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Stretch Goal Poll Options


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Chris, could I suggest packaging tilesets and missions together? For example (using thothkin's list and your ideas) offering a military base tileset, with the military terror, rescue key personell, and subdue hostile local forces missions? By associating missions with a tileset, you emphasise a theme and create greater sense of value for the stretch goal. Not all the missions need to be "tied" to a particular tileset - thothkins' rescue and subdue can also be played out on any other tileset, but I think you would encourage people to pledge towards a goal which seems to have better value for it.

Additionally, you remember when you did "research unlocked - Desura"? If you can, please keep that kind of theme going for the stretch goals, it would be really cool!

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-dislike leveling vehicles- as we have improved ones as the game progresses

Do you dislike leveling soldiers? You've got even more options for improving them than vehicles as the game progresses without even touching the leveling system.

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Idea for a mission, a good old alien abduction rescue mission, intel locates a small base camp. You have to find and release prisoners, before another ship comes to pick them up, it does not have to be a timed mission, but just act like it is one. Job well down brownie points and possible additional funding from country, and maybe some reserch as to why aliens are abducting people if in fact they are in your game.

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Do you dislike leveling soldiers? You've got even more options for improving them than vehicles as the game progresses without even touching the leveling system.

Soldiers gain experience and can have improved armour.

How would you do it with vehicles without ditching the vehicle when something better comes along.

Transferring drivers etc would create an extra level of complexity to implement.

My super tank 1 might have veteran status and better accuracy, but it will still have paper thin armour.

My mega tank 1, would do more dmg and have better armour anyways, due to the progression model that means vehicles stay robust alongside troops. Also a better driver\gunner might react faster, but he cant physically make the tank do more damage.

You would have to keep re-leveling vehicles with every upgrade, not like a xenonaut who you could take with you till the bitter end.

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Idea for a mission, a good old alien abduction rescue mission, intel locates a small base camp. You have to find and release prisoners, before another ship comes to pick them up, it does not have to be a timed mission, but just act like it is one. Job well down brownie points and possible additional funding from country, and maybe some reserch as to why aliens are abducting people if in fact they are in your game.

UFO aftermath did stuff like that.... hated them because it was so easy to fail from a bug or mechanic

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Soldiers gain experience and can have improved armour.

How would you do it with vehicles without ditching the vehicle when something better comes along.

By ditching the vehicle when something better comes along, just as you mention in your next statement:

Transferring drivers etc would create an extra level of complexity to implement.

I agree that it'd be silly if you couldn't transfer drivers, but I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to do that. Assume 'pilot experience' includes 'pilot transfers'.

My super tank 1 might have veteran status and better accuracy, but it will still have paper thin armour.

My mega tank 1, would do more dmg and have better armour anyways, due to the progression model that means vehicles stay robust alongside troops. Also a better driver\gunner might react faster, but he cant physically make the tank do more damage.

Vehicle experience shouldn't increase either damage or armor. It doesn't increase damage on Xenonauts, so I see no reason why you'd expect it would with vehicles. Armor, unlike Xeno health, shouldn't increase with experience.

But vehicle experience could certainly improve reaction times (for better reactionary shots during alien movement), improve driver ability (increasing vehicle TUs), and improve accuracy (allowing the tank to hit the enemy more often). With aircraft, it could improve turning radius/laser beam dodging capability as well as accuracy and probably a few other things.

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How about police/swat showing up in missions doing their own thing? The sprites wouldn't need work as the basic blue looks right.

Extra police/civilian weapons for flavour. A police revolver would be essentially the same as the pistol but with a 6 round capacity. The animation would be the same as the regular pistol. It wouldn't ruin game balance as it wouldn't be a weapon you would equip your own men with, just one that could be picked up in battle from a dead police officer. All that would be needed, unless I'm missing something, is a weapon picture. The same thing could be done for a hunting shotgun or a rifle.

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75k Mark add in random Elite Alien Units in tacitical missions? They will have more hp and more accurate but will drop rare loot or extra alienium if they are killed or captured? like 25% to have an Elite Alien unit to generate each tactical mission and they will be special colored to mark them as Elite units.

100k Add in Alien Sub-boss Special Tactical Missions: these will be specialized battlescape missions for rare loots or extra alienium or power sources or perhaps a special modified ufo interceptor only 1 in game? Maybe allow these missions to appear once every month , optional missions but the rewards will be better in the later months as in special equipment drops from aliens you can use or reverse engineered? Also the Bosses should be totally big and cool and have 8 arms carrying 8 heavy plasma guns and shooting torpodeos from his chest or some crazy bosses. I always wished the old xcom series had some sub-bosses to kill during the play-through of the game.

150k Add in multiplayer so players can pick between playing Aliens or Xenonauts death matches in battlescape=]

200k Make Female Soldiers a DLC in future after release of Xenonauts this fall 2012. This way the game can be released on time. Female DLC pack will be free and be updated free of charge to Xenonauts later in 2013. This way the game does not get stalled and delayed release to add in this big feature.

Edited by Dragonx
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Couldn't the tileset for the Xenonauts base be reused as the tileset for the military bases, simply with randomly generated rooms?

And then just change where your soldiers spawn, so instead of defending you have to assault the military base and kill the invading aliens.

Edited by GrumpySage
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How about police/swat showing up in missions doing their own thing? The sprites wouldn't need work as the basic blue looks right.

Extra police/civilian weapons for flavour. A police revolver would be essentially the same as the pistol but with a 6 round capacity. The animation would be the same as the regular pistol. It wouldn't ruin game balance as it wouldn't be a weapon you would equip your own men with, just one that could be picked up in battle from a dead police officer. All that would be needed, unless I'm missing something, is a weapon picture. The same thing could be done for a hunting shotgun or a rifle.

