Ogilvy the Astronomer

Thanks for the reply Chris, and again congratulations on X2 being as good as it is! A couple more quick thoughts I forgot to add into my epic bullet pointed list: · Using alien corpses for ballistics reports is a great idea. I think that currently too many corpses are needed, or at least that was the experience during my playthrough. · The aliens started using poison grenades, but there was no mention of this, no research options or anything like that. No reverse engineering possibilities. How about a project to add a poison effect to smoke grenades? Would make smoke more potent in the latter stages of the game. I’ve been thinking a bit about potential DLC content, and would like to pitch an idea for you to consider or completely disregard as you see fit! I’ve tried to come up with something that would improve three core aspects of the game: variety, replayability, and tipping points (when things become so bad you’re on an inevitable downward spiral to failure; or so well that you steamroll the enemy and it becomes exponentially easier). Xenonauts 2: Terminal Protocol DLC My main idea is to introduce player choices and moral ambiguity that lead to multiple endings. This is inspired by some moments in the current X2. Specifically, when I learnt that Cleaner Agents were basically good humans that had been misinformed; that the aliens could use technology to mind control humans (like the General); and then later on with the UOO, the Chief Scientist isn’t that bothered because military bunkers will be safe, but the Ops Director is horrified about the potential death toll. I thought that these were all interesting moments that could be expanded on. So, how about throughout the game there are multiple forks in the road so to speak, where you have to make decisions that have tangible consequences. The Chief Scientist can support the pragmatic but morally dubious options, while the Ops Director flies the flag for the morally good options. The difficulty of the game should be such that it’s nigh-on impossible to complete the game and be squeaky clean yourself. Compromises will have to be made, and it’s up to the player to decide where they’ll draw the line in the sand. I’ve listed some initial ideas, all pretty rough but they’ll explain the kind of thing I mean. · Install Mind Control tech in world leaders After reverse engineering the Cleaner mind control technology, near the end of Phase One you have the option to use your covert ops to install it in key world leaders, effectively placing them under your control. This would give you a big funding boost and panic reduction, but will make you worryingly similar to the enemies you’re battling. A player might think that they’d never do that – but what if the doomsday counter is close to 100, and their bank balance is close to zero. Might it be worth making this decision to try and save the world from a greater threat? · Install Mind Control tech in your own troops They don’t want this, but you can force them to undertake the procedure. They’d get a big bravery boost, and maybe some other stats get buffed too. It’s abhorrent to even consider – but if alien psionics are buffed and your soldiers are getting mind controlled every mission, maybe you’d do it… · Rebel Human Faction If you take some morally dubious decisions (like Mind Controlling world leaders), a new human faction arises to protest your abuses. They sabotage your supplies, take out your operatives, and ambush you on the way to missions. The question is then, how do you deal with them? Your choice is kill or stun. Stunning is the morally good choice, but would require investment in Stun weapons, and be more difficult overall. (A theme with my ideas being that it’s harder to be good than evil!) · Xenonaut Terror Mission You find an alien logistics hub, mainly staffed by unarmed aliens. Alien civilians, in other words. Do you attack it anyway? It has low tactical value. (Basically a terror mission where *you’re* causing the terror). · Prisoner Dilemma Operatives have found two prisoner transports preparing to depart. You’ve only got time to raid and rescue one. The dilemma is that one has Xenonaut prisoners (that join your roster if you rescue them); the other has civilians (no real benefit to you, but they’re totally innocent in all this). The actual mission would be fun too, breaking into a facility, finding the cells, blowing the doors, then carrying the prisoners back to the chopper. · Free Aliens, or make them fight for you? You’ve found a weakness in the algorithm used to mind control a specific ship full of aliens. Do you break the mind control, allowing them to escape to freedom and live their lives? Or use the mind control yourself to make them fight for you? · Bio Weapon Juicy late-game one, this – the Chief Scientist finds a weakness in the genome of a specific alien species. He can engineer a bio-weapon that you can use to wipe out the entire species. It’s genocide, but this is war… What do you choose? Maybe you get to choose the species to wipe out! · Top tier MARS and Interceptor Reverse engineering Cyberdrone technology has shown that incorporating an organic brain is superior to machines alone. We can build top-tier MARS units and Interceptors, but the harsh reality is that to get the required performance, a human brain is needed. So as well as alloys, alenium, and money, you need… a dead Xenonaut. Luckily the Chief Scientist has kept all the casualty corpses on ice in the morgue (can definitely imagine him doing this!) Your soldiers didn’t sign up to this, they should be left to rest in peace. But you don’t get the top tech unless you take this step into the abyss… This one would be a good leveller for players that are having an easy game and so don’t have many casualties! · Colossus Similar to the idea above, what if Colossus units aren’t armoured suits, but rather Robocop-style cyborgs made from dead Xenonauts? Pretty grim, but if there’s a decent gap between Colossus and the ultimate armour, then it’s a genuinely tough choice. After completing the game you have variety endings based on the decisions you made. And you get to see what other people chose too. “You are among the 65% of players who decided to use the remains of dead Xenonauts for Colossus units.” A “stretch goal” for this idea, and to increase the replayability aspect in particular, is inspired by the Westwood Studios Blade Runner game. I don’t know if you ever played that, but it was very clever. Each new game had a secret seeding that randomised key plot points and events. For example, which characters were replicants (including you), and whether or not your boss was corrupt. Something like that could work with Xenonauts. For example, in each game there’s a 20% chance that during late-game the Chief Scientist uses Colossus units and sentries (that he’s build in secret and are under his control) to try and usurp you and take over the Xenonauts. The odds of his betrayal could increase if you’ve used mind control technology yourself. This concept would be good for tempting back players that have already completed the vanilla X2. Anyway, that’s about it. Was fun to think about all these ideas! File away for later consideration or immediately forget as you see fit!

