Leaderboard

Once you stop seeing the entire world as a single unitary block with a collective consciousness I think it becomes a much easier sell. Plus you only have to look at the debates around the scientific claims that smoking was harmful / climate change is being caused by human activity to see that it's easy to muddy the waters of public opinion, irrespective of what "facts" are put forward by each side of the argument. In most cases people find the facts to support what they want to believe, rather than vice versa. Now imagine that the aliens have infiltrated elements of the media and world governments, and are actively trying to discredit the notion that aliens exist. Instead, they're pushing conspiracy theories like the narrative that one of the two superpowers has developed a secret weapon and is regularly using it on their opponents, whilst staging hoax / false flag attacks against their own people so as not to arouse suspicion. The photos of aliens are doctored; the witnesses are just government stooges. Indeed, the aliens might not even need to discredit the theories themselves. If I was living in the UK at the height of the Cold War and one of our aircraft carriers disappeared in mysterious circumstances, and the government explanation was: "Aliens did it, but all we have is few grainy photos to prove it", I'm not sure I'd believe that. If elements of the local media were accusing the government of being soft on Communism and covering up a Soviet attack because they were frightened / secretly supporting a Communist takeover then I might give that some serious thought. It's not likely, but is it more likely than a secret alien invasion? Might well be. Similarly, the Xenonauts can have powerful political support but that only needs be from a few key figures, ideally in a cell structure ... if aliens are infiltrating governments, you don't want a lot of people knowing about the Xenonauts. The aliens might not have enough power to take over the world militarily, but they certainly have enough power to wipe out the Xenonauts if they find them. The whole "men in black" and government conspiracy lore is a rich vein, particularly in the Cold War. I think this type of setting is actually a much better fit than the outright warfare in Xenonauts 1; mechanically it doesn't have to change the game at all.

First - Hello! And also first topic. I want to share my idea for a inventory system for xenonauts 2. Xenonauts 1 currently have a basic system with a small belt and a big main backpack. Right now, there is no point really to place an item on the belt rather than the backpack, neither the armor we wear have any impact on the space we have. In my idea of Xenonauts 2 Inventory, storage should be a tied function for the armor. So you could choose either an heavy, medium or light armor per say and each will have its available space to be used. I see 3 main spaces that can be used: The belt would allow very fast and easy access (meaning low TU cost), perfect for fast use of secondary weapons like pistols and grenades or any other gadget used a the discretion of the player. However, its small room means only a few things can be placed on it and also, only small and compact equipement could be placed on it. The Webbing (or tactical vest) would have moderate all-around storage and TU use. Perfect for some secondary weapons, main storage for weapons mags, medikits, etc... The backpack would be the largest inventory, being able to store the biggest items like shields and heavy weapons. But it would also have the highest cost in TU to access the backpack. Some armor would not have the backpack available, for example, predator armor and others heavy or specials armors. So placing carefully your equipement could actually be much more meaningful and also would lead to more tactical choices. Example: i can store my M-16 mags on my belt for fast reload, but i would lose the space for a handgun or a medikit. Another example: Belt reload of a M-16 = 10 TU, Vest = 15 TU, backpack = 20 TU.

I suppose, new Xenonauts should have a Black market options, which allow player to make instant cash in exchange of future relation and/or reputation. That should be the place where you can buy or sell alien stuff, bribe a politician in the particular region (with some %% of success), hire the mercs to do your job on the crash site (with heavy civilian casualties). Also, it seems to me a good idea to add some black market missions, to trade you team as mercs - do some dirty job, like drugs or human trafficking in exchange of cash, rare materials or relations with particular region.

Just downloaded the demo and there are definitely issues with the cover system. The cover penalty is applied, or at least displayed as applied, irrespective of what side of the cover you are on. That means hiding behind cover inccurs an accuracy penalty from the cover you are hiding behind. How cover impacts LOS seems "unrealistic". Shooting at a standing alien through a medium obstacle has a 30% chance of being blocked. Have your LOS clip a three pixel corner of a large obstacle and your shot has a 50% chance of being blocked. It's easier to hit an alien through three blocks of shoulder high raised terrain than it is to hit an alien who's elbow is in cover. There needs to a two block area around the xenonaut where cover does not affect LOS. Also the chance of a piece of terrain to block LOS should be worked out on how many LOS pixels cross through the terrain not a flat rate.

