Maybe it was before I set that? Or something is just wrong. Please tell me it's not wrong.
After reading this thread a little more closely, I think I might have hit the self-destruct button when trying to minimize the intercept window. I wanted to quickly minimize and see if I could get another craft up in the air to come help, but I didn't realise the minimize button had turned into self-destruct. I suppose the fact that it was red should have been a clue, but I was already panicking about being attacked.
Well, almost no "tutorial" is hidden behind research, except some psionic stuff. I can add more articles, but it's never easy to recognize what is unclear.
Here's a few things I think would benefit from being detailed in articles:
The fact that dogs and AIs can improve their stats, and some tips for when they're best used.
Whether melee attacks are more effective from the back here. I don't mean in terms of armour, I mean in terms of chance to hit. Piratez had evasion, but I see that doesn't apply to melee here, so does it matter what direction you poke someone from?
How the whole 'Aliens intercepting you' thing works (and recovering crashed guys, if that's a thing). Mention self-destruct!
How alien psionics work, particularly vis a vis enemy sight - is the thing where if they see one of your guys, they can control any of your guys still a thing? Do they still focus on the weakest guy (which is pretty exploitable)?
Something telling the player to enable alternate movement methods (running helps so much in the earlygame). Or just make it default.
(Possibly) Some vague guidance on things that are tricky and might trip new players' up. 'It's worth bringing a few heavy melee weapons along with you on most missions - they can penetrate armour where small arms would fail'. Or, after discovering the Psi strength of your soldiers, something like 'Be careful about who you bring on missions against enemy psionics! Soldiers below XX Psionic Strength are likely to be exceptionally vulnerable to alien psionic attacks'. And 'Don't leave the Skyranger on the first turn! The aliens all start with full TUs...', etc etc.
(Possibly) Some hinting toward which missions are fine to skip and which will greatly damage your score.
Some of the above seems obvious, perhaps, but for my part at least I've recommended this mod (and Piratez) to people who barely played the original XCOM. Rather than have them poring over a Ufopaedia article laying out exactly how Psi Strength influences their defence, it seems simpler to just have a succinct explanation of what they need to know placed in the mod, accessed through research.
You can't really go wrong with providing more information to people in my opinion. And people pay more attention to a cheap and interestingly-titled research topic than they would to a readme.
Other random feedback:
The game is good fun, and I love the working your way up from humble beginnings aspect. However, too much of the earlygame becomes a slow grind - there's only so many times you can have a bunch of new agents standing in a square and reaction-firing at a wide open field full of scorpions and giant rats before it gets painful. I'd suggest buffing the gym to work faster and take agents to a higher level, and potentially nerfing a couple of the more bullshit 'death from nowhere' things, like Lotus Assassins. I've heard people say that the grindiness is something that's still being worked on though, which is good to hear.
I was surprised, given the Piratez influence, that night ops are so harshly punished here. It was great fun in that mod sneaking around and taking out unsuspecting Academy guys, even if it was a little OP in the earlygame. Here it seems borderline suicidal, at least in the first couple of years. Is there at least a way to turn off the lights on the car/van/craft/whatever you came in? They're doing my agents absolutely no favours.
Weapon balance could use some work. Magnums are too accurate, and there seems little incentive to use rifles and machine guns instead. From something like month 6 to month 30, the vast majority of my squad went from using magnums, to black ops magnums, and eventually smart magnums. A couple of them had Arasaka 3000's, and one had a Milkor (eventually upgraded to a rocket launcher) but aside from undercover missions there rarely seemed an incentive to use anything else.
I was a little unclear on what things could be 'Lost Forever'. Like, the staff of Dagon and Heartgrip staffs - would I lose all opportunities to get more of those after I elimated the Church of Dagon? And the missions that come up saying 'You'll only get one chance at this', like the Lo Wo mission - will it only appear the once, or does it just mean I can only attempt it once, but I can leave it for now and it'll repop in a couple of months? Not a big deal, but worth clarifying if possible.
Anyway, thanks for all your hard work on the mod. It's a lot of fun, and one day, when someone combines it with XPiratez and then remakes the whole thing in the Jagged Alliance 2 engine, we'll have achieved gaming perfection
