V22 Experimental 6 Released!

[Troublechuter]

I'm not sure about Corvettes appearing from day one. I'm happy for them to show up earlier, but having light scouts, scouts and corvettes all show up together seems like the feeling of progression will be diminished somewhat.

[alfern]

The alien LOS seems to be messed up a bit. So far I have only done a few scout ground missions, but I get fired upon long before I can spot the aliens. I counted 12 steps from where I was shot before i got the icon that my soldier could see the alien, but it still wasn't visible on screen. Is this intended?

Edit: There were no obstacles between me and the alien.

Edited April 29, 2014 by alfern

[TacticalDragon]

Agree Alfern, this new LOS calculation system is a mess... ruin the game and take cover.

I'm having lot of issues

[AndyHill]

This does sound very good indeed. This is probably a stupid question, but do these changes take effect in existing saves (not combat saves)? I'm hoping to not have to start over, but I absolutely must get to taste these new features.

[AndyHill]

Just to clarify, I've been playing the experimental branch for a while now and I would like to know if these changes will appear in my existing game after the update.

[UmberSkies]

- Alien Plasma Rifle has gained 10 damage but lost 10 mitigation (a relative Jackal buff)

I'm probably just not understanding the formula used in damage calculation, but wouldn't this just result in the same damage being dealt?

(From http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Damage_System)

HP Damage Taken = Damage Dealt - (Target Armour - Weapon Armour Mitigation, min = 0)

HP Damage Taken = 20 - (15 - 10, min = 0) = 15

HP Damage Taken = 30 - (15 - 0, min = 0) = 15

[Duke]

- PersistentLOS

yeah nice. that was i asked 3-5 month ago

[Duke]

- The "Reveal All"

what?! is it optional?

oh sht. make it on\off pls. its realy bad casual option

[UmberSkies]

- The "Reveal All"

what?! is it optional?

oh sht. make it on\off pls. its realy bad casual option

I don't know if you ever played the original X-Coms, but Reveal All is a godsend. Nothing was more annoying than spending an additional 5-10 minute on a map trying to find one cowering alien (Curse you multifloor house maps -.-)

Its not so much a casual option as it is a Quality of Life increase, especially for people who dont have muchtime to spend gaming in a day.

[Belmakor]

I am also in the hater camp when it comes to "Reveal All". I can only remember one mission in which I couldn't find the last Alien (just happened to be in a store cupboard I hadn't bothered to clear. Of course, some others might find this frustrating but you shouldn't lump us all like that.

Half the tension for me is hunting down the last Alien, knowing full well that they could still kill one of my soldiers.

I'd rather see a "Aggressive" stance change for any remaining Aliens on the map after 12-15 turns - ala X-com - to force Aliens out of hiding. Yes this could be abused by camping outside the UFO, but that is a choice for the player. A reveal all gives us no choice. Suddenly the remaining tension is gone and its just a simple mop up.

[Belmakor]

Alternatively, is there a way you could use the reveal all as a way of lighting the fog of war (but without actually drawing the Alien). So you get a rough idea where it is but you don't know exactly - until you get LOS. I.e. you know hes in a room, but you don't know what way he is facing, if hes crouched and what type of Alien he is.

[Amiga4ever]

With new game PersistentLOS working fine ;]

[Lorebot]

I'm probably just not understanding the formula used in damage calculation, but wouldn't this just result in the same damage being dealt?

(From http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Damage_System)

HP Damage Taken = Damage Dealt - (Target Armour - Weapon Armour Mitigation, min = 0)

HP Damage Taken = 20 - (15 - 10, min = 0) = 15

HP Damage Taken = 30 - (15 - 0, min = 0) = 15

Umber, you're forgetting that not all targets have armor. The damage buff is gonna be a pretty big deal when you're trying to save civilians or in the early game when your soldiers don't have armor.

[ls35a]

Alternatively, is there a way you could use the reveal all as a way of lighting the fog of war (but without actually drawing the Alien). So you get a rough idea where it is but you don't know exactly - until you get LOS. I.e. you know hes in a room, but you don't know what way he is facing, if hes crouched and what type of Alien he is.

Just have the last alien drop his weapon and walk dejectedly into your troops. Suicide by Xenonaut.

[Dead Dread]

Half the tension for me is hunting down the last Alien, knowing full well that they could still kill one of my soldiers.

I'd rather see a "Aggressive" stance change for any remaining Aliens on the map after 12-15 turns - ala X-com - to force Aliens out of hiding. Yes this could be abused by camping outside the UFO, but that is a choice for the player. A reveal all gives us no choice. Suddenly the remaining tension is gone and its just a simple mop up.

+1 Hate the idea of reveal all, plz give us an on/off in options for it.

[Duke]

I don't know if you ever played the original X-Coms, but Reveal All is a godsend. Nothing was more annoying than spending an additional 5-10 minute on a map trying to find one cowering alien (Curse you multifloor house maps -.-)

Its not so much a casual option as it is a Quality of Life increase, especially for people who dont have muchtime to spend gaming in a day.

i played. and i asked to make it optional. i dont want dat option

[frank_walls]

I am also in the hater camp when it comes to "Reveal All". I can only remember one mission in which I couldn't find the last Alien (just happened to be in a store cupboard I hadn't bothered to clear. Of course, some others might find this frustrating but you shouldn't lump us all like that.