Compare with other strategic changes, this should be pretty minor. Thanks XCOM 2 for inspiration. Problems: 1. The candidates do not improve with time. New recruits take forever, if ever, to catch up to veterans. 2. Do the candidates all die at end of month? Why do they all disappear so fast? 3. The recruit list is full of candidates we don't want, that we cannot remove, but we get free candidates whenever we hire. Proposal for problem 1: 1. Make new candidates' stats improves with time. A training system may be needed to keep idle soldiers competitive, but they did stay in a safe base as the world went on fire. 2. Make veterans available at higher cost, as the game progress. Proposal for problem 2 & 3: 1. Let the player get a new candidate by rejecting someone, perhaps at a moderate interview cost but with some free monthly quota. 2. To keep the pressure up, may be each candidate has a 10% chance to disappear at end of month.

Hello all. I've played the latest version of Xenonauts 2 (0.11.0) and want to share my opinion so far. First, secondary weapons. You added a key to swap easily weapons or items for fast use. I really like this concept. But two cons i think: unlimited munitions is a very bad idea. I think this kill the purpose of having to choose more mags or shots for our secondary weapons. Also, i would introduce a system like this: In your inventory display, you could have one slot that could be a QUick Access Item Slot (QUAIS). This could have the benefit of reducing half the cost of TU for the switching, but can only place one item per QUAIS (Assuming different armor could have different size of inventory and slot available.). Let's say i have a rifle, a pistol and a medikit. A normal switch would cost 10 TU, but switching from a QUAIS would cost 5 TU. Placing a item back into the QUAIS also cost only half. So i have my rifle, switch to the pistol only cost 5 TU. But then i switch to the medikit in the backpack, 10 TU. I place the pistol back for 5 TU. This is only a example, actual numbers and process are up to you. Overwatch. I saw a few occurences where a human soldiers and some aliens too, will fire overwatch while having teamates in their line of sight, injuring/killing them. They should do a check if there is no chances of hitting allies. Medical. I think adding medical systems to the game could really expand the possibilties of gameplay. Basically, instead of relying only on damage leftover below 0 to determine the dead/knock out state, you could add a system where we can do a check up on downed soldiers and take actions from there. Another example: A soldier get downed. Medic soldier come at his position and do a check. The guy can be dead, where no actions can be taken. He can be in critical state, so dead in just a few turns if not took care of immediately. He can also be unconscious, where he can be bleeding or not, and will wake up after some turns. The only way to know the state of a knock-out is by doing a check with another soldier, or having some technology that can display his status. (Advanced suit, specific monitor gadgets, etc...) Critical soldiers could need specifics items/training/role to be stabilized. So like morphine, patching, injections,Transfusions, whatever... This would only stabilize the wounded soldiers and could take a few turns, depending on technology and medical training of the soldier. Some technologies could even bring it back up on his feets. The unconscious state is basically a state where the soldiers will wake up by itself after a few turns, but he can be bleeding and need some other soldier help to wake him up or patch him up, so that he doesn't bleed out and die before regaining consciousness. Some aliens (or humans) weapons and gadgets can do knock-out's like this, non-lethals weapons like taser, sleeping darts, etc... That's pretty much it for now.

Whilst I appreciate the support, this thread is over a year old now and perhaps not worth resurrecting To be fair to TrashMan, the "secret war" idea was also in deeper flux at the time he wrote this post and there were some more extreme elements of the setup that have been experimented with and quietly dropped in the interim - for example, the original plan was that the Xenonauts were going to deploy to battle via translocator rather than via a dropship - so the idea might have been a bit more disagreeable back then.

Variable lighting - it would be cool if, for example, interiors of UFOs or buildings without windows were dark inside, with reduced visibility even when mission takes place during the day. Or the other way around, visibility is 100% in well-lit buildings during the night missions. Weapon customization - for example, an assault rifle could have couple slots for additional equipment - flashlight, additional grip, laser sight, 40mm grenade launcher, something like mini-shotgun attachment or what have you. It would make the weapon more versatile and could create more tactical options during combat.

