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My Thoughts on Xenonaut


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So I finally bit the bullet and bought Xenonaut and played it for a while. I played the XCOM original and Terror from the deep but didn't like apocalypse and subsequent series.

These are my thoughts about the game that I felt needed improvement. I played it once, haven't completed my first run through on normal mode yet.

I'll try running on the highest difficulty with ironman mode and see if grenades can simply win the day.

Battlescape Terrain

There needs to be height differences in terrain and the UFO needs to reflect battle damage and have various openings. In the 2 OG, researching the jumpsuit featured a tremendous advantage in battles because not only you could do pop up attacks (float up shoot, float back down), you could navigate dangerous terrains easily and avoid AOE damage from rockets or grenades.

By being able to enter the UFO from different heights gives more advantage to using the jumpsuit as entrances could be blockaded or risky. It also makes it extremely dangerous to approach the UFO as you have to account for multiple firing angles that the aliens could take.

Weapons & Battlefield Tactics

I used an organic line up and felt that other weapons are totally useless. I used only Rifles and Grenades eventually at basic tech. Sniper rifles don't give me the versatility I needed and their accuracy was pretty crap for rookies. I never used any machine guns at all as some aliens cannot be suppressed and being able to move out of cover and shoot and back to cover is more useful than any suppression effect. What's the point of suppressing say... an alien and you get killed by return fire???

Shotguns were useless. They are too risky to use and if you want to kill anything at that distance... you should just toss a grenade.

I used to be in the military so I used battle drills. The simplest assault drill worked. Toss a smoke grenade to cover everyone, proceed to toss as many grenades as you can at the aliens. Rinse and repeat. Shooting is irrelevant because at low levels they are literally useless at hitting anything at a meaningful range.

Shields are useless for mitigating damage and what you could do, is have a shield guy spot and have everyone else simply carry and throw grenades.

I see little point in the weapon varieties offered because I have this problem. Ideally you would use "Carbines" and this is established in many military due to the capability it offers of both short and mid range versatility. However you cannot "aim" with the carbines in this game and they really function like shotguns. I want a real carbine which I can used aimed shots according to the situation, trading that off against a full length battle rifle which will do well at range and have more penetration. There should also be a "designated marksman" weapon as well for ranges slightly longer than the rifle.

So the effective range of weapons should really work like:

Shotgun - Carbine - Assault Rifle - Battle Rifle - Sniper Rifle

Their real life equivalents (From the 80s for the USA) being: M4 Carbine, M16S1, M14, Any dedicated bolt action sniper rifle.This will encourage greater variety in tactics and adaptation to the various terrain you can pose as a game maker, giving more meaningful engagements for the player.

There are issues with ammunition as well. With the normal rifle, I had 20 bullets and I never needed to carry spare clips. Perhaps it is because I only fired shots or Invest TUs into actions that had a reasonable pay off (at least 50% accuracy). As such, I had plenty of excess weight to use grenades which nullified aliens effectively.

I have no incentive to built better weapons or variety of weapons as well due to the reasons listed above and the extremely long time it takes to manufacture them. Right now I'm fighting massive UFOs with blue coloured androns with Laser Weaponry but Plasma Grenades. Can't kill it with weapons? Blow it up. Incidentally, I should not upgrade my weapons either because when they get mind controlled, they can't massacre each other with laser weaponry thanks to Wolf Armour (what I'm using currently).

Why should building weapons... significantly LESS complex platforms take up MORE time than building an interceptor? I prioritise building my MARAUDER ANY DAY over getting another plasma rifle. Let's see...

A marauder shoots down UFOs for me. Shooting down UFOs keeps up my funding from the countries and I get to airstrike it if over land giving me more money. A Laser/Plasma Rifle??? Only if I get to the crash site... have a soldier with decent accuracy... actually shoot something... hit it and damage it... good luck if it resists it.

If my marauder shoots it down over water, I don't even need the plasma rifle... so given that, isn't it obvious I rather build tons and tons of marauders??? Besides, I can just throw grenades to kill anything

The useless high tech drop ship

I get to choose where to drop my man... in a small square that is literally the same as my original deployment zone?! And without cover (as some forum posters have said in another thread). I actually want to drop my men right NEXT to the UFO so it saves me time from having to find it so I can kill all the aliens straight away.

Alien AI

They really need to be more intelligent. Back in the original UFO, aliens would move about actively, both back into and out of the UFO. Stacking up was a risky tactic to employ as you could have an alien pop out suddenly through the door, drop grenades or fired an explosive weapon and killed everyone.

Aliens need to be ruthless in their battlefield tactics, to go on missions to find and kill the operatives who are engaging then. Right now all I need to do is kill everything outside, march up to the UFO and clear it step by step. As mentioned in another thread, ambushes, counter-attacks etc. needs to be done. Since the alien solders have no independent thought, they should fight aggressive battles of attrition.

