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Like I said earlier, Xenonauts is shaping up really well. There is however, one niggling annoyance that becomes more pronounced as time goes on: the ground combat starts repeating itself. The basic pattern is always the same: dig in and survive the first enemy wave, then clear the UFO at your own leisure. The same problem existed in the original X-Com too to a degree, so it'd be high time a game tried tackling this. I know it is late in the production, but I maintain that those minor tweaks would really lift up the game! Breaking the Monotony and Keeping the Players Awake The key word here is variety. I wouldn't want all aliens doing any of those consistently, but still there should be an exception in the pattern often enough to force players stay awake and adapt to changing situations. General combat behaviours: - Utilizing the buildings. Alien snipers could decide to climb to the ceiling/second floor of the building and set up there. Currently you don't need to enter the buildings at all. - Setting up ambushes instead of rushing the enemy. ATM you just go for the UFO once aliens stop coming. Smaller squads could set up an ambush somewhere, then head back for the UFO if it is breached (aliens sneaking up on your breach team... FUN!). UFO breaching: This is my biggest annoyance. Breaching the UFO/alien base becomes repetitive and boring. - Time limits. Why does the player have infinite time to breach the UFO? There should be a sense of urgency. For example, the aliens could: a.) Repair the UFO and take off b.) Rig up the UFO to explode c.) Roll out some heavy duty death machines - Make breaching the door risky business. Maybe aliens could throw some grenades at you? Or maybe there could be an explosive booby trap on the door itself. Make it a concussion bomb if you're feeling generous. - Aliens rushing out from the UFO as you approach it. Possibly in bigger numbers than you expected. Etc etc. I'm sure there are plenty more. Doesn't need to be a major change, but something small and unexpected. We'll be doing a lot of ground combat, so small surprises like this will definitely make it more memorable.

Played 15 hours of 20 V1 and V2. Loving the feel, the gameplay. Combat is good, but I do find the maps not so varied. Am I the unlucky one? I miss the insane mazey maps of Terror from the Deep from inside ships and the condos and highrises of the maps of Apocalypse. Warehouses, shopping malls. Apocalypse had awesome maps for intense squad fighting. So far most Xenonauts maps I ran into have been flat terrain with a few city maps here and there. Exception was the first terror mission and europe base crash. IS it me being not so lucky?

Now i'm not sure if people have suggested this already but i've read in the FAQ that there was a demand for having different starter weapons. Yet the devs said it would be too confusing for players to have multiple weapons for the same purpose yet with only slighty different or even equal stats and I can completely agree with that. I love the Cold War scenario a lot, where humanity seems to unite against an enemy that is threatening everyone. Yet i simply cannot see a base on soviet territory equipped with M16. A NATO like alliance appears most believeable to me yet even a UNO like organization sents their troops together with equipment. My suggestion would be that either: A) Every base has their weapons decided by the continent it is located on. So basically M-16 for North America, FN-FAL or HK G3 for Europe, South America & Australia, AK47 for the rest of the world. or B) You can chose your preferred weapon pack at the beginning of a game. or C) The nationality of the soldier will decide his gear once he has it in his hands. Personally i would favor A. In all cases your weapons cabinet wouldn't be overloaded with 3 versions of basically the same gun. The game would simply replace them and keep the clarity this way. This would also be the most user friendly option instead of having to use mods to replace the guns by hand. I'm sure the community would provide great graphics even for MG's, sniper rifles and so on. All the devs would have to do is to integrate the code that the game realizes which weapon "skins" have to be available on which base and in which mission, decided e.g. by the base the dropship has started or for option C, as mentioned before it is decided by the nationality. I do believe immersion would benefit noteworthy due to that.

more letters to the templates[like assault or heavy weapons]? and if you can't all at once here are some I would like to see first[these are my classes] M- Medic E- Explosive experts

