A few things to make the game less annoying

[JoeBlog]

Guns that fire in range not any old range and at nearly 100% accuracy in the aliens' favour. Them being unable to fire through windows, gaps, impossible angles etc just like I can't.

Economies of scale or a useful economy so it doesn't take forever to make things that you can buy anyway, even though perhaps you shouldn't be able to e.g. coilgun.

A useful autocombat system, if you're going to have it, not one that chokes as soon as you get 9 or more aliens because troops on 90 or more missions' experience should be more than cannon fodder.

Retrieval of dead troops' effects if a battle is won - see above on economy.

Saves for the battlescape. 2.5 hours of careful planning gone to shit because the game crashes and there is no save is not a good idea.  People might also have lives and have to go out in the middle of a battlescape game for a reason. Troops are immensely precious, hard to train - well, there is no training but this is a work in progress - and once they get to a certain point if one's lost it's the 'retry' button which is tedious and then the auto combat sucks so it's back to ... ad nauseam.

A nice little readme that says 'Don't enter the baddies' base just yet' so we know not to end the game prematurely.

A few more TUs for the troops just so we're only 5000 short of the aliens - it's not like they don't know where you are all the time, can shoot through walls, are almost perfectly accurate and can shoot through solid objects and somehow end up there being more of them than you in the middle of an open field with them all already having reaction shots primed (which work accurately all the time unlike the player's) etc. In short, revisit the combat - at times it f-g stupid. And I'm playing on super-easy level and yes, I've played TFTD etc so I know the score with these games so quite how I end up with 8 of them just pounding the shit out of me can only be down to poor game design. Note this is 2 moves in, it's not as though I've had the chance to make any dumb moves.

And why do I get no credit for my workers in item costs? That means they're costing me money!

And you have to have a fair number of bases the same which really limits your options if you intend to cover everywhere with radar as is a good idea. Then if you have the requisite 50 workers in order to disassemble those ufos in any practical time at all there's no room for anything else.

And the spawning of troops in base defenses is dumb. They spawn so far away from the entrance I moved the hospital to get them nearer as they spawned there and the command centre. Then they all just spawned in the CC anyway - ffs!

And the descriptions need to bear some resemblence to what happens e.g. "The cc is important, put it at the back" (so it takes 5 turns to get to the entrance in a well-designed base or "If you have too many power-guzzling rooms, you might need a second power plant" except that once you've built one you can't build another and ... anyway, back off to try those dumb-arse maps again, see if I can last 3 rounds.

Game's promising but I wouldn't buy it as it is. Sort out the things above and when it's finished provided it is playable  - yeah, I'd buy it even though I've played a lot of it already.

Ta.

[H-Hour]

Why would you buy this game? It's free.

[Duke]

Thank you for your detailed suggestions. We welcome your upcoming patch submissions to remedy these issues.

[ShipIt]

This needs a threadsaver:



edit - fixed the link

[Rodmar]

I may advise you to out-light your requests (?) with subtitle or a number, so that answering is less tedious.

Overall, you may have forgotten that UFO : AI is a work in progress. As such, you should post here only feature requests that might fit in the existing game, and reserve rants and heavy criticisms to another part of this forum, maybe here.

Overall, I humbly think that your are an impatient gamer, aren't you ? What I experienced is that UFO : AI is a slow paced game compared to original one. Time flows slowly. From this point of view, as from others, you have to adapt (from the original game).

So, go for cover, build accordingly to your economy, save before risky action, build radar turrets, etc.
By the way, your witticism about radar coverage, shows that you didn't play the original game, not a prerequisite though.

About finding money :

First months are quite difficult, start building a second base immediately, then another hangar helps. Once you have three intervention bases, you detect much more landing events and you shoot most light crafts. You don't shoot all the UFOs above sea, do you ?

As for January of 2085, I have no use of the advanced craft yet. Eight bases (HQ, 2 Tactical, 1 Research, 1 Prod/Dismantling, 1 Anti-craft only, 1 Prod (with hangars), 1 Radar (Future Storage/Whatever useful), build in this order, with six costly anti-matter storage. My maintenance costs are now even higher than the nations' subsides, but knowing that, mid-game, a single harvester mission can bring me more than 100Kc...

However, I took time to read and note suggestions of interest.

1°) Securing squaddies' too high value :

Me too, it's restart button when one is killed. I feel like cheating, but it's my game. Between cheaters, I may advice you to not do that, and to save just before landing instead, then reload in case a casualty occurs (or game crashes). When you hit Restart (once), the random seed seems to be (intentionally) at your disadvantage money-wise (Aliens are equipped lighter). I did the same with the original game.

I need a stronger incentive to rush for civilians lives, do nightly missions (in original game, you better had with terror missions), and consider soldiers as spendable (against higher objectives), feeling how I am on the edge and fighting overwhelming forces... Maybe, it would be another game (the simplified production X-COM that i just coming out ?). For now, I am slowly building and preserving my squaddies in order to prepare for the final (?) strike.

I could of course have mixed squads of say 4-6 attended veterans and 4-2 canon-fodders, but it would end the same (I know me). Maybe if (when) I am overwhelmed by a sheer number of simultaneous missions, I will start weighing shorter missions (with casualties) and experience gains (for vets) up.

2°) Auto-combat :

I am not used with it, so I spend many time fighting. I like maxing experience, distributing the kills and swapping weapons when danger is cleared to increase secondary (or tertiary) skills. Even to the point to switch tactical roles for a while with sure hit weapons (MG&FT for heavy, GL for blast, NG for assault, coilgun for sniping). A short assignment as a grenade launcher and you soon get a better grenades thrower. Many time spend here.

Not allowing to save in Battlescape is a chosen feature by the dev team. However, there is the Auto Combat option...

I understand that the missions take many time, and that, occasionally, you may want to abort one. THAT is the point. There could be a feature in the ESC menu, that allows to swap (once for all) to Auto Combat from within the Battlescape. As far as I can guess how things work, this could be implemented by saving automatically in the Geoscape, then aborting the mission (when AUTO is desired), then loading the hidden save and playing Auto-combat instead, with no further player intervention. Not sure if I am clear.

edit - removed the maroon color so the text could be read.

[Nokim]

About saving before mission... Game already do so in quicksave slot, so in case of crash you can load it with F2 key.

[H-Hour]

... do nightly missions ...

Day or night makes absolutely no difference to soldier or alien performance -- no visibility differences or anything.

Not allowing to save in Battlescape is a chosen feature by the dev team.

We've said before that we wouldn't be opposed to the feature if someone implemented it. But none of the current devs are interested enough to do the very extensive work it would take to make it possible.

[Rodmar]

Thanks for fast answering.

However, reloading a pre-Battlescape game won't help much when you have to prematurely end a tactical mission (that has never happened to me, yet), in the sense that you may still lose gaming time, while not hours, and it depends on your game habits, of course.

[homunculus]

i remember having trouble with getting my soldiers shot at the 'ice lake' map until i started to use smoke grenades : )

as for soldiers being valuable, i also hope that will change to almost worthless : )