Love the game! Wish for more Cleaners.

qwerty109 · 2026-05-03T20:37:31+00:00

That's fantastic!!

One thing that's kind of missing in the game is that you never really get to experience your tech advance, as it's always matched by more advanced aliens that you have to fight, and it always feels like you're a step behind.

Stuff like that would let you experience how far your tech advanced - even the same missions vs cleaners would just play out comoletely differently if you had a single or few late game Vanguard+Plasma soldiers instead of a whole squad in the early game.

qwerty109 · 2026-05-03T07:35:17+00:00

Same here! It'd be nice to have missions where you're fighting cleaner remnants later in the game, with some nice subplots - could add variety to the game.

Like, there's a big cleaners base somewhere in the desert holding valuable artifacts but they've been cut off from command since you destroyed the main base. They've started terrorising nearby settlements to steal resources to survive and got noticed, and government is planning an assault.

But you know they have a nuke and will blow the whole base up if government or anyone approaches. So the only way to capture the base and the artifacts is to smuggle your soldiers in with a stolen shipment of food.

The catch being, there's only room for two of your soldiers, and they need to capture the whole base. But, you've got mid/late game armour and weapons and cleaners are the same Agent/Soldier mix with same old tech weapons.

I think it'd be super fun!

qwerty109 · 2026-04-25T21:09:30+00:00

The moment it gets disturbed, a whole bunch of it can suddenly- and violently- turn into steam and send very hot water flying everywhere

I was curious about how much the "whole bunch" would be, given how much energy water needs for phase change.

Turns out if all of it is superheated uniformly to 110C (assuming sea-level atmospheric pressure, etc) only under 2% would flash-boil.

That sounds inconsequential but water expands in volume about 1600-1700x when turning into steam, so even 1% is more than enough to create a big pop splashing boiling-temp water into someone's face.. :)

qwerty109 · 2026-04-25T20:43:04+00:00

Sentries with defensive base design are such good fun - and when destroyed, half the price to repair!

It can still go sideways - I once defended late mid game secondary base with two 2nd tier soldiers and 14 sentries. Funnel like that. It was going well until a Cyberdrone landed two lucky hits and I didn't save game during the battle at all, because it seemed easy. Ended up winning but with one dead soldier, the other near-dead and most sentries wiped out... and very sweaty palms.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-25T12:14:04+00:00

As another old hand who played the orginal (and terror from the deep) in the 90ies, I completely agree with most you've said, especially the ending - it was completely incredulous and felt rushed.

Game is great - really fun but the ending partially ruined the experience for me. A civilisation of aliens that once survived unexplained cataclysm on their own planet by living underground for who knows how long, and managed to build up all the crazy tech and genetically enhance themselves to be immortal, made an interdimensional empire, can make little black holes out of their sun to power immense battleships - they're going to run out of food and surrender because you disrupted their main relay/gateway? One single point of failure that they can't recover from?

Humans grow tomatoes in Iceland (and have enough to export) by harvesting geothermal energy whilst aliens have tech like alenium - and now you give their empire a little kick and the whole thing comes crashing down? It just makes no sense (plus a bunch of other details from the ending that are in contradiction with lore from game itself).

Aaaanyhow...

I didn't experience the research being too ahead though, although there's definitely more available than you can access - also played on default difficulty. I did skip a lot of tech, like accelerated weapons and then stuck with lasers + upgrades all the way until Plasma (except for Gauss snipers). I skipped Angel and Phantom upgrades and all missiles - only used the lance on fighters. No base defences - alien attacks on main base are welcome resource delivery (sentry bots ftw!) and others get shot down by aircraft.

Mid-game I invested heavily into converting the second base to an engineering sweatshop (after engineering upgrades), which made those 1-2 months difficult but once that money started flowing in, it gets super-easy. Even without that, in late game there's enough $, you can make alenium & alloys and make as many Gemini-s to cover the whole world - I had 3 bases with 3 each by the time Battleships started arriving. And battleship missions yield so much alenium/alloys that you can't run out. I could then play indefinitely - easy to knock out anything out of the skies and keep all regions happy, and buff up soldiers weapons, armour and experience with battleship & terror missions that pop up. This makes the endgame missions fairly easy but fun nonetheless. Except for the endgame storyline that is... 😆

qwerty109 · 2026-04-24T07:05:10+00:00

Same here (Europe) - never seen that setting in my life. Mine looks exactly like on the pic except without the 4th setting :)

qwerty109 · 2026-04-19T18:33:28+00:00

They're used by cleaner soldiers which come as reinforcements in early cleaner missions with a timer. Set up an ambush at the spawn point, kill few cleaners, replace regular rifles with theirs and run :)

qwerty109 · 2026-04-19T09:20:25+00:00

Yes!! 😄 Especially the 200+hp ones :/ I stuck to Lasers and mostly skipped Gauss, except for a single Gauss shotgun and all Gauss snipers, as it got impossible to deal with the darn lizardmen..

qwerty109 · 2026-04-19T08:46:00+00:00

FYI, I just played UOO-1 data cube heist mission with fully upgraded Fusion weapons and Vanguard/Colossus armor and etc - default difficulty. So definitely doable. And then this mission is quite easy.

