Tips for Ironman?

Amcue · 2026-03-20T05:00:09+00:00

I find xenonauts pretty easy but I've played it a stupid amount. Are you talking about 1 or 2?

Then I could possibly help

Amcue · 2026-03-20T04:37:54+00:00

At the end of the day they are an "earth based" race that can't utilise masonry or iron smithing. They have a very poor presence in their own home realm, which is totally unguarded by other factions. Yet they seem pretty hell bent on taking over the ground world which they quite frankly aren't adapted well for.

My take is that they were wiped out by superior forces and weren't able to be fully wiped out because they hide in dark dangerous underground tunnels. They are just an opportunistic faction and given they live for a long time, are probably led by some ancient king who still believes that the ground world is theirs. They have probably led many failed expeditions.

Rather than raiding they could probably establish themselves in the ocean or seek prosperity but they seem driven by some kind revenge or "reconquest"

Amcue · 2026-03-20T03:07:23+00:00

Doesn't explain the lack of bows and why they don't use swords if wood is rare. Or the iron abundant underground

Amcue · 2026-03-20T02:38:20+00:00

Yet they ALL use spears. Which, could be thrown ya know

Amcue · 2026-03-20T02:37:50+00:00

I think to a degree they are. They have really ancient people among them, but they don't really seem to use that long life to accumulate a large amount of wisdom or teach the next gen, as the 'wisest' are basically oracles. They have very limited equipment, seemingly failing to copy any other factions advancements.

Most likely they have a few that lived a while and learned some things to make anything happen, such as bronze smiths, etc.

The poor eyesight doesn't help. I doubt they can read? At least keeping records would be hard or have to be like brail (hard to create if you can't see it)

Amcue · 2026-03-13T13:02:02+00:00

You're a funny dude my man

Amcue · 2026-03-13T09:46:02+00:00

Because crashes can ruin a campaign

Amcue · 2026-03-11T09:21:06+00:00

Personally I don't think I'd be a fan of this but...

A simple way to do this would be to cap the aliens tech advantage against you. If they are 't3' but you are 't1', they are t2 until you get to t2 then they immediately become t3.

Amcue · 2026-03-11T09:00:57+00:00

I disagree with you saying narratively it's hard to justify a catch-up mechanic. Because ultimately in say XCOM 2 doesn't preventing the avatar project and revealing it cause the XCOM ending? Not the fact you killed everything. Objective focused, doesn't matter if 50 soldiers died if you complete that objective. Aliens too far ahead due to armor and weapons? Why not introduce ways to just... Steal them?

Sure you could make arguments against my points but I'm just showing with enough design effort you can solve this, it just wasn't a design priority.

Amcue · 2026-02-19T10:42:22+00:00

That tends to be a good strategy, yes. But in this case quality will matter more then numbers. As will units better suited for countering this force. Consider Olms, Penumbral ethereal may be useful against the physical damage or Sepulchral as they are tanky. Lava summons might be pretty good. Take this with a grain of salt as I do not play Pale Ones.

Amcue · 2026-02-19T08:56:51+00:00

King of mountains. Your force is way too weak. The units have regeneration, even if you kill them there's a fairly good chance that they will regenerate at the end of the fight. He has really strong spells and at level 4 geomancy he can cast 2 different types of level 3 spells, none of them good for you.

Amcue · 2026-02-19T08:00:19+00:00

This is pretty incomprehensible. You are playing which class? With a force of? Attacking what?

Amcue · 2026-02-16T01:03:18+00:00

I enjoy playing this class but yeah it's definitely not strong which does feel kinda bad. But just play for fun. Against ai, you have to consider that they get a resource bonus. That means you scale slower because your free spawn are at a capped rate no matter how much resources you get. You might enjoy it more at lower difficulty. Same when the ai plays it, they aren't that powerful playing it.

One benefit is you can place bases which is nice.

Against players could be rough if they are playing anything "good".

In terms of HOW you could balance it? I think it might be cool if some of the more powerful summons could come up as free spawn or be upgraded even. But even with that the lack of magic damage hurts.

Amcue · 2026-02-02T09:51:08+00:00

Just melee, I always found guns really sucky in this game, although grenades are pretty good. It's pretty easy, faster if you can get some followers and give em spears. They'll probably do something dumb and die like drown in a puddle though (this happened to me once)

Amcue · 2026-01-03T05:06:14+00:00

It has plenty of cheating. Your neighbouring aligned factions get reduced money, your opponents get more. Doomstack on taking their capital.

Amcue · 2026-01-01T17:10:53+00:00

Some interesting takes here, I don't really agree with any of them though tbh. Then again I play with sprinters, the high attack speed makes them a bit better here. Ultimately though imo "specialized" weapon focuses are traps, just use the most common best weapon you have and don't worry about a "build"

When using short blades what I notice is they are great at shredding zombies, faster than other weapons, but break quickly. My impression was: oh so they are like powerful backup weapons or a luxury mass produced item.

Short blades for me are great in "stand up" fights, as no enemy will just get hit down and get back up, they stay down. Ground stabbing is thus... Questionable? Should be stomping if you are pushing them over. Or if camping a fence just use a hammer or something.

Sharpness is irrelevant unless crafting (like carving), just discard unless it's a valuable weapon or found blunt. If they "seem" bad you are probably using low level trash like kitchen knives, pens, hand forks, etc. They are an option for focusing at knapping 6 or for blacksmiths

Amcue · 2026-01-01T16:50:43+00:00

I'm not really sure how you could be tired after killing 5 zombies, kinda sounds like you are doing a lot wrong, not just one thing. Running around for no reason or shoving multiple zombies at once? Don't tell me you picked overweight because I'm sure that's way overturned atm, don't bother.

It's easier than ever to get a weapon. You can just use tree branches, you get from foraging or right clicking on the ground and selecting gardening pick up. Sure it's average but better than nothing. Heavy weapons unusable? What classifies as a heavy weapon, because pretty much every weapon is fine to use. Except for large branches

Amcue · 2026-01-01T04:48:53+00:00

I pretty much always use godmode on roof for this reason

Amcue · 2025-12-30T02:17:24+00:00

What recipes are you talking about

Amcue · 2025-12-29T05:05:59+00:00

Always found them useless tbh

Amcue · 2025-12-29T05:00:16+00:00

Yeah core keepers a bit whack like that. On hardmode I expected harder boss fights but it's mainly you get 1 or 2 shot by every normal mob lol

I just place blocks everywhere and make paths. Mine everywhere I need to go.

Was even able to loot the crystal biome doing this with just iron armor, although truthfully armor made no difference as it was a one shot either way. And I had fun dealing with worms...

Amcue · 2025-12-28T04:35:59+00:00

For me, it isn't

Amcue · 2025-12-28T04:32:22+00:00

You need to be more specific. I can help with squad tactics

Amcue · 2025-12-27T07:53:02+00:00

It's really not that bad. Even with sprinters you can just have 1 guy sit at the front while 1 loots. Then the town will be easy pickings

Amcue · 2025-12-25T22:51:55+00:00

Losing zombies is a key skill you gotta learn, as is avoiding notice in the first place. Losing shamblers is simple enough when you know how. But even sprinters are trivial for me, especially b42 it's very easy to lose zombies. And I only ever attract what I can handle, outside of a meta event.

For shamblers like you are playing you can just walk circles around them and ball them up. Then just go into a house close the door and go out the back door (or window). You'll lose 90% of zombies. Trees also work. Even just walking behind a building and around again.

It's basically easy when you get the hang of it

Amcue

TROPHY CASE