I’ve just completed a full playthrough, and had a great time! The game has come on such a long way since I last played an early access build. There are so many quality of life improvements, and countless well thought-out gameplay decisions. Splitting the game into Phases is ace. No crashes or bugs either. Congrats to everyone involved, the game is a real achievement! In case it’s useful, I’ve splurged my thoughts for potential tweaks and improvements in a big bullet pointed list. All just my opinions of course, but maybe useful when considering future balance passes / possible DLC / mods. · Grenades feel slightly under-powered. · Stun guns are frustrating to use, their accuracy is too low. I stuck with stun batons. · Could shields be a bit lighter? Once I gave someone armour, a shield, and a handgun, they rarely had any strength left to carry even a single grenade. · MGs feel overpowered, at least in the latter part of the game. Maybe the high-end MGs, like fusion, should have some limitation to nerf them a bit. Maybe only 10 rounds in a magazine. · The difficulty spike when enemies started bringing fusion weapons felt a bit too extreme. · It would be great to have extra MARS upgrade options to make them more interesting and allow specialisms. For example, how about a MARS upgrade so it can be used as mobile hard cover for your soldiers? Or a medical upgrade so it can be like a medic bot. · I think there’s potential for a more specialised medic role. How about a new item, a trauma kit, that takes most of the space in the tactical vest but if applied to a “killed” soldier then it increases their chances of survival. · The 360-vision device is heavy and takes up a lot of space for the benefit it gives. I think it would work better as the ultimate upgrade for the tactical module, i.e. it gives accuracy bonus and 360 vision. · Grenade launchers feel meh, I tried them a few times and then skipped them forever more. Does anyone actually use grenade launcher plus smoke? · Similar for the knife, I never really considered ever using one. · Micromanaging base stores is no fun. I’d prefer every base to just have infinite storage space and no need for a storage room. Feels like a hangover from XCOM that could be streamlined away. · For the missions when you need to extract soldiers, a win condition is that you can just get everyone onboard the chopper, but that isn’t specified in the top-left of the screen during tactical combat. It just says to kill all enemies. If you do get everyone on the chopper, the mission should end automatically. Instead, I had to click Abort Mission, which felt like I was admitting defeat. · The OP cost to complete repeated UFO crash missions feels too high. I get that you want to disincentivise grinding, but I found the OP cost so high that it was never really an option. Maybe have the OP cost half of what it currently is? Then it would be more of a tactical decision, rather than a “no” every time. · Maybe it was just the luck of the draw during my playthrough, but I encountered sooooo many Wraiths. · I only came across two or three Eternals during the entire game. · If you go overweight for a soldier, your TUs are reduced until they’re over-burdened. I think it would be good if the opposite were true as well, i.e. soldiers under their carry capacity get some bonus TUs. That would be more interesting than just filling your soldiers’ pockets with grenades every time. You could have some designated runners during abduction missions, for example. · I saw a tooltip about soldiers becoming unconscious and being able to revive them with a medkit, but I didn’t encounter this situation even a single time during the entire playthrough. · The in-game tutorials are excellent, but they seem to be missing for base building. · I’d have appreciated some reminder / hint about building a second base. For example, maybe once you reach Phase 2, if you haven’t built a second base then the Ops Director could say that it would be good to build one. · It would be super-useful to know in advance about the 16-person limit for base