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A few suggestions after playing alpha.


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1. Can we rotate the map so you can see your troops when they are moving along the right side of a wall?

2. I like the pilot chatter during air combat . I think you ought have them say

"Engaging bandit", "I have tone ", "Fox Two" and "I'm RTB". At the appropriate times in combat.

3. Aircraft should gain experience with each successful combat.

4. There ought to at least one other missile option for all aircraft . Even in the 70's there were longer ranged missiles than the Sidewinder. Sparrow or AARAM would be good.

5. Please show a cone indicating the maximum range of the aircraft's missiles and gun.

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1, No all of the map tiles would need to be redone from multiple directions if it was to be added.

2, Radio chatter has been discussed but was generally thought to be too repetitive to be added, unless lots of voice variations could be included which was not the case..

3, They don't and probably never will as the air combat is supposed to be a quicker and less intensive experience than the ground combat so is being kept lighter on features.

4, The current weapons have roles, for example short range cannon, medium range fast missiles and long range heavier damage missiles.

How would you see the extra long range missiles fitting into the system?

Remember that the advanced tiers will probably also have advantages, possibly including range and damage increases.

5, The cannon currently uses a cone while the missiles use colour coding to show when they are in range.

The much larger cones for missiles might work as well but may also look a little over the top on the map.

The cone would be nice to help decide when the craft was inside its missile range though.

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More radio chatter would increase emersion even if it repetitive specially at the low volume that have it at now. As far as radar homing missile I was thinking of another weapon for the F-17 which only has two options right now. Original UFO had three conventional weapons for all fighters. I was thinking not more powerful just longer range than a Sidewinder. The fighter experience I can live without but it would be cool. Pilot quality is very critical in air combat. As far as the map rotation goes I'm surprised this wasn't built into the graphics engine. Modern software and graphics cards makes 3-D rotatable objects quite simple to do.

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Modern software and graphics cards makes 3-D rotatable objects quite simple to do.

Xenonauts uses sprites, so the fancy graphics cards won't help at all. They'd need to make 3 additional versions for many of the tiles to make rotation work.

While the tiles are initially rendered from 3D models, they have been drawn over by hand, so that'd still be quite a large undertaking for a relatively small return.

Edited by Kaguya
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StellarRat, of the three starting aircraft weapons in UFO, if you weren't trying to loose or not trying to shoot down the smallest UFO, you switched straight to avalanche because longer range = safer aircraft. So there wasn't any real choice in weapon type. If there was a long-range missile with a short lock-on time (the avalanche torpedo is actually quite long-range but has a long lock-on period) that would become the defacto weapon for MiGs and F-17s. Air combat would devolve pretty quickly - I expect the safest strategy would be fly all MiGs (to maximise long-range missiles), slow the MiGs down at the start of combat, wait for the AMRAAMs to fire then turn tail. Where's the fun, or challenge in that?

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Can you slow the MIGs down now? It seems suicidal of the pilot to overshoot a UFO when she is right on it's six and waiting for tone. It also seems fiddly to have to manually turn the aircraft in a quick circle to keep from overshooting and straying into the kill zone.

[edit:] Oh, I just spotted the throttle. That helps a lot. Maybe I should read the manual or something. Gosh those fighters are tough and numerous and it's only the first week. I'm going to run out of fighters at this rate.

Edited by SaintD
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More radio chatter would increase emersion even if it repetitive specially at the low volume that have it at now. As far as radar homing missile I was thinking of another weapon for the F-17 which only has two options right now. Original UFO had three conventional weapons for all fighters. I was thinking not more powerful just longer range than a Sidewinder. The fighter experience I can live without but it would be cool. Pilot quality is very critical in air combat. As far as the map rotation goes I'm surprised this wasn't built into the graphics engine. Modern software and graphics cards makes 3-D rotatable objects quite simple to do.

The same voice repeating the same phrases over and over is never a good thing.

If you had the 4 things you suggested then you could hear each one at least 3 times per air combat, assuming full squadrons of interceptors against a single enemy.

If you are up against 3 enemies you may well hear some of them 9 times in every combat, unless you need to switch targets or fire multiple missiles in which case that could easily double.

Not to mention that each fighter pilot would have an identical voice.

The craft in x-com were all generalists with the only differences in loadout being which long range weapon you had available.

In Xenonauts the craft have more specific roles and their weapon loadouts reflect this.

The f-17 is designed to be a shorter range dogfighter while the mig complements it by having longer range, harder hitting weapons.

The higher tech interceptors have not been shown off yet but I imagine they will follow a similar design principle.

That may mean you will need to chose your squadrons more carefully though as sending a squadron of dogfighters after a battleship could be a very bad decision.

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I'd like more talking. Even a mod hook triggered by flight events would suffice. As far as more missile types, again, your opinion. I like more options in games as long as they are balanced. I think it makes things more interesting when you have more tactical Possibilities. You aren't obliged to use any of them.

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As far as more missile types, again, your opinion. I like more options in games as long as they are balanced. I think it makes things more interesting when you have more tactical Possibilities. You aren't obliged to use any of them.

Of course it is just an opinion, you put yours forward, others put theirs forward, that is how a conversation goes.

You do have tactical possibilities with the current system that are not reliant on adding a new missile type which was what I was pointing out.

Rather than being stuck with a single combat capable craft you have multiple options to choose from depending on the roles you want to fill.

I am not saying that more weapons are a bad thing, just that they should fit within the roles the craft are designed for or they will detract from the experience rather than enhance it.

The only point I really would disagree with is 'You aren't obliged to use' the weapons that the system is balanced around.

If the devs have balanced the game with long range missiles on all interceptors then you would more than likely need to use them or suffer needless losses.

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I guess part of my back of mind reasoning is that I'm trying to make the game more realistic to increase immersion. I don't know of any frontline fighter that doesn't carry both radar and infrared missiles now or in the late 70's. I should also point out that the ATA loadouts a pitifully small even for a light fighter like the F-16. They really ought to be carrying x3 the number of missiles. Anyway, its still great game. :-) can hardly wait for a production version!

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Increasing the loadouts so you had maybe 3x the current missiles may make the air combat easier to balance.

It would also probably make it more complex and/or tougher.

You would have to fight for longer in order to get that damage into the target and if the enemy had the same increase then that could well be incredibly difficult.

You can always tweak the aircraft weapon numbers and damage to see how it plays.

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Don't forget, if you've not looked through the the xml files, especially the aircraft ones, there's quite a few more missiles to come.

Really, I'd wait until beta and we've got all the planned toys before seeing if we need more or if stuff needs changing.

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Probably the biggest concern for the developers is time vs. added value. Adding loads of weapon variants costs time and art budgets and doesn't add very much to game mechanics for the cost. Something like that can be easily addressed by modding though so just wait a bit and someone will mod in every kind of real world weapon in no time.

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In the theatre/circus business, the general approach is to either have spoken lines or have everyone on stage be mute. I think that applies equally well to video games -- I don't feel you can have nobody say a word through the whole game, but then fill the dogfights with all kinds of radio chatter. In my eyes, even the curt reports you get at the end of each dogfight is extraneous.

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