Davion Fuxa

Just read through the post, overall it looks good. Will be interesting to see what the game looks like when it comes out.

Lemm makes me want to post this link just on principle https://docs.google.com/document/d/1atEtvdad7hi_WIqZaBIEddAA6DMZe7rScbqDpzbQFUg/pub

I keep hearing a lot in the realm of 'sequel, remake, and whatnot' when it comes to the game. I kind of wonder if people are simply being ignorant of the fact that while Xenonauts was a great game - it wasn't in any shape or form a game that reached its maximal potential. To be blunt, I'm not sure the next Xenonauts game needs to try and run with a different theme then the current one; there is still plenty to work with under the current theme To bring up a point, Civilization went through 4 iterations of refinement of gameplay. With each subsequent game, Civilizations game premise wasn't really expanded on, it was just fleshed out more until we got the quality game that was (eventually) Civilization IV. It wasn't until Civilization V that they really started messing around with the actual gameplay - and subsequently making something different from the traditional Civilization experience. There really is no true point in comparing the game to the next X-Com releases either - those have retooled the formula to something different which may not cater to the same based of gamers that the original X-Com (and now Xenonauts) cater too. The way people keep asking for something different kind of reminds me of an old flash on Newgrounds. At some point, while you may recognize the elements in play, you are experiencing something complete different: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/527393

I think I can safely say that Xenonauts 2 is quickly looking like an overall big improvement from Xenonauts 1. This isn't to say I necessarily like everything stated, but it is certainly looking like a game still worth playing. One thing to talk about since you haven't talked about it in the suggestion board though - If Sebillians are made to get back up from below 0 hit points, then all I can suggest is that other actors should also be looked at in how they act below 0 hit points. IE, maybe Xenonaut Soldiers below 0 hit points can be stablized/revived during ground combat. Maybe there could be an alien unit that could revive other alien units that are killed/incapcitated. Perhaps Reapers could 'infect' Xenonaut Soldiers that aren't entirely dead. In summary, make how incapacitated units work have a lot of depth to it. In reference to incapacitation, maybe a thread could be started on it? It is certainly something that could be fleshed out a lot more. There could be a lot ideas that could be discussed about it. I'll also mention that I still don't think much about the collective psionic power attack that Caesans can do, and that any psionic powers the Caesans exhibit should be local proximity.

Greetings to Chris, and by extension everyone else on the Xenonauts Forum. Very recently I completed a Let's Play series for Xenonauts on my YouTube Channel. I was quite happy with the game and primarily the reason why I came looking towards the Goldhawk Interactive site was to see if there would be any plans for a sequel (remake or continuation). Anyhow, I'd be for seeing Xenonauts 2. Some of what I said might have been mentioned - I'm not exactly keen on reading through 10-11 pages of posts. Maybe there be something worthy of note though: Full 3D - We'd make the game in full 3D with a (90-degree) rotatable camera. I'd also want to replace soldier paperdolls and painted screen backgrounds etc on the strategy layer with 3D models. Making everything 3D sounds like a good step in the right direction for a remake of the game. I assume this would also better simulate some things as well such as shot travel; so maybe there won't be some of the graphic errors that occurred in the original game. Aliens - I'd like to add some more aliens, rework some of the existing ones mechanically to be more interesting and also redesign them so they look more striking and "alien" in the ground combat. Personally I don't care how the units look. You could have an invading alien army of Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks and I would be fine. What's important is what sort of strategy the alien units bring to the party for the player to react too. Research / Development - I want to add the concept of 'development' to the research tree, allowing you to continue researching "hub" technologies (like laser weapons etc) to increase their effectiveness if you choose. Choosing whether to improve existing tech or research new stuff should add more choice to the research tree. Research was definitely a bit lacking in the game - where you basically just researched to the next tier of development. It could be interesting as well if your research could also be used by the rest of the Earth as well; and vice versa because I'm sure the Earth isn't putting all their 'eggs' into the Xenonaut basket. Destructible UFOs - the UFO outer hulls should be destructible, which means we'll have to redesign them visually too. A question - what would it take to compromise the Alien Hull? Would Xenonauts be able to eventually do it with developed weapons and how much force would it take to beat down the destructible elements? Vertical Terrain - we should have hills etc in the game, rather than purely flat maps with buildings offering the only verticality. As a note I think it would be interesting if perhaps we had things like Pedways, Underground Subway Systems, Canals, Sewers, and what have you. Go All Out! XCOM Cover System - I think the cover system in XCOM was very easy to understand and also integrated 'leaning' in an intuitive way, whereas our cover system was a bit of a mess. I think we'd probably switch to their cover system. I've not played any other X-Com styled games but this one, but I had no trouble with understanding the basics of cover. The only real problem was understanding when your soldiers were in cover due to how objects might be placed between your soldiers and the aliens. It could help if you could somehow see what a soldiers cover was like . Soldier Colour Customisation - I want to redesign the armours so they are more recognisable from silhouette, allowing people to customise their colours of their troops (including having role-specific colour schemes). Not against the color customization, but I think it might be easier to customize troops if you could see an Icon next to the units which displays their roll. This could both appear on the map just above your soldiers and/or next to their portrait displays and offer a much easier recognition factor. UI - the existing UI is a bit of a mess, particularly with regards to the strategy layer, so we'd redo that. The UI reminded me a lot of the Dwarf Fortress. Anyhow, making the UI less intimidating would certainly help new players. Air Combat - I'm not sure exactly how I'd redesign this yet, but I think it could do with further improvement. I might be in the minority for suggesting this but I will suggest it all the same - change it so that the player no longer directly controls the fighters. Maybe make it so that the player can suggest a sort of attack pattern for his aircraft to pursue and then letting the AI handle the behavior of how the aircraft goes about following that pattern to attack/evade the enemy. Additionally, it might be cool if you could have a sort of mid-air battle dropship raid where you don't have to specifically down the UFO to begin the tactical battle phase - you just have to land your dropship on the UFO in the air. This might make more sense when factoring in the larger UFOs, with perhaps the Battleships just being impossible for the Xenonauts to shoot down anyways. I'm not exactly sure how the UFO landing would work, but maybe your jets could shoot off battle armaments so your dropship can approach, and then your dropship slams through the hanger door or something. Tutorial - the game should use the Iceland Incident as a playable tutorial that explains the setting and the basic game mechanics. You definitely need a tutorial - EVERY strategy game needs a tutorial! Modding Tools - we've been working on some pretty cool game editors and level editors, so the modding / translation / level creation tools will be much better than in Xenonauts 1 and will handle the "modular mod" stuff automatically. I don't deal with mods so no comment here. Two questions - one, would you buy an improved version of Xenonauts again if we made it? Yes - though I wouldn't buy it for full price. Secondly, what annoyed you about the first game and what do you think we should improve? Honestly, the aliens being sort of cheap was a bit annoying. Having grenades lobbed at you from aliens behind a wall, or stray shots being fired long distances from aliens off screen that are clearly outside both your soldiers sight radius and the aliens sight radius gets a tad frustrating. The lack of melee options was also a bit of a let down - basically it was limited to Reapers, Zombies, and Stun Batons; I think the use of fists or the butts of rifles could be employed somewhat. Also to note it, the lack of items to help fallen soldiers was a bit annoying. While I'm not necessarily saying you should be able to defibrillator your soldiers back up, I would like it if perhaps it was possible to at least try to have it so you could try to stabilize your fallen soldiers so that they have improved odds of surviving upon either completing, or if dragged backed to the dropzone Forrest Gump style, abandoning the mission.