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Proposed Stretch Goals:


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This is my proposal for the stretch goals. If people like them, they'll go up in a couple of hours along with a survey that allows you to vote for them in order of preference. Thoughts?

- Mac / Linux port – The game will be ported onto Mac / Linux platforms for release, and hopefully for beta too.

- Female soldiers – We’ll add female soldiers to the game, with 20-30 portraits and modified Basic Armour art. However the battlefield sprites will remain unisex.

- Soviet Town terror tileset ($40k) – the current terror tileset is an American town. To fit with the Cold War theme, we’ll put in an alternate tileset for the Soviet bloc countries using Soviet-style architecture.

- Military Base tileset ($40k) – this tileset would allow us to put military terror sites in the game, where aliens have attacked a military base and you are sent in to deal with them.

- Inside missions – these would be missions where combat squads are sent into large buildings or into underground bunkers to clear out an alien strike team. We can mostly re-use the Xenonaut Base tiles for this, so this will be a $25k item.

- Reaper (Chryssalid) Hive tileset ($40k) – in addition to the normal alien base missions, we will add Reaper (the Xenonaut equivalent of Chryssalids) Hive missions to the late-game. These would feature “nodes” that spawned infinite numbers of Reapers. Yes, I have been playing Space Hulk.

- Tileset-Specific NPC Allies – we do have friendly AI soldiers in the game, but only one type. This would add different variants – police on the Industrial tileset, farmers with shotguns on the Farm tileset, mujahedeen with AK-47s on the Desert tileset etc.

- Vehicle Combat Experience – soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.

- Pilot Portraits and Callsigns – at the moment, the aircraft are just aircraft. This would give each aircraft a pilot portrait and a callsign, so they seem less expendable. These pilots will not level up with experience.

- Human Psionics and Blaster Bombs – We’ve removed these from the game due to balance reasons, and we will not put them in Xenonauts. This stretch goal would bundle the game with a developer-made mod that allowed people to put them back in.

- Memorial Screen – This would be a tab on the UI which allowed you to view a list of all your dead soldiers, including the location and time of death, their portrait and number of kills etc.

- Proxy Grenades – These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.

- Motion Detector – This would be a one-hand soldier item that, when equipped, will display a coloured overlay on the battlefield to show any AI movement in previous turn within range of the soldier holding it.

- Hire a Level Designer - we will add a lot more map variation to the game before release, but we don’t have a devoted level designer. This will let us hire one.

- Tall Grass – There’s waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.

The goals that involve the creation of a new tileset cost $40k instead, so if one proves most popular then it will arrive at $90k instead of $75k. This is because tilesets are surprisingly large and are EXTREMELY time consuming and expensive to make – they’re the most expensive component of the game by some distance.

Given we’re only going to get about 50% of the money pledged after KS fees and the costs of manufacturing and shipping the rewards, there’s no way we can put an extra tileset in the game for a $25k stretch goal, I’m afraid.

If you want to know why, it’s basically because you need a lot of tiles to make a convincing tileset that doesn’t repeat, and every single tile has to be modelled in 3D and rendered out, then hand-painted in three different variants (undamaged, damaged and destroyed) to support destructibility. Plus all the ground maps have to be painted too. It’s a LOT of work.

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Chris I'd like to see a mission that pops up in countries that are you are losing suppport from. Kind of a situation where aliens have infiltrated an area and subjected the locals to mindcontrol. (Possible this doesn't even have to be tilespecific)

Few alien units but the civvies/local forces are hostile to compensate.

You still get negative points for killing human enemies so you have to incapasitate them with stun weapons instead.

Primary objectives are either to kill the alien commander that is leading the operation or destroy the mindcontol machinery. (assuming the commander flees asap if he loses control of the civvies)

Secondary objective could be to capture both the mindcontrol unit intact and the alien commander alive (and have alien containment)

The secondary objective could tie into developing the psionics resistant armour or whatever.

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Completely personal response. I was hoping to hire my response out to someone else, but they haven’t shown up…

- Mac / Linux port – The game will be ported onto Mac / Linux platforms for release, and hopefully for beta too.

Hmm! But good for sales.

- Female soldiers – We’ll add female soldiers to the game, with 20-30 portraits and modified Basic Armour art. However the battlefield sprites will remain unisex.

Big Yay!

- Soviet Town terror tileset ($40k) – the current terror tileset is an American town. To fit with the Cold War theme, we’ll put in an alternate tileset for the Soviet bloc countries using Soviet-style architecture.

Yay!

- Military Base tileset ($40k) – this tileset would allow us to put military terror sites in the game, where aliens have attacked a military base and you are sent in to deal with them.

- Inside missions – these would be missions where combat squads are sent into large buildings or into underground bunkers to clear out an alien strike team. We can mostly re-use the Xenonaut Base tiles for this, so this will be a $25k item.

Big Yay!