Dealing with Crash Sites

There needs to be more information on dealing with a crash site. There's zero reconnaissance, zero considerations. March in kill all the aliens or air strike it. I want a briefing, an overview... to plan my course of action, my area of landing etc. Missions need to give meaningful tactical choices.

Air strike should not be just be a decision of:

1. I don't have men available to deploy to mission (my expansion bases which intercepts but no dropships)

2. I can't be arsed to kill everything properly (my main reason for air strike)

It should also include:

3. This mission is potentially too dangerous to undertake...

4. There are repercussions from civilian deaths etc. but that is far better than the amount of dead operatives that would happen

5. Evacuative mission. Enter crash site, evaluate civilians, leave and blow up location etc.

It should be a tactical decision to airstrike a crash site... not one of convenience.

Missions have to feel DANGEROUS. I don't want to go into mission thinking... oh yeah.. rinse and repeat. That being said... Alien Bases are too easy. Back in XCOM you feel extreme dread when you realise there's an Alien Base. Now I'm like... Meh. Just bring more grenades.

Research

When was the last time people demanded funding from a manager without giving a good reason? There needs to be a Research Proposal (basically giving information) about what the technology that's being researched will do for the player. If not for my knowledge of playing XCOM games... I wouldn't have known what the heck I must research and why it is important.

You should include in the short write up, the potential that researching the technology will grant you.

Plot holes

If aliens need a low oxygen environment to live... by virtue of them crashing and potentially having malfunctioning equipment... isn't it simply a matter of time before they die of oxygen toxicity when their equipment fails??? As much as the almighty power of the plot demands that xcom operatives should risk their lives and go in and shoot... I think a smarter decision would be to simply fire an EMP device (after finding out how their electronics work) and let their natural biology do the rest.

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I really agree in lot of points exposed here, specially Weapon diversity, AI behavior, Crash site routine and level of danger.

For some of this point some of community members put some effort trying to bring some diversity with mods.

You can review some valuable mods from Kabill, Soviet Weapon addition and Max.Caine balance patch.

I you want try the developed mod that me and my team make, XNT-Into Darkness in my signature.

In other hand we need to be patient now to the final version of the game, because I notice that Developers don't want to add more content for balance and time issues.

Thanks for your review.

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Thanks for the feedback, it's always useful to hear from new players.

Firstly, would you mind letting us know if you play on V21 Stable or V22 Experimental? Also are you playing Normal or Veteran difficulty?

It's also worth noting that your weapon balance paragraph rests on the premise that grenades are overpowered, which is useful feedback but only to an extent. Why don't you try a playthrough without using them instead? If we nerf the grenades then most of what you've said quite possibly would not apply any more.

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Meh. It sounds like he's got to Marauders mostly via cheesing grenades so it's a valid point to raise, even if it may not work as well against endgame aliens.

The problem is that grenades don't really miss much, and their damage scales well with your research whilst also requiring no investment to upgrade. So I can see how grenade spam might break the game. I might give it a try and if it feels OP then I'll just reduce the damage scaling on advanced grenades.

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On open terrain they in fact are accurate - but in UFOs (good training field is for example ground floor of Landingship) they may be stopped by the first knee high obstacle.

If you however lower the damage of grenades - maybe increase their suppression a bit? For my experience I find that when I use grenade I mostly do overdamage and I don't get any loot then :(

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Terrain:

The game engine cannot handle multiple terrain levels in the same way as the OG.

By the time this was discovered the game had progressed too far to be able to start over with a new engine.

Battle damage also doesn't work as well with the decorative UFO hulls as it did on the flying boxes of the OG.

For example some of the external walls are several tiles thick so blasting your way through would be improbable.

The way the hulls have to be displayed in order to allow the internal areas to be used also means that they cannot easily be made destructible.

Jump armour was deliberately made less powerful in Xenonauts than in the OG by making it impossible to fire while airborne.

I would liked to have seen different entrances built in to upper levels of the larger UFOs but they can have multiple ground level entrances.

Weapons:

I agree that more weapon variation would have been nice but I don't agree with your assessment of some of them.

Shotguns for example are great damage up close and have a modifier to the users reflex stat making them better at avoiding and making reaction shots.

When breaching that is a useful combination.

The carbines you mention were replaced by shotgun type weapons a few builds ago because the shotguns were seen as more useful.

There was talk of bringing a true carbine type back in later tiers but I don't know if that is being done.

Grenades have always been an easily abusable weapon.

They are light, decent damage, ignore most cover, and can affect multiple enemies.

They have had many changes made over the years to try and balance them.

They damage equipment carried by the alien and can destroy parts of the UFO that you need to recover in order to progress which can leave you lagging behind the enemy.

They should also only explode at the end of your turn leaving you open to reaction fire from enemies who would be dead if you were using other weapons.

