Did it take 10 years though? I don’t remember X-Com/Xenonauts/XCOM being released with significant balance issues.
Yes, the difficulty curve in these games have never been perfect, but they broadly offered a good combination of balance and giving the player a sense of growing power.
By contrast it has taken 6 months just to fix acid in PP. It’s never going to be possible to completely restructure the game unless a modder does it.
Sorry, I can’t find it - it’s just a loading screen. I’m on the phone right now so I can’t look through the whole video to find it - I will do later.
However, it’s clear that we are referring to different things. As I said many times before, I like the skills, and I like combining them, the question is how far this is taken and what it allows to achieve. If it bends the rules so that you can manage a difficult situation, that’s great (or at least a matter of taste - some players like it, some don’t). If it breaks the game to the point where there is no situation at all, it’s bad.
Well, that is interesting. Particularly this bit
“Loving it just as much as before, despite the nerfs, mainly because i’ve found all new OPs to play with, a few other possible OPs, trying to figure out if they are viable.”
Maybe it’s someone who enjoys finding ways to break the game, rather than playing it? Or maybe there are many players who like playing this way, I have no idea. But how can you balance the game around players who purposefully don’t want any balance in the game?
You’re not wrong there - but you forget that all but X-Com had the baseline of the original UFO: Alien Assault to work with. Even X-Com had Laser Squad to base things on. Both Xenonauts and XCOM were simply a reskin and update on a tried and tested formula.
A better comparison would be Xcom: Apocalyse, which had a terribly troubled history for all kinds of reasons, which mainly boiled down to it being wildly overambitious, without enough manpower or resources to realise the mad-genius vision of its creator. Sound familiar?
Acid’s an interesting one which has been hashed over many times on other threads in this forum, so I won’t bore you with it again here. But for me the mistake they made with Acid was overloading it with too many seemingly ‘good’ ideas all at once. Instead of just providing the players with an upgraded tool that was useful in the fast-paced alpha-strike world they had created, they added a whole bunch of spiffy looking Acid weapons to the Aliens without thinking about what that new Acid would do to a squad. The result? Howls of anguish.
But the devs have learned from that, and from everything I’m reading in UV’s feedback on various threads, they intend to take a longer, more considered approach to the next set of big changes they are implementing.
Fair enough. I’ve never experienced that myself. Until my rookie play through, I’d been experiencing nothing but unfair balancing, with the Pandoran’s getting to a point (via the evolution and enemy count being tied in with how well the player was doing) where I had to save scum to succeed at all. I was quite disappointed to have to end that play through, as I just couldn’t progress any further.
In comparison, in my current rookie play through I’m doing FAR better. Some of that is due to knowing more of how to play PP effectively (versus how you would play in other XCOM-like games) and of good weapon and ability combinations. Plus in my original veteran play through, there wasn’t the squad SP bonus’s for battles.
Yes I noticed that he didn’t use Rage Burst or Rapid Clearance. However, goes to show that one doesn’t need every skill in the book to make a turn 1 massacre.
That is was one of the reasons I started doing that guide. Did you read it, btw? Any suggestions on what topics to cover/ideas to prioritize for new players? What about in game tutorials? (this I think might be very interesting to the devs).
You don’t - that’s my point.
You give them an Option/Difficulty setting that says: “Knock yerself out - go massacre Pandas to your heart’s content.” Then you balance the game for those who do want some challenge and balance - which will inevitably make the Pandas less brutal than they are atmo because that challenge and balance is provided by adding some restrictions.
With luck that should a) make the game easier to manage for the likes of Icemann, and b) make the game more interesting for the likes of me and Voland.
But I repeat: I’m not asking for the whole skill tree to be removed or nerfed in its entirety, I’m asking for the devs to provide players with options - do you want to play with Super-Soldiers, or do you NOT want to play with Super-Soldiers: and the simple way of doing that is having one setting which says ‘you can use each Squaddie ability as many times as you like in a turn’ and another setting which limits the number of times such Terminator abilities can be used.
Which - I have to say - is what we’ve been saying all along.
It’s just easier to provide the most obvious examples when you’re trying to make your case to a sceptical crowd.
No disagreement there 
Holy crap. Ok if that’s a Terminator build, then sure that needs to be nerfed. The computer had zero chance against that.
The funny thing is that I have that ability that gives 2 action points per enemy killed on quite a few of my 1st squad, but I never use it. I can see how that would heavily unbalance a battle in the players favor. That’s almost unbeatable (what you see in the video).
That’s it!
Have you already seen this (Link below)? That goes to another level.
See what I mean?
Thing is, you don’t know such things are possible until you’re experimenting with a Skill combo and discover that you’ve stumbled across a 'Zerker who simply cannot be stopped - especially after the horrible nerf they gave to RF (which would have gunned him into the ground for being so stupidly unrealistic - EDIT: Though look at @Walan 's example above to see what Electric Reinforcement can add to the party).
Like I say, I’m all for being able to eg. Jet-Jump your Heavy up to a Siren, Rally a couple of times, and then shoot her head off.
What breaks the game is then being able to do the same thing 10 times over, because you’ve created a perpetual AP-generator in whatever form the lack of skills limitations has allowed you to this time.
Checking / reading it now.
Things I’d like to know -
So the defense strength of a Haven drops over time, when under attack. If an attack is repelled (either via a higher defense strength or if the player intervenes), does that defense strength return back to full after?
Missing -
Multi-classing. Pros / cons.
I’ve been using this site as my reference point for multi-classing -
Good weapon combinations per class is another.
Tips for getting resources quicker - I find building up a large stockpile of food is the no.1 best way. Making sure to grab all resources on map helps as well, when inventory space allows for it.
And that’s what defines a Terminator Build 
Because the Pandorans are like the cops in the police station in Terminator.
Best scene in that movie.
Night Club bit being second.
And the flashbacks from the future!
Definitely :). That’s my favorite Terminator film. Second one is fantastic, but it lacks the horror vibe.
Now I feel like an idiot, as the version of Termintor squad’s I had assumed wasn’t anywhere even close to that. That’s just broken. Wow.
The fix would be limiting the amounts of times a unit gets AP back from a kill I think. Like how dash can only be used a certain amount of times now.
Thank you!
Now we have to think further …
Successful YouTube streamers such as ChristopherOdd are “real” hardcore players and use “everything” that the game “allows”!
What drama or tension can such a streamer generate for his viewers when all soldiers stands around in the initial position and shoots everyone away with rage burst? If he makes himself invulnerable, crosses the whole map and blows everything away with a terminator, and so on …
Nothing surprising happens, there is no movement, no exchange of blows in combat as long as he uses the “FTS” termination. What happens then? Fewer viewers are interested in this boring cleaning simulation. Streamer makes no or fewer videos. There is too little or even bad advertising for the game. Snapshot loses money. The game cannot grow … Bad for all!
I’d far rather watch a stream where actual tactics were used. That’s how battles are won. Not via exploits.
Do you have more informations on this ? I’m very intrigued.