I usually shy away from posting feature suggestions because I'm very much aware of the development time, so here goes one I know is simple to implement. Taking into account some other features (such as mixed race missions), I think it would be interesting to occasionally have partial intelligence reports on alien missions, somehow tied into the Geoscape. X1 has the quantum decryption, as did the original game. That's relatively late in the game, and provides full intel. My suggestions would be to also occasionally get partial information about the upcoming mission, consider it information from civilians, local military flights, and so on. Examples of such intel could be race info ("aliens have deployed robotic units on this mission", "a reconnaissance flight has spotted Sebillians"), numbers info ("a local outpost reported at least 8 hostiles before we lost contact"), and possibly objective/aggression/map info, whatever else fits with the combat. These should not be available always but should, when they are available, be helpful in preparing for the mission in the best way.

I'm back to playing X1 again. Each battle is a frustrating struggle. It would be nice to be able to train your troops in X2 so they can keep up with Xenonauts on the field. In real life, militaries not only have minimum physical requirements, but have minimum intelligence requirements as well. You can't be a tanker in real life if you're bad at math (at least during WW2, I don't know how tank internal stuff has changed) because you have to very quickly make calculations on the fly to hit a target. Xenonauts are not just regular military, they are literally special forces. There is no reason why agents / troops (don't know what the right word is) should be deficient in any way. Also, please try to avoid the "armor is almost useless" trope. It would be great if every tech item developed has a benefit and is not offset completely by problems or simply so little of an upgrade its not worth it. Would be interesting to see something similar to "Alien Infiltration %" like there is in X-Com Apocalypse. Possibly within national governments, or NATO and Warsaw, and so forth. More infiltration might mean less funding. This might not work well with the proposed Cold War system in my other thread though.

Let's try to summarise proposed major changes to Xenonauts 2. Left: Major casts - Military Commander (Player), Chief Scientist, Director of Operation, and Soldier. Right: aliens @ Nov 2016. In Mar 2017 we get a preview of an animated Reaper. Done (i.e. being tried out) Move Shot Preview allows player to check line of fire and hit rate after planned move's, to get around what you see is not what you get. Replaced Rocket with Grenade Launcher which allows but only direct (horizontal) fire. Less damage, less TU, more shots, more ammo types. Definitely Happening (i.e. being implemented for trial) Short cutscenes between the three Xenonaut heads (above) will tell a better story of the secret organisation fighting a shadow war. Merging Research & Engineering makes R&D less idle, expands research tree, make build or research choice direct. No confusion on which to go first. Turn-Based Geoscape consolidate timed events and easy to code. UFOs come in one wave, player maps fighters to ufo, and end turn. No chasing. Strip Down Geoscape to solve imbalance base coverage and air rush, dumping multiple bases and base location. Keep facility slots, hangers, radar arrays etc. Fighters now have infinite range. Radar radius replaced by global detection level. Squadrons Replace Individual Aircraft. When a squadron lost fighters it also lost firepower. Fighters are replenished free after a long wait. If shooting ufo always take its toll but not too much, strategic air combat choices would be less binary, and will be harder to down every ufo. Reduce Dominance of Air War by adding missions that does not depend on ufo, and/or increase ufo land chance. Ground combat is the meat not air. Map Randomisation will prioritise randomisable maps like wilderness or dock. Retexture map to fit different biome gives more randomness. Removal of multi-tile armoured vehicles yields less balance problems and simpler combat rules. May have small single tile robots, may be not. Destructible UFOs will be tested, both fully destructible boxy ufo, and semi-destructible ufo that looks nice but harder to map (think walls, line of sight etc). Tweak Weapon Armour Penetration by shifting to a multiplier to help differentiate weapons, and/or some damage ignore all armour to avoid confusion. Very High Priority Build Up Geoscape by putting pawns in regions to fight for. May shift to a secret Shadow War, player has some control over when to show hands. Allows subtle and selective missions, e.g. vip protection or praetor assassination. More strategic actions to keep regions on good terms. Soldier Stress acquired after fights and apply penalties. Even a perfect battle will take its toll, forcing player to skip some gc or rotate soldiers. May make bravery more useful and give the operation division more things to do. Alien Racial Abilities is being revised, to be more distinctive, more tactically meaningful abilities. Work in Progress. Psyons: moves in pack and drones project psi-shield on officer. Sebillians: average hp but can revive from prone (damage sponge). Wraiths: Reactive teleport. Reaper Alphas: passive psionic debuff. Androns: X-1 plus limited mobility / thin back armour / death explosion. High Priority Base Structure may moves to slot based for of lack of buildings (and fun) in X-1. Instead of build new base (get new slots), player may upgrade buildings. Soldier Perk may replace stat upgrade. Each soldier has individual perk tree and earn perks by actions, like medals. Slower but more significant growth. Advanced Weapons may have a cost. Fielding (firing) them cost you fuel, which is generated by base infrastructure(s). Make upgrade a harder choice. The Translocator may replace dropship. It will have a recharge time and team-based weight limit, plus conditions like soldier or turn limit. Story wise, alien corpse and equipments will disappear after a few minutes, and the translocator can stop this which makes Xenonauts special. Crouching & Cover may be simplified to ease learning curve. e.g. Automatic crouching, bonus protection from adjacent cover. Or sth. more complicated. Modding & Translation may get a mod editor, language editor, and map editor. Automate parts of creating modular mod / organise translations. Medium Priority Automatic Story Research should make sandbox supporters happier, prevents player delay of harder enemies, and allow no-research walkthrough. Human Psionics, if researched, may carry a risk that things may go wrong every time it is used. Darker theme, more risk-reward. Potentially a DLC. Mixed Alien Missions should be more realistic and tactically more fun. But not as mixed as xcom, perhaps. Not sure. Unknown Priority New Soldier Inventory System will be slot based: primary, quick, and belt. Primary are the most powerful weapons, Belt are grenades and ammos. Quick are weaker weapons, like SMG, baton, or light grenade launcher, or tools like medikit and psi-shield. Free pistol for everyone. New Research System will split projects into fields, like physics and biochem. Research will raise overall expertise in that field, opening up new projects. Potentially scientists may improve skill from experience, has perks, and can work faster at risk of blowing themselves up. I don't promise to keep this topic up to date... I can't tell when each proposal is updated. Let me know if you find something major missing.

