My thanks to, and my thoughts for the makers and creators

[Napalmtheelf]

Personally and firstly a big thanks to you for getting this game going and out there. Having played the original XCOM games, all those many years back and having played every half decent version since, I had to have your Xeno version and it dragged me back into the fun filled days of 94.

But, to your game.

Firstly...terror attacks! OMG...having encountered a handful of these I just have to ask...is it intended for me to land surrounded by nasties and have my squad obliterated in three turns? If this is the case, might I bring up an old idea me and my friends had when playing the original. Calling in Artillery cover. Or better still we had the idea of a mini game where you pick your landing site and have the option to bomb a given landing site before landing and thus clearing it and enabling your troops to secure a perimeter. Even smoke rounds would help!

Secondly...research in the steam version is waaaay slower than in the demo. A few more shinies would make up for the slow progress. This is more important when you start getting corvette class UFO's which your planes don't even scratch.

Troop characterisation. All I can say is MORE. The great thing about all the XCOM games (yes I know this isn't XCOM, but you get my meaning) was the fun and odd sense of loss attached to having a certain element personalisation.

Love the aerial combat mini game btw. So much better than the standard linear exchange of fire from the XCOM games.

Gameplay and LOS. I'm guessing that the latest version hasn't had this sorted yet. The fact that a soldier behind cover when firing will simply shoot the cover in front of him most of the time must be on your 'to do' list. Please. The same goes for cover and throwing grenades, which as above, just explode in the soldiers face. Come on guys, they're trained soldiers, I think throwing over things is on page one of the combat manual.

I would moan a little about friendly fire, but on retrospection, it makes you pay attention and so fine.

Vehicles. Think they need to be a little tougher. Well, a lot tougher in fact. A soldier in upgraded combat armour seems to be able to take more damage than an armoured car. I'm sure the vehicles get better, but as with planes, without the research being sped up a little, they are just sitting ducks. Maybe an option to upgrade their armour, while keeping weapons. Maybe with a movement restriction or something. This would also enable them early on to be used as troop carriers to get your soldiers out of sticky landing sites and to somewhere safe before heading out into combat.

Well, thats it for now. Ive only played the steam version for a day, so will update this as I go.

like I said, awesome to play the game and thanks you for making it happen

[thothkins]

Firstly...terror attacks! OMG...having encountered a handful of these I just have to ask...is it intended for me to land surrounded by nasties and have my squad obliterated in three turns? If this is the case, might I bring up an old idea me and my friends had when playing the original. Calling in Artillery cover.

Support weapons indeed! Take your beating like a human! I'm beginning to think it is intended. I've been getting cuffed around on them for so many builds now it can't be by accident. I can;t be that bad at the game, can I ? Balancing is ongoing, but the terror missions are quite a step up from Light Scouts and Scouts.

Support weapons were considered to get away from the focus of the game, which is your soldiers on the mission (and their tank). Also worth considering is how much fun it would be to survive the alien barrage if they get an equivalent as a balance.

Secondly...research in the steam version is waaaay slower than in the demo. A few more shinies would make up for the slow progress. This is more important when you start getting corvette class UFO's which your planes don't even scratch.

In balancing again, much like everything else. Having too many shinies may actually get in the way of the research you need to undertake for when the Corvettes show up. There's some debate around the escalation of UFOs as well.

Troop characterisation. All I can say is MORE. The great thing about all the XCOM games (yes I know this isn't XCOM, but you get my meaning) was the fun and odd sense of loss attached to having a certain element personalisation.

There's a pretty good selection of ethnic portraits (cue replies from ethnic groups not yet covered) and gender. Backers of a certain Kickstarter level also have their own portraits. It's unknown if these will also make their way into the general pool. Pinetree has a great extended soldiers mod that provides many more countries and backgrounds.

Love the aerial combat mini game btw. So much better than the standard linear exchange of fire from the XCOM games.

very impressed with it. Such an improvement on the other basic X-clones (although I did really like Apocalypse)

Gameplay and LOS. I'm guessing that the latest version hasn't had this sorted yet. The fact that a soldier behind cover when firing will simply shoot the cover in front of him most of the time must be on your 'to do' list. Please. The same goes for cover and throwing grenades, which as above, just explode in the soldiers face. Come on guys, they're trained soldiers, I think throwing over things is on page one of the combat manual.

suicidal grenadiers is going to be looked at.

I can't comment at all about vehicles, as I've never really used them.

[Sathra]

Odd, a number of people have said that research is too fast.

As for terror missions, you can use smoke grenades to reduce alien hit chance and the walls of the chinook to break line of sight.

[Napalmtheelf]

Fair comment on all....I have a fresh crisp and heavily starched pair of Bigboy trousers on order so I can cope with the terror missions, though as with my point regarding grenades, throwing them from inside the skyranger will at the moment result in my lads on the ground being enveloped in smoke, but the tactic is sound from previous XCOM games.

I did have a thought regarding money. The threads do mention here and there regarding selling...fair enough, but might I suggest something rather morre interesting.

Patents!!

Sadly not an original idea but from a line from Men In Black.

J - 'So who pays for all this?'

K - 'We own patents on a few gadgets we confiscated from out-of-states visitors, velco, microwave ovens, liposuction.'

The fun thing here is that a patent would provide another source on periodic payment and even better, your game is set in 79, which gives huge scope for connecting alien tech with 79/80's technological advances. Personally, I remember 79 and besides Abba, Voyager 1, Another Brick in the Wall and the Stylophone, it sucked. But I can definitely see how alien artifacts could have shaped the yuppie soaked affluence of the 80's...in the UK at least.