Every one in 20 or one in 40 armed NPCs should be a Rambo or Dirty Harry type guy/girl. That would be a hoot! Check out this thread: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/7199-Local-Forces?p=83615&viewfull=1#post83615

Thinking of going ahead and buying on steam, but I wanted to know the answer to this first please . In the alpha there were only a few IIRC. Also, I tried the alpha a while back when it was on kickstarter, and found the dogfight portions extremely repetitive, are they more varied now? thanks

Hello there. I know. But first - I've spent some hours writing this. I'm new here and at once I'm starting huge discussion and feature-list. Well... I'm playing original XCOM since nearly 20 years (near every year), also played many remakes and resurrections like Aftermatch, Aftershock, Extraterrestial, Cydonia, OpenXCOM and took part in the communities of many other small home-made projects. Since year I'm checking out this game, looking, reading forums and stuff. Today I decided to register here and write some of my dreams. Dreams that can make this game more awesome. As always in threads like this. You can find here my personal feelings and subjective opinions what should be changed or added to this game. I know this is indie-game, so I do not expect big changes and miracles, just few tweaks and stuff. Kebabs DREAM-FEATURE list v. 1.2 If you want to respond to the specific idea, use the bold name (quote it), do not quote the whole idea and description More intelligent civilans. Currently, they are so stupid that ic even scares me. Sometimes, they like to run between my positions and positions of aliens, no matter there's whole shytstorm. Or they like going to beat them with fists. Another time civilians like to squat in the middle of the road between the bullets. This must be changed. In my opinion, civilians should always try to reach the landing site of Xenonauts. More attractive geoscape. There are some mods for this, but look - geoscape in near every game looks similar, right? Right. So, we should change it a bit - for example making night-time part of geoscape to look like this. Some random events. Playing this game is cool, but after few weeks it's starting to be boring. We need some stuff to change this. For example - XCOM: TFTD ship attack was awesome. It could be included - we need to cap civilians and don't destroy whole ship Idea with expanding huge alien life form in the Aftermath or Aftershock was nice. Also some random events on the ground - for example, with bigger alien ship we have greater chance that aliens will try to shoot us down during landing. Player will get the message that aliens where trying to defend crash/landing site. If they succeed our Choppa (or other kind of lander) will need to be repaired in base and some of our crewmembers will be injured during mission (at once after landing). Space station and space-fight. Near every XCOM-like game or indie-based title designed on XCOM idea looks similar - we are fighting on the ground. It would be awesome to bring end-game to space. For example, aliens are using most powerfull ships agaist us, most powerfull weapons. We can do it too - we are building space station like huge base, defending it (like normal geoscape battle, but using station in the center). Station would be used to end-game, somehow. Ya know, building big spaceship and pwning aliens by this thing More attractive crashsites. Right now every mission looks the same - crashsite or just landing looks same. We need small graphical changes to make it more attractive and more... mysterious. After some time each round is the same, and we are pwning missions at once. Aliens should wait for us, prepared for battle. For example every banged ship (not just landed) should be hidden in smoke. Also there should be some remains of destroyed stuff. Burning trees. Currently, every map looks the same. We could add an overlay, textures with fire, many dirt, crater around the ship, something like that. Ya know, attractive stuff, that is different every time! More attractive alien ships. They look awful, ugly and dumb. Sorry for this but it's true. Ships was made without thinking, all based on the same style, idea and model. They all look like scarabs (cockchafer or cockroach, idk how to write this in English), but with different shell. Someone should watch some Star Trek movies and know how battleships should look like One of the most awesome stuff in XCOM is about to explore these great ships. Here? We have small not attractive ships. Also interiors of those ships are... well... I need to find clever but strong word. Looks bad. They are empty, just few consoles and black borders. They should look like interrior building. We need walls inside, not just black borders, screens, doors, stuff! More different tiles and a little bigger maps. They are nice, especially those in the cities, however, they are a bit too small and too soft. We need more small buildings, barrels, fences, boxes, bushes. Sometimes half a map is like potato fields, lawn or a big parking, tons of same-looking terrain. Also maps are a little too small - when we are fighting with medium ship, it's just around the corner, rather than lying somewhere nearby, +32 blocks in X and Y direction would be awesome. In original XCOM creeping up and searching the map was cool, here we have very small area, you always know where to advance. More missions where we have something to do. Idea of capping alien ship is nice. But we need more ideas like this to make game more different every time, every mission. For example we need to attack an alien outpost and escort captured scientist. Or we must defend our position for some time/rounds. It would be awesome to make other kind of missions than just "GO AND BLAM BLAM BLAM KILL EVERYTHING!", I mean missions like that - we must sneak unnoticed into alien outpost. Arm the bomb, steal something and get out. If we will get noticed aliens are getting strong support, we need to fight them like in normal mission.