- Reaper (Chryssalid) Hive tileset ($40k) – in addition to the normal alien base missions, we will add Reaper (the Xenonaut equivalent of Chryssalids) Hive missions to the late-game. These would feature “nodes” that spawned infinite numbers of Reapers. Yes, I have been playing Space Hulk.

Big Yay!

- Tileset-Specific NPC Allies – we do have friendly AI soldiers in the game, but only one type. This would add different variants – police on the Industrial tileset, farmers with shotguns on the Farm tileset, mujahedeen with AK-47s on the Desert tileset etc.

Yay!

- Vehicle Combat Experience – soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.

Bah! Would much rather see you allocated out a soldier to the vehicle, or leave well alone.

- Pilot Portraits and Callsigns – at the moment, the aircraft are just aircraft. This would give each aircraft a pilot portrait and a callsign, so they seem less expendable. These pilots will not level up with experience.

Little yay!

- Human Psionics and Blaster Bombs – We’ve removed these from the game due to balance reasons, and we will not put them in Xenonauts. This stretch goal would bundle the game with a developer-made mod that allowed people to put them back in.

Big Yay!

- Memorial Screen – This would be a tab on the UI which allowed you to view a list of all your dead soldiers, including the location and time of death, their portrait and number of kills etc.

Big Yay!

- Proxy Grenades – These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.

Yay!

- Motion Detector – This would be a one-hand soldier item that, when equipped, will display a coloured overlay on the battlefield to show any AI movement in previous turn within range of the soldier holding it.

Yay!

- Hire a Level Designer - we will add a lot more map variation to the game before release, but we don’t have a devoted level designer. This will let us hire one.

Huge Yay!

- Tall Grass – There’s waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.

Little Yay!

So pretty positive really. Obviously you didn’t include the following …. reaches for large ringbinder…

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Also while we make our choices the 50-500 tiers need fleshing out with ideas. You have 1772 backers. If 300 could be persuaded to up their pledges you get an extra 10k. Just make sure its digital extras between the 50-200 tiers.

You also need a new 200. Having it sold out is 1 less pledge.

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- Vehicle Combat Experience – soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.

Chris you need to make clear if it is the vehicle or the soldier piloting the vehicle that gets stat increase. IE will the experience carry over to the next vehicle or will it become obsolete when a better vehicle is available and you trade in for that?

I think most will assume it's the pilot gets the experience and stats, but I think you have said something to the contrary some time ago?

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Sounds nice, especially "Hire a Level Designer", which would solve some of the replayability problems without costing near as much as a new tileset (would love to have new tilesets though, and hopefuly the Kickstarter gets overfunded to allow everything).

What about combat mechanics though, walking crouched/crawling/sprinting + smoke grenades? They'd allow for far more varied tactics, and would be even easier to add if the level designer stretch goal is also achieved. Basically, anything that allow for a more complex/varied gameplay, for the player but also for the AI (mission design).

And I do feel women soldiers and Linux/Mac are important, even for backers who only care about the gameplay. They're crucial to make all players feel accepted by Xenonauts' community, especially after reading some of the offputing comments from the existing playerbase (I've been following the forums since the beginning, and only with the Kickstarter did I feel at ease enough to subscribe to the forums).

20-30 new portraits + one (one!) basic armor artwork can hardly be considered as endangering the budget when you're offering 50 backers (90 if you include higher tiers) their own portrait for the 50$ difference from the lower 150$ tier. I must be dense and misunderstanding a lot, because it makes it seem like all this fuss about the high cost of adding female soldiers was because nobody at GHI valued making female players feeling welcome worth 20x50=$1000 cost (plus what, 200$ tops for a basic armor modification, and there's no money to fund another tier or armor tweaking?), which is atrocious seen from the userbase point of view.

That's probably part of what upset gamers - the Kickstarter and your explanations make people realise that drawing a new portrait is dirt cheap (IIRC you said it would be $30-$40 to outsource each one), but everybody at GHI or among the forum oldtimers seemed to agree it would be a waste to spend even such a low amount when the face being drawn would be that of a woman (because women, unlike men, aren't worth even 40$ to Xenonauts players)?

You're a man, but ask yourself this question: if you had a daugther, would you be confortable letting her play a game reinforcing the idea that only men are valuable, especially when it comes to important jobs like saving the human species? How can she identify to positive models if the only positive ones are of men (because "they" can do the ultimate sacrifice, unlile her)?

I'm not saying it reflects reality, but it reflects the perception potential supporters have been given. And that external point of view would also want to support your game.

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These are some pretty impressive goals! I guess I'll be upping my pledge just to get some of these :)

Alas, you really need to add more tiers/rewards to the kickstarter. At the moment there is not too much stuff to pique one's interest. And the bestseller soldier faces are gone... But I've seen some good reward ideas in the comments section of the kickstarter.

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I think the missing female portraits have become a component of the Xenonauts debate and it might be worth factoring in a rewards tier... say those 35 portraits are real women at $200. It would reignite higher tier interest and the pledges would be the cost of implementing it. Also you would have 35 satisfied ladies.

