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I played through the game on Veteran, with minimal savescumming (reloading primarily as a result of getting shot through the floor). My opinion is that Xenonauts is, generally, well balanced and enjoyable through the early and middle stages, but, like XCOM, once it nears the end, it starts to fizzle instead of building to a thrilling conclusion. This trend was topped off (or bottomed out?) by the final mission, which was a total letdown. I ended up saving Earth on July 27th with $2 million, 2 large bases, 1 extra strike base with only condors, and a bunch of radar posts everywhere.

Here is my feedback on some aspects of the game.

Bankroll and Funding Relations

I was never really in danger of losing a funding bloc. I had less than $1 million in funds up until April or so, when I started downing carriers and battleships left and right. I did opt for airstrikes much of the time, however, so I probably could have made more money. After April, my bankroll shot up to $3 million, and I probably could have kept playing forever at that point. Terror sites were often not completable, but it wasn't the end of the world.

Ground Combat Weapons and armor technology progression

Ballistic, Laser, and Plasma showed up at just the right time. Each technology was in use for 2-3 months, which seems like the right length of time. Mag was superfluous, as I had captured all technologies by then, although it was good to have it for the final mission. Nevertheless, it seems like MAGtech would be used for far less than 25% of the missions. Armor availability coincided with corresponding alien weaponry technology upgrades.

Air Combat progression

New craft were well coordinated with the alien spacecraft progression, although I saw no need for the Fury, and I didn't build a single Foxtrot, either. The Shrike shows up at just the right time, and it was a good idea to ditch the Valkyrie and the other fighter craft, whatever it was called.

I think you're giving players too much for free. As it is, you don't NEED to build the new fighter craft, for several reasons:

1) Condors can take the latest weaponry.

2) Guns do HUGE amounts of damage to capital ships.

3) The latest weaponry is given away for free.

If you put all of this together, it means that you really only need to buy Condors (lots of them), and you can skip everything else until interceptors start showing up in pairs.

This could be fixed by limiting the weapon technology allowed for certain craft (i.e., Condors get up to alenium/laser, Foxtrots and Corsairs get plasma tech, and the Marauder gets everything), and/or by reducing the amount by which cannon fire damages large ships. Or maybe by making Condors unrecoverable :P.

Vehicle progression

I only built one Scimitar, which was destroyed, but it was made available at the right time. Like MAG weaponry, the Hovertank was available so late that it wasn't useful for me.

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Your comments are quite valuable as not many of us have gotten as far as you have! (At least as far as I can tell.) If you were someone less experienced would you feel the same way about the progression? I'd say that since a lot of us have been playing the game in one form or another for one or two years that our comments might be a bit warped. That said, I do believe same of the problems with the end are probably related to the fact that until the final beta it's pretty unlikely that many of us will be able to give useful feed about the end game. Speaking for myself, I've never gotten past plasma weapons and cruisers because a new version of the game comes out or some bug stops me from playing any further. I think a lot more end game playtesting is going to have to happen to get that part balanced.

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I've read this a second time and there's some valuable stuff in there. Condors are being beaten with the nerf stick in the next build and interceptor spam in general should be a bit less viable as a strategy.

Once the remaining maps are done (Aaron) and the UI stuff is done (me) we'll probably do some finer balancing on the game. The final mission is only half done tbh so that should improve dramatically once it has graphics and some more playtesting.

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Before you strike the Condor into stunned submission, please bear in mind the reason Condors are so versatile isn't the Condor itself, but the arms it bears. Foxtrot spam was viable because the missiles were free and numerous. Condor spam is no less viable because all of its weapons are free.

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Thanks for reading my feedback, devs. The game has come a long way since I started testing it last October.

If you were someone less experienced would you feel the same way about the progression?

