Ogilvy the Astronomer

Oh nice, that could make breaching UFOs a lot more dramatic. Potential issue though: what if a player forgets to bring C4? Or uses it all up before reaching the UFO. Would the mission then be impossible to complete? Additional idea: capturing a live Mentarch unlocks "Alien Security Systems" research. Completing this then allows you to manufacture keycards to access UFOs (i.e. the doors open normally so you don't need C4). This research could also allow your soldiers to bypass the security safeguards built into alien weapons, allowing you to use guns dropped by dead aliens, albeit with significant accuracy penalties to maintain game balance (in-game explanation: the weapons aren't optimised for humans so they're difficult to fire).

I like the idea of a drone for scouting, albeit a very fragile and unarmed one. Maybe buildable once you kill / capture one of the alien servitor gun drones? To prevent it being OP it could have quite narrow vision. To keep things simple maybe it doesn't have its own TUs, but rather uses the operator's TUs to move. Great idea, I'd love to have a motion scanner in the game. Rather than having the signal shown on the battlescape, how about an old-school alternative. See @FLIR's excellent post here, which includes a link to an image of the original X-COM motion scanner visuals. Personally I never use these kinds of devices in these games, but if other people would like to then why not? FYI, for more module ideas I recommend checking out @GreyICE's thread here.

I mean more like this for my bonus idea a (give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project): The size of locker and weight capacity should be dictated by gameplay balance. (The one in my screenshot is probably OP). The contents of this dropship storage locker would be in addition to the equipment that the Xenonauts are carrying on their person, and could be accessed on the battlefield by soldiers in the dropship. My personal preference would be to have this, and in addition not allow overburdened soldiers onto the dropship. This is possible solution #2 (make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently): If players really want loads of kit then there's also bonus idea b (add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule). I won't make a screenshot for that! That's how I'd try changing things anyway, I appreciate there are other viewpoints!

Sounds good. Damaged UFOs could have more entry points too.

This is interesting, and I think gets to the bottom of the issue. We just don't agree on being able to bring whatever equipment affecting balance: I think it does, you don't. I don't see that either of us will convince the other, but luckily that's OK as it's for the devs to decide whether this is an issue worth addressing or not I definitely disagree here. I've played for 24 hours and never felt the need to overburden my soldiers in the way you do. It never even occurred to me. On the contrary, I rarely found that the weight limit was restrictive. It seems that some players want this. If the devs agree, then it does indeed make sense to have a method that's convenient. The dropship locker and MARS storage secondary "weapon" seem like fun ideas. It's not about saving equipment consumption on the battlefield, but rather making the battlefield too easy if you can take whatever equipment and in whatever quantities you want. This is back to our fundamental disagreement. I appreciate that you don't think that this is an issue. This is what I was saying about internal game logic taking precedent over real-life logic if it makes for a better game. I'd have no problem with the dropship having a capacity of 9 units, including up to one MARS, and a separate cargo hold with a capacity of x kg. Even if that wouldn't make sense in real life. I expect most players would accept this without thinking too much, but if it needed justification then just say that the dropships have these limits so they can stay balanced in the air. I'm going to exit this now as unless anyone has any radical new ideas I think there are enough viewpoints and suggestions in the thread to help the devs make any changes they feel are necessary.

Maybe some nuance has been lost because of using written messages here, but for what it's worth I didn't think there was anything out of hand with Raffik's message. It seemed reasonable and level-headed.

Whether or not it can happen in reality doesn't matter much -- this is a game about shooting aliens after all! What's fun and relatively balanced gameplay-wise comes first, and then you fit that into the game's internal worldbuilding logic -- or change the lore to accommodate the new ideas. There are no photos of fighter jets shooting down UFOs in real life, but I'm guessing you don't object to that in the game. I'm having trouble understanding your points, so here's something you could do to help me. I'll copy out my suggestion summary again. Could you please state how you'd change it? Maybe add in a possible solution #4, or bonus idea #c? Or are you saying that you don't think that the issue as I've written it is actually a problem; in which case would you support solution #1? I just want clarity on what you're proposing. ### The issue: players can overload their soldiers, then dump excess equipment on the dropship floor during turn 1. This gives plenty of equipment and can unbalance the game. Possible solutions: 1. Do nothing. Accept that this is how some players want to play the game. 2. Make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently. 3. Give each dropship a weight capacity that includes all the equipment carried onboard. In addition, there are two bonus ideas: a. Give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project. b. Add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but in any case lots of interesting points have been made and the devs can decide what, if anything, they'd like to change!

To clarify, I think it's OK to have some extra equipment on the dropship if that's what players want to do -- hence bonus idea a, mentioned earlier. But allowing every solider to overload and then drop equipment on the dropship floor feels more like an exploit than intentional gameplay design. With a dropship locker you could more carefully control how much extra equipment is bought along. It doesn't sound like you think there should be any limits on how much equipment can be bought into battle, instead providing balance by altering the number / lethality of the aliens. This isn't personally how I'd do things, but it is an approach that could work -- hence my proposed solution option #1, which is to do nothing and keep things as they are.

There are a few examples that spring to mind. Maybe a player drops assault shields all over the dropship floor, and just collects a new one whenever their original breaks. Or they fill their soldiers' inventories with lots of large, heavy modules, and run to the dropship to get any extra equipment they need when a specific situation crops up, e.g. lots of grenades. It wouldn't be how I'd personally like to play the game, mind you! Consider that the whole concept of items having sizes and weights is so that you the player need to make tactical decisions; and to prevent soldiers becoming OP. I see what you're saying about increasing the capabilities of the enemy. If you follow that logic to its conclusion, why have any soldier limits at all? Why not give them infinite equipment (as dropping kit all over the dropship floor is heading toward), and just increase the number of enemies accordingly? Some people might prefer that, but it does't really appeal to me personally.

