Kaguya

Pretty sure it'll be sold in the Early Access section, which has "NOT FINISHED" labels all over the storefront. (says so in the OP, too.) Also n:thing the inability to claim a badge, the button has HTML code in it and clicking it regardless throws out a 403-error.

The setting is in 1970, the game isn't done with 1970ies tech (or isn't even made to look like it was, unlike all the 8bit/16bit indie games coming out today.). Or should we scrap all the graphics in the game and make it look like Pong because the game is set in 1970? XCOM: Enemy Unknown was also based on a 18 years old game. That didn't make it "retro".

"It's nostalgic" alone isn't any kind of argument for adding, well, anything to a (non-retro) game. Not that I feel one way or the other about it, it doesn't really matter with Xenonauts; your units do not have any kind of idle animations, the maps don't have anything animated, watching a static "hidden movement" screen isn't much different from watching a static battlescape.

Because Obama just turned like 18 years old, it doesn't mean anything for Xenonauts, they haven't even heard of the kid.

I don't think Mind Control or Blaster Launcher had much over the Ghost armor when it comes to "things that are OP". Equipping your entire team with that pretty much broke the game. Didn't really like the PSI abilities. Mind Fray was okay, reliable 5 damage. Panic, on the other hand. Any time I used it, the panic'd alien shot the soldier that panic'd it. Mind Control needs some tweaks mechanically. If the aliens kill the MC'd alien, your rookies will panic. If you MC the last alien, the mission won't be over until the MC runs out and that alien is killed. You can't shoot the MC'd alien yourself, and once the MC breaks, and the alien gets a free shot at your guys, so you'd have to run it as far away as you can on the last turn.

It was lot more immersive and, well, interesting. Capturing leaders alive to learn more about the various alien missions, navigators to learn about various different UFOs, medics for.. eh, getting some random autopsy/live alien report you haven't gotten, research on food, entertainment, surgery, etc. It was all useless fluff ultimately but it was very interesting stuff to read, none the less. I'd still have liked to have those in the new game, maybe tag them as "non-critical" so people don't research those before the actual important stuff if that was an issue to remove them.

UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-COM: Ufo Defense is the "original" game (one name was used in the EU, the other in US). Terror From The Deep was a sequel to it, and is largely a palette swap of the first game, and adds a whole lot of tedium to the game with multipart missions and obscure techtrees. X-COM Apocalypse is very different game from the two originals, it has it's good sides, but it suffers from getting rushed out the gate with lot of the cool mechanics planned for it scrapped. It's worth a look if you are a fan of the tactilol squad games. X-COM Interceptor is a very different beast. It's a flight sim. It still has basebuilding and research and whatnot, but it's in a whole different genre. X-COM: Enforcer is all that remains of X-COM: Alliance. It was supposed to be a tactilol squad game like the first three games, but they ran out of money / the project got slashed. Someone slapped in all the assets they had made for Alliance, and made it a first person shooter. A really, really bad first person shooter. Given the track record, the fact that we got XCOM: Enemy Unknown in the first place is a minor miracle. They are all available on various digital distribution services like Steam for pretty cheap. The Steam version of the original IIRC comes with both the original DOS version and DOSbox to run it, and the Windows(95) (gold) version. The Windows version probably requires some fixes since it doesn't run very nice with modern graphics cards, but the Dosbox version should run out of the box, so to speak. XcomUtil is good thing to look at, it fixes few bugs and annoyances that the old games had.

Which hardly was the issue in the originals anyways. Laser rifles? Infinite ammo. Heavy plasma? 35 rounds. It took some effort to burn out the entire mag. The only thing with ammo issues were rocket launchers, which also are limited in XCOM. (and Apocalypse had Devastators which again had infinite ammo, with some hilarious results)