Some people adore the air minigame. Chris seems to hate it. But you have to agree that it has a "cool factor" to it that breaks up the monotony of dozens of scout missions. Unfortunately, mundacity arises in the geoscape because EVERY week, EVERY ship (except for the ones that are trying to kill you) does the same random walk around one little corner of the globe. A little variety in the air combat would go a long way. Anyways, I don't think the development team would want to radically change the game at this point, so I'm making suggestions that would be very easily to implement and would not impact the geoscape balance. These features are just meant to make the Geoscape more "interesting." 1. Make Alien Bombers priority targets (i.e., air combat terror sites) Bombers are this unique type of alien ship that don't really go after you and can't be recovered, but are designed solely for ruining your relations with the host nation. Given that host nation funding is far more important now, bombers could have a more prominent role in the game. Instead of just milling about like every other alien craft, what if they circumnavigated the Earth on global bombing runs. They would be detected independently from Xenonaut radar similar to terror sites or alien bases (as they're just dumping plasma bombs on everything, they're fairly easy to track). In fact, a message pops up that says "Alien Bomber Detected" just to let you know how important this is. The bomber travels in a path resembling a straight line, across the globe (so that you can easily intercept it) and every hour it stays alive, it bombs something and costs you about $2000 in funding from whatever nation it bombed. Depending on the stage of the game, the bombers could have an escort fighter wing that trails them, or there might even be two bomber groups at once. It's essentially like an airborne terror site that can cost you up $50,000 or whatever in relations funding depending on how long it stays alive. This isn't really too different from how bombers act now, but it's just more advertised and more "fun". 2. Alien radar jamming stations (i.e., air combat alien bases). Another thing that's kind of messed up about the current geoscape is that radar ranges are gigantic and you can build two bases and see just about everything on earth. (It's even more amazing that a radar dish is operating while buried underground but whatever, it's just a game). To counteract this, the aliens have developed this radar jammer that blocks the Xenonaut radar and cloaks any alien ships under its protection. You can determine its location by how it distorts your own radar range circles (or maybe the Xenonaut operatives just stumble upon it as soon as it pops into existence). You have to take out the dish with your interceptors, BUT, there are alien fighters (and maybe even a SAM site or two) defending it. Essentially, it's just the same as an ordinary alien fighter wing, but instead of tracking you down and disappearing after a while, it persists forever and blocks your radar vision.

Hi Guys! I just love this game...but with the time it became boring, because I am in this stadium in my game, that evry time if i shot a UFO, its always a carriar...and its aaaaaalways the same fucking map. This one farm map!!!I had download the map pack and install it...but there are anyway every time the same map with this stupid carrier...it becames boring. sometime I have a terror atack or I engage a alienbase. But its also every time the same map at terroratack and every time the same map at alianbase. What can I do do? Meybe mappack is dont working in my game? Is it possible to dowload other maps for alienbase, terroratack and this fucking carrier...I can not see it anymore..every second mission I have this stuped farm map. hate it!! It becames really boring

