Mew

Well, that is a relief. As much as I like the idea of being able to buy games online, one of the big reasons I've refused to use Steam is the unability to actually own the games bought on that platform. (with some truly horrid examples being games that you buy in the stores, with full CDs... only to find out that the CDs are basically just empty, linking you to Steam and requiring you to play the game streamed, meaning the physical copy is 100% useless. In fact, you don't even get to keep the .exe files on your computer, making the physical copy doubly useless)

Will it be possible to get the game *without* Steam? I picked up the Desura copy specifically to avoid Steam and because I hate Steam's "you only own the ability to download streamed files as long as the service hold" system ; I do like having the .exe on my computer and knowing that if my internet goes down or if Steam goes down all my purchases won't turn into thin air. Just want to make sure that the announcement does not mean that the Desura purchases is no longer valid and merely allow you to get a free Steam copy (which I do not want).

The one thing I've really been wondering for and waiting for, release-wise... When will the final mission/victory condition be implemented (if it's not already in)? I guess it will probably be put in last and determine which release is the final/'retail' release but basically, I admit this is the one thing I've been meaning to wait for. As much fun as an arcade / endless mode might be, I admit I've been waiting for the story / beatable mode (though the main difference between the two is probably only the presence of an unlockable game winning mission via research & built items and, maybe, a couple of extra missions if relevent).

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

Frankly, I am much more satisfied with dev logs than with deadlines. Having worked in the industry on occasion and having been thoroughly disatisfied with the horror that is deadlines, I find that Chris releasing dev logs give a much better idea of how close the game is to completion and actually reveal *why* the game is not being released. A "oh dear, we must redo/rework that point" log entry is far more informative to me than a 'deadline extended by 8 months for no reason' entry. The only really sore point I see is that there is no checklist showing how close to completion he is. But this is deliberate, from what I understand ; he wants many features to remain secret. So he mention his progress but not what is the 100% state shooting for. This make for better surprises and avoid the SSBB dev log disaster but it also remove the reference for how close to completion the game may truly be. As it stand, as long as he can give consistent logs (showing he hasn't dropped/stalled the project), I will be happy.

Frankly, I feel the opposite. Actions may be easier to learn but Enemy Unknown's are so utterly limited that after a while, I was really wishing for Time Units to return. Time Units are hard to learn and I think that visual aids to indicate to a player how many Time Units a sequence of actions will cost would help a lot but the flexibility is worth it in the long run. What I'd really like is a Time Unit system that give you a permanent indicator of how many units your current course of action will cost overall and the ability to reserve as many Time Units as you want for each unit. In short, merge the two. ... or if one go with Actions, don't have it as utterly limited as Enemy Unknown. Xenonauts is frankly quite good on that aspect, with a number indicator that tell you how many time units you have left if you make your chosen sequence of actions and color-coding the paths. The only point I'll really fault is that it doesn't put label the ducking button to show how many TUs it use up but apart from that, it's actually very easy to pick up and play. Once you understand that the number indicate the amount of TUs you will have left once at that spot rather than how many it will use up, the interface is very intuitive.

The Seekers, or more exactly this particular Cerberus faction (Seekers that go rogue are refered by their peers as 'Cerberi', called after a faction of rip-offs that gave them huge amounts of trouble in their beginnings), were created for a X-Com/Xenonauts setting. The actual Seeker species was technically made independantly, with many of its Clans (the species is nomadic and fragmented) acting as protagonists in various separate stories. However, in the process of writing and setting up a X-com/Xenonauts story involving a Clan trying to forcefully colonize Earth and then, when that fails, going rogue and trying to kill everything, I ended up basically redoing every trait of that faction, making it radically and distinctively different from the baseline species in basically every point. For example, the 'canon' Seeker actually look far less mechanical and is more life-like, with a generally cuter appearance. In the process of making this particular faction, I changed the looks of the basic Seeker, making it more mechanical to fit in with the esthetics of X-Com/Xenonauts-like settings. Also and most importantly, 'canon' Seekers use mostly a single all-purpose Drone model for everything and their technology is more mechanical. This new faction has a more organic-machine mix look and a large variety of specialized units, based off Outsider DNA they gathered (normal Seekers don't use Combat Forms, for example). I admit that one of my first thoughts when I came on this forum was to post the full story, adding drawings & xenopedia entries on the faction's units as the X-Com/Xenonauts organization defeat and research them in-story. But since the forums lack a proper fan stuff sub-forum and I didn't want to clutter this forum with my material, I decided to just post those three drawings and descriptions.

No, not yet. But color-wise... Seekers are variable in colors but males tend to have green-ish/blue-ish colors while females alternate between pink and red. Combat Forms are snow white with red tentacles and dull grey machinery. Emissaries are red. I actually have a full set of aliens for this faction, including the UFOs and guns they use. I had writen Xenopedia, autopsy, and interogation entries for them but lost them. I'll eventually rewrite them. I plan to post the drawings I made of each of the aliens I made, alongside with basic descriptions like I did with the first three ground troop types.

