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Stretch Goal Poll Options


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Imersion, as others have mentioned, is key for me.

I would LOVE more tilesets. Did I say that clearly enough. I would LOVE more tilesets. I don't mind playing the same missions again and again as long as I am struggling to get a grip of my surroundings, enjoying exploring new maps/map lay outs. One thing that would really encoarage me to step back into kickstarter would be themed tilesets:

  • $70,000: Implement inteligent sub-map generator - to bring more interesting combinations from existing tilesets.
  • $80,000: New Urban tilesets for Soviet block countries (USSR, China). Current terror map is definitely US centric. Soviet tilesets would fit very well into your cold war theme.
  • $90,000: New urban tilesets to fit a theme (to be chosen by poll). From lists like: Favelas (to be used in S. America; Afriaca and West Papa); South or East Asia (buddist temples, water ways: to be used from India to Japan); Northern European set (terraced houses, slate apec roofs); Mediteranian (brown grass, white washed buildings: used in S. Europe, Middle East, N. Africa and Mexico)
  • $110,000: Another from the list above
  • $120,000: Another from the list above
  • $130,000: Introduce maps with elevations (maps with gorges, maps with rivers (might generalise easier) with river planes and raided ridges)) - hard to do avoiding the chunckiness of the original Xcom implementation that might break the crispness of the current visuals

Having lots of small levels (look at Steve Jackson's ogre page) with defined goals, works. "Wouldn't it be cool if we can somehow squeeze another $241 dollars to unlock this next level?"

For me they greatly increase the playability/replayability of the game. I think they are also tracktable: They are not tied to an Artist who doesn't want to give us their day job; extra money shoudl translate fairly easily into extra resources to do tilesets. There are lots of other tilesets ideas - fill out lots of levels [i would do 5/10 thousand dollar levels from $60,000 - you just need to fill up these small step levels to $100,000 at this stage.

[Personally I am not a fan of vehical or pilot levelling - too much like games workshop, doesn't fit for me into the feel of everything/body is completely expendible]

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[Personally I am not a fan of vehical or pilot levelling - too much like games workshop, doesn't fit for me into the feel of everything/body is completely expendible]

I keep seeing comments like this, or mentioning 'oh, we can already level them up sorta by giving them new guns!', but I honestly don't understand it. Why are you against pilot leveling but for infantry leveling? They have literally the same exact impact. Just like infantry can switch out types of armor, vehicles can switch up to new tank hulls or interceptors. Just like infantry can switch out to new weapons, vehicles can switch out to new weapons. Both of those are already in the game. I completely fail to see why you'd resist making the similarities complete by offering vehicle pilots the option to level-up just like infantry can level-up.

If you are against vehicle leveling, can you explain why you're for infantry leveling? Or do you want to remove leveling altogether?

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[*]$90,000: New urban tilesets to fit a theme (to be chosen by poll). From lists like: Favelas (to be used in S. America; Afriaca and West Papa); South or East Asia (buddist temples, water ways: to be used from India to Japan); Northern European set (terraced houses, slate apec roofs); Mediteranian (brown grass, white washed buildings: used in S. Europe, Middle East, N. Africa and Mexico)

Hey! WTF?

Do you think that if a UFO crashes here in Brazil the tile set would be a favela?? That's just blissful ignorance. There's "favelas" in all countries, where the poor people live. If a UFO crashes here in my city the tile set would be a beautiful rich neighbourhood map FYI.

Also, FYI, the only city in Brazil wich holds a majestic favela is Rio, and I'm glad I live far away from there. We have other hundreds of well developed big cities, wich ressembles nothing like a favela.

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I would not say I am exactly against it I just don't see it as a big deal.

The focus of the game is on your soldiers and their progression.

The vehicles are there to support your troops on the ground.

You can already upgrade your weapons or replace the vehicle with a different one.

That is good enough for me.

Adding crews (not just a single trooper remember but potentially a commander, gunner, driver etc) also adds complication and balance issues.

You are asking for a whole new feature to be added, it is up to you to persuade people why you feel it would be a worthwhile addition to the game.

Soldier promotion already exists in the game and has always been a core part of this genre.

Having multiple ranks in a military organisation makes sense to me.

Tank with Laser Turret being better than Tank with 50cal Turret is a nice obvious difference.

Having Sergeant Tank with 50cal being better than Private Tank with Laser Turret makes less sense.

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With Gauddlike on vehicles.

The game to me is about the progression of my men from rookies to Elite Mther Fckr Alien Killers!

Vehicles are a support mechanism and I often played without them in xcom games because it meant I could level up 4 extra rookies who could take over from injured dudes.

I dont want a situation where I would be a fool not to have a fully levelled vehicles, they already have quirks. Range of weapons, longer LOS, replace at a standard not weaker level, so they are a constant.