it is something that happens in games where the weapon has a range greater then the users LOS, for gameplay reasons LOS is restricted..but in order to give some long range weapons the correct feel, they have a range longer then a soldiers sight IRL people can see quite a bit further then the ranges shown in this game...actually, barring a obstruction or lack of light, we can see all the way to the horizon..beyond a certain distance our vision blurs and things become practically unidentifiable, but they don't just vanish. (in order to assist with long range optical indentification, various optics like scopes and binoculars can be used, turning a dot on a hill into a lighthouse) now when firing at something far away that isn't identifiable (but has an unobstructed straight line of sight to it) it is definitely still possible to aim your weapon. so I can't say I agree with your reason you should only be able to snap/burst at it

Well, imagine a sniper and a spotter. The person looking through the scope has a very narrow field of view so they have someone with binoculars to do the scanning.

So one of the biggest problems with this sort of penetration system is how the accuracy information is displayed to the player, and I know this because for a long time in Xenonauts 1 we had "hypervelocity" weapons (largely MAG weapons) that could shoot through walls. The calculation we used was somewhat different to what is suggested above but had a similar effect. The crux of the issue was that each object needed a fixed amount of damage to shoot through, and weapons do a randomised amount of damage (a rifle that does 40 damage could do anything from 20 to 60 damage per shot). If it takes 50 damage to punch through a wall and hit the target behind, you've only got a 25% chance of penetrating the wall based on those numbers. But if you're trying to shoot through multiple objects the calculation becomes extremely complex, extremely quickly ... and it's only one part of the "hit chance" calculation, because you've got to worry about all the accuracy modifiers too. So it's not that hard to write code allowing weapons to punch through walls but it is really quite hard to display that information to the player in a way that they can easily understand it. Hypervelocity weapons ended up being so confusing that we just disabled that property in the final game (although I think it's easy enough to turn back on in the weapon stat files if people want to play with it).

The farmers in X1 were actually alarmingly effective at killing aliens

I like the idea that soldiers who engage in missions against the aliens can come down with diseases (as well as wounds). The idea of research in the bio-sciences makes my brain all tingly. Other traits (off the top of my head): - Survivor's Guilt from high-casualty missions. - Walking Dead for troops that have just been revived too many times. - Strong Heart and Weak Heart that affect the chance to be revived. - Jaded: Too many high casualty missions, the soldier no longer suffers morale penalties from other soldiers dying. - Psychic: The soldier is a conduit for mental energy, and thus easier to affect with Psionics. - Civilian: The soldier has an X% chance each round to be doing "other stuff", and not able to act (or Suppresses themselves).

Yes, this definitely needs to be put in a tutorial.