I think that's a fair opinion. But what would stop a player overloading their soliders just to drop kit in the dropship floor and filling a dropship locker?

I think that would work too. The reason I'd go for option 2 is that I think it's a bit easier to understand. When you're equipping your soldiers for the dropship, if you go over their weight capacity there would be a message saying "Over weight capacity, soldier cannot board the dropship" or similar. It's immediate and obvious. With option 3 there would need to be another readout somewhere tracking the total weight for the dropship. People might also wonder if they could take fewer soldiers but more equipment. But option 3 could definitely still work. I think they're all valid choices and it's down to style and preference, as you say.

Here’s a summary, as I see it. The issue: players can overload their soldiers, then dump excess equipment on the dropship floor during turn 1. This gives plenty of equipment and can unbalance the game. Possible solutions: 1. Do nothing. Accept that this is how some players want to play the game. 2. Make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently. 3. Give each dropship a weight capacity that includes all the equipment carried onboard. In addition, there are two bonus ideas: a. Give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project. b. Add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule. Personally, I’d go for solution 2 and bonus ideas a and b. I think this combination is simple, intuitive, but gives the opportunity for different playstyles without unbalancing the game.

Well the limit to the number of soldiers / MARS units is for gameplay balance rather than because of the actual weight that the helicopter can carry, right? But I guess if weight is used to explain away how many people it can transport, then it wouldn't be hard to expand that to equipment. Maybe it would over-complicate things, I don't really know.

It's very easy for a soldier to carry ample ammo with the current weights of items. In 24 hours of playing I don't think I ever had to even reload a ballistic or gauss weapon. Lasers are the exception, with their smaller capacities. To be honest, overloading soldiers and dropping spare supplies on the dropship floor never occurred to me because ammo was always so plentiful. So I don't think it's much of a problem? However, this running out of ammo scenario situation does tie into a suggestion I made somewhere else on the forum: make it so your soldiers can pick up and use dropped alien weapons, but with significant accuracy penalties, and perhaps other deterrents too, such as a risk of the alien weapon exploding every time you use it. So, if you actually do run out of ammo and are desperate, you've still got an option, albeit a risky one.

Another option is to simply not allow soldiers to be loaded with more weight than they can carry. That could work well on its own or in conjunction with a dropship storage module upgrade.

What if dropships had a weight limit for all the equipment they can carry? I.e. everything carried by your soldiers. It might be too tricky to balance, but perhaps it could prevent over-loading soldiers just for them to drop kit on the dropship floor during turn 1.

Hmm, I can't say I'd enjoy delegating base defence missions entirely to AI and just watching the game play out. But this is interesting in that it highlights how different people want to play the game in different ways, and the developers seem keen to allow this whenever possible. With this in mind, what if there was an extra unit you could recruit -- Base Defence Guard -- that's essentially an AI controlled "local forces" kind of soldier, just for base missions. Maybe you hire them in squads of five, and maybe they need their own special barracks building in a base. In any case, for your kind of ideal scenario, you could just hire loads of these troops and let them fight out the aliens without any input from you -- you just watch it, popcorn in hand as you say! My style would be to have a few squads of these troops, backed up by a couple of Xenonauts that I'd be controlling. These Base Defence Guards could be a nice alternative / complement to the sentry guns, which I think are currently a bit too good (and look ridiculous on their tea-trolley castor wheels!)

What if you started a mission controlling local forces. You're badly outgunned, but you have one objective: hold the landing site for x turns. If you do that, then the Xenonaut dropship arrives with your regular forces, and you take the fight to the aliens. Maybe a bit different from what you're suggesting, but it's what sprang to mind when you said "area defense".

I don't think it's particularly useful to declare that a system is perfect so shouldn't be changed. That doesn't really encourage innovative thinking.

Now this is an interesting point you've touched upon: using the existing system we've each come up with different strategies. After reading this I can see that my idea might give with one hand (potentially be more interesting on the battlefield) but take with the other (limit strategic options). I still think my ideas have merit, and I might personally prefer the situations they'd allow, but maybe they wouldn't be to everyone's taste. In any case, I think lots of valid points have been made and if the devs read this thread then they can take from it what they want!

I'm not sure actively demoting soldiers is something you'd ever really want to do, but my suggestion of having some promotion points you can distribute after a mission would allow you to roleplay it a bit more and give a boost to certain soldiers who perform particularly well, as you gave examples of.

It might be fun to have the option of using alien weapons that are dropped, but the point about them being OP is very fair. So how about some significant penalties to their use? Ideas include: * They're not optimised for human use, so their accuracy is massively reduced; * Their inbuilt security system causes some damage to the user every time they're fired; * As humans aren't proficient in their use there's a chance they could explode when fired, causing significant damage to the user and anyone within a blast radius; * They can't be reloaded; * They can only be used on the mission they're dropped. So, you wouldn't really want to use them, but in a desperate situation (like you're out of ammo for your regular gun) then they could give you a roll of the dice.

I think that the current system of healing some HP in the field but needing a long time back at base might not be realistic but works well from a gameplay perspective. My suggestion does make things a little more realistic, in that bandages would only stop bleeding, and more specialist equipment would be needed for actual field medic work.

I didn't find they were particularly heavy or TU consuming. Advanced medkit: weight 15, 12 TUs to use. I gave it to all my soldiers, including HMG, Grenadiers, Shields. I'm not sure of your point here. You can give anyone a medkit? I'm suggesting an alternative approach which could be more interesting. I'm not sure it would only make it for veteran players. If you're referring to difficulty, I gave some examples of how it could be balanced. I'm sure there are many more.