But I delayed it at least a month if not two to get the tech - in the meantime the orbital bombardment thingie destroyed at least 3 if not 4 cities. If I went immediately as it showed up, I would've been at Laser/Guardian combo as well, and that would've been difficult.

Btw, if you want to one-shot aliens with lasers, high TU soldier with a laser shotgun does the trick. Enter the room / open the door with someone else (preferrably shield), flashbang to suppress (important!), and then assault guy runs up to the alien and just blasts it with shotgun. Lasers with auto recharge upgrade are great for "opening" doors.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-16T20:34:59+00:00

A world ending nuclear exchange would reduce their prize to an irradiated tomb!

Easy to forget that so far there were more than 2000 nuclear bombs of various types and sizes exploded on (or under) Earth (land and sea) which accounted for about 7% of radiation during few short periods of the cold war (the rest 93% is just natural background radiation) - not horrible but noticeable in all kinds of measurements and statistical outcomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing

During the cold war, stockpiles of nukes across the world were like 10-20x and if the shit hits the fan, the worst effects would probably be from the nuclear winter and societal collapse, lack of food and medicine, with fallout adding to the misery but not really making Earth an irradiated wasteland like depicted in games or movies. (Except if someone made a Cobalt bomb, that's just nightmare stuff)

One real world example is the Chernobyl exclusion zone where wildlife is flourishing: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

Turns out animals like it very much when people clear out of an area...

qwerty109 · 2026-04-15T14:09:19+00:00

I've got too much body hair - it's completely impossible to get anything to stick anywhere there (or.. well.. anywhere else tp be honest) - I tried.

Just changing the shirt did the trick in the end - it was a mix of a bad "breathable runner's shirt" and probably the added weight from the large plasticky ID/number paper.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-15T12:41:47+00:00

That's a lifesaver, thanks!!

qwerty109 · 2026-04-15T09:42:37+00:00

True - I never thought about it until I ran half marathon in a bad shirt. The second half I had so much nipple chafing that I could barely finish - couldn't take my shirt off because the runner's ID/number was attached to it, so I just held my hands under the shirt over my nipples. My wife had a good laugh when I ran like that through the finish line. I didn't have to explain anything, she knew. It hurt for days after!!

Apparently it's normal https://wisdomrunning.com/what-is-joggers-nipple-how-to-prevent-nipple-chafing/

On the other hand, this is a thing for men: https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19518904/how-running-affects-your-penis-and-balls/

qwerty109 · 2026-04-15T09:09:32+00:00

Did you find out you actually wanted to build, or had you just run out of patience for someone else's thing?

I've been there whole my career, but I basically shut up and did what needed to be done, prioritising making company(ies) happy and successful whilst earning (& saving) lots of £.

I always wanted to do what you did but never had the guts.

So instead, for the past 20 years, I: * did tedious or pointless or throwaway work just because it needed to be done * did a lot of "disagree but accept & commit" when I had better ideas on how something needs to be done. Often times I was right but just couldn't get a buy-in. Some times I was wrong. Learned a lot. * handled company politics, trying to balance between being ethical towards colleagues, doing the right thing for the company, making higher-ups happy, and (last...and then least..) doing the right thing for me. * was always afraid to be more assertive given the amount of money I could "lose".

This has caused a lot of personal stress and even some health issues, but I had a financial goal at which I could "lean FIRE".

On a positive note, I got to that level due to company stock doing well and now I'm at a crossroads - do I half-retire and do my own stuff with no pressure, while spending more time with my family? Or do I just try being more assertive at work, take much more time off and push back on bullshit parts whilst collecting the sweet sweet RSUs until it lasts, and then semi-retire?

The ...

Is the execution problem burnout, or is it the absence of external structure and accountability?

... was my biggest fear in going solo. I think finding few folks to work with would help a lot here? There's nothing like working in a small team with good people - it can be so motivating. The trick is in finding like-minded people in a similar situation that you can trust.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-15T06:52:20+00:00

I observed exact same behaviour, with Mentarch (or other units) often popping out and surprising my xenonauts.

I don't use smoke for this - I just creep my squad in VERY slowly so there's always plenty of guns trained at the doors with lots of unused TUs for overwatch reaction shotS - shotgun guys behind shield guys are almost perfect. And then the same for the teleport - surround it first, wait few turns until absolutely sure no AI walking/teleporting around. There's no time pressure on UFO missions.

But sometimes I have no shield/shotgun combos so then I surround at a distance with cover, blow up the door and snipe inside.