I agree with the following; - C4 should take up a larger slot in inventory. - C4 being placeable in the current player spot OR on adjacent tiles - including on structures/props (as opposed to grenades which should bounce off props) but not thrown. - C4 having a high damage/destructibility such that it destroys equipment the closer the alien/object is to the blast centre. However, if you really consider why C4 is so good its because its mouldable. Its versatility comes from the fact that you can make a small or big explosion by breaking off parts of it to make smaller explosives. I was going to suggest making it more of a directional explosion but perhaps that's not niche enough. So... Might it be a nice idea if you could control the size of the explosion (perhaps even at the expense of the timer). A player could set a single tile charge which essentially just knocks a man sized hole in a wall, a 1-tile outward explosion up to some limit, say 6-tile outward explosion. This gives the utility to a player that A) they can control exactly how many tiles are effected, meaning it still has some versatility in tight spaces (such as a breaching a corridor door) with men standing only 2-3 tiles away. B) you can control just how much damage a tile is going to receive. I could imagine the mechanic being 100% damage on the tile the C4 is placed (regardless of size) with 25% less damage per tile moving away. Visually the damage would be for: single tile charge 100 a one tile outward charge 75 75 75 75 100 75 75 75 75 a two tile outward charge 56 56 56 56 56 56 75 75 75 56 56 75 100 75 56 56 75 75 75 56 56 56 56 56 56 and so on In this manner you could do sufficient damage to kill an alien but not destroy its equipment if that alien was X tiles away from the explosion centre, you could breach the UFO next the reactor without setting it off, or conversely you could blow the sweet daylight out of everything. I would couple this mechanic with a C4 charge value. Lets say it has an ammo value of 5. Meaning you could make 5 man sized holes or a single 5 tile outward explosion with one block of it. Intuitive and niche.

Yeah, if we go ahead with the new inventory system then it would make sense to make them a secondary item, yeah - so you're limited to one of them per soldier, and it comes at the cost of carrying something else like a medikit instead. That gives you an excuse (indeed an obligation) to make them properly powerful. Yeah, ideally I'd like them to work differently to grenades both in terms of power and limitations. The most obvious candidates to make them play differently are: You can stick a timer on C4 when you activate it, so you can delay the detonation by X turns if you want. You can also choose the detonation to be end of the player turn, or start of the next one. C4 can't be thrown like a grenade, it can only be placed on the ground on the same tile as the soldier that used it C4 does a LOT of damage, possibly enough to 1-shot most aliens. This would probably have to gib them and destroy their equipment though. C4 is the only type of weapon able to breach UFO outer hulls With those advantages and limitations you get a pretty unique piece of equipment. It also allows UFO destructibility but in a more limited way than if you let any weapon breach UFO hulls, and sets up a situation where you're choosing the breaching points and putting timed explosives outside the hull and then storming into the UFO through the new hole you just created (you'd want a detonation at the start of the player turn for this, rather than the end). That might feel a bit more cool and "special-forces" than anything you could do in the original Xenonauts. It does also allow the requested fun with blowing up aliens - I guess a viable tactic might actually be to scamper up to an alien and put C4 at his feet, then run away (depending on the blast radius of the C4). Similarly if you know a soldier is going to get eaten by Reapers then you can drop C4 at his feet and self-destruct him if you want. I figure that gives you all the fun bits of playing with high explosives, but fixes the "problems" with the old one by making it a more limited item that you can't spam. Thoughts?

Surrounded by reapers? Self destruct mode initiated

If I set up arbitrary rules for the setting and then break them, the setting has consistency errors and that's a problem for everyone ... but if someone else sets up arbitrary rules and the setting breaks them, that's only a problem for them. Whether an alien race advanced enough to travel to Earth has the technology to be able to disguise its infiltrators as humans is up for me to decide, and the precise parameters of how mind control or whatever "space brain magic" that the aliens are using to infiltrate governments for plot and gameplay purposes is also up to me to define. Sure, if I come up with rules for how those things work and they break the pre-existing X2 lore, by all means raise that as an issue. This isn't that, though. Whether intentionally or not, your posts just read like you're arguing about tiny details for the sake of it - I'm genuinely curious as to how you know for certain that these advanced aliens have no way to disguise their operatives as humans? And that there's no way I could ever plausbily write one into the setting? And that the logic chain therefore means that the entire setting has to be abandoned? That without passing as humans, the aliens therefore have no way of infiltrating governments, which therefore means that world governments can't be unreliable actors, and therefore that the entire of humanity would immediately and complete unite against the aliens as soon as a single alien body or craft was recovered by anyone, and therefore that the "secret war" idea can never work? Even if it were to provide a much better overall gameplay experience than the previous setting where a dozen soldiers and three or four jet planes stop the entire might of an interstellar alien civilisation?