This is more of a heads up than anything. I'm not sure this is supposed to be like this, but I feel it needs to be said. Standard assault rifles, in this game, are thoroughly useless. There is a range in which shotguns work great, there is a range in which snipers work great. Same for grenades, heavy machine guns, bazookas, stun prods. Assault rifles, though, seem to fall short in every category in some aspect: they use up too many TUs for single firing, are too innacurate in burst fire, their damage is too little, even at point-blank range. I mean, what is the tactical advantage of using one of those instead of shotgun, for example? I have no riflemen in my entire team (20+ soldiers), as I have replaced all of them. Worse, my tactics got all more efficient as I got rid of this kind of weapon. Another obsolete firearm is the pistol, which for whatever reason is more innacurate than shotguns even at medium ranges and use more TUs than most weapons, considering the fact that you have to shove your main gun in the bag and equip it. My feeling translates as this: I have never seem a situation in which the use of a pistol would be the optimal choice. WHAT COULD BE DONE: the main thing here is, there has be an exclusive advantage for each kind of firearm. I'll agree shotguns, snipers, bazookas and machine guns are all more powerful than assault rifles, but there is a reason most men in armies go with the usual AK-47 or similar: they are functional in most situations, as opposed to those specialized guns. In my view, this would translate into the game as the use of minimal TUs in either fire mode. Accuracy, while not great, should definitely be better than that of a shotgun after 10 meters/squares. Firepower doesn't have to be changed. For the pistol, I think there has be a different paradigm in using it: it really is weaker than all the rest, but soldiers use them because they are the quick option. In the game, that would translate in a sidearm which use almost no TUs to equip, almost no TUs to fire from the hip, and would weigh next to nothing. In fact, there are pistols today that weigh as little as 200g, so why not incorporate this into the game? That would give some use to the pistol. Tactics game get richer the more alternatives you offer. At the moment, the justified roles (in my humble opinion) are centered in 4 areas: assaulters with shotguns, sweepers with HMGs, pinpointers with snipers and painters with explosives. Add these tweaks to the assault rifles and you could have true supporters too. Change the way the pistol is used and every soldier would be two times as flexible. What do you guys think?

Remember the original X-com? It had so many maps that I would never see the same one twice. I tried playing Xenonauts but the maps got boring to me. Are you guys going to use the same structure as the original game to have randomly generated maps, or are you going to have default maps that can be played over and over?