Some custom aliens I made... (linked to a custom alien invader faction, not to the usual X-Com bunch or meant to be linked with the Xenonauts aliens. More like three types of aliens to be linked with the custom faction) Seekers (left: male / right: female) The Seekers are a mechanical species that was designed before the dawn of time by an extremely advanced, now extinct civilization for the purpose of acting as a vanguard against hostile intelligences both native and from outside the fabric of space and time. Most of them are benevolent, travelling in moon-sized motherships, looking for enemies to defeat and for civilizations to defend and nurture... ... but sometimes, one of their Clans lose faith in their never-ending mission. Most of the time, they simply abandon their technology and settle down on some remote planet where they fade into obscurity. But sometimes, some Clans become corrupted by their powers. After all, as the ultimate weapons, shouldn't they rule the Universe rather than serve it? Such Clans are known as 'Cerberi'. And wielding technology based upon the 'base code' of the Universe, the ability to warp the fabric of reality with their minds, and holding technology that can create from nothing and destroy in an absolute manner, the Cerberi quickly become indistinguishable from the monsters they were designed to destroy... In the year 2008 of another timeline, one such Cerberus Clan has decided to make Earth its target... This is a Combat Form. Having decided that morals no longer apply to them, the Cerberi have used the nanobot technology which compose their bodies and modified it into a plague. Those plague clouds, once released over human population centers, quickly enter the bodies of victims and twist their bodies into Combat Forms, removing organs, adding implants, and destroying whatever mind once occupied the body. All that is left in the wake of those clouds are hordes of Combat Forms, unreal mockeries that mirror the Cerberi's own twisted minds. Thankfully, although gruesome in shape, the Combat Forms are little better than the human beings that they once were, relying upon weapons, both local and given by the Cerberi, to threaten the world. Being mindless husks controlled by Cerberus intelligences, Combat Forms are relentless and fearless. Thankfully, due to this, they also have a low level of autonomous intelligence relying on weight of numbers to be effective. Still, Earth operatives should be careful not to be swamped in bodies. Emissary In few other creations of the Cerberi is their decadence better reflected than in the Emissaries. The Emissaries are three meters-tall toned-down clones of the Outsiders that the Cerberi once defended reality from. Although far smaller and lacking the sheer power of the originals, Emissaries are still capable of exerting their will upon the fabric of reality in a limited manner. Most of this influence come under the form of telepathic powers, Emissaries serving as control nodes that allow the Cerberus hive minds and Command Units to remote control their various Drones without communications lag. Emissaries also serve an offensive role in the hallucinations, panicking attacks, and mind-control they can unleash upon victims. Despite being surprisingly resilient and capable of warping space to tear apart targets if directly threatened, Emissaries are aware that their fancy powers are slower on the draw than a gunshot and as such tend to hang back and attack from within cover or from the air, using Combat Forms as 'spotters'. Emissaries are priority targets ; should one be destroyed, all Combat Forms under its control will be struck by a psychic backlash and be destroyed with it. However, caution should still be used as the psychic backlash, although only lethal to minds under its control at long ranges, can cause pain, brain damage, and even death to operatives who do the mistake of killing an Emissary from point blank range.

You know... reading this thread, it suddenly made me think of the original X-Com and how it dealt with this. Don't know how relevent my opinion might be but well, here it goes. Basically? You were fighting an actual enemy who was setting up slowly in the original games. You did not run into a range problem (or very rarely) because the aliens begun by sending scouts who scouted the entire planet, looking for a suitable location for their own initial base. Then after setting up bases or getting enough scouts downed by the player, then they start attacking the countries with terror ships or begun looking for your bases (if you got a good enough score downing scouts). Likewise, alien bases meant supply ships, which flew in from various directions and could also be caught. In short? The aliens had plenty of reasons to swing by the player's airspace and you could predict the aliens' base placement and targets via the type of ship sent and where they tended to go, allowing you to guess where new bases had to go. In short? Why make it so complicated with random chance and what not? We're talking about early game, where you have F-serie fighters with short ranges and a slow Chinook as a transport. Have alien scouting forces that go around the world looking for a fight and that thus will run into your radar unless your base is in the middle of nowhere. As for the new recruits thing... Having to raise a rookie once more is a big part of the 'using veterans' risk/reward thing and a cornerstone of X-Com's meatgrinder dilemna (do I use expandable suicide squads that may run out of meat before the end of the mission or elite teams that *will* get the job done but whose fatalities cannot be undone with just a few clicks?). I personally think this is an element worth keeping. Besides, it was pointed out that the superior weaponry is already a new advantage for mid/end-game anyway. If all else fails, I see HWPs being a good cornerstone ; a selling point of them is that they don't need levelling-up. So although they use up many soldier slots in vehicles, they serve as a crutch while your rookies level-up.

Well, if that's the feeling... Frankly, I'm being diplomatic because although the game is pretty mediocre, it did do a few things well and on first playthrough, it does a decent job. I must stress that the 'panic meter' point is something that I'm baffled took this long to be implemented in a X-Com game. It would have saved me a ton of trouble in the original games if I knew how close to pulling the plug the various nations were in the older games instead of having a rather vague 'Excellent-OK-Average-Bad-Terrible' rating that doesn't mean anything really. And the 'one base' point worked surprisingly well. But those two points alone do not prevent the game from suffering from event-based gameplay (aliens appearing in vacuum), cheating AI (enemy get a free turn when spotted. Cannot destroy cover. Cannot target opponents you don't directly see), and shallow tactical depth (no ammunition shortages, weapons are class-limited, the likes). They said 'streamlined'. In truth, it's actually and truly dumbed down. I have to side with the haters on that point.

Well, I've checked it out and Desura is the best option ; you actually truly download the game from it rather than a permission to redownload the game whenever the service feels like it. Hopefully, the 'download the whole game' point will remain for the final game. As this is a Desura option, I suspect it will likely stay (unless it has filesize limitations regarding that point).