defence missions. Maybe as part of a base tutorial. For example, I decided to defend my second base just with sentry guns, to avoid having the cost and hassle of garrisoning troops there. So, I built 30 of the things. Thought I was being clever… · The best mission was the UOO Bridge Attack. It felt perfect for the very final mission. Desperately holding off waves of enemies, keeping the control console clear. Great! By contrast, the actual very final mission was quite easy. I beat the initial enemies, then opened the doors and just let rip at the Eternal. · Back to the UOO Bridge Attack mission, it would be good to know in advance that once the mission is complete then all your soldiers will be automatically teleported away. I positioned them ready to run back to the starting point, and was loading the bodies of fallen comrades to carry them out of there in the hopes that they’d survive. Then everyone just teleported away in a *poof*. · The time gap between accelerated weapons and then and lasers feels very fast. · Same for gauss and fusion. · Lasers are the most interesting weapons. Armour penetration, upgrades for damage, and upgrades for recharging. I know other tiers have the damage upgrade, but it would be neat to see more variety too. For example, armour penetration upgrade for gauss, accuracy for accelerated, maybe fusion clip capacity is lower to start with and needs an upgrade to increase. · I liked how there was a countdown for each phase, but that’s lacking for Endgame. You can just keep things ticking over for ages, building your forces up and milking crash sites for cash. The sense of urgency that’s been there for the entire game just disappears. · Some missions turned into a tedious bug hunt, looking for a sole survivor. I like the mechanic where you can reveal the aliens’ location if you hold a ship bridge. Maybe on other missions, the whole map is revealed after x turns. In-game explanation could be that Xenonaut spy satellites are in position over the battle location. This could even be a researchable bonus, come to think of it. · I liked the scanner device from the original XCOM. Potential for that to be an item? · It would be neat to have multiple endings depending on the choices you made during your playthrough. Maybe the General makes an appearance if you captured rather than killed him, for example. · I liked the early parts of the game the best, with the cleaners and early aliens. There was interesting plot, the cleaners were a mystery, and the missions were the most involved. Things like raiding the data centre, ambushing a convoy, rescuing soldiers… all really good. And the option to kill or capture the Cleaner leader. (Way back on this forum I used to bang on about needing more variety in mission types, and I’ll admit to feeling somewhat vindicated!) Then this momentum kind of fizzles a bit during the mid and particularly late game. The plot in particular becomes a bit generic. The initial segments made me think there were going to be some twists in the story. The cleaners being previous-generation Xenonauts is a rich vein. I wondered if somehow the current Xenonauts were being mind-controlled, and the Cleaners were actually the good guys. I think that a few different mission types (here I go again…) specific to each phase would help. Maybe in one of the phases there’s a mission when you have to rescue prisoners, breaking them out of a facility and carrying them on your backs to the chopper. And then for a later phase the aliens attack military bunkers of allied nations, your team can’t get there in time so you’re put in control of local forces, mounting a desperate defence. If the quality of Phase One could be maintained for the entire game then it would be a real 10/10! Ideas for a DLC expansion · Prelude Phase. Maybe you’re the Cleaners? Ends with your defeat. · Post-endgame Phase where you’re the liberated aliens, taking on some rogue Eternals that still have their own cohorts. · Skirmish mode where you build a team with points. Can play as Xenonauts or Aliens. Potential multiplayer aspect.