Yeah, it'd be cool if capturing a Wraith or something would allow you to do this. There are ways to balance cloaking armour - you could have it so the cloak a one-use thing that is broken as soon as the unit moves or shoots, so it effectively just removes the unit from combat until they act again. Or it could make the unit immune to reaction fire, as the unit is invisible while moving but becomes visible again at the end of the player turn (or when attacking). Those are exactly the sort of "cool" items that were missing from Xenonauts 1, I think.

Yeah I can see that all sides are interested in keeping it secret. Especially if the desired end game is control over a stable population. There has to be a reason that the aliens don't just bombard from orbit. And along the same lines, there has to be a reason that Earth's military forces aren't all mobilised. If either of those things happened, then people would go nuts and soon enough there wouldn't be much of a human race to save.

It's a bold claim to say that the aliens would have a hard time infiltrating anything, especially given the first game has aliens that can literally mind control your soldiers. Outdated radar equipment has a difficult time tracking modern stealth aircraft, so why is it beyond the realms of possibility that local forces might not be able to detect highly advanced UFOs? I think you're trying extremely hard to see ways in which it wouldn't work, but I don't think any of them are particularly problematic.

Yeah, this might work well

This isn't a classical X-com game. During the "shadow war" stage, "terror" missions (or chaos missions) would be mostly infiltration and sabotage - attack on intelligence and security institutions, false-flags with mind controlled humans, deployment of technology such as dedicated gateways, construction crawlers or psionic transmitters which will make future alien efforts on Earth easier. Once the all-out invasion begins, terror missions become far more visible and direct like X1 terror missions.

Yeah, first idea sounds good. Reminds me of TFTD cruiser terror and island missions. The aliens is quite capable of jamming communication and liquidating all witness there. Of course, if there are too many surviving witness, the Xenonauts will need some better way to silence them like MIB flashlight. But lore wise it seems to be a good improvement.

Yeah, I guess Terror Missions *exactly* as they are in X1 would be hard to recreate in the "shadow war" stage. There's two possible solutions to that which I can see: Slightly reframe the mission so it's similar from a gameplay point of view, but more fitting with the new theme - e.g. the aliens are attacking a civilian power station, and unless the Xenonauts intervene they do a very good job of disintegrating all the witnesses. But if the Xenonauts can intervene and win the mission, they get an increase to the country relations score because there are now X additional survivors who will be telling everyone that the alien invasion is real. That actually gives a good reason why the player should save as many civilians as possible in a terror site (whereas in X1 you had to kill the aliens so the local forces didn't nuke the city; saving individual civilians was unimportant). Bring in the two-stage mechanic I mentioned in another thread, where the Xenonauts have a "threat" counter that increases as they perform hostile actions against the aliens. If it goes above a certain level the aliens launch an attack against the Xenonaut base, so the player has keep a low profile and stay secret in the early game until they are strong enough to repel an alien attack. When they get militarily strong enough they can trigger the base attack and, if victorious, remove the threat counter for good. At that point the aliens could move into outright warfare with terror attacks against civilian targets like in X1. I quite like the first one actually. Let the aliens carry out an attack against the infrastructure in the region on their own terms and there's no witnesses - so it raises the threat in that region, bringing it closer to war with its rivals. Intervene and save the day and the survivors reduce threat in that region by increasing support for the "Aliens are causing these problems!" narrative, pulling them towards peace with their rivals. It better fits the scope of an actual mission in Xenonauts too, where there's only around a dozen civilians at a terror site - which makes for a pretty sparsely-populated city...