Why would you need to control the way your troopers are looking at? People have these magical things called necks, and eyes that move around in their heads. It's ridiculous to suggest that ordering a guy to a position he would only look at a 90 deg arc in front of him and nothing else. It's just a bunch of ultimately pointless micromanagement required from the game. It's not like with smart movement you'll have more than one option to look at anyways, one direction is where you came from/where rest of the team is, and the other direction is where the enemy is. Shooting at walls on demand wouldn't make sense with the new gameplay mechanics. Oh, an enemy in high cover? Just have one guy shoot the cover away, and the rest get free shots at the target. It can still be done with grenades, but since they are limited use per mission, there's downsides to removing someone's cover, you can't do it all the time. The limited inventory slots reflect that as well. You can't equip everyone to deal with absolutely everything, you need to make choices. Do you want to give the guy extra survivability, ability to heal, blow up things or something else? Likewise, losing your medic actually has consequences, instead of another guy simply picking up the medikit and soldiering on. Sure those things might be nice to have, but none of that is absolutely required re: the way XCOM works. Plotting the path for your troopers to move would be nice however, for example for avoiding poison clouds whatever.

The map sizes of XCOM support that squad size, however, as does the challenges it pits you against. It's not like in X-COM where you split your guys up the moment they stepped off the skyranger and sent them in their merry way in different directions in smaller groups. XCOM is largely moving the 4-6 you have in a single team, fighting against alien teams of 3-4 at a time, with the occasional larger conflict. The game design is inherently different in that regard. Squad size isn't something that makes one better than the other, the environments/challenges in both supported whatever it was set at.

Of course they would. Just look at the Enemy Unknown threads.

When'd you actually need to make any ammo? It's not like every alien didn't run around with a plasma weapon, and you end up swimming in mags. Plus the whole "unload mag at the end of mission to not lose it"-glitch.

How is that any different from the original game? Both games start off by giving you easy aliens to kill with your piddly guns. Both games give you gradually better gear, and gradually harder aliens to kill. And it all culimates to a big overall "boss" like some f-ing mario game in both the old and new game.

Problem with anything Steam says that it's always "Yup just had 700% increase in sales", "welp, another 200% increase in sales", but they haven't ever told actual figures. There's very little numbers on digital from any store, unfortunately. I'd say digital already sells (much) more than retail, but by how much, don't think there's any figures on that.

The hell? Take a chill pill. It's an obvious joke. Ever since the NES-era consoles have been around, people have been saying that PC gaming is dead. Yet it somehow keeps being relevant after all this time. It's obviously not dead, or dying.

PC gaming is everyone's favorite undead. It's been dying for over 20 years now, 'm pretty sure.

Dropping prices? Lot of the new AAA titles have gone up in prices recently. $49,99 has been the baseline for PC games for a long time. If there's any price trends re: AAA titles, it has been up. Lot of the "100% surefire hit sequels" are selling for $59,99 instead. (speaking of RRPs). And the idea that developers are making better products because of piracy is just laughable. Nothing stops a pirate from pirating the game no matter how good they are. Some of these pirates say that they buy good games. I seriously doubt that is anywhere near the majority of them.

If the trooper you are about to Overwatch can see an alien, there's ZERO reason to use it (think only exception is that you used Flush on it, forcing it to move). Overwatch triggers when the enemy moves, and guess what the enemy WON'T do if they see you Overwatching? That's right, move. Instead they will just shoot you in the face. And even if they did move, Overwatch has like -20 aim penalty (or is it just -10, either way). If your guy can shoot, then shoot. It'll have better chances to hit than overwatching. If the chance to actually hit is low, just hunker down, or dash back. Of course, troopers that the aliens don't see can overwatch freely, and when they move in closer to get a better shot at the hunkering guy they see (or come in chasing for the guy that dashed away), the overwatching guys can get free shots on the alien running through the open. In short; See an alien? Shoot it, hunker down, or fall back. Don't see an alien? Overwatch.

The fact that it's the worst demo... pretty much ever is probably the reason. It has two maps, and the first one is 100% hand-held with the annoying-in-the-long-run talking heads popping up all the time.Even the second map starts off like that, and it's structured like a shooting gallery. First you encounter a pair of sectoids. Then you proceed deeper along the corridor-like map, and you bump into a pair of floaters. Move in further and you bump into a pair of thin men. It just left a really foul taste in your mouth after completing it. They should've added an abduction or a terror mission as a third map to get a real taste of the game, but they somehow missed that. Classic isn't that bad. I did an Ironman run on classic, losing 4. And those were pretty much low ranked rookies/squaddies at that. Just remember that there's an option to Hunker, which makes the trooper harder to hit, AND gives immunity to non-flanked criticals. Trying to avoid half-cover as much as possible won't hurt either. Trying to lure the enemies into overwatch is also useful, while a bit time consuming occasionally, but frontal attacks still work at times. Don't be afraid to use explosives-- a grenade will blow up the cover enemies are using, giving free shots to everyone else, turning those shots that were likely to miss into near-guaranteed hits. (and sectoids have just 3 health in Classic, so a frag nade will kill them, handy way to rank up fresh troops instead of losing them)

