much sense of self preservation. I feel that it ought to take perhaps 6 turns for infected to turn to full reapers, for the first of which the should be suppressed and they should also move slower than full reapers (or do they already?) - these are supposed to be basically shambling zombies right? Perhaps urban maps should have a few more civillians to allow the potential for some missions to turn into minor zombies outbreaks.

Would it be possible to add to the capabilty to set default troop loadouts/role (another new feature I really like) a bonus to progression in that roles key attributes i.e scouts might get slightly movement and sight range, snipers to accuracy and sight range, heavy weapons to rate of fire and strength. This could perhaps allow one team member to act as a spotter for threats such as reapers, and make it pay to have specific soldiers develop their skills in particular directions.

Wraiths - these are a nightmare, and in a way that feels arbitrary and nonsensical - they just pop out of nowhere, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time and wipe out half my squad in one go. I actually think they should have the capabilty to teleport wherever they like but doing so outside their current sight range but that doing so should mean losing all remaining AP's and causing them suppression on the next turn, in addition they should cause cause reaction fire on materalising and should be very fragile, perhaps dying on 1-3 pistol shots. This would allow them to remain sneaky assassin types capable of causing havoc within your ranks while not being OP'd.

Praetorians - Again arbitrary and overpowered. Their dread ability means the player can no longer afford to train up troops as anything less than 80 AP means a soldier is mostly paralysed. Could affected squad members feel where the praetorians influence was coming from allowing the player to effectively triangulate its position? Praetorians should struggle to contniually use their abilties, possibly running the risk of some form of damage causing blowback effect from psi powers several turns in a row.

[Chris]

Thanks for the comments, platypus. We'll be addressing a number of those issues before release so hopefully you'll like the final version even more!