Man up, fans of X-COM! [Xenonauts]

[Mánagarmr]

Post-mission autopsy: it's an android.

*facepalm*

Those androns (yes, that's their name) cause me nightmares. Far worse than any muton ever did in the original. Those things are damn terrifying, and I haven't even SEEN a reaper yet. /cry

[Aklyon]

Xenonauts, has several different ways to actually stun things that can be stunned, which is neat.
Firstly, the stun rod. It is what you're expecting.
Second, stun grenades. They spew forth gas and give you a reason to cram even more gear on whoever can hold it. You can also walk into this gas and interrupt your movement to cough.
Third, the stun rocket, which can be aimed further than a grenade (and with the same kind of gas) and gives more versatility to the rocketeer.
Lastly, there is the occasional 'stun with a non-stun rocket by accident'. This is the least effective way to do things and really only happens if you are unlucky (you missed the target) and lucky at the same time, afaik. On the otherhand, explosions!

[keith.lamothe]

Those androns (yes, that's their name) cause me nightmares. Far worse than any muton ever did in the original. Those things are damn terrifying, and I haven't even SEEN a reaper yet. /cry

They were remarkably tough, compared to the other stuff thus far, yes.  Weren't too much trouble on easy, where if I can get my machinegunner into reasonably close range nothing really survives the barrage.  Or, failing that, the rocket launcher guy or the big honking laser cannon on the recon tank, though I don't get any loot from the target in that case.

On easy the tactical battles are more a matter of finding a good medium between "be careful so I don't take a ton of casualties" and "get this mission done sometime today".  The recon tank has really helped with that.

It's the strategic layer where I felt that I was getting perilously close to a deathspiral.  Getting that second base up fast is pretty freaking important, turns out.  As after losing UFOs int he first few waves they did a remarkably good job of staying completely out of my radar envelope for the next several weeks, hammering the rest of the planet.


@Aklyon: yea, I've used the stun grenades and rockets quite a bit more than the rods, actually.  I turned to the rod for that particular enemy because I'd faced one earlier in the mission that had completely resisted a stun rocket hitting it directly in the face, and a follow-up stun grenade.

Androns do not seem to care about gas or stun rods   Though I did just see a new research project for "electroshock grenade"; we'll see...

[Wingflier]

Well I did on X-COM: EU, though I did end up losing for that reason I suppose, near the end of the game. I blame them for that though, it wasn't until you actually tried to attempt an attack on the alien mothership that it told you of this arbitrary requirement which could have been mentioned 10 hours (game time) prior. Perhaps that's how the X-Com games work though, and if that is the case I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

The Firaxis XCom is a very different game.  It's inspired by the original comparing them very much doesn't do either any favors really.  Best enjoyed separately

Though when I played the firaxis one I think it did tell me about the psionicist requirement, or at least that I wanted to train one up.  I did anyway because psionics were largely what let me turn the tide in the original (though there was no hard rule requiring it).

In the original you still got bitten hard by things you didn't know, but they were things that it made sense that you didn't know them.  Thus far that's also my experience with xenonauts.  Like:

ZAP! (My sergeant whacks new enemy with stun rod, because I want to take one alive)
... and it doesn't fall, despite my being able to one-shot their massive overgrown lizard shock troops with one, and this hit doing about as much stun damage as the other one took to down

ZAP! (My sergeant whacks it again, big numbers, alien still standing)

(Alien shoots my sergeant in the face repeatedly, but between the difficulty causing misses and my sergeant's armor he barely survives to next turn)

ZAP!

ZAP!

"I hit the freaking thing four times with a giant cattle prod, what gives!?"

(reload from slightly earlier save, and just gun the thing down rather than get my sergeant shot up)

Post-mission autopsy: it's an android.

*facepalm*

See, I think that's where we differ.

My seargant would get one chance with the stun rod, and that's if I'm generous enough to the "science team" to use it at all. If they're not down in one hit, it's a shotgun to the face. Then another shotgun to the face, and throw in a grenade just for good measure.

If the eccentric scientist leader is anything like the lady from the Firaxas game, I can almost imagine the look of horror on her face and the barrage of ceaseless moaning when *what* I bring back to the lab can't be acceptably distinguished from a batch of overcooked macaroni and cheese.

[keith.lamothe]

If the eccentric scientist leader is anything like the lady from the Firaxas game, I can almost imagine the look of horror on her face and the barrage of ceaseless moaning when *what* I bring back to the lab can't be acceptably distinguished from a batch of overcooked macaroni and cheese.

Have fun in the alien salt mines!

[Aklyon]

If the eccentric scientist leader is anything like the lady from the Firaxas game, I can almost imagine the look of horror on her face and the barrage of ceaseless moaning when *what* I bring back to the lab can't be acceptably distinguished from a batch of overcooked macaroni and cheese.

The head scientist here is a guy, but almost any melee-type alien in these sorts of games tends to end up looking like that (or worse) for me, because what they do (and their lack of valuable loot) generally outweighs the idea of not using the excessive force I have available in the tank or rocketeers.

I usually have a feeling that while the squad (and maybe the pilots) are quite alright with my not-exactly-firm grip on keeping overdamage down, the rest of the base is sighing at me for going to the rocketeers first (who tend to be slightly behind in distance anyway) in emergencies.

[keith.lamothe]

I usually have a feeling that while the squad (and maybe the pilots) are quite alright with my not-exactly-firm grip on keeping overdamage down, the rest of the base is sighing at me for going to the rocketeers first (who tend to be slightly behind in distance anyway) in emergencies.

Overdamage?  Overdamage is when you don't even land to recover the crashed UFO.  You just airstrike it to smithereens.

The ability to do that is one of my favorite additions Xenonauts made to the original formula.

[Aklyon]

And for some reason they pay you for the airstrike. Dunno how that works.

[keith.lamothe]

And for some reason they pay you for the airstrike. Dunno how that works.

Apparently the gov't gets the shreds of alien alloy, and they pay you for that.

Kinda like selling sectoid corpses in the original: don't ask questions, just take the money.

(incidentally, that doesn't work in this one)

[Mánagarmr]

And for some reason they pay you for the airstrike. Dunno how that works.

Apparently the gov't gets the shreds of alien alloy, and they pay you for that.

Kinda like selling sectoid corpses in the original: don't ask questions, just take the money.

(incidentally, that doesn't work in this one)

It does actually. Corpses not sent to research are automatically sold off at the end of a mission. There's no point in storing them, after all.

[keith.lamothe]

Kinda like selling sectoid corpses in the original: don't ask questions, just take the money.

(incidentally, that doesn't work in this one)

It does actually. Corpses not sent to research are automatically sold off at the end of a mission. There's no point in storing them, after all.

In the end-mission summary it tells me that the corpses (and live aliens that the research team didn't need, if any) were "Destroyed", whereas the plasma pistols and whatnot list a sale price.  Is that not what you get?

[Aklyon]

No, thats alien equipment, unless I missed something very recent. Corpses are marked as DESTROYED.

[Cyborg]

Wouldn't it be unfortunate if aliens ever did visit planet Earth and saw our video games, that we were already fantasizing about killing them before we even met them?


Not that I believe that's even a remote possibility, but…something about it seems off from that perspective.

[Coppermantis]

It's not like the aliens we shoot in video games would likely resemble them specifically. They might be humanoid, in which case there would be similarity, but we play games about slaughtering our own kind just as much, if not more.

[Cyborg]

It's not like the aliens we shoot in video games would likely resemble them specifically. They might be humanoid, in which case there would be similarity, but we play games about slaughtering our own kind just as much, if not more.

Just hope they don't play Duke Nuke'm.