Dear Goldhawk

[TrashMan]

I enjoyed Xenonauts 1 immensely, but for Xenonauts 2, have the following:

 

- soldier inventory similar to JA2 (specific slots)

- weapon attachment (like in JA2)

- friendly troops and missions involving them

-  localized soldier damage. Mangled arm that reduces aim, mangled leg that reduces movement, etc..

- to tie with the above, a comprehensive armor scheme (front torso, rear torso, head, left/right arm and leg). Each body part has it's own armor value and armor HP.

- more organic weaponry - different weapon types behaving differently, rather then being clear tiers. So plasma has short range, but is powerful and deals splash damage.Lasers are accurate but not very powerful. Kinetics are relaiable and offer high RoF.

So no tiers that go kinetic-laser-plasma, but rather technological progression within a tier. For example:

TIER1:

- continuous lasers (your basic beam. Since it's almsot impossible to miss, the %to hit affects damage done. "Will I hit it" becomes "how long did I keep the beam on the enemy?" as the enemy tried to dodge)

- basic kinetic weapons (the "research" is actually searching for and selecting the best weapons that are available in the world at the start of the game. "Hey Xenonauts, we found that the HGK-416 is the best suited, sop ti will replace your M-16's's)

TIER2:

- pulse lasers (mechanically, works the same as a gun. Think lasrifle from WH40K: DoW)

- advanced kinetic weapons (new guns, more modern look, better stats)

- basic plasma (prone to overheating, bulky)

TIER3:

- UV(purple)/X-ray(blue) lasers (better stats, more modern look)

- hypervelocity kinetics (coilguns/railguns)

- advanced plasma

- advanced kinetic munitions (HEA, HEAP, etc.. rounds)

[Dagar]

I agree on different tiers of weapons behaving differently (not the example tier scheme though - why should pulsed lasers be more effective than a continuous beam, and how is the latter in the same tier as modern weapons of the time?), weapon attachments and the friendlies in missions. The rest I see as rather unnecessary, especially considering the limited resources Goldhawk likely have.

The different weapon behaviour should aim at never obsoleting any weapon type completely and just increasing damage with tiers, but rather them having some unique features and bonuses (like lasers being more accurate in general).

[TrashMan]

The tiers were just an example.

As for why pulse lasers would be more effective - the pulse effect? More energy delivered in a burst, and the shock effect?

 

A comprehensive armor and limbs/body scheme would add to the depth of the game and produce more interesting scenarios and heroic stories.

In X1, there was little difference between a heavily injured xenonaut and a full health one. Here, the difference would be visible and would affect tactical decisions.

 

And it's not even that difficult to implement - it's 3D, so shot direction is easily calculated. All you need is to define body parts and how likely they are to be hit depending on surface area - and you can go even further by chance to hit a body part depending on facing(if you're to the left of a guy and are shooting him, chances are you're gonna hit his left arm and it's almost impossible to hit his right arm) Let me give you an example using some butchered Rimworld code:

  <BodyDef>
    <defName>Human</defName>
    <corePart>
      <def>Human_Body</def>
      <height>Middle</height>
      <depth>Outside</depth>
      <parts>
        <li>
          <def>Torso</def>
          <coverage>0.5</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.5</HP_percent>          
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>
        <li>
          <def>RightArm</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.2</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>        
        <li>
          <def>LeftArm</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.2</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>

        <li>
          <def>RightLeg</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.3</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>
        <li>
          <def>LeftLeg</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.3</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li> 
      </parts>        
  <BodyDef>


        

 

The beauty of this is obvious - you can go autisctically deep with this, adding internal organs, specific fingers, etc... The toughenss of each body part can be defined in may ways - as percentage of soldier HP (tougher soldiers have stronger limbs too) or a fixed value, or every part would have the maximum HP value the soldier has

Within this, you could also define functions of body parts - a simple addition like: <affects>mobility</affects> and <affects>carry</affects> added to a leg would mean that leg injury would reduce both mobility and carry capacity.

 

 

So now instead of Pvt. Bob being hit twice and still running a marathon, we have private Bob who's armor has been breached and lost use of an arm and has a heavily burnt leg. He shoots his rifle one-handed as he limps to cover, drop it since he can't hit jack s***, and kills the alien with a grenade/pistol.

 

 

Note that this would also cause players to have secondary teams and replacements out of necessity - not only does healing take time, but wounded units simply do not perform well. Normally, people would bring soldiers with 50% health on missions, but give them heavy armor or use them as pack mules. But now you have a solider that is limping so is slowing everyone else down, can't carry as much or isn't as accurate until he recovers.

[RustyNayle]

I love this idea of each weapon type having tiers as well.  I reckon that each initial weapon type (rifle, shotgun / carbine, MG, precision, and explosives) should have a more advanced equivalent.  In the examples above

* Lasers only have rifle and precision, with a pulse attachment being a later equippable mod which lowers accuracy but increases effective clip size.

* Plasma only has shotgun and explosive

* Coil / gauss has rifle, carbine, MG and precision so remains flexible, but while an improvement on initial ballistics still might not do as much raw damage. The ammo is of course modded with special ammo equipment which could help make it on par with other weapon types when used for certain purposes (e.g. incendiary, hollow point, armor piercing, stun, etc).  They might also be more easily modified with attachments such as scopes, laser sights, stocks, etc to make them more accurate.

[RustyNayle]

Another thing I always wished were possible is dual pistols akimbo style, with mag pistols that have little or no recoil, which act as a single weapon so don't each require TUs.  Not because it's realistic or whatever, but just because it's cool.