Any other suggestions on how grenades could be made more balanced with the other weapons?

Drop ship:

That useless drop ship also allows you to carry more troops than the others which makes it useful to me.

The drop pods are not the most useful feature and still need work but I think dropping your troops next to the enemy ship so you don't have to bother with half the ground combat would be an incredibly bad idea.

Good in real life, bad in a game.

Alien AI:

GJ has done a good job improving the AI so far but I would also like to see it switch around a little more so you don't know what they will do next.

In a previous build aliens acted as you suggest, hunting down and swarming the player.

People didn't like it so it has been changed and that change is still being balanced.

Crash sites:

Maybe some of your concerns will change when you are not playing on normal mode.

Veteran and above will be balanced for people with experience of this type of game while the lower difficulties make the enemies significantly weaker.

You should really be forced to consider the danger of the mission when thinking about airstriking or attacking on the ground.

If you are not then it is a balance issue.

What would you suggest as a way to increase the danger level of the missions you have played?

Plot holes:

There are many places where you could remove all gameplay from the game but what would be the point?

Aliens are in orbit, we must defend our planet!

They fire a plasma beam at each major population centre, game over.

They drag a medium sized asteroid from the oort cloud and drop it in the Atlantic, game over.

They mind control a few presidents, game over.

They do a quick environmental scan and realise the air is toxic, they leave, game over.

Fills a plot hole but kills the game.

For my experience I find that when I use grenade I mostly do overdamage and I don't get any loot then :(

I think that is the point.

It doesn't matter so much if you use a couple and lose some items but if you use a lot you will get very little reward from the mission.

Edited by Gauddlike
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A small suggestion on that:

How about making it so that exploding grenade destroys other grenades in its explosion range.

This would prevent the spamming effect. They're quite nicely balanced IMO by the way. I grind a lot and make use of the loot I get so I only spam them when its life and death anyway.

Edited by Caaygun
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Yeah, but if grenade spam means you don't need any other weapons (OP said he was still using ballistics) then you probably don't need all the rewards of combat.

Grenades may well be balanced as part of a normal strategy where they are used occasionally. That doesn't mean grenade spam can't be imbalanced at the same time. None of us have tried it so perhaps it works better than you might imagine?

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Sounds like it might be the case.

Caaygun might have a point with the destruction of other nearby grenades to prevent them detonating.

Using one grenade would still be fine, using a couple with spacing between them would still be fine, even using several would be ok as long as you didn't rely on all of them on the same target.

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I don't own the game yet (waiting for a stable release), so I don't know how much time units throwing a grenade costs. Anyway, the issue afried brought up is about the right balance between grenades and firearms. Guns are superior at range. At grenade ranges guns should still be superior against an opponent in no cover. This could be achieved by increasing the time units needed for grenades considerably. Readying and throwing a grenade takes way more time then quickly aiming and shooting a gun. You shouldn't be able to do much else in this turn. Nerving the damage of grenades is not the best solution imho.

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If the TU for throwing grenades counted against your initiative and the range you could toss them was reduced back to the way it was the first time you nerfed the range they would be far more situational. Also, throwing a grenade should use enough TU that the average soldier can only move about 3 or 4 tiles (or 2 tiles with a 180 turn) in the same turn. Nerfing the damage amount is not the right way to fix the problem. I would be very frustrated if I managed to get close enough to use one and it didn't do much. They should very effective on a direct hit but not easy to use. Firearms should be preferable at all but the closest ranges. Grenades should be useful inside buildings and UFOs with lots of cover, but otherwise not used too often.

Using grenades in real life is very dangerous because it's difficult for the thrower to escape the blast radius and you have to get very close to the enemy. Normally they are thrown when thrower can immediately get behind cover or targets location will shield the thrower (behind a solid wall, through window, round corner, etc...)

Edited by StellarRat
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Yep, grenades only depend on strength stat, both for weight allowance - i.e. how many grenades soldier can carry and throwing accuracy, but using grenades doesn't train strength stat (at least i didn't notice, because my soldiers always carry 2 or 3 kilos more than their strenght allows). Using grenades gimps the player quite a bit: less money from missions, no training of important stats like accuracy and reflexes.

I don't really think that reaction fire from aliens is an additional danger factor because when soldier expends all his TUs on shooting, aliens still reaction fire at that soldier, unless they are dead of course.

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If the TU for throwing grenades counted against your initiative and the range you could toss them was reduced back to the way it was the first time you nerfed the range they would be far more situational. Also, throwing a grenade should use enough TU that the average soldier can only move about 3 or 4 tiles (or 2 tiles with a 180 turn) in the same turn. Nerfing the damage amount is not the right way to fix the problem. I would be very frustrated if I managed to get close enough to use one and it didn't do much. They should very effective on a direct hit but not easy to use. Firearms should be preferable at all but the closest ranges. Grenades should be useful inside buildings and UFOs with lots of cover, but otherwise not used too often.

