Firstly, I would like to congratulate everyone for the nice work! I played UFO:AI once when it was still in the beginnings (no geoscape at all), and returned to it now by downloading and playing the latest dev version of 2.5
I've read the most recent forum posts, so I'll try to only address stuff which I did not read before. I would like to share my first impression and a few issues about the game, so I hope it's not a problem if I list everything here instead of opening a dozen topics. If something proves to be important, we can open up a topic for it later.
(as a sidenote, I prefer the "nearly permadeath" playing style. Instead of playing on very hard and savescumming, I play on easy and never reload unless a Total Party Kill or very serious disaster)
1. Is there a way to transport antimatter between bases? Or do I have to make my main disassembly base which packed full with workshops to also be my main airfleet base?
2. Opening up the bio stats of a wounded soldier in battlescape requires a long time, up to 10 seconds, and might crash the game. Opening it for a healthy soldier is always instantaneous and without problems.
3. The story is great, and I like the Stanislaw Lem - style of realistic approach to sci-fi, especially in the research notes. What I appreciate (and would like to see much more of it), is the theories and assumptions scientists make and get disproven when researching a new field. It looks great on the reports screen, but what about integrating it into the game? For example, having a fruitless research, or at least not knowing the exact percentage of completeness until at least some progress is made? Or having several assumptions after a first-encounter type of research, like first ufo or alien, and have to research more of them, some turning out to be incorrect assumptions? Some tiny bit of randomization at least in time needed, if not in topics and red herrings?
4. The electromagnetic bolter rifle has an ammo capacity of 2. Is it a bug? The graphics show more than two bullets. Even with this small bullet cap I can still make some use of it, as my soldier equipped with it makes a fine share of the aliens killed. However, a slightly larger magazine, of at least 4 bullets would make it much less frustrating.
5. As the only significant income is funding, will it ever significantly increase? The nations have always good happiness values, but I'm always short on cash and can hardly keep up more than 2 or 3 bases. It's not a big problem, I like the difficulty curve, but I'm unsure if I'll ever be able to support many more bases in the future. (I'm at around 6 months of in-game time, researched all plasma and laser weapons, all ufos up to harvester, and aliens up to the universal serum, with no new unresearched topics)
6. I can spare a lot of money by firing all my staff at the last second of the month and rehiring them a few seconds later.
7. Is buying always planned to remain instantaneous?
8. Will I ever need more than one alien containment? I have no new research topics after the universal serum, and my containment is full with 10 aliens inside. Do I need new ones, and do I need them in the same base? If no, can I transport live aliens? They don't show up anywhere besides the containment. I can't even transport and sell dead alien bodies, only their armor (or did I miss something?)
9. A few live alien research reports indicate a few aliens died in the process. It is not implemented in-game.
10. I played Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod. While the JA2 engine is much, much older, it has in my opinion, a much better combat system. In UFO:AI, my soldiers cannot shoot around corners or around a lamp post (even 20 year old roguelikes have solved this problem), cannot throw items, units don't lose action points due to suppressive fire, can't target body parts, etc.
11. I liked the realistic laser research tree (handheld laser is much harder to be developed than vehicle-based), but I find ground laser defenses to be utterly useless. While SAM sites can sometimes manage to destroy even harvesters if I'm lucky, the ground lasers in my base fail to even scratch any ufo at all, even if it flies right over my base so spends a lot of time in-range. The base fires at it quite often, with absolutely no damage done.
12. Hangars and storages have no security cameras. Those are the places I would expect security cameras the most after the entrance.
13. The selection of conventional weapons is extremely limited, with only one item in every category. Or is it just my prior experience with the thousands of guns from Jagged Alliance 2 which makes me need lots of guns with only tiny variations between them? We have pistol / machine pistol / smg / assault rifle / sniper rifle. It could be backup pistol / large caliber pistol / machine pistol / SMG / PDW / assault carbine / assault rifle / battle rifle / DMR / sniper rifle / anti-material rifle just for the magazine-fed guns. There are no gins with multiple ammo loaded, like underbarrel grenade launcher (maybe not possible due large engine/gui requirements?) Maybe I'm too biased here because of JA2.
14. My radar-equipped base was once stormed without any ufo closing on it. It only happened once, so it might be that I was not paying enough attention.
15. Will scientists and workers ever have stats? If not, why the hassle of having to hire them individually? It would also be nice if we could sort soldiers, based on rank, stats, etc.
16. In the buying screen, what are the checkboxes at the beginning of the rows for?
17. It would be nice to either automatically buy ammo especially for aircraft if below a certain amount, or at least give a warning.
Please don't misunderstand me, I intended this list more as a description of my first impressions, not as a critic. I enjoy it very much, despite its unfinished looks and some balance and stability issues.