Ugh, yeah, I forgot about that "start of turn" issue. :-/ However, couldn't it be something that only happens when you click End Turn? As in, when your - or the alien's - turn ends, anyone with enough TU's to fire go into "overwatch stance", and stay that way until they no longer have enough TU's to shoot (at which point they go back to default stance or what-not). It might even give a neat "end-turn aesthetic", since you'll get to see all of the overwatch-ing mobs all suddenly shift their stance right before the other side's turn begins. Just because mobs are glancing around doesn't necessarily mean that their vision cone must change (or go away); it's kinda like how this thread started, there's got to be some level of abstraction with any game, let alone a turn-based one using some sort of "action points", and ambient animations is probably the best kind of abstraction to justify at the sake of "realism". There's already the (glaring?) issue that vision cones seems waaaaay too constrained, as it should be ~115 degrees not counting peripheral vision (which gives almost 180 degrees of "situational awareness" total). So if anything, I'd suggest that, if adding in animations involving head movements, to just increase the vision cone (which I vote for, period ) to make it seem more realistic...and in a sense to actually explain what's going on, given that the current vision cone literally makes me feel like my soldiers have had all their vertebrae fused together.

Ahhh, those answers warm the heart ! I'll even look forward to my first new hedge encounter. Now to think up some snappy one-liners while leveling them ... 1) "Frag you, foliage !" 2) "I don't need no shrub ..." 3) "Hasta la vista, vegetation !" 4) "Deck the halls with plowed up hollies ..." 5) "I wanna be .. your Hedge-Hammer ..." ok, so those're awful ... I'll think up something better, lol ...

It wasn't an issue when using much more static, 2D sprites, but adding the third dimension and more realistic environment(al effects) does make it seem more than a little strange that the best soldiers in the world can't hit the broad-side of a barn (very often quite literally ) until after they've been in a dozen battles. Another idea: maybe adjust the actual stance of mobs that are behind cover - both if they are standing or kneeling - as if they are "using" the cover even when not being shot at, probably based on the direction they are facing. For example, if there is a tree next to them and they are facing in any of the 3 directions that would put it "in the front arc" of their LOS, have them lean behind/around it; if it is a wall, they suck up to it and glance around the corner. (The latter would be especially good since it would really give a visual explanation of how the "you can see around a corner, but the enemy can't see you" mechanic works. Really, there's no good reason - besides time/money/animators, granted - not to make use of the new 3D models to "explain game mechanics" in whatever form they can.)

The game can deal with 1m raised / lowered ground, so if we put those Farmyard shrubs back in then you should indeed be able to vault over the earth bank once you'd blown up the vegetation above it.

Ducking behind cover is a good way to make the battlefield feel more alive than having the shot miss. I think XCOM's action cams would feel a lot more static without the enemies or soldiers actively dodging shots. Turning miss chance into dodge chance - where you can see your soldiers hitting the alien's normal position, may also reduce that "are these soldiers blind" feeling...

...and don't forget the fact that, with a turn- and square-tile-based "combat sim", everything is an abstraction at some level...and something like cover is deeply abstract. Just because Xenonauts 2 is using a 3D graphics engine doesn't mean that it suddenly can, or even should, become more "realistic" than Xenonauts 1 was; just because you think you can see an alien's body better from one angle than from another doesn't mean that, in the meta-game, that alien can't duck behind that heavy cover to get the 50% bonus, or is so much behind the lighter cover that no matter how your soldier might be aiming they're still at a 30% penalty. Now, that thought does pose a question/idea: why not create "dodge" animations for mobs - possibly just three each ("step to the left, step to the right, hunker down in place" - and that last could be a quick up-and-down of the crouch position, even), and have them use whichever is appropriate by having the shots pathfinding splitting the highest-level intervening cover object into 3 quadrants and, based on which quadrant the shot passes through as a straight mid-square to mid-square line, does the appropriate animation to indicate that the target is "making use of the cover?" That's a pretty simplistic description for the idea, but hey, "abstractions", right?

3D is nice. Yes. But sometimes it is hard to see the map, where the soldiers can go, where to find covers - or where the aliens can. So, if we can turn the map from this: Into this with a simple click: This clearly show all the walls, covers, doors, characters, items, and other necessary info transparently. It's called the tactical view, and it is really handy when you want to plan tactic instead of admiring the aliens. But I guess... sparing the effort to create an alternative view is out of question?

Second this. A really good idea, but maybe it should be restricted in tiles you may side/backstep, or soldiers will tend to move sideways for proverbial miles, which is not really realistic. Maybe sidestepping should give the enemy a bonus to reaction fire, as your soldier clearly moves slower and more upright than s/he could when moving forward.

