CommanderFoxPrime

Largely because they didn't need to, as their UFOs were more than agile enough to doge AAMs although the modifications to make them work in our atmosphere did reduce the agility a bit. They are immune to ICBMs though.

Two words: Pulse Lasers. Especially if NATO and WARSAW PACT discover that the plasma sheath that going hypersonic or undergoing reentry creates is transparent to UV light. Hook base defense pulse lasers (UV band of course) to a nuclear power plant and you've got something that invalidates ICBMs, SLBMs, and pretty much MAD for it makes nuclear war survivable if outright invalidated because there is no way to deliver nuclear weapons to their target. Thing is, you've got two sides that absolutely hate each other, and really the only thing that is keeping them from going to war with each other is nuclear weapons. Now remove those nuclear weapons from the picture... I was thinking that the Xenonauts start out similarly to GDI. GDI wasn't always the independent group you got to know, it started out as a UN organization with some UN oversight but is mostly independent. Eventually, it becomes fully independent and takes over.

Actually think about it for a moment. This is during the height of the Cold War, with two sides wanting the advanced technologies to further their ideologies (this is more or less spelled out in the epilogue of the game's victory ending). With such advanced technologies, MAD is invalidated... leading to a situation where war is certain. With the various technologies including various bits of insanely advanced biotech and nanotech from the Praetorians, you can see where this is going. The sad thing is, this would be effectively impossible, leading to a situation where you've got four sides outside of the aliens working their asses off near Saturn: NATO, Warsaw Pact, the Xenonauts, and everyone else aka the 'third world'. The Xenonauts will have the best tech, of course, but that is due to the due diligence of the RnD staff of the Xenonauts than anything special about them. So the Xenonauts -later rebranded as the Global Defense Force or something similar- has to juggle making sure that WW3 on Earth (and later, an interplanetary war) doesn't happen, keeping terrorists with alien toys from causing problems, and fighting the alien CBs...

Well, the basic idea is that due to some political maneuvering by the Commander (aka the player avatar), the deaths of so many, the infrastructure damage that such a conflict would incur, among other things, would eventually lead to a situation where you've got this group on your hands that isn't doing much (initially) after the invasion. So there would be a lot of rebuilding and what not to do and a lot of people getting their hands on alien tech, something that even our Head Scientist outright stated that it shouldn't be in everyone else's hands. This would lead to a situation where the Xenonauts-turned-GDI has to not only juggle trying to keep as much of the technology away from the various human governments (especially the technology behind Singularity Torpedoes) and this would later spread across to Mars and Jupiter. So, in essence, the Xenonauts has to make sure that WW3 (or later an interplanetary war) doesn't happen after an alien invasion on the 'home front'... I was thinking of having Saturn be the primary planet of operations for the Praetorians after the invasion, and what they have is almost entirely dedicated to mining and construction, not combat like the main fleet. The head Praetorian there knows that humanity managed to kill the head of the invasion fleet, so it'll be cautious so it wouldn't suffer the same fate. This leads to the Xenonauts going out and fighting the equivalent of CBs...

Well, I've been playing Xenonauts on and off and one day I simply went 'huh, the end of the game is the perfect thing to start a setting with' so I jot down some notes, played with the idea for fanfiction, even started creating a few fanfics that worked with the concept. That and creating a 'Physics + Starship Builder' So, let's start with how things are likely going to go: At the end of the game, it's raining Praetorian tech, meaning everyone and their brother is likely to reverse engineer it sooner or later which is going to do horrible things to world stability By the time you get plasma, the local forces have started getting lasers out the wazoo, and likely alienium grenades/missiles too It's the Cold War, so... yeah... things are going to be interesting there on out A common theme of my walkthroughs is that at least a few hundred million die on Earth, even on easy. Partially because of how quickly things ramp up compared to X-COM/XCOM (at most, you've got two years to defeat the invaders, even on easy)... so yeah we've got to get through the fallout of that. The entire invasion looks half-cocked from the getgo, meaning that it is likely that something got the Praetorians scared enough to go in hard and without preparation in the first place and I don't mean having their scout self-destruct either. Some of what Chief Scientist Condescending said was based on an incomplete picture... particularly to alienium and the elements needed to produce alien/Praetorian alloys with a handful of others being part of the deal due to cracking the Praetorian language and encryption (as well as reading how the Praetorians exploited their thrawls gene pool for their own ends) Praetorians always need two things: genes and resources. Humans provided the genes, and it would be discovered that the outer solar system would have the latter. Initially, it looked like the head Praetorian of the invasion ended the threat of the Praetorians and their thrawls... but apparently the Praetorians aren't as cohesive nor good losers as once thought, so on Earth (and in the outer planets) humanity still has to fight Praetorians and their thrawls, upping the casualty count Well, that's the basic idea that went into this... leading to the Xenonauts into a GDI style organization. You guys are free to discuss as much as possible because I think that this might be an interesting topic as a whole...