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I'll add my vote to the "vehicles are fun but wouldn't be my first choice for leveling up or a new mechanic". I don't necessarily use them, either, and even with the fundraising goal met, it's not like Goldhawk has unlimited resources. I'd much rather have proximity grenades or new tilesets or mission types - things that add to or change gameplay than incremental additions like vehicles leveling. At root, the game is about your squad of men (and hopefully women) and how they save the planet. I'd like to have more ways to direct them so they can do so instead of additional elements from tanks or planes which aren't as central to the story. Sure, if it money/time were no issue, that would be great but it's still a question of priorities and I can see there being more important ones.

Back to the main topic: in addition to posting the polls, just a reminder to add some more reward tiers at the same time, which I know everyone's thinking about... but it takes awhile to hit another $25k or $50k if you're going in $20/30 increments - plus those tiers require bringing in new people. If there's a way to give current donors who are excited about new goals a way to increase their pledge, then you're essentially growing without having to do the PR legwork to interest new folks. In addition to the possibilities kicked around on the other thread (naming planes, etc.), I do think that new ideas of easy digital swag and/or signed books/art/etc. would be good ways to entice folks (and digital swag has a low overhead in terms of cost and distribution).

-Kilrathi, who's looking forward to playing some Xenonauts tonight

Edited by Kilrathi
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Also, FYI, the only city in Brazil wich holds a majestic favela is Rio, and I'm glad I live far away from there. We have other hundreds of well developed big cities, wich ressembles nothing like a favela.

Sorry Corporal Hicks, you are right. A terror mission in Brasilia would be nothing like Rio. All I wanted to get across is I would love to play in tilesets that didn't all look like Suburban US tilesets. Coming up with with an urban tileset that could fit into 1970s Brazil or 1970s Indonesia (lush vegetation, houses packed closer together) would be a huge step forward for me.

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I remember awhile back we were told that fire mechanics were coded into the game but currently do nothing because the flammable tiles needed for fire to spread were not in the game.

If the above is true then what I'd like to see more than anything else are flammable items such as wooden walls, hay bales, tall grass, wheat fields, etc. Fire was my favorite feature in X-Com.

Collapsible buildings - I'm assuming that it's already in game since it was planned but I haven't tested it to see if it is or not. If not, then I'd like to see this make it in as well.

Super advanced AI would be excellent. Some things I'd like to see aliens doing are as follows:

  1. Work together in teams that tend to stay within LOS.
  2. Attempt to destroy a building if they see multiple soldiers within.
  3. Flanking attempts.
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Chris, will the Poll go up tonight? I think it would be a big boon to push up US pledges during UK night night time.

Also perhaps you could set a goal at 75k, 100k, 125k, 150k, 170k, 185k, 200k.... that would really get the juices flowing to hit the 200k+ target. You should have bought yourself relocation by that point and you would still have money for UI etc.

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I would not say I am exactly against it I just don't see it as a big deal.

The focus of the game is on your soldiers and their progression.

The vehicles are there to support your troops on the ground.

You can already upgrade your weapons or replace the vehicle with a different one.

That is good enough for me.

Adding crews (not just a single trooper remember but potentially a commander, gunner, driver etc) also adds complication and balance issues.

You are asking for a whole new feature to be added, it is up to you to persuade people why you feel it would be a worthwhile addition to the game.

Soldier promotion already exists in the game and has always been a core part of this genre.

Having multiple ranks in a military organisation makes sense to me.

Tank with Laser Turret being better than Tank with 50cal Turret is a nice obvious difference.

Having Sergeant Tank with 50cal being better than Private Tank with Laser Turret makes less sense.

Of course it makes less sense. You're deliberately giving an example that makes no sense.

First, the actual vehicles shouldn't 'level up'. Only the crews (or pilots, however you want to put it) should. They should be transferable between vehicles. If you can't do that, then I agree that it shouldn't be done. But an experienced crew using one vehicle should be better than an inexperienced crew using the same vehicle.

And yes, in real life not all tank commanders are the same rank or have the same skills, exactly like the troopers.

Basically, what I'm saying is - the game should be about the troopers, and the people manning those vehicles should be treated just like the poor bloody infantry. Just because they're inside of a vehicle doesn't mean they're automatically less important than the infantry, and the game shouldn't encourage you to treat them like they are - and that's what making a super-experienced tank crew be equal to a complete rookie crew does.

EDIT:

I can completely understand people thinking that there could be better uses for the money, or wanting other things to go first, etc - I'm just surprised that so many people apparently don't want vehicle crew leveling no matter whether it'd be super-easy to implement and cost no resources or not. I still don't see the innate difference between 'vehicle crew' and 'troopers' if you allow vehicle crews to level up - sure, in X-COM vehicles were expendable and not at all really 'part of the team', but if you do vehicle crews right you could change that, make it so vehicle crews actually feel like Xenonauts and not just 'random sacrifice number 3'. How is giving the vehicle crews some kind of life and attachment to the player a bad thing?

