I played Xenonauts Community Edition (without Division-X or other downloaded mods) last night for 2 hours or so, normal difficulty. I shot down first scout UFO near Tel Aviv. Dropship had landed on a farm field. Fields were filled with hay bales of different sizes and shapes (at least 2 different machines to make them
). There were some fences and equipment too. At center of the map was a house, surrounded by wooden walls, and farmer with a shotgun. That's nice. Well done map which leaves little for nitpicking. Except for one thing: some of the house's walls are invisible to player. Where's the door? Where are windows? Those are there, but I couldn't see them. If it happens again... Hey, I can load a save! Here we go. As you can see, movement path goes around the invisible wall and destination point is presumably by the window. Door we can see is NOT the front door but a door inside the house. Whatever is at front of that door is blocked by the invisible wall. What the Hell?
I had one casualty there. It was my own damn fault: I had spread my xenonauts all over the map and some were wandering alone without back up. And it had to be one of the lone 'nauts who found a sebillian with plasma rifle. He got shot, wounded, suppressed, and panicked. Of course I rushed other xenonauts to help, but too late: sebillians are tough cookies and less than handful of rifle shots didn't bring him down in time. Now when I think back, I could maybe have saved panicking soldier with a smoke grenade. UFO itself had one occupant. He opened the door, shot couple times (presumably with plasma pistol), then closed the door. I placed my sniper and machine gunner for overwatch the door, but they didn't do reaction fire. Manual explains the reason. When reaction fire check is made, game makes comparison of TU and RFL values of the units AND their equipped weapons. Weapons have Reaction Modifier, which dictates how well that weapon is suited for reaction fire. Pistol and shotgun are good for that, sniper rifle and machine gun are poor, assault rifle is average, and rocket launcher doesn't do reaction fire at all. Therefore gunslinger is likely to draw & shoot faster than sniper and machine gunner, and take cover before retaliation fire ensues. Therefore ideal door opener is a (wo)man with high TU and RFL, and a shotgun. Waittaminnit! Shotgun? Isn't sub-machine gun used for that role? Manual also says unit can be suppressed by shooting near of it, even though shots don't penetrate possible cover (like a wall or a door). I utterly forgot that when playing the game and machine gun didn't fire a shot.
Some other problems and points of interests I have noticed this far:
Picture of the F-17 in the game looks way off (
compare to this)
Much of the salvaged & looted equipment are automatically sold off (good bye plasma rifles)
Selling the produced items doesn't make a profit (manual explains it as game balance measure)