Summarisation of changes

[Sheepy]

Let's try to summarise proposed major changes to Xenonauts 2.

Left: Major casts - Military Commander (Player), Chief Scientist, Director of Operation, and Soldier.  Right: aliens @ Nov 2016.

In Mar 2017 we get a preview of an animated Reaper.

Done (i.e. being tried out)

• Move Shot Preview allows player to check line of fire and hit rate after planned move's, to get around what you see is not what you get.
• Replaced Rocket with Grenade Launcher which allows but only direct (horizontal) fire.  Less damage, less TU, more shots, more ammo types.

Definitely Happening (i.e. being implemented for trial)

• Short cutscenes between the three Xenonaut heads (above) will tell a better story of the secret organisation fighting a shadow war.
• Merging Research & Engineering makes R&D less idle, expands research tree, make build or research choice direct.  No confusion on which to go first.
• Turn-Based Geoscape consolidate timed events and easy to code.  UFOs come in one wave, player maps fighters to ufo, and end turn. No chasing.
• Strip Down Geoscape to solve imbalance base coverage and air rush, dumping multiple bases and base location.
  Keep facility slots, hangers, radar arrays etc.  Fighters now have infinite range.  Radar radius replaced by global detection level.
• Squadrons Replace Individual Aircraft.  When a squadron lost fighters it also lost firepower.  Fighters are replenished free after a long wait.
  If shooting ufo always take its toll but not too much, strategic air combat choices would be less binary, and will be harder to down every ufo.
• Reduce Dominance of Air War by adding missions that does not depend on ufo, and/or increase ufo land chance.  Ground combat is the meat not air.
• Map Randomisation will prioritise randomisable maps like wilderness or dock.  Retexture map to fit different biome gives more randomness.
• Removal of multi-tile armoured vehicles yields less balance problems and simpler combat rules.  May have small single tile robots, may be not.
• Destructible UFOs will be tested, both fully destructible boxy ufo, and semi-destructible ufo that looks nice but harder to map (think walls, line of sight etc).
• Tweak Weapon Armour Penetration by shifting to a multiplier to help differentiate weapons, and/or some damage ignore all armour to avoid confusion.

Very High Priority

• Build Up Geoscape by putting pawns in regions to fight for.  May shift to a secret Shadow War, player has some control over when to show hands.
  Allows subtle and selective missions, e.g. vip protection or praetor assassination.   More strategic actions to keep regions on good terms.
• Soldier Stress acquired after fights and apply penalties.  Even a perfect battle will take its toll, forcing player to skip some gc or rotate soldiers.
  May make bravery more useful and give the operation division more things to do.
• Alien Racial Abilities is being revised, to be more distinctive, more tactically meaningful abilities.  Work in Progress. 
  Psyons: moves in pack and drones project psi-shield on officer.  Sebillians: average hp but can revive from prone (damage sponge).
  Wraiths: Reactive teleport.  Reaper Alphas: passive psionic debuff.  Androns: X-1 plus limited mobility / thin back armour / death explosion.

High Priority

• Base Structure may moves to slot based for of lack of buildings (and fun) in X-1.  Instead of build new base (get new slots), player may upgrade buildings.
• Soldier Perk may replace stat upgrade.  Each soldier has individual perk tree and earn perks by actions, like medals.  Slower but more significant growth.
• Advanced Weapons may have a cost. Fielding (firing) them cost you fuel, which is generated by base infrastructure(s). Make upgrade a harder choice.
• The Translocator may replace dropship.  It will have a recharge time and team-based weight limit, plus conditions like soldier or turn limit.
  Story wise, alien corpse and equipments will disappear after a few minutes, and the translocator can stop this which makes Xenonauts special.
• Crouching & Cover may be simplified to ease learning curve.  e.g. Automatic crouching, bonus protection from adjacent cover.  Or sth. more complicated.
• Modding & Translation may get a mod editor, language editor, and map editor.  Automate parts of creating modular mod / organise translations.

Medium Priority

• Automatic Story Research should make sandbox supporters happier, prevents player delay of harder enemies, and allow no-research walkthrough.
• Human Psionics, if researched, may carry a risk that things may go wrong every time it is used.  Darker theme, more risk-reward.  Potentially a DLC.
• Mixed Alien Missions should be more realistic and tactically more fun.  But not as mixed as xcom, perhaps. Not sure.

Unknown Priority

• New Soldier Inventory System will be slot based: primary, quick, and belt.  Primary are the most powerful weapons, Belt are grenades and ammos.
  Quick are weaker weapons, like SMG, baton, or light grenade launcher, or tools like medikit and psi-shield.  Free pistol for everyone.
• New Research System will split projects into fields, like physics and biochem.  Research will raise overall expertise in that field, opening up new projects.
  Potentially scientists may improve skill from experience, has perks, and can work faster at risk of blowing themselves up.

I don't promise to keep this topic up to date... I can't tell when each proposal is updated.  Let me know if you find something major missing.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Sheepy
Move grenade launcher to implemented

[RustyNayle]

This sounds and looks fantastic!  Sorry if I'm not leaving these comments in the right place, but I've been reading through so many posts and just wanted to get my thoughts down before moving on:

I read that you really wanted to evoke the Cold War feel, which is interesting given the current politicking between democrats accusing Trump of working with the Russians (I don't know if you've heard much about the theory of NWO wanting a war there?). To help with this feel in your game, why not assign the players only to one side (I would be interested in the Soviets), which enables you to develop the story better from just the one perspective for now. Then, you can have intrigue against the other side start to increase, eventually the player starts to figure out that aliens are involved, that some of the info supposedly incriminating the other side itself was fabricated by the aliens, and in fact the aliens have also been working with a clandestine NWO type organisation influencing your own government which is trying to topple world powers so they can rise up and take control instead. It would be nice to give the players the opportunity to choose one side or the other, but this will create a lot more work for you if you have to be able to tell the same story from both angles. I would definitely prefer that you spend your time developing a deeper plot with great story-driven missions, now that you want to do something different with X2.

Elsewhere it was mentioned the idea of a secret war, with aliens beaming themselves to sights and/or using human lackeys instead.  If this is the case, I reckon coveted alien weapons and craft should definitely only be able to be captured at great risk from live aliens, or very painfully reconstructed from pieces left behind after the weapons / craft self-destruct. I don't think full reverse engineering should be possible, certainly not construction of these devices from raw materials as we do when we adapt alien tech to advance some of our own initial ideas. If the aliens are very few, and not using a lot of craft to get around, then perhaps mid- to late-campaign, the player just captures a working alien craft and this is what they now start to use for more effectively intercepting other ships and/or transporting their own troops. Certainly, being able to travel to another dimension or into space (esp. if a hyperjump is required), and then successfully passing through alien security, they will need a fully alien craft rather than constructing their own hybrid.