Half the tension for me is hunting down the last Alien, knowing full well that they could still kill one of my soldiers.

I'd rather see a "Aggressive" stance change for any remaining Aliens on the map after 12-15 turns - ala X-com - to force Aliens out of hiding. Yes this could be abused by camping outside the UFO, but that is a choice for the player. A reveal all gives us no choice. Suddenly the remaining tension is gone and its just a simple mop up.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm not sure if I like the idea. It makes sense in the alien base to do a reveal when you capture the Command Center, but why in terror missions? If there was something that could trigger it that would be cool. Like if you stunned an alien, carried his unconscious body back to your landing craft, and then got a message saying "Alien Interrogated - revelaing battlefield".

On another note I can't wait see how the new corner system works in battle. Thanks Chris!!!

[silenced]

12 turns is way too short. Though sometimes the mission is over after the first turn, when the Hillbilly shoots the only surviving Alien, but 12 is too short.

[smoitessier]

I'm unsure about corvettes in week 1, only because I was able to shoot one down with 2 condors with auto resolve at 25%. I don't mind them flying around but there's a lot of tech gains from the salvage, even thu you don't have the labs to help much. But that's just a first impression and don't have time to test it out

[Caaygun]

The seb officer inside handed me my ass last night. Was a total surprise.

[Chris]

Lots of people seem to hate the idea of Reveal All, but they should wait until they've experienced the reality before dismissing it. Bear in mind it doesn't apply to Crash Sites at all.

[Nemeo]

Shooting around corners is awesome. That's the main thing that bothered me after playing the latest Xcom. The autoscaling font is a great idea as well. Thanks for listening to us foreigners.

However I'm going to side with the "reveal all" haters this time. Not that I like the idea of spending 15 minutes looking for the last xeno but revealing the whole map sounds like a cheap solution and I think it would hurt the tension this kind of game creates. This last alien could be the most dangerous if he acted carefully after all.

In UFO:E, the last alien would get map sight and he would attack the player. In my opinion it worked, because the player didn't know where this last alien was so this attack had something unexpected. The problem was that the player would often have to wait 5, 6 turns for him to come and therefore, if he knew that mechanic, the player would expect the attack. My solution would be to trigger the "last alien suicidal attack" when the last but one alien gets shot at or when he sees the player. In the best case, the last but one alien would hold the player long enough for the hiding alien to sucessfully flank the player. In the worst case, the last but one alien gets one shot and the suicide attack fails miserably but, on the bright side, the player wouldn't have to comb the whole map again for him.

In Xcom12 you can hear the aliens. It could work for the last alien in xenonauts, I guess. A twist would be to have the alien move a little bit after revealing in which direction he is, so that the player would not be tempted to fire a rocket in his direction.

But please, people, understand that this problem has to be addressed in some way. The last enemy hunt has plagued that genre for ages and even if it's not game breaking, it has considerably dragged this kind of games down in the eyes of many, many players. It causes a real pace issue. Xenonauts already has plenty to offer to nerds, so let Chris do what he has to do so that all casual gamers won't meh the game after two tries. The reveal map option might not be the best solution in your eyes, nevertheless it will save many players from boredom so take one for the team.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Nemeo

[TacticalDragon]

I really hate the "shoting around" things... lot of LOS bugs, plz revert this build... you can even shot bypassing wall and all the cover system is ruined.

Edited April 30, 2014 by TacticalDragon

[Shodanbot]

Lots of people seem to hate the idea of Reveal All, but they should wait until they've experienced the reality before dismissing it. Bear in mind it doesn't apply to Crash Sites at all.

I'm on the camp of liking the reveal all after x amount of turns. Cuts down some of the busywork.

But maybe there should be an option to disable it, for those who don't like it. It's a fair compromise that satisfies both camps.

[kabill]

Regarding the autoreveal thing, I've honestly never had a problem with hunting down the last aliens in Terror Missions and was quite happy with things as they were. A lot of what I enjoy about the game is the tension of searching for hidden aliens and I've never found this tedius in Xenonauts. (While it was, on the other hand, the most annoying thing in the world in TFTD.)

So I don't think I hate it, but I'm not convinced it adds anything for me, at least for Terror Missions.

That said,

12 turns is way too short. Though sometimes the mission is over after the first turn, when the Hillbilly shoots the only surviving Alien, but 12 is too short.

On intuition (I suppose I'll see how it pans out in practice, though), I very much agree with this. Gonna throw this out there: is there any way the number of turns before autoreveal could be made dynamic, based on (for example) number of aliens remaining or number of turns since an alien was last spotted or since a shot was taken? (E.g. if no shots have been fired in four consecutive turns, the map reveals)?

EDIT: Is there any kind of indication to the player what's happened when the reveal-all activates? If not, I'm wondering whether it might be worth having a quick pop-up message at the beginning of the turn saying something like "Surveillance teams in place. Combat zone revealed". Just so its clear what's going on.

Edited April 30, 2014 by kabill