I've accumulated some thoughts on replayability so far. We all know it was one of the amazing parts of X-COM, so here's a few points on it, and the variety of gameplay. 1. Map variety. In a game like this, I believe the quantity is significant. I'll hopefully be playing this for hundreds of missions, hence the need for map variety. Xenonauts does pretty well in this, except that maps are very unevenly spread, and that more maps are still needed. By an uneven spread I mean, in my current game I've maybe had 1 or 2 Arctic missions, 1 Soviet Town mission and no Mid-East town missions, with loads of the familiar Farm/Industrial. I do think that ultimately making heavier use of randomization for some maps would improve replayability by a lot, and the support is there due to the submap system. I know it is already supposed to work that way with randomization but it does not always feel like it does. At least the two terror maps that I get most of the time seem to have no random elements, I am well familiar with their buildings by now. On the upside, the underlying system is very good, and it seems relatively easy to create maps (and there's a healthy mapping community), so I am confident that this point will be very strong. 2. UFO variety. Something I mentioned briefly in another thread yesterday, I find it problematic that there is almost no overlap at any given time in the types of UFOs appearing. If it's Corvettes, then it is Corvettes until landing ships appear, which then cause Corvettes to disappear, and so on. It actually takes a lot of the fun out of air combat because it becomes too repetitive. My current game has Cruisers currently, so I know every contact is a Cruiser, so I also know I don't need any light missiles or such, that I just need to scramble jets with a full torpedo loadout. Every time. Plus of course it leads to what feels like worse map variety because you get them in clusters. Early on, you'll get the maps that are for small UFOs, then these maps disappear and you get maps of other sizes. There is no mix as the game proceeds. This is something fairly easy to fix, just by tweaking the timelines and probabilities of the different UFO types. Let me still get the occasional scout when it's cruisers flying around. 3. Aliens. Ideally, I'd like to see one more alien race. There's Caesans that correspond to Sectoids, Sebillians are Snakemen, Androns are Mutons and Preators are Ethereals. Plus some companion races. I do feel that there is one more lacking to hit the sweet spot, preferrably a race with some very scary companion, like Sectopods were. Man I miss those guys. But I realize that adding alien races is an effort due to the graphics. That said, aliens seem to suffer from a problem slightly similar to my UFO point above, though not as bad. In my current game for instance, Caesans have essentially disappeared quite quickly, almost every missions is Sebs with the occasional Andron mission. By the way, why are they called Preators and not Praetors? The latter is probably what they are intended to convey. 4. Needs more curveballs. In the long term, I think it'd be best to have occasional unpredictable events, emergent or not. Again, like the original X-COM. In it, sometimes you'd get lucky to capture an alien Navigator very early, giving you early hyperwave decoders. Or sometimes the first terror mission would come up really early requiring you to respond to it with mostly green troops. Some unpredictable elements like that would really improve replayability further. For contrast, that's poorly done in the Firaxis remake, where I know the first terror mission hits around 15th of April, that Mutons appear in the last days of April, and that my encounters before the terror mission will include a shot down small scout and a large one, and one landed scout.

Any thoughts on creating more clutter items to populate the map with? Like sprites of trash, posters... Something to make the maps less static and clean? Some taller grass as well. Things your soldiers can move on top of so it's not something that blocks your path. Like: Taller grass. Leaves. Newspapers. Twigs and branches. Pebbles and rocks. Curtains. Carpets. Wallpapers or paint. Just spouting ideas. I'd happily sit down and do some sprites myself lol.

Ive been playing a bit of Xenonauts and im wondering if there gonna be more types of missions in the game other then these below: Crashed UFO Site: secure crashed UFO UFO Landing Site: secure landed UFO Attack Alien Base: Secure/Destroy Base Defend Own Base: Kill invading enemies/prevent destruction of own base Terror Missions: Kill all aliens, prevent human casaulties I havent played the original X-COM but did play the new 2012 X-COM and some of those missions were great: Abductions sites: Kill all aliens Escort/Retreive: Get to VIP and escort him to exit point Bomb disfusal: Get to bomb in time (number of turns) to disfuse it Will there be more missions types other then those mentioned above?

Besides the grey men and the lizardfolk, are there any other alien species in this game? I'm not talking about announced specific names, I just wonder if there is a casual mention by the creator of the game talking about, roughly, how many species are in this game. Two? Five? Ten? Unknown?

Hey guys, Been playing the alpha and lurking on the forums and thought I would post an idea. Apologies if its been floated before. One thing that occurred to me playing the alpha was the lack of diversity and mission goals. I know we are likely to see improvements in Terror missions and base assaults, but was thinking that maybe a few other kinds of mission might add to the game. My suggestion is that in missions where alien craft have sustained catastrophic damage in the crash there is now a potential for these missions to become power core diffusal missions. Xenonauts are briefed on arrival that the power core in the craft is in danger of going critical, and that they have say, 15 turns to diffuse it before it blows. This would create a rush to secure the craft asap, and encourage more risky behaviour as players are forced to weigh the danger of waiting to kill nearby aliens with the need to breach the craft with a small team. TENSION! This would be easy to explain narratively as well, as either a damaged core going critical, or maybe as a self destruct option initiated to avoid capture. IF players fail to disarm the device, there could be a large explosion on the map itself, a failure of the mission as the area is destroyed, or a 'evacuate NOW' order (say 8-10 turns) after the point of no return has been passed and xenonauts flee to the dropship to escape the explosion, with an associated penalty to nation score for failure. Success in the mission would lead to a repaired power generator that would otherwise not have been salvageable. Potential items added could involve a diffusal kit and possibly a fire extinguisher to allow quick entry to ships that are blocked by fire. This could be a later game mission for the larger craft, or something the ai throws your way if you look like you are coasting. Apologies if the idea has been floated before, had a look but couldn't see anything on it. Do post any ideas for other mission types.