Although I have almost 200 hours on Steam alone, there are really only a few "tricks" that you need to learn in order to quickly improve your performance, and it doesn't take very long to discover them (e.g., get two bases immediately, research many things at once, master air combat, use lots of C4 on terror missions and base raids). So, if I had about 10 hours play time, I'd probably be at 75% proficiency.

That said, I do believe same of the problems with the end are probably related to the fact that until the final beta it's pretty unlikely that many of us will be able to give useful feed about the end game.

Yeah, I've stated that before in one of my posts, and it's probably why the beginning is so much more balanced than the end. Devs and beta-testers should post their midgame savefiles so that testers don't need to start from square one each time (although now that we have airstrikes, it's not such a big problem).

Here's a little more feedback on the late game, and some suggestions as to how it could be beefed up a bit.

Late-Game Air Combat

Carriers and Battleships aren't fearsome enough, particularly if they are unescorted. It's just like fighting a larger landingship or corvette.

It says in the Xenopedia that Carriers are supposed to launch a pair of interceptors? If it's not possible to "launch" interceptors in combat, which would be fun to see, then they should at least have an interceptor or two to defend them.

As for the battleship, I think that you could make it's main gun more menacing. Inspired by the strike cruiser, whose main gun can be tricky to deal with, could the Battleship have a "spread cannon," which covers about a 60 degree Arc with a dozen lethal projectiles? The idea is that you will die if you are caught in its firing arc. Or maybe the Battleship could shoot a missile every 5 seconds (from well beyond Xenonaut craft torpedo range) to discourage the use of Foxtrots, and thereby encourage the construction of Marauders.

Late-Game Geoscape Balance

1. Urgency The first problem is that I could prolong the game indefinitely once I get a fleet of Furies rolling (unless I have yet to encounter some sort of fail-safe that ends the game after so many months). Given eight bases, a player could probably deal with waves of 200 battleships if it actually went that far. By May or so, there should be some sort of new alien danger that presents the threat of the immediate loss of a funding bloc. (I know that there are alien bases, but those aren't too hard to disable if you know what to shoot, and they take a while to diminish your score). The original XCOM had this problem too, but it wasn't very well balanced imo.

2. Length It would be nice if MAG weapons and Hovertanks were useful for more than just the final mission. I'd like to see the extension of the post-battleship phase by a few more missions.

Right now, it goes Praetor capture (which is essentially recovering a battleship) -> Final Mission.

Maybe it could go Praetor capture -> Praetor reveals three special, large bases on geoscape (sebellian, andron, caesan, each represented by a unique icon to differentiate them from ordinary bases) which must all be secured -> Final Mission.

Maybe the Fury should be required to escort the dropship to the final mission?

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I encourage you guys to look not just at Condor's overperformance (which has been present since Foxtrots were initially nerfed, and just really made more visible by more recent changes) but also consider why Foxtrots and Corsairs are largely seen as useless. The strengths of the Fox (speed, supposed-high damage) frankly either don't do anything (doesn't matter how fast you can reach a target if you can't kill it, and adding a Fox can actually decrease the damage output of a squadron relative to adding a third Condor).

I would encourage a indirect nerf, such as increasing the speed of later UFOs which would allow Condors to be outclassed by mid to late game UFOs simply by being unable to catch them.

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Corsairs are definitely worth the money IMO, they make taking on later enemy ships noticeably easier compared to Condors. Both their agility in combat and strategic speed/fuel capacity make them much more reliable. Also Foxtrots are quite solid as well, if you spam aircraft as much as I do. Once you get to Plasma explosives, there isn't much in the skies that three foxtrots can't take out, provided it doesn't have any escort of course. But you usually get one or three large enemy ships appearing without escorts, and taking them out with torpedoes is a lot less work than dancing around them with light interceptors. Also, a single foxtrot can take out a large scout, which is just convenient.

I dunno how things will turn out later on, but now that I have a bunch of Marauders in service, I usually replace Condors with Corsairs in my secondary bases, then add hangars and send extra Foxtrots there, as they get obsoleted in primary bases. I will soon unlock fusion explosives, which should keep older aircraft in service a bit longer.

