TopCat

Started a new game over the holidays with the 1.3 patch installed. I had one mission where the objective was to eliminate 7 transgenants. Everything was going fine and I killed number 5 when the box popped up and told me I'd killed all the aliens in the area. I knew I needed to kill 7 so I chose to continue and walked my squad all over the map but there weren't any more. When I ended the mission the stats were that I'd killed 3 and disabled 2 enemies. Anyone else come across this one? Never happened to me before 1.3. TC

Have you checked out the 1.3 patch yet? This is one of the issues it is supposed to address. TC

It was pretty much guaranteed that as soon as I said that it wouldn't be fixed in a patch that they would go and do it! Looks like the 1.3 patch might make the collapsible weapons worth thinking about now. Especially for missions where you know you're going to start right in the middle of a lot of enemies. TC

It won't be fixed in a patch as it's not a bug. You can't kneel because you need to wear heavy armour to use the collapsible weapons. Heavy armour will not let you kneel. Maybe one of the modders might do it though... TC

My first time through the game the Russian base had just popped up but I hadn't visited it yet. I was also unaware of the difficulty jump that happens at this time. A reticulan battleship descended on one of my bases (Tripoli, I think) so I loaded up for a base defense mission. I'd had a couple of them already and they'd proved to be fairly easy. Of course, I hadn't encountered reticulans armed with rocket launchers and microslugs before... About a minute into the game and my team of 7 is down to 3 with no reticulan casualties. I grouped the remaining three together in a corridor and started picking off the rets as they came round the corner. Eventually managed to kill 6 of them (the mission objective) without another casualty. The 3 surviving soldiers all gained a level and a long stay in the medical bay. I gained a healthy respect for rocket launchers! TC

Early on Balloonfish are a pain in base missions. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a group of soldiers open a door only to find a Balloonfish on the other side. BOOM! Mid-game I'd rate Deathbellows as most dangerous. Once you get decent ranged weapons they become less of a problem unless you accidentally get too close. Late game it has to be anything armed with rocketlaunchers. TC

In my experience the appearance on the map of each story mission ramps up the alien weaponry. Certainly rocket launchers and microslugs appear as soon as the Russian base mission appears on the map. The appearance of the "Retribution" mission also seems to trigger a difficulty increase. Level of the soldiers also seems to have some effect. I was experimenting the other night with a team I'd increased to level 20 using a save editor. Just after the first story mission (Area 51) I had my team go on a pilot rescue mission. Right next to the drop zone were 2 Deathbellows. The squad were wiped out in seconds. With squads I've levelled up properly Deathbellows never started appearing until much, much later. TC

I've never had anyone above about level 17. Once they get that high it takes about 10 missions to get a new level. Given that by the time you've got a soldier to that level you're mostly facing rets with microslugs and rocket launchers I think you should get a bit more experience for killing them. There doesn't seem to be much difference in experience between killing a ret with a rocket launcher and bio armour and a flapper! TC

It would be nice if I could make more conventional items in my engineering bases. It seems a bit odd that my engineers can reverse engineer warp and psionic weapons but the only regular ammo I can get is off dead aliens and found in abandonned bases (apart from UZIs and shotguns for which I seem to have an endless supply). Also, where does the endless supply of jet fighters come from? You'd think there would be at least 1 or 2 extra helicopters around so I can send out multiple squads. Maybe if you got an extra chopper when you had 20 bases or so? TC

In a game I was playing last night Los Angeles had just lost it's fighters trying to shoot down a planter. Shortly after that I captured a base in Mexico City and, because my influence was already quite strong, Havana became my base as well. I decided I didn't want LA to be a military base any more so I changed it to be an Engineering base. When I looked, though, it said that it would take 64 hours to be ready. I assume this was the delay waiting for new fighters but now it's not a military base any more it should only take 24 hours to be ready. I accept that if I changed it back to military I shouldn't get new fighters until the 64 hours had passed but if I change it to something else the wait time for new fighters should be ignored. This happens with version 1.2 installed. TC