Some general comments and questions. What a nice game!

[nllsq]

Guys, this is such a great game!!!  Thank you for making all this progress so far!
I played the 2.2.1 version until I researched everything so far available and the viral stuff started.  Now I am playing it on very hard to see how it is.

I have a couple of questions/comments, and I hope somebody can find them useful:

Do you plan to implement doors? I remember in the old UFO1/UFO2 getting through doors was a big deal with aliens waiting in ambush. 

It seems that soldiers not always can get close to a wall.  Sometimes there is a whole line of squares between the wall and where the soldier can reach.  This leaves a lot of “air” between the soldier and the wall, making if very hard to hide.

The aliens seem to have too many hit points on “very hard.”  I know that it is supposed to be “very hard” but when my soldiers die from one shot, while the aliens can take several, even having three soldiers with reserved time units in the end of the turn does not help.  Anyway, I am now getting the nanocomposite armor and I hope this would make it better.

I saw this to happen on “very hard”: Soldiers fire single shots during the aliens’ turn even though I have let them on “burst” and there is enough ammo.  This is nasty, because aliens can take many shots while my rookies die in one.  The machine gun guy fires auto; the laser rifle guys, however, fire single shots.

About the artificial intelligence: does program run each alien separately, or it tries to use several aliens in concert, as if playing chess? The latter would be much more fun.

I see that the terror maps follow some order.  I think it may be nice to have the early maps sometimes reappear.  This makes things more unpredictable.

Playing on “vary hard” means that I sometimes had to repeat a mission a few times.  The aliens always would appear in the same starting locations.  Is there a way to make this a little more random?  For example. when clearing a crashed harvester, I know that there are no aliens in the buildings right behind my troops.  I would be nice if sometimes there are “nice surprises.”

I hope that you plan on having more kinds of soldiers armor.  Do you plan on having additional types of alien weapons or types of aliens?  I hope there are at least some new races.

Economy:  I don’t know what your plans are, but so far I am getting more money that I need.  It should be the opposite: the player should always be cash strapped and one missed UFO away from bankruptcy (kidding).
A minor issue:  items cost the same to sell and to buy.  You may change this to buying at a premium and selling at some loss.
Purchased items appear immediately.  I like this because it helps in last minute preparation, but you may want to add delivery time

I like your idea about bases, necessary buildings, secondary bases, etc. 

Do scientists and workers need to show up with names? You could make them like in the old games - hire by the number.

NICE GAME! Thank you!

[BTAxis]

Do you plan to implement doors? I remember in the old UFO1/UFO2 getting through doors was a big deal with aliens waiting in ambush.

They are already implemented in the development version, though broken at the moment.

It seems that soldiers not always can get close to a wall.  Sometimes there is a whole line of squares between the wall and where the soldier can reach.  This leaves a lot of “air” between the soldier and the wall, making if very hard to hide.

These are problems with the maps. Chances are they're already fixed, though.

The aliens seem to have too many hit points on “very hard.”  I know that it is supposed to be “very hard” but when my soldiers die from one shot, while the aliens can take several, even having three soldiers with reserved time units in the end of the turn does not help.  Anyway, I am now getting the nanocomposite armor and I hope this would make it better.

What is actually happening is that aliens get a damage bonus while you do less damage. The amount of hit points does not change. This is subject to tweaking and improvement, of course.

About the artificial intelligence: does program run each alien separately, or it tries to use several aliens in concert, as if playing chess? The latter would be much more fun.

Separately, at least in 2.2.1. The AI is being rewritten for 2.3, though it will probably perform about the same. Ultimately though we hope to have a more sophisticated AI.

I see that the terror maps follow some order.  I think it may be nice to have the early maps sometimes reappear.  This makes things more unpredictable.

2.2.1 uses a fixed mission list. 2.3 uses a more generic mission/map selection method, though at the moment it's still under development.

Playing on “vary hard” means that I sometimes had to repeat a mission a few times.  The aliens always would appear in the same starting locations.  Is there a way to make this a little more random?  For example. when clearing a crashed harvester, I know that there are no aliens in the buildings right behind my troops.  I would be nice if sometimes there are “nice surprises.”

It is possible to do this, yes. Aliens will be placed randomly at the spawn points on the map. If the amount of spawn points is equal to or less than the amount of aliens, then the starting positions will appear fixed. The remedy is to add more spawn positions.

I hope that you plan on having more kinds of soldiers armor.  Do you plan on having additional types of alien weapons or types of aliens?  I hope there are at least some new races.

We have plans for 7 types of player usable armour (light, medium, heavy, upgrades for each, and a jumpsuit). We would also like (much) to introduce more aliens, but the big snag there is that we need people to provide models for them. As long as we lack 3D artists, there won't be any.

Economy:  I don’t know what your plans are, but so far I am getting more money that I need.  It should be the opposite: the player should always be cash strapped and one missed UFO away from bankruptcy (kidding).
A minor issue:  items cost the same to sell and to buy.  You may change this to buying at a premium and selling at some loss.
Purchased items appear immediately.  I like this because it helps in last minute preparation, but you may want to add delivery time

All of the above issues have been discussed repeatedly before. Some have already been addressed in 2.3, some will be addressed later.

Do scientists and workers need to show up with names? You could make them like in the old games - hire by the number.

Yes, this is what we've decided to do.

[nllsq]

Thank you for the reply, BTAxis.  I wish I were a 3D artist.  I don't know if this is possible, but can a college student help with this?  I guess there may be a college student who will be willing to do the job as an extracurricular project.

[bayo]

Do scientists and workers need to show up with names? You could make them like in the old games - hire by the number.

Yes, this is what we've decided to do.

I dislike the idea of removing the name. It just improve immersion, without removing any usability. So, what is the problem of the name?

[stevenjackson]

The issue is that is unneeded detail.  It adds a focus that isn't needed as there is no differentiation between these employee types.
Also in storing the name it means a whole lot of stuff goes in the background that just isn't needed.

Anyway as with other topics this has been argued to death already

Steve

[BTAxis]

Thank you for the reply, BTAxis.  I wish I were a 3D artist.  I don't know if this is possible, but can a college student help with this?  I guess there may be a college student who will be willing to do the job as an extracurricular project.

Anyone can help out, for whatever reason. The only condition we have is that the author must agree to release all submitted contributions under a compatible license, such as the GPLv2.