Oh nice, that could make breaching UFOs a lot more dramatic. Potential issue though: what if a player forgets to bring C4? Or uses it all up before reaching the UFO. Would the mission then be impossible to complete? Additional idea: capturing a live Mentarch unlocks "Alien Security Systems" research. Completing this then allows you to manufacture keycards to access UFOs (i.e. the doors open normally so you don't need C4). This research could also allow your soldiers to bypass the security safeguards built into alien weapons, allowing you to use guns dropped by dead aliens, albeit with significant accuracy penalties to maintain game balance (in-game explanation: the weapons aren't optimised for humans so they're difficult to fire).

I like the idea of a drone for scouting, albeit a very fragile and unarmed one. Maybe buildable once you kill / capture one of the alien servitor gun drones? To prevent it being OP it could have quite narrow vision. To keep things simple maybe it doesn't have its own TUs, but rather uses the operator's TUs to move. Great idea, I'd love to have a motion scanner in the game. Rather than having the signal shown on the battlescape, how about an old-school alternative. See @FLIR's excellent post here, which includes a link to an image of the original X-COM motion scanner visuals. Personally I never use these kinds of devices in these games, but if other people would like to then why not? FYI, for more module ideas I recommend checking out @GreyICE's thread here.

I mean more like this for my bonus idea a (give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project): The size of locker and weight capacity should be dictated by gameplay balance. (The one in my screenshot is probably OP). The contents of this dropship storage locker would be in addition to the equipment that the Xenonauts are carrying on their person, and could be accessed on the battlefield by soldiers in the dropship. My personal preference would be to have this, and in addition not allow overburdened soldiers onto the dropship. This is possible solution #2 (make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently): If players really want loads of kit then there's also bonus idea b (add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule). I won't make a screenshot for that! That's how I'd try changing things anyway, I appreciate there are other viewpoints!

Sounds good. Damaged UFOs could have more entry points too.

This is interesting, and I think gets to the bottom of the issue. We just don't agree on being able to bring whatever equipment affecting balance: I think it does, you don't. I don't see that either of us will convince the other, but luckily that's OK as it's for the devs to decide whether this is an issue worth addressing or not I definitely disagree here. I've played for 24 hours and never felt the need to overburden my soldiers in the way you do. It never even occurred to me. On the contrary, I rarely found that the weight limit was restrictive. It seems that some players want this. If the devs agree, then it does indeed make sense to have a method that's convenient. The dropship locker and MARS storage secondary "weapon" seem like fun ideas. It's not about saving equipment consumption on the battlefield, but rather making the battlefield too easy if you can take whatever equipment and in whatever quantities you want. This is back to our fundamental disagreement. I appreciate that you don't think that this is an issue. This is what I was saying about internal game logic taking precedent over real-life logic if it makes for a better game. I'd have no problem with the dropship having a capacity of 9 units, including up to one MARS, and a separate cargo hold with a capacity of x kg. Even if that wouldn't make sense in real life. I expect most players would accept this without thinking too much, but if it needed justification then just say that the dropships have these limits so they can stay balanced in the air. I'm going to exit this now as unless anyone has any radical new ideas I think there are enough viewpoints and suggestions in the thread to help the devs make any changes they feel are necessary.

Maybe some nuance has been lost because of using written messages here, but for what it's worth I didn't think there was anything out of hand with Raffik's message. It seemed reasonable and level-headed.

