Differences between Xenonauts and UFO:EU

[Zombie]

Here's something different: I was on a Sebillian Battleship mission today and just cleared out the ground floor of the UFO. The second floor was empty too so I ran my heavy over to the 3rd floor lift to cover that (to prevent aliens from filtering down, aka: "plug the lift"). He had to go upstairs first of course, but when he did he was instantly zombified by a Reaper Alpha who was apparently standing right next to the lift. Reaction zombification! Kinda scary that reapers can use their melee attack in reaction fire circumstances.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Chrysalids can do this too in OpenXcom

[Zombie]

Here's something different: I was on yet another Battleship mission today and my guys were getting mind controlled nearly every round. Not much you can do to recover from that if your team is bunched up together (short of getting them to a different level and plugging the lift). Anyhow, I used the stun baton to knock the unfortunate squad members out cold which seemed to ease the MC attacks a bit. Just for giggles, I wanted to see what happens when you dust off with unconscious soldiers so I tried that. Well, if they are out in the field somewhere, they will get left behind. Strangely, if you haul a body back to the ship and have it in your backpack when you abort, the soldier is lost. You actually need to drop the body to the ground inside the ship in order to recover them (doesn't matter if they were under alien control when you knocked them out, they will still be recovered uninjured. So I guess that's another tool in the arsenal to use against MC.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Back on to Xenonauts again. Played a few missions since December, but only enough to clear the Geoscape of UFOs except for the last Battleship which was giving me extreme trouble. It seemed like all the aliens had battle rifles and they were tearing my squad to shreds. There just wasn't a good strategy to deal with that plus trying to train reactions. I ended up just mowing the aliens down like I normally would do and not worrying about reactions. Magstorms are great for this. Was a little miffed about the loss of a training mission until I saw the EOM report.

 

 

Five soldiers ended up with reaction fire increases, and because the Praetor was going nuts, five soldiers also got bravery increases. Nice! Oh, and 16/24 aliens had battle rifles which equates to 67%. No wonder! I also found out that soldiers will most likely still get small increases in Strength as long as other stats are increased. I'm not sure if there is a breakpoint where the amount of weight carried will prevent these strength increases, so that will require some tests. Possibly Sentinel/Predator armor might prevent strength increases, but that's more of an end-game strategy. Finally on the soldier side, I retired my first guy (Andrew Spruce) due to reaching 100 reactions.

 

 

He will probably not see any more missions until the final one (unless I think I can train his bravery a little more with some low hanging "fruit" aka "medals" or use him as a "rear commander" or "soldier of last resort"). I have a few other soldiers which have 100 in TU, Str and Accuracy, 99 for health and high 80's for reactions, so there will be a time where they will be retired as well. It certainly will be nice to be able to just grab anyone for the final mission.

 

The one thing I learned these last few days is that my USA team is a tad under-equipped. I'm still using Precision Plasmas and Buzzard armor for a few of my snipers. Not that it's a bad thing, but the 360 degree vision of the Sentinel and MAG Precision offer a lot of upgrades as well so I'm trying to get that sorted before anything else.

 

The one thing which I allowed to finish production was the Valkyrie. Now I can take 12 soldiers on a mission instead of 10 which should help out a little more to expedite map clearing (I normally like to use 2 groups of 3 soldiers to clear each side of the UFO and a central group of 4 to hold the main door but those two extra bodies could be door opening meat shields instead). I learned something new about the Valkyrie "dropship" today also - because there is an initial "placement" round where you can decide where to put your soldiers, you can save the game at the start of that round and then reload if the placement wasn't right and the aliens will still be in the same spots and the map will be unchanged. So that's kinda neat (along with the flares on the ground so you don't need to deploy so many on night missions).

 

So it's been a productive last couple of days.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

I think only Caesans carry battle rifle and I hate this gun. They autoshotted me from 2 screens away with pinpoint accuracy. Not cool. I am sort of amazed that you still go for the reactions.

[Zombie]

I think only Caesans carry battle rifle and I hate this gun. They autoshotted me from 2 screens away with pinpoint accuracy. Not cool.

 

Yeah, it's pretty annoying when you are almost 100% in cover (let's say behind a hay bale) and the battle rifle autoshots come, destroy your cover with the first shot then the subsequent shots of the volley all connect with your soldier. I kneel religiously at the end of every round but that still doesn't do an ounce of good with the battle rifle as the shots seem to ignore all logic. Can Xenonaut soldiers use the battle rifle just as effectively as the aliens? I think not.

 

I checked the Wraiths in my previous mission save and all seem to be carrying either a heavy plasma or plasma cannon so it's probably just the primary races (such as the Caesans) that can get the battle rifle.

 

I am sort of amazed that you still go for the reactions.

 

Me too. Force of habit I guess. It does help with increasing other stats a little bit though, so I'm sticking with it until I squeeze every last drop of blood out of training as I can. With 4-5 soldiers nearing 100 reactions, it will not be long before they get Predator armor and mag cannons. So that's the eventuality I'm planning for right now (a little bit low on those two items, but I've kinda decided I have enough Marauders to deal with the UFOs so I can switch gears). At this point, I'm delaying the inevitable by researching the Wraith corpse and another corpse... if I'd put everyone on the Praetor and end-game items I could probably close this out by the end of the month.

 

- Zombie