As for the personalisation, I grew up playing role play games, which nowadays have reached the level of twee or quaint, but did focus the player on the character sheet and tinkering with it was almost as fun as actually playing the game. The ability to adjust character stats or train for bonus skills is my idea of personalisation, not just having portraits. Fair enough I understand that widening the focus on individual soldier skills would require similar balancing with aliens, a coding nightmare I would imagine for a game designer, but a little more might be nice.

We don't want a single soldier trained and tweaked so he is the Chuck Norris of the alien asskicking world, but having specialised training choices was a good part of the most recent XCOM game, which I felt helped me attach to the soldiers rather than just being drones under the CRASH styling.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Napalmtheelf

[thothkins]

I have a fresh crisp and heavily starched pair of Bigboy trousers on order so I can cope with the terror missions

That's the spirit. It also answers why there's so much empty space on the chinook. It's so everyone can wear their special adult nappy Xeno-suits.

Patents!!

Have a look at this post on Research Dissemination (scroll down a bit in the post) which goes down a parallel path.

Personally, I remember 79 and besides Abba, Voyager 1, Another Brick in the Wall and the Stylophone, it sucked. But I can definitely see how alien artifacts could have shaped the yuppie soaked affluence of the 80's...in the UK at least.

So apart from the awesome stuff, it sucked Hmmm, didn't even mention the Electric Light Orchestra or Chic... Aliens attack but are beaten when they think that this is real...

not to mention disco balls.

As for the personalisation, I grew up playing role play games, which nowadays have reached the level of twee or quaint, but did focus the player on the character sheet and tinkering with it was almost as fun as actually playing the game. The ability to adjust character stats or train for bonus skills is my idea of personalisation, not just having portraits.

Training was held around for quite a while, but looks to be finally about to pass on when the new UI appears. Here's some ideas

We don't want a single soldier trained and tweaked so he is the Chuck Norris of the alien asskicking world

So far it seems that the weapon types keep some sort of specialisation and the cap on stat advancement each mission make progression gradual, with gaps through injury, meaning that getting superhuman soldiers is a bit tougher.

The question now is, is attacking a planet with Chuck Norris on it basically committing suicide?

Edited July 4, 2013 by thothkins
ELO cover too small.

[200down]

Research between different weapons and item types is all borked at the moment. Plasmas are way to soon after lasers for instance. There are general "gaps" in research where you'll be doing no research at all for long periods. I'm sure the devs know this and will fix it in the final release though. Just give it time. Research timings are honestly much more complicated than changing one value in a file. They also need to sort out "when" aliens show up with that technology too. Which is regulated in part by "ticker speed". So when it comes to research, depending on your difficulty level and ticker speed mods, it will "feel" different to each player. Hope this makes some sense.

As for the terror missions, Sathra is spot on with this one imo. Honestly if you use all the "gadgets" at your disposal the terror missions are far far easier than the latest x-com. Smoke grenades do 2 things. They reduce visual range by 2 squares and they reduce accuracy by 20%. Best case scenario, you should be behind or inside smoke if aliens are in range at the end of your turn. The game in general is just too damn easy in this latest release, in large part due to the huge lack of viable tactics documented for weapons. They need to document general strategies for each weapon and better explain how they should be used to your advantage. The game keeps getting more and more for casual players and it shouldn't be. It isn't the average turn-based strategy after all.

On a side note:

Many many things can be easily adjusted to your liking in the basic gameconfig.xml file. They obviously made the game easy to mod for a reason. Although you will notice that the difficulty levels really don't change much in the way of gameplay because they haven't actually completed it. Which we can easily do in the config.

My game is highly modded but these simple config changes should still help fix the difficulty levels being unfinished. It's my attempt at filling in the the difficulty levels. Normal feels challenging, veteran is HARD but winnable, and superhuman is just that, damn near unplayable. If you aren't already finding the base settings for the latest patch too easy on veteran than I'd suggest sticking with normal or even easy with these settings.

<!-- DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIERS -->

<!-- The values for each are multiplied by these numbers -->

<alienTickerSpeedEasy value="0.8" />

<alienTickerSpeedNormal value="1.5" />

<alienTickerSpeedVeteran value="2.2" />

<alienTickerSpeedSuperhuman value="3.5" />

<ufoHealthEasy value="0.75" />

<ufoHealthNormal value="1.0" />

<ufoHealthVeteran value="1.15" />

<ufoHealthSuperhuman value="1.25" />

<alienAttributeEasy value="0.75" />

<alienAttributeNormal value="1.1" />

<alienAttributeVeteran value="1.3" />

<alienAttributeSuperhuman value="1.6" />

<alienWeaponDamageEasy value="0.75" />

<alienWeaponDamageNormal value="0.9" />

<alienWeaponDamageVeteran value="1.1" />

<alienWeaponDamageSuperhuman value="1.2" />

Note that these settings have only been tested for "veteran" difficulty on my highly modified game, so they will most definitely be very unbalanced if using the unmodified latest build(it will highly favor the aliens at the base game weapon stats). I'm just showing them for an example. Veteran, like previously stated, should be damn hard but winnable which is exactly how I like to play turn based strategies. So don't feel bad if you can't play it on normal and have to move down to easy for awhile. This game, like X-COM, is an entirely different animal than most turn based strategy games.

Edited July 8, 2013 by 200down