Edited by Langy
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How is giving the vehicle crews some kind of life and attachment to the player a bad thing?

It isn't. For me, it really is that there are a number of other things I'd like to see first. There's nothing at all wrong with the idea. You mention that the vehicle crews would be 'part of the team'. Would an option be to actually assign a Xenonaut to the task of piloting the vehicle? So that there would be no separate vehicle crew at all?

You would do it through the soldier screen or personnel screen, in the same way as troops are assigned to the Chinook. For example Squaddie Langy would be assigned to Hunter-01 on the personnel screen. Hunter -01 would be assigned to Chinook -01 in the vehicle screen. There's probably an even easier way to do this, but it makes a sort of sense.

After all, we go with the assumption that a couple of the troops are Chinook pilots, so why not have them be skilled enough with the vehicles as well. It would certainly make you more careful with the vehicles.

The missions and kills would be allocated to the trooper in the vehicle for that mission and not to the vehicle itself, which would always have zero as troops are moved in and out of it. Unless that's too fiddly then any trooper assigned to the vehicle isn't counted as actually being in on the mission in the same way as the infantry and all missions and kills are assigned to the vehicle they are in.

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Here are a few suggestions (some of which have been mentioned already):

Weapon accessories: scopes, torches, grenade launchers, improved barrels, foregrips.

Armour appearance customisation: different colour shades, adding insignia.

Squad logos: some defaults plus the option to design your own.

More mission types: defend military bases and hospitals; protect VIPs; escort VIPs to exfiltration area (VIPs could be player-controlled to avoid AI issues); plant bomb; destroy alien device; assassinate alien commander; eliminate alien cultists (humans working for the aliens); hold out against waves of alien attackers; rescue downed pilot (not necessarily your own); investigate reported alien anomaly. The more the better, basically.

Secondary objectives that appear only when revealed mid-mission: you find a wounded civilian and need a Xenonaut to pick him up and carry him back to the chopper; retrieve information local agents have compiled about aliens; destroy alien mind-control device causing humans to fight you (once destroyed the humans could turn into allies). Again, the more the better. Would really add to replayability.

More variety in friendly NPCs: armed civilians, police, army, Men in Black-style government agents.

Vehicle operators can escape: if a vehicle is destroyed, there's a chance the operator could survive. He’s only got basic armour and a handgun, but if he lasts the level then your point reduction isn’t quite so severe.

Static emplacements for Xenonauts to use on military maps: machine-gun nests that are powerful but have limited arcs and ammo.

More locations: forests, jungle etc. But I’d be inclined to avoid places like oil rigs, the reason being that to be worthwhile the locations would have to be used a lot, and it would seem strange to be fighting 20% of all battles on a rig.

Anyway, just some thoughts… It’s shaping up to be a really great game. Kudos to all involved.

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Here are a few suggestions (some of which have been mentioned already):

Weapon accessories: scopes, torches, grenade launchers, improved barrels, foregrips.

Armour appearance customisation: different colour shades, adding insignia.

Squad logos: some defaults plus the option to design your own.

3 suggestions that would send Chris to an early grave :P

Not putting down, would be great,

But each one involves re-rendering all the sprite animations several times over. Look in you xenonauts\assets\units folder and laugh

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Here are a few suggestions (some of which have been mentioned already):

Secondary objectives that appear only when revealed mid-mission: you find a wounded civilian and need a Xenonaut to pick him up and carry him back to the chopper; retrieve information local agents have compiled about aliens; destroy alien mind-control device causing humans to fight you (once destroyed the humans could turn into allies). Again, the more the better. Would really add to replayability.

I like this idea. These objectives, as secondary objectives, could pop up and contribute to:

  • advancement to research (eg save an important scientist)

  • more funding (rescue a vip or politician),

  • early conclusion for base building (again free a captured vip)

  • discover of an alien base location (rescue policemen, secret agents)

.......

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I like this idea. These objectives, as secondary objectives, could pop up and contribute to:
  • advancement to research (eg save an important scientist)

  • more funding (rescue a vip or politician),

  • early conclusion for base building (again free a captured vip)

  • discover of an alien base location (rescue policemen, secret agents)

.......

Oooh, I like those! And how about a situation where a local soldier is being overrun but if you save him then he can join your team of Xenonauts for the rest of the game, for no cost. He could even have slightly above-average stats in one area, e.g. maybe he's a sniper so has good accuracy. All these ideas could be slightly scaled up and make for full mission types too.

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