Using grenades in real life is very dangerous because it's difficult for the thrower to escape the blast radius and you have to get very close to the enemy. Normally they are thrown when thrower can immediately get behind cover or targets location will shield the thrower (behind a solid wall, through window, round corner, etc...)

People already complain about unrealistically short grenade ranges and that they take too many TU to throw.

Making both of those things worse could be a bad idea unless they were small adjustments.

I don't use grenades much myself and would probably use them even less if it cost nearly a whole turn to throw one.

It would also likely not completely rectify the grenade spam situation as you would still be able to throw 6+ of them a turn (one per squad member), possibly at the same enemies if you keep your squad together.

The solution should reduce their effectiveness when used in large numbers without affecting their use in small numbers too adversely.

I don't think increased TU cost does that.

I think it has a large impact on their desirability even when used as intended and a potential knock on effect on other grenades as it would make little sense that a frag would take a full turn while another grenade type would take far less time to throw.

I don't really think that reaction fire from aliens is an additional danger factor because when soldier expends all his TUs on shooting, aliens still reaction fire at that soldier, unless they are dead of course.

If you shoot an alien and it dies it doesn't matter if you have any TU left, that alien cannot reaction fire at you any more.

If you throw a grenade that detonates at the end of your turn that alien will still be standing when you get low on TU and potentially will reaction fire so it could have an effect.

Edited by Gauddlike
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I used an organic line up and felt that other weapons are totally useless. I used only Rifles and Grenades eventually at basic tech. Sniper rifles don't give me the versatility I needed and their accuracy was pretty crap for rookies.
Personally, I find the main "problem" with sniper rifles is that the maps simply aren't big enough for me to need them; machine guns and other medium-range weapons can hit aliens just fine, and
Shotguns were useless. They are too risky to use and if you want to kill anything at that distance... you should just toss a grenade.
I find shotguns tremendously useful at close range, and I try not to spam grenades because they destroy bodies and equipment I need for money and research. That, and nadespam just doesn't work as a strategy for me because, as you've discovered, it makes everything way too easy.

Shields, never used them. Mostly because I think of them more as a police/riot control asset and it always felt silly to me to bring them to an alien invasion battlefield.

Agree with you that you could be offered slightly more info at the beginning of UFO recovery missions, but then again I like the suspense of moving into "total darkness", not knowing what lies around the next corner. I do miss an in-game "mega map" like in the original games, though, or at the very least the ability to zoom out quite a bit more than I can right now.

As for grenades, the obvious problem with doing too much to nerf them is that you risk that all of a sudden they're not "fun" to use anymore. Don't know quite how to balance them myself, to be honest I think it's up to the players, whether they want to succeed through "nadespam" or force themselves to use more diverse tactics and weapons.

Edited by Safe-Keeper
fixed ubb
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People already complain about unrealistically short grenade ranges and that they take too many TU to throw.
I know that, but compared to the other weapons they have FAR too much range. I don't know if there is a good solution due to the ground scale compression in Xenonauts.

Another solution would be to make them less accurate and reduce the splash damage, but leave the direct hit damage alone (this is actually my favorite). That way, it would require some luck to flat blow up an alien (or a lot of grenades), but you will probably wound them often.

Limiting the number that can be thrown in one turn seems very kludgy to me. Plus it's highly unrealistic. Perhaps making the splash much bigger, but less dangerous would help. Then you'd really have to plan on how to get out of the blast. They could cause few points of damage in a much larger area. So wounding yourself could be a real possibly if you don't use full cover or have a lot of TUs.

Another concern I have is that making grenades do less damage in the impact tile moves them more towards "sameness" with other weapons. We've had plenty of that already in the name of balance, but I'm starting to feel that if it continues further we ought to just have an AR as the only infantry weapon in the game. If everything does about the same damage wants the point of carrying different weapons?

One thing I definitely don't want to see an alien laughing off a grenade that lands in his tile. If an alien isn't too damaged by that, it would be hard to accept that a rifle would do anything either.

Edited by StellarRat
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Mostly you need 2-3 allenium grenades to kill 1 Sebillian Guard and after that mostly remains bloody gore. Throwing grenade without holding in hand costs a bit more than 50% of total TUs.

When using guns you also in theory need 2-3 soldiers to kill Sebillian Guard.

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Perhaps rockets if you are going to limit grenades, but I guess the question is does ammo limitation add anything to the tactical element.

Is it possible to have one manufacturing project produce multiple units of something?

Someone suggested that all Tier 2 and higher ammo and weapons should be manufactured. That would be tedious and I doubt it would stop grenade spam. I think the procedure and stats of grenades are place to change things for this problem. By limiting their useability to super close combat you limit the spam potential.
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