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You're a man, but ask yourself this question: if you had a daugther, would you be confortable letting her play a game reinforcing the idea that only men are valuable, especially when it comes to important jobs like saving the human species? How can she identify to positive models if the only positive ones are of men (because "they" can do the ultimate sacrifice, unlile her)?

Not to hijack the thread, but Miles - I agree with much of what you say and I'd like to see female soldiers in the game, too. I think one issue with your analysis is that the debate typically hasn't been "add female portraits to the game" (which obviously carries with it a lower marginal cost - although there's the more general issue that the portrait artist seems to be nearing capacity right now) but that it has been "adding female soldiers with fully-differentiated sprites" to the game - in other words, a full realization of female characters versus a portraits-only concept. I think for awhile there was a thought of "don't do it unless you can do it right", as in have different character models, and adding in different character models actually is a really big time and resource issue, which has been out of Goldhawk's price range. Just wanted to clarify the issue since I don't think it's as simple as saying Goldhawk/old timers didn't want to spend a "low amount" of resources on female soldiers because to fully realize female soldiers would actually require a large amount of resources.

I hope to see female soldiers in the game, too, and I think the portrait-only solution is a nice happy medium. As I just posted on another thread, I think that more mid/high end tiers (including maybe a "female soldier only" portrait tier) would be good since I get the sense that there are people willing to contribute more to the project to help get these great-sounding features included, if only they have the option to do so.

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Gorlom - vehicles will gain experience. When the vehicle is obselete, you lose that experience. It shouldn't exactly be game breaking though (and someone who is really good at driving an armoured car might not be good at driving the new vehicle anyway).

Miles - Smoke grenades are already in the game actually, just not in the public build. I don't want to add major gameplay mechanics like prone etc with the Kickstarter, essentially because they'd have a major effect on the combat model and I think we're too late in development to make a change that big (also I'd argue the squad sizes are too large for it, as opposed to 4-6 as in JA2).

Re: the women, we actually put it at $200k because we thought it would excite people more than the other stuff and they'd be willing to raise their pledge to get it. So it's esssentially the opposite of the conclusions you've drawn, although I can see why you'd think that in hindsight.

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Gorlom - vehicles will gain experience. When the vehicle is obselete, you lose that experience. It shouldn't exactly be game breaking though (and someone who is really good at driving an armoured car might not be good at driving the new vehicle anyway).

Ok, please make sure that is clear to everyone that's voteing. From the discussions about pilots/aircrafts and tanks/operators gaining experience that I've seen people have allways assumed the oposite, and been less interested in it if the experience doesn't carry over.

Add "note: vehicles, not pilots or operators but the vehicles themselves" or something.

Miles - Smoke grenades are already in the game actually, just not in the public build. I don't want to add major gameplay mechanics like prone etc with the Kickstarter, essentially because they'd have a major effect on the combat model and I think we're too late in development to make a change that big (also I'd argue the squad sizes are too large for it, as opposed to 4-6 as in JA2).

Would it be possible to add into the code for modders to play with or would that be too much?

Edited by Gorlom
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When you put in the poll, please allow for multiple choices in the poll. Otherwise you'll get unrealistic results for the second, third and fourth most popular choices.

EDIT:

Just as I wrote this I got the update with the survey. Really cool system the surveymonkey one!

Edited by Linque
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I must be dense and misunderstanding a lot, because it makes it seem like all this fuss about the high cost of adding female soldiers was because nobody at GHI valued making female players feeling welcome worth 20x50=$1000 cost (plus what, 200$ tops for a basic armor modification, and there's no money to fund another tier or armor tweaking?), which is atrocious seen from the userbase point of view.

I am guessing you didn't follow the original arguments around this subject very closely.

The problem wasn't about a few portraits.

Doubling the number and cost of all of the sprites used in ground combat for an indie studio was the issue.

Chris has said before that he wanted to add the female troops but the cost has been beyond reach.

I have always thought that a half done implementation would be worse than none at all.

If Chris had started with female soldiers and not been able to afford to add male ones I would have said the same thing.

Chris and several others have pointed out that there probably wouldn't be much difference between male and female sprites (I am not convinced).

He has decided that it is too important to leave out, even if it can't be the perfect implementation I am sure he would prefer.

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The proposed tilesets seem nice and all, but the one I would've upvoted without hesitation, Wilderness, appears to have fallen through the cracks. "March, man, in Karelia, sniff the pines, sniff that lizardman roasting down by the river. Whoo, hot damn!"

If it comes down to technical limitations, I'll gladly settle for another enviroment.

Edited by iamkyon
Damn typos.
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Reaper Hive mission... Wow!

But I think a level designer is your best investment, even if I'd like more tilesets.

Yeah I went for hire level designer first and Reaper Hive second. How scary the terror sites with Chrysalids in is pretty much my strongest memory from X-COM so I like the idea of this!

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