Hi chaps and chapettes, I've been playing Xenonauts for a while and wondered - do we get any other aircraft than the initial Chinook and the first two types of figher plane? Will we see a different drop ship, more advanced fighter craft etc.? If so, what are they and are they in the game yet? Cheers!

Hello love the game but thought I'd post my ideas, so please don't hit me, I am writing to suggest something rather hard to implement but please think of this as more of a wishlist rather than actual expectations. I would like to have greater attachment not just to my little SAS troopers, but to my whole military staff made up of supporting roles. My simplest suggestion is that a skins are made of scientists and engineers so that when an alien attack occurs at your base a small number of staff (maybe those that couldn't evacuate) are at risk of becoming collateral damage. Maybe have a panic room that is sealed during battle to house support staff. If the battle ends in defeat they would naturally be killed off, if not they are not they would return to there jobs My next suggestion is that all staff level-up, how that is implemented would be simply be by checking how long they have served, or even better how many projects they have seen through. A scientist that has spent 2 years studying alien artefacts should be more proficient than a newb. As stated in the title I would also like to see more types of operatives... (Mostly as NPCs) Intelligence-Service (Men in Black) They lower your chance of detection, increase the chances of alien base detection, have a chance of detecting alien attacks and movements off radar, and have a chance of assisting you during your attacks. Pilots They cost more money than a standard trooper Exist inside the transport, equipped with a side-arm and no knowledge of how to use it. If they die you have no option to evacuate, if you lose the battle after this the transport is lost. A pilot would add a level of risk to all land battles. And will constantly have you asking; "Do I want to risk him so I can have more firepower?". The pilot could also man fighter-craft and gain experience. Admin Staff (Less so) People who handle the logistics by lowering the costs of imports. They could also help by increasing the efficiently of support staff, the export value of goods and the relations between other countries. Security Staff They decrease the likelihood of your base being detected and assist you in base battles with gunpowder weapons Head of Xenonauts The base you're situated in receives efficiently perks. You can transfer to any base and, if aliens attack the base, you can fight with a side-arm. If you die you lose the game. ---end Hope you don't mind my thoughts on what could be added, the game is looking great but I thought I'd suggest it now rather than suggest it even later down the line.

but random maps? for not having to always play the same two maps... is the most important things for now in order to play the game... not with the new tile(tundra or desert) with the old its ok..

My take away from playing the Kickstarter demo was that the battlemaps were very heavily tile based. In the two or three missions I placed the areas looked like the whole map had just been cut into quarters and preplaced terrain just plonked down into the 4 quarters of the map. Barn here, field here, crashed UFO here, each area taking up roughly the same footprint. It didn't feel very organic to me. Is this a limitation in how the battlemaps are built or is this a freak occurrence given I've only played a couple of battles and they are more varied?

Hi, Well, from what I can tell, it seems that the types of UFO's are limited to: Very Small Small Medium Large Very Large Only 5??? Well, 4, because the fighters do not generate crash sites... They should include more UFO's IMO. I remember the earlier UFO's on X-Com were those really small single seat scouts, usually with 1 sectoid on them. There were UFO's with 2 floors as well (the medium ones).

What if we could only buy some products from specific countries. Tanks from Germany? Big Guns from Russia? High tech from Japan? etc. If you fall out of favor with a country or if Aliens take it over, then you would lose the ability to get those items (as well as some funding).