ooey

Base defense missions: although it says the chrisolid-type aliens can enter the base in any room I haven't experienced it, but I think that's unfair if they can. If you take the time to build a base defensive structure in a spiral etc. the benefits of doing so compared to just plonking structures anywhere are then totally negated...

I like the fact that interceptors drop out of the battle before they get shot down. The Xenonauts only aircraft advantage. They can always escape total destruction because they are aircraft, not UFOS. The emergency refit is much welcome!

The "die" mechanic. I think this was also in Xen1. I think it works like this: If a soldier dies in combat and you have a medical centre, the longer you stay on a mission the more chance of them bleeding to death (providing they wern't blown up by explosives). An alien killed one of my elite cadre in the dropship so I immediately aborted the mission, and he survived! The mission or the man? A good mechanic!

I was in a fight to the death to capture a destroyer and my last man dies but there was an enemy bleeding out. I was annoyed to find that although I had a slightly knocked out guy what would have recovered, the game ended with an alien victory! I would have loved to have seen him recover and save the day! I thought that was a bit unfair. I would say as well that at the level I'm playing at, the snatch raids where the enemy get unlimited reinforcements are very tough on their time-lines. I think these would need to give you perhaps an extra 4 turns at least before the reinforcements arrive. Anyone else agree? I never get to see all 10 captured civilians/data disks, capturing at most 6/10 before they are whisked away or reinforcements turn up. I like the way if your MARS gets destroyed but you win the battle, you can rebuild it at half-cost, but I think that's a carry-over from xen1. Another thing I miss is General Burt Reynolds not being on the title screen to help your organisation to fight the aliens - everyone needs a Burt Reynolds in their army (but Chris knows that already ;-})

This is true, but I still don't think that's going to be enough. I'd rather have a much longer game than have a 30+hr play through and start again. Perhaps mods will extend things. I may have a look at modding myself actually. Kudos to Chris for letting the community mod his creation; it can only add to its greatness. Kudos to Chris for putting a bit of alien weirdness into the game in the form of the floating squid creature with 1 eye! I'm wondering how the aliens keep pace with your tech upgrades. It would be logical that if you fail a mission, they examine the equipment you were using on the mission and upgrade accordingly, as the player can do with them. This is usually how war works.

I'm sure they will! I've noticed a few minor things it would be convenient to have. 1) There's no reason not to have the ability to build a new lift-shaft for the original base so the old one can be destroyed to make the base more defendable from attack. 2) It would be nice to have an "empty skyhawk" button where it puts all your soldiers back into the base rather than having to do it 1 by 1. This is especially important now the missions are more varied.

Do we need/want a xen3? Wouldn't you prefer Chris to work on something different?

Hmm... Thanks for that snippet! I may have to start again just to do that. I would assume that you CAN blow holes in UFOs as a breech point. I think you can certainly "blow the bloody doors off!" but I haven't tried that yet. Note that I'm not trying to pick faults with xen 2 here. But if you do something right it doesn't really get talked about (only the little things you might miss or you think might have been a bit better implemented get reported on). Cracking game so far, and I'm sure it will continue like this. There's a lot of complexity in the game. Just what the doctor ordered really - I only wish we hadn't had to wait so long for it. Hopefully if Chris decides to do another game he has a larger dev team to work with. Xen2 deserves to do well to justify that. I just loved the cartoony art from UFO (see below).

Geez - this doomsday mechanic at that level made sure that I got my bottom kicked pretty quickly so I have dropped down to Soldier! Xen 2's interface is so slick. I'm wondering if you get a bonus for capturing the General in the first mission rather than killing him. Can you capture him? The abduction mission - I didn't realise that was a dash and touch mission (nice variation) so I only managed to rescue 2/10 (not good for the doomsday counter!). If you are a methodical alien eliminator this kind of mission really throws you out of your comfort zone. It's also a lot more risky for your soldiers. I dread the latter game where such a mission probably has Chrysalid-type aliens.

Hi all, I started with Rebelstar (one of Julian Gollup's first games for the ZX Spectrum way back in the mid 80s) which is really where this type of game all started. Loved Lazer Squad and UFO:Enemy Unknown and always will. Xen 1 was terrific too and one of my all-time favourites. I can equally say that MW2 (multiplayer) on the x-box 360 is also tremendous, so I do like a wide style of games (but turn-based strategy is my fav). I've been playing for a few days now and the only thing I notice so far in relation to X-com is that the only thing missing is the striking scary/panicky/weird art of Xcom. Nevertheless things are looking great so far, but my fear is that 30-or so missions on a playthrough may just be too short. I'm playing Ironman on second level from the top. Is there anything anyone else misses from X-com that hasn't been replicated here?

Thanks to you both. I finally get to start playing it properly! Been waiting years to do so. I'll be playing the 1.0 release. Also glad you finally got to the end Chris. I knew you wouldn't let us down because Xen1 was so good. Bet you feel a big weight lifted off your shoulders! Roll on your next high quality product. Personally I think you'd do a great job of updating something like Star Wars: Supremacy if you could somehow get the licence. That was a great strategy game, but the real time combat left a little to be desired. If you like strategy games and you've never played it, look it up. It's one of the most authentic Star Wars lore games ever. I miss these sort of games now... Sometimes, as with Xen, it's a good idea to look back to the past and maybe resurrect something that was a good idea at the time, but just wasn't implemented properly or the machines weren't powerful enough to do so. One game springs to mind - Red Arrows simulator on the C64. There may be a flight formation sim on the market somewhere now, but the poor old c64 just couldn't handle 9 Hawks in formation (the frame rate was about 2fps).

Chris, does release 1.0 mean that the game is basically finished and we can start playing with any tweaking meaning that we don't have to restart a game we are already playing through now? Or should we wait a bit more if we don't want to do this?

Yikes! I hope not.

30 hours just isn't enough for a tactical strategy game. Sorry.

Xenonauts 3. Coming to a PC near you in 2035(!)