Greetings again.
It has been a couple of years since I last really played around with UFOAI and thought I would share my thoughts of the latest (as of a week ago) stable build.
First, let me give you guys some Kudos for sticking with it and not letting it flounder. There is a marked improvement over the previous build I played with (previous one had glitches where the cursor would not line up exactly on the soldiers rectangle among other issues).
Second, I have gotten maybe a week or so of solid gaming out of the game with only what appeared to me as minor issues but now I think I am stuck.
The bugs include a few errors in the pedia, such as no game stats for the researched particle weapons (however when you go to the sell window, you can see their stats there).
The ship board particle weapon has no graphics just a red square, indeed there is a few research items that don't have graphics some before and some after research is complete (the autopsies have no research completed graphics) only the shipboard particle weapon has the red square (my guess, from my experience with Freedom Force means that the engine doesn't think there is a graphic present, but that is just a guess).
Next up is I have gotten three or four black screens of not-so-death. I got two or three of them when I completed a mission, it had some small print in the top middle which to me was gibberish but down at the bottom right corner was a note to press any key; pressing any key took me back to the geo-sphere with the Firebird above the previous mission site, flying home like nothing was wrong.
This black screen appeared on more time. When I got my monthly stipend for August that took me over 1billion or 10 billion or something; either way when it went over that number I got the black screen of not so death again and again it continued when I pressed a button (enter).
However, I think I am stuck now because I have captured four guys and after researching them I cannot research any of the ship board items and those are the only things left to research. I could see three in the research que; Astrogation, engines and ship particle weapons but I Transferred one astrogation unit to my second research base and that item no longer shows up in the research que at either base.
Interface wise there is a few things that can be added; specifically with base management it can get downright confusing what is going on. For example; when equipping planes, there is no indication what plane you are working on. Just as there is not an easy way to figure out how many slots you have available for personnel.
As mentioned above, Transferring can seem buggy. I had items I transferred simply not show up at the other base; real important when you transfer a fighter and the fighter does a no show. Additionally, twice when transferring the large fighter a large fighter appeared on the Geo-sphere, once above a base and once in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. They stayed there until another event message flashed.
Balance wise, on Standard difficulty the game as expect was much harder early on with lots of deaths but once I got the advance armor the deaths petered off, especially if I took my time with the missions; however my guys seemed to get much more opportunity fires then the aliens.
The assault rifle seemed practically useless early; the SMG was much deadlier; my guys were more effective with just the SMG, Bolter and Grenade Launcher. The sniper rifle seemed too inaccurate and weak when it did hit, the rocket launcher too much of a niche weapon (because of the small maps and built up terrain; there is a few maps that it is ideal on but you never know what maps you are going to get.
Oh, hey more kudos; the only maps that I thought I played more than once was the ones where I shot down a ufo; lots of different maps. Good job there.
I think I found another bug though, once I had researched most of the alien artifacts, I was suddenly bringing in over 300K in creds per mission (which is how I broke the bank).
Question; what happens to the intact ufo’s that get captured on the ground? You get the option to sell them to host nations and I did that twice to improve relations but kept the rest and yet they did not show up in my storage (knowing how much stuff was in storage was another interface issue as well).
Hope this helps and thanks again for all of your hard work.
Pariahsolo