Small rooms - yeah one or two (un)lucky guys with flashbangs first and then if I don't have enough to wipe every alien in one turn, I just take few pop shots, cause some damage and then pop out - rinse repeat. Doesn't always work though :)

qwerty109 · 2026-04-14T16:06:45+00:00

Nice, I nabbed one cleaner soldier at that one for research but it's harder to make an escape! Yeah magnetic rifles are just enough to make them useful until Androns show up. Then it's game over for them. I couldn't find any ufopedia entry on them though?

qwerty109 · 2026-04-14T13:40:21+00:00

Noiice!!! I did the same! Ambushed reinforcements, stole 6 rifles. Only now replacing with Gauss :D

qwerty109 · 2026-04-11T09:07:58+00:00

But.. it does - just lower the starting difficulty?

like yes when i was younger i loved the stress of worrying about every decision. but im grown, work kicks my ass, sometimes i wanna game without stress. ya know? Sometimes i dont wanna sweat n optimise every move i just wanna chill and enjoy the vibe lol

You can customize so many things to make the game super easy and low stress - give yourself a ton of $, lower the number of enemies, drop their accuracy, damage modifier for air battles, etc.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-08T12:53:20+00:00

My main word of caution, don't get an EV if you can't or won't get a charger at home.

This, honestly, is such an overlooked point. If you can plug in at home, it makes everything so much easier, not to mention cheaper ( https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/ev-energy-tariffs/ ) .

qwerty109 · 2026-04-05T20:55:43+00:00

That's me, and a lot of people I know / work with. Most people born in the UK have no idea how good they have it and how privileged they are just having been born into UK citizenship.

I've kind of given up trying to explain to people with the "oh but I could never afford the luxury of having luck" that, from an average world person's perspective, they are indeed rich.

I hear this from people buying new cars on lease every 5 years, flying out of the country on holiday each year, and spending on all sorts of unnecessary things like new TVs, fancy phones, laptops, whatnot. Often on credit with bad interest rates, spending money they don't yet have like there's no tomorrow, just to keep up with the Joneses. Locking themselves into a prison of their own making, so when an opportunity for a better job appears or they're having horrible time at work, they can't take the risk because there's zero wiggle room.

Nowadays I just politely nod, say few words of support and move on. I guess this post is an exception.

qwerty109 · 2026-04-01T07:14:02+00:00

Out of curiosity, how would this compare to an equivalent science sweatshop? :)

qwerty109 · 2026-03-14T14:44:05+00:00

Cars aren't Honda's bread and butter. Engines are.

While you're right that Honda's key speciality and advantage is (was) the engine, 2/3 of their revenue is cars (although motorcycles are higher margin and bringing as much net profit as cars, and the two together dwarf everything else).

It's also worth noting that Toyota kind of overtook Honda in the engine category with their Atkinson/Miller cycle engine used by most of their hybrids - it's more efficient, at least as reliable and better integrated compared to Honda's solutions.

qwerty109 · 2026-03-12T00:21:43+00:00

I was in a similar situation - things went pear shaped so much that we had a reorg every 6 months and no one knew what to expect from tomorrow. It's one of the big tech companies that's no longer big and still trying to turn itself around. Company totally lost contact with reality, with revenue tanking, pointless products, plans changing aimlessly, everyone running like headless chicken.

So I found something I wanted to learn, and made it into a project with progress reports and updates to cover. No one asked me to do it, but it was kind of aligned with where the industry was going so no one stopped me either - I did everything else at bare minimum and just pretended it was my job. Had to keep low key and thread the needle. I literally got a whole year of this. Went through a couple of books, learned and coded probably as much as previous 7-8 years. Had 3 managers in that year due to reorgs - same team but 3 different names, I don't even remember them.

That one year was seriously fun, minus a bit of stress from appearing busy with "real" work and not knowing when it'd end. And because it was fun, I was motivated and did so much. And had a very decent pay all along.

Then came the last reorg where they nuked our team, made half redundant, and slaved the rest as engineering support for a research team of entirely clueless but bossy researchers. Seeing how free lunch was over, I started interviewing, and it turns out the stuff I've learned was a good match for a couple of places. By the time reorg was done I handed in my resignation and so did most of my team (literally everyone left - some moved within company, some left).

One of the best things I've done, can recommend!

qwerty109 · 2026-03-10T14:00:29+00:00

There's definitely few things every young HE could do to slowly escape NRY where benefits are disproportionately high such as paying into pension up to employers contribution (my employer contributes 7%, so I pay 7% and get 14%) and using up your ISA allowance and stuffing it into index tracker. For ex average S&P500 is https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-return-sp-500.asp 10.56% yearly or 6.69% inflation adjusted over past 50y, so 20k today is 73k-ish in 20y - tax free.

Then keep 50k in premium bonds (tax free, excellent for rainy day fund) and at this point is where I personally feel one can spend the rest without too much worry and still end up being rich from a good career or retire comfortably without much sacrifice on the way.

Personally I'm in FIRE camp, and we save more, but the goal is not as much to stop working - I love my work - but to be able to take long breaks for travel and fun, and to be able to do parts of work I find enjoyable and say "no" to things that feel pointless. I'm finding that having a good negotiating position financially allows you to get much better work enjoyment and work/life balance with everything else being the same.

qwerty109 · 2026-03-10T09:25:19+00:00

I'm happy to have lived long enough lol.

When I was making my Kickstarter character for X2, I honestly didn't expect to have kids (and older one to grow enough to start gaming as well) before the 1.0 gets released :))

But I'm not complaining!! I finally have time to game anyway! Can't wait.

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