imperialus

I kinda doubt that will be an issue. RTS done well though can be very good for squad based tactics. Check out Satellite Reign for an indy example, or Dawn of War 2 for a big(er) budget one. So you don't want Apoc, but you do want X-Com Interceptor? A 3d flight sim would be an astronomical amount of work. What would this add to the game though? If it's just the kewl factor then I'd suggest a small screen with a helmet mounted camera for each soldier like in Space Hulk or (the movie) Aliens. It'd create quite a bit more work for the artists though since then the player is going to be looking at the art assets from angles they wouldn't otherwise be doing. So what would the other players be doing when someone is off on a battlescape mission? staring at a pause screen? Watching time pass by at a 1:1 ratio? Watching him play the mission? Xenonats 2 could benefit from some graphical overhauls though just to aid in usability. A lot of this can be solved just by moving to a better engine like Unity though.

I threw my pennies at you back in 2010 when the alpha build consisted of watching the geoscape day night cycle. I would cheerfully do so again.

Yes, redesigning the entire soldier selection GUI shouldn't take more than 2-3 minutes tops.

I ran it on XP for years before I upgraded to Windows 7. You should have no issues.

Apparently... Honestly I don't care much one way or the other. It just struck me as such an odd hill to plant your flag on and die defending when 30 seconds in google and a picture on wikipedia rendered the whole argument moot. Still it's been highly entertaining to read the strawmen, the appeals to authority, and all the other rhetorical fallacies in this thread.

Just for funsies... here is a picture of NORAD's Command Centre. Wot is that on the right hand side of the front wall? ...A flat map. Looks an awful lot like the Geoscape actually except they don't need no fancy colours to track incoming ballistic missiles. Can we consider the realism case closed now?

I'm wondering if it might just be bad luck. I mean the chinook was out of your base's radar net, and it was unescorted. I think it's possible at least that an alien craft encountered the chinook and shot it down without it even being detected on radar. I'm not sure how the spawning mechanic works for alien craft, but I do know that after they have spawned they will fly around doing their thing even if it is outside your detection range, or your radar hasn't happened to encounter it yet. I think it might be possible that you just happened to cross paths with an alien patrol.

Quite a few of the complaints/questions on the steam forum right now seem to be centering around the battlescape bugs, AI, and balance or lack thereof. Those of us who've been with the project for a while know to expect this, but other than a brief statement on the store page saying that that the game is in bugfixing/balance mode right now there isn't much to inform new players as to the state of the battlescape. I've mentioned it whenever I've seen it come up, but my posts tend to get lost in the sea pretty quick. Just a suggestion, but what if Chris or GJ could post a sticky at the top of the forum explaining where the Battlescape AI is at right now and some of the more common bugs like grenades, shooting through walls, ect. You could point people towards GJ's blogposts while you're at it. For reference here is one of the posts I did on the subject

you can download the standalone from Desura or the Humble Store.

Hrm... odd. I just upgraded to Win 7 back in December and never had a problem running Xenonauts on Win XP prior to that.

There's about 50 maps right now, so you'll see repetition but the number is growing (and moddable) Bigger than the original games. Bigger than TFTD's too. Names and the like are totally customizable. Can't customize any visuals though due to engine limitations. Can't really speak to this on since I haven't played any long runs yet (I've actually been waiting for the the beta release then Desura crapped out on me). Then it gets released on Steam and I pull a 60 hour workweek. From what I've seen playing vicariously through youtube, the higher difficulties get damn hard. Can't say for sure, but this game has been Chris' life for over 3 years now. I don't see him bailing on it as soon as it's released. Plus, it's highly moddable. It's X-Com with a prettier UI and a snarky head scientist.

heh, technobabble. At the end of the day I'm trying to show the ridiculousness of the situation. We're on page 7 of a thread discussing the accuracy of a weapon that is likely going to be used for a grand total of 30-60 minutes in a game that will last... well many times longer than that. It reminds me of an argument that I heard between two 15mm Napoleonic players going at it hammer and tongs about the fact that one of the guys had painted silver epaulets on his Old Guard miniatures while the other guy was adamantly convinced that they should have been gold. Personally, I think the weapons work just dandy as they are. Each one fills the role that it is supposed to fill in the context of the game which is good enough for me.

Which is why, if you had read to the end of my post you would have noticed that I mentioned that the gun that almost certainly would have been used by the Xenonauts, as in standard issue US army ordnance from 1967-1980ish was the M16A1 which had two fire modes. Semi Auto and Full Auto. I know that M16A1 does not equal M16 either, but if we want to get really pedantic the only branch of service that adopted the "M16" was the Airforce. And it was a fully automatic weapon too. What I think has you confused is that from the early 80's onward the M16A2 was the most common M16 variant seen, and it was only capable of 3 round bursts or semi automatic shots. However that gun was not in production in 1979. They developed the M16A2 because experience in Vietnam showed that a fully automatic assault rifle was a fantastic way for an infantry grunt to burn through all of his ammunition.

The M16A3 does have a full auto setting though the point is moot since it was introduced in the late 1980's and is only used by the navy. The M16A2 does not have a full auto setting and was standard issue after the late 80's until the M16A4 began to be issued in the early 2000's However in the late 1970's what you would likely be seeing is the M16A1 which did not even have burst fire. You got to choose between semi auto and full auto... I hate to resort to gun porn on Youtube, but as you can see... This is not burst fire.

Which, ironically enough is how it should be. An M16 on full auto fires between 700 and 900 rounds per minute. An M60 fires around 500.