Well, I have an idea that has been playing in the back of my mind for quite a while, basically... it's post Xenonauts, or in this case post-"Praetorian Invasion". The world has been saved (with hundreds of millions confirmed dead, with tens of millions MIA at best, much of the infrastructure has to be rebuilt, etc.) and all that needs to be done is pick up the pieces. Problem is, despite the Xenonaut's best efforts, the major powers of the world -be NATO aligned or Pact aligned nations- have gained control of various minor Praetorian bases, allowing them access to Praetorian technology. This has upset the balance of the Cold War, among other things. So, the Xenonauts became essentially GDI and quickly started setting up facilities all across the world (and in the late '90s, in space) to help keep the situation from going out of control. Thanks to a leak from Xenonaut probes, everyone has discovered that there is alienium and the base components of Alien Alloys -aka 'Praetorian Alloys'- in them hills and started a massive race of space colonization. In addition to this, the Xenonauts discovered that humanity has psionic abilities, just nothing like the Praetorians and their thralls, mostly empathic and minor telekinetic (with the latter being what the Praetorians wanting) abilities. In an unanimous decision of all the departments, the Xenonauts have made an entire section of the organization simply dedicated in getting now-budding psions from pretty much everyone else, knowing what would happen if they don't. The Xenonauts have bee trying to keep the peace in Sol for decades, but one incident in the Jupiter Sector would lead to war... Another idea is basically the 'post-Xenonauts' setting above and having the Xenonauts discover -via the largest Praetorian base on Earth- that the Praetorians have discovered an alien energy signature on the moon near Tranquility Base that has them scared shitless, so the Xenonauts -once they got the equipment- sends a team to the area and investigates... discovering a Chozo facility dedicated to observing humanity. The Xenonauts quickly build humanity's first base on the moon -also called Tranquility Base- around the entrance and quickly gave access to the site a Black Omega rating. With complete and utter care, the scientists, archaeologists, and engineers at Tranquility Base uncover the secrets that the facility holds, and learn more about humanity in the process.

The Afterblank (that's what the series as a whole is known as in quite a few circles) series is probably the best way to go in terms of modular weapons. You have a base weapon (say, an Assault Rifle) that has a series of stats like loudness, damage, base accuracy, etc.; now what the modules do is modify those stats, but you have to be careful as they come in advantages and disadvantages. For example having silencers on your weapons decrease how loud they are but at the cost of damage, while accelerators increase the noise while increasing damage. If that makes sense...

I've tried this and... it didn't work...

Afterblank didn't use that until Aftershock, and is probably the only reason why you didn't simply produce only one weapon and nothing at all. Add to that the various resistances that are a staple of the series and you're forced to haul multiple weapons because there isn't one 'powerful' weapon. Addons can even change the capabilities of these weapons like adding sniper scopes to precision rifles makes them able to be aimed at a body part after the user gets a skill. 'Accelerators' make kinetic weapons far more effective by improving muzzle velocity while silencers make it hard to pinpoint the shooter. Then there is the shit that some mods would add in like a giant fuck-off AMR that kills pretty much anything one-shot but required sniper and heavy weapons training to use and power armor to wield. That really isn't a problem with the Afterblank series as the KISS principle really applies there. There you've got your basic and advanced variants of equipment that generally modifies how they work in a general straightforward way.

Um, guys, you know that Wikileaks is now your enemy right? They've been editing their content to suit their narrative with Assange outright saying it.

So, I've been playing this mod and... holy [insert expletives here] is it hard on easy. Maybe I'm rusty from not playing Xenonauts for quite some time but this is crazy...

Well then, as they say unto the breach.

Hm, other than more mod-compliance and more complete... I think variety is needed. Like say the HWPs (as I like to call the ground vics) need secondary weapons even if its simply a MG equiv. A solid secondary (or secondaries if you want) so you don't use your primary all the time would be a decent idea.