I have the base game and I love it. I was speaking of the DLC.

And the artists, level designers, et al. don't have any use in a bug fixing process. They can work on the DLC just fine. The content of the Slingshot DLC certainly is a bit iffy. I'd been happy with just more maps, and hell, even cosmetic additions, but adding even more scripted content feels like they are kinda missing the point. Especially by adding scripted, unique voice actor'd soldiers in. I mean half the fun is the emergent stuff you get with your ordinary soldiers. "This guy panicked and killed his friend, and yet somehow became this badass colonel" and whatnot. Ohwell, I'll just wait and see for the reviews and general opinion of it before buying it.

Problem is that Kickstarter will never fund something like GTA 4, Skyrim, or rather, any of the AAA titles we currently have. Project Eternity is now the game that raked in most Kickstarter money at $4 million. GTA 4 cost closer to $100 million, and pretty sure more common titles run around $20-40 million...

Day 1 DLC doesn't take away from the original. With current generation of games, the game is finalized good month or two before release. What do you want the programmers, artists, level designers et al. to do in these few months? They either get suspended, or moved to another project. Both of these are kinda bad for the "original" game. Instead chuck them on working DLC, and they get that thing done by release. While it's easy to go "JUST INCLUDE THAT FOR FREE", it's certainly an understandable knee-jerk reaction, but the DLC is coming off a different budget altogether, it wasn't paid for by the original game itself et al. so they'll sell it. It'd be cool and all if it was included for free, but like hell that's a justification for pirating the game. I own ME3, and I don't have the DLC pack for it. It's a complete game without it. Also, Fallout:NV DLCs are bloody awesome. Maybe they aren't "full expansion" sized, but how many expansions have you seen in the last few years, seriously?

Regarding free movement and melee, I never really found that to be bothersome. Chryssalids haven't been a threat of any kind on my Classic runs (both Ironman and not), they have what, 8 health. I suppose they would be a problem if they did appear just as you did your last move, but that seems really, really unlucky. With the system they have, you should never, ever uncover new ground after you've already moved most of your guys. This definitely can happen by shooting walls and whatnot but it's exceedingly rare, atleast I've never stumbled into it myself. The difficulty overall seems to seriously drop after first 2-3 months, once you have everyone in Carapace armor and plasma weapons of some sort, lot of the problems go away (not to mention having a Colonel Sniper with Double Tap). By the endgame when you get Ghost Armor, it becomes trivial. Did your scout stumble into something you can't handle? Make it invisible! Make all your other guys invisible too, and dash into position and devastate them next turn. Being able to shoot cover with all weapons would be really bad game design (in regards to how combat in XCOM works). Shoot the cover on one guy, and the next guy has 90% accuracy and 60% crit chance. It would make things way too easy. The map design is such that it doesn't really require creating entry points either, buildings have plenty of doors and windows to enter through, and all UFOs have multiple ways in. Press Y. It'll Overwatch the selected soldier without any further confirmation. I end my turns most of the time with just TAB-Y-TAB-Y-TAB-Y-TAB-Y. Attacking is pretty easy as well, IMO, 1, TAB to select target, 1 again. Or 1, click on target. Not that I wouldn't appreciate "Overwatch all and end turn"-buttom, but with hotkeys this can be done pretty fast as it currently is.

The method of creating them doesn't have to cost anything at all (aside from a little dev time). Simply generate a bunch of random, unique number-letter combinations, slap them into a database, and then when the user goes online with it, check that it's valid with the server. (for online stuff, anyways) There probably are some middleware software that handles it all that costs something, but making your own, free variant is far from impossible.