What I noticed however is that I stalled at 6 bases right now, with 26 interceptors and two dropships, and spent nearly two ingame months just producing gear and upgrading everything. Had I not had these bases and their income, I'd be in a much worse situation.

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research many things at once

That comes as a surprise to me. Why would that be advantageous? If you have two research projects that each require 100 "units" of research input, wouldn't it always be better to research them sequentially? Sequential and concurrent research will both take 200 "units" to complete the pair, but sequential will finish the first in sequence in half the time.

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Condors are being nerfed primarily by making them slower and reducing their range enough that using them against later UFOs is quite difficult, and by making cannons weaker. So it's not a nerf to their HP.

Yeah, the auto-resolve is going to be rebalanced again although possibly not for the very next build.

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That comes as a surprise to me. Why would that be advantageous? If you have two research projects that each require 100 "units" of research input, wouldn't it always be better to research them sequentially? Sequential and concurrent research will both take 200 "units" to complete the pair, but sequential will finish the first in sequence in half the time.

There should be diminishing returns to scientists allocated to the same project. Not sure how much these diminishing returns are thought. It might not matter that much.

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Condors are being nerfed primarily by making them slower and reducing their range enough that using them against later UFOs is quite difficult, and by making cannons weaker. So it's not a nerf to their HP.

Yeah, the auto-resolve is going to be rebalanced again although possibly not for the very next build.

I think the better solution is to restrict what late game air to air weapons the Condor can carry and/or make the late game UFOs harder for Condors to shoot down by increasing their speed or toughness, etc... I think the early to mid-game ATA balance (Foxtrots/Condors with laser cannons and Alenium missiles) is really good right now. Some of the changes you are considering are going to affect the balance even in the early game. I'd hate to think that another round of balancing will be needed for early ATA because changes were made for the late game.
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I think the better solution is to restrict what late game air to air weapons the Condor can carry and/or make the late game UFOs harder for Condors to shoot down by increasing their speed or toughness, etc... I think the early to mid-game ATA balance (Foxtrots/Condors with laser cannons and Alenium missiles) is really good right now. Some of the changes you are considering are going to affect the balance even in the early game. I'd hate to think that another round of balancing will be needed for early ATA because changes were made for the late game.
+1. Condors seem fine in early game if the problem is late game cap their max tier weaponry. If Condors become slower it seems likely my pilots will play "catch the UFO" forever instead of intercepting some.
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The issue I seem to see with Condors is that the cannon is so very effective against heavy craft; much more effective than the torpedoes, which are what you are supposed to use against the big ships.

Was wondering if it would be possible to just nerf cannon vs heavy craft, such as by implementing an armour system for aircraft which would reduce damage from each hit by a certain amount. Give heavy craft enough armour that the cannon barely scratches them, while still leaving it effective for dogfighting (it's intended role)

Edited by MrPyro
Typo
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There should be diminishing returns to scientists allocated to the same project. Not sure how much these diminishing returns are thought. It might not matter that much.

Interesting. If research output doesn't scale linearly, then the game ought to communicate that. I think it's natural to assume that output is directly and linearly proportional to the number of scientists.

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Research already has a dimishing returns formula in place.

Yes he had been told that, what he was asking for was something conveying that... PErsonally I feel that the game is better if that particular mechanic remains hidden.

Not everything should be glaringly obvious to the player.

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I think the better solution is to restrict what late game air to air weapons the Condor can carry and/or make the late game UFOs harder for Condors to shoot down by increasing their speed or toughness, etc... I think the early to mid-game ATA balance (Foxtrots/Condors with laser cannons and Alenium missiles) is really good right now. Some of the changes you are considering are going to affect the balance even in the early game. I'd hate to think that another round of balancing will be needed for early ATA because changes were made for the late game.

That's what would make sense to me.

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