The issue I foresee with that is location. Would Russian police look the same as Chinese or British.

Game already has friendly NPC fighters.. but there AI is almost non-existent. I would like the team to focus on making them an effective fighting force 1st.

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Definitely new tilesets.

More stances! I know you hate rendering sprites, but at least have prone and duckwalking. This does really help gameplay wise. Thoughts on that here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1833-Any-way-to-change-stance-%28crouch-etc.%29?p=20558&viewfull=1#post20558

Different mission types would be great - protect x target and other things in code being available to modders would be a boon down the road, though that would have to be secondary.

Vehicle leveling is bad I say. I much prefer gaud's idea of having one vehicle w/ a secondary weapon or utility and one vehicle with more armor/health and less weapons.

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Vehicles

I like the idea of upgrades/customization of vehicles. IMO it makes more sense than improving them/pilots via XP. For example after using vehicles in missions for a certain amount of time/turns/kills a new research project becomes available... something like "After analyzing numerous mission reports we believe we identified several opportunities to improve the utilisation of infantry fighting vehicles in typical combat scenarios involving alien ground forces.".

This then leads to a few minor research projects for adjusting hardpoints on the vehicles like armor (heavy armor=more HP but less AP, light armor=more AP but less HP, resistant to one damage type but susceptible to another), armament (damage vs. accuracy vs. AP cost) and powertrain (total ap, ap cost for turning/driving over stuff). Nothing major or too complex, just some choices to accommodate to personal playing styles. And I think the adjustments shouldn't be very high (maybe +/- 5%) so a fully specialized old tech vehicle can never outdo an unmodified next generation vehicle.

Of course something similar could be done with the jets as well.

Tiles

Instead of a complete new set I'd prefer more variety/assets in those sets we are going to see most of the time.

Female Soldiers

Not plausible, doesn't fit the setting, lots of work for little benefit. IMO a waste of resources. (BTW what will you do if some >$125 pledger on KS happens to be female?)

More Misson Types

# Destroy Alien/renegade Facility by escorting a refitted, remote controlled Hunter carrying a bomb (maybe including non-combat specialist/technician) to a certain place and leave before the bomb's timer runs out.

# Same as above but inverted: Aliens/renegades planted bomb and squad has to defuse it in time.

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We already have vehicles that you can improve over time.

You can add new tech turrets to older vehicles, for example adding a scatter laser to the starting vehicle.

If that trend continues then you have options for upgrades.

I would like to see secondary weapons, especially smoke or flare launchers.

This can be added with a relatively simple mod though I reckon.

I don't see a need for vehicle driver progression on top of that.

My personal preference would be for things that can't easily be added as DLC or mods.

Gameplay mechanics are a good place to start (crawl/sprint options were suggested as an example).

Mission types/victory conditions would be another option.

Tying those in with new tilesets or expanding the current common ones would be a nice bonus.

Maybe if you wanted something a little different you could offer an improved map and submap editor?

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If you get more funding (I hope you do), I'd like to have more content:

More tilesets --> arctic, military base, oil rigs, ships (why not an aircraft carrier)?

Mission objectives/more mission types --> attack/defend military base, protect/rescue person x, destroy structure y, resist an attack for x turns, and so on...

Female soldiers: nice, but not mandatory. More tilesets/mission types would be better. After wolf armor there would be no differences!

Porting to Mac/Linux: not really interested. Too many games get ruined because they must work anywhere. As an example Firaxis XCom has 4 soldier squad, because it has to work on consoles... If porting means only execution through an emulator, such as Wine, then it's ok, as it should not require a lot of work.

More content would be best, even if that delays the release for a few months.

Just my 2 cents.

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On the subject of female soldiers - I see people saying it doesn't make a gameplay difference and that's true... but it does send a message that the game is open to female gamers (and conversely but also important that it's not just an oversight or some weird misogynistic strain in the game). Those of us who've followed the development know the reasons for it but I think it's one of those "non-gameplay" features that does play well to lots of people, makes for good PR and, frankly, would make the game more fun. I've always had some badass women in my RPG parties or JA2 squads, so I'm all for it here, and I think that as far as "non-gameplay" features go, this one's high on the list since it both adds variety to the game and would likely be good PR for the Kickstarter.

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After thinking about the options a little bit, I want to suggest a new tileset:

It would be cool if you could add a terror mission on a cruise or/and military ship. As the game will go forward the dimensions of the terrorizing ufos would increase, so you could start with small 1 level boats terrorized (by scout crews?) in the beginning of the game, and finish with large, 3 level ships(what is the engine level limitations?) terrorized by large ufo crews (cruisers?, etc…)

Advantages-

1. You can design the ships in a way that it would be impossible to use tanks/large units (at least in the smaller ships), so it would be infantry on infantry battles, which would give some artificial variety(on planning and tactics) to terror missions.

2. You could reuse the tiles from the smaller ships on the larger ones, so it would be easier and faster to develop the whole ship tileset family. Basically, it would feel like you added a lot of content to the game (with less effort on your side).

The only disadvantages that I see is that you’ll have to make some water tiles (Possibly animated?) which could be hard with the current engine.

Sorry for the wall of text, English is not my native language.

Thanks for your efforts.

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A lot of indie games implemented better lighting (Minecraft, Terraria, Project Zomboid). Add lampposts and other sources of light for additional atmosphere:D I would put that to 100000$ mark.

Adding light sources rather than a new lighting system is just a case of altering or adding a few new items to existing tilesets.

Doesn't really feel like a milestone addition to me.

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