Whether or not it can happen in reality doesn't matter much -- this is a game about shooting aliens after all! What's fun and relatively balanced gameplay-wise comes first, and then you fit that into the game's internal worldbuilding logic -- or change the lore to accommodate the new ideas. There are no photos of fighter jets shooting down UFOs in real life, but I'm guessing you don't object to that in the game. I'm having trouble understanding your points, so here's something you could do to help me. I'll copy out my suggestion summary again. Could you please state how you'd change it? Maybe add in a possible solution #4, or bonus idea #c? Or are you saying that you don't think that the issue as I've written it is actually a problem; in which case would you support solution #1? I just want clarity on what you're proposing. ### The issue: players can overload their soldiers, then dump excess equipment on the dropship floor during turn 1. This gives plenty of equipment and can unbalance the game. Possible solutions: 1. Do nothing. Accept that this is how some players want to play the game. 2. Make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently. 3. Give each dropship a weight capacity that includes all the equipment carried onboard. In addition, there are two bonus ideas: a. Give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project. b. Add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but in any case lots of interesting points have been made and the devs can decide what, if anything, they'd like to change!

To clarify, I think it's OK to have some extra equipment on the dropship if that's what players want to do -- hence bonus idea a, mentioned earlier. But allowing every solider to overload and then drop equipment on the dropship floor feels more like an exploit than intentional gameplay design. With a dropship locker you could more carefully control how much extra equipment is bought along. It doesn't sound like you think there should be any limits on how much equipment can be bought into battle, instead providing balance by altering the number / lethality of the aliens. This isn't personally how I'd do things, but it is an approach that could work -- hence my proposed solution option #1, which is to do nothing and keep things as they are.

There are a few examples that spring to mind. Maybe a player drops assault shields all over the dropship floor, and just collects a new one whenever their original breaks. Or they fill their soldiers' inventories with lots of large, heavy modules, and run to the dropship to get any extra equipment they need when a specific situation crops up, e.g. lots of grenades. It wouldn't be how I'd personally like to play the game, mind you! Consider that the whole concept of items having sizes and weights is so that you the player need to make tactical decisions; and to prevent soldiers becoming OP. I see what you're saying about increasing the capabilities of the enemy. If you follow that logic to its conclusion, why have any soldier limits at all? Why not give them infinite equipment (as dropping kit all over the dropship floor is heading toward), and just increase the number of enemies accordingly? Some people might prefer that, but it does't really appeal to me personally.

I think that's a fair opinion. But what would stop a player overloading their soliders just to drop kit in the dropship floor and filling a dropship locker?

I think that would work too. The reason I'd go for option 2 is that I think it's a bit easier to understand. When you're equipping your soldiers for the dropship, if you go over their weight capacity there would be a message saying "Over weight capacity, soldier cannot board the dropship" or similar. It's immediate and obvious. With option 3 there would need to be another readout somewhere tracking the total weight for the dropship. People might also wonder if they could take fewer soldiers but more equipment. But option 3 could definitely still work. I think they're all valid choices and it's down to style and preference, as you say.

Here’s a summary, as I see it. The issue: players can overload their soldiers, then dump excess equipment on the dropship floor during turn 1. This gives plenty of equipment and can unbalance the game. Possible solutions: 1. Do nothing. Accept that this is how some players want to play the game. 2. Make it so soldiers can only fly in a dropship if they’re not carrying over their ability. Soldiers can still carry too much on the battlefield but with TU penalties, as is the case currently. 3. Give each dropship a weight capacity that includes all the equipment carried onboard. In addition, there are two bonus ideas: a. Give dropships a storage unit that a player can fill and Xenonauts can access during a mission. This unit could come as default, or be a manufacturing project. b. Add a storage unit as a secondary weapon option for the MARS. This could make it like a pack mule. Personally, I’d go for solution 2 and bonus ideas a and b. I think this combination is simple, intuitive, but gives the opportunity for different playstyles without unbalancing the game.