LOL I have an old 50 Hz CRT monitor from my Amiga here, do you also support that? It will not take that much broad space on your desks, more rectangular though. It comes with SCART interface. ....no just kidding, couldn't refrain me her...

Thanks for collating this stuff. I'll have a more detailed read later (and people are free to continue to add more to this thread) but it's probably worth taking all of this with a pinch of salt; if you read feedback on this forum then you'd probably come to the conclusion that the Firaxis games were complete abominations that nobody wanted to play. There's always going to be an element of people being drawn to what they like and I don't think we'd be able to make a game that will entirely appeal to many XCOM fans without losing what is intentionally different between the games. Of course, there's probably plenty of valid criticisms in there too. Xenonauts feeling dull and having sub-par graphics are something we should be thinking about, whereas gameplay issues I'd be a bit more cautious about "fixing". To be honest, I'd be most curious to hear where people think Xenonauts falls down against the original X-Com games, as they're our inspiration rather than our competition.

Fire support for your team - help you to begin the mission without an instadeath. Fire support for the aliens - make the UFO breach a tad more interesting as you have to put some firepower towards those murder holes or rush their blindspot. For obvious reasons you don't want to have your own support capable of taking out all the enemies on the map without risking your soldiers. It could be fun for a while but it isn't xcom. Maybe it'd work in some tutorial phase of the game until you get the translocator, after which point you can't use death from above to win ground combat. Equally, you don't want the alien support weapon to be a high power, long range, source of frustration. Having said that, breaching the alien craft is usually the toughest part of crash sites, so spreading that difficulty over two sections (getting up to the front doors, and then opening the door of the control room) could at least mix it up a little. Accordingly, I'd recommend that the static support weapon on the ship be intentionally nerfed in a particular way, e.g. short range, limited arc of fire, but in such a way that it would encourage tactics which are dissimilar from the main breach of the control room inside the UFO.

The idea of a versatile dropship is very nice! I like the idea of a slot for functional equipment: that would mean the equipment would get better with more research, but you still have to produce it (costs in resources and money) ! And with better dropships you could have more slots available. I'd strongly advise against the dropship as moveable unit. If you really want something like that you go with a hover tank / drone instead of a couple of soldiers... dropship one - one slot, dropship two - two slots ... slot options: stationary heavy machine gun (default): firing from the doors / energy cell locator: giving the location of energy cells=energy weapons at the beginning of the mission only, as buildings block detection, so the reading is taken while touching down in a perimeter of xx tiles/ emp burst - stunning mechanical units for one round, suppressing biological (half movement points) in perimeter of xx tiles at first round only/ ecc range and effects could get better with advances in research but resulting in new constructible equipment available (choices: do I really want to spend money to have a more secure Landing Zone?)

Also explains why we can't manufacture stuff for profit, lest we destabilize the super powers. My thoughts: DEFCON effects: if it's low, no-fly zones appear on the Geoscape, and NPCs have a chance of being hostile; crashed UFOs could also disappear more quickly. Military Counter effects: High military counter means better equipped NPCs on missions, and better chance of knocking UFOs out of the air; maybe better radar coverage. Alien Alert Counter effects: like you said, risks of a base assault. DEFCON interaction: Failing Terror missions lowers the DEFCON counter. Maybe there are special missions (akin to Council Missions from XCOM2012) that also lower the DEFCON counter. Military Counter interraction: allowing UFOs to fly around the globe uncontested would reduce the military counter. In order to increase the Military Counter, the Xenonauts can share their tech secrets with the world; doing so will jump the Alien Alert Counter. Alien Alert Counter interaction: What I just said, plus Alien Base Assault missions would also increase the counter. Maybe also a passive increase as time passes, or after each successful mission. None of this mentions faction alignment, but that might be okay. The Xenonauts wouldn't have the presence to shape the geopolitical landscape anyway, I don't think, so it's more like they're trying to undo the Alien's influence.

Not bad! This would also explain the low quality of the recruits, why they can't reliably shot a 7 foot tall robot at point blank range.

Well, let's take a step back here. We know the game is set in the Cold War era, meaning that the SU/USSR and the USA are the main opposing human forces. I think Chris wrote at one point that it is not public knowledge that there are Aliens. There are rumours about abductions and UFO sightings, but most people, including leaders of nations, do not believe in that, at least initially. The Aliens are here to overthrow humanity as a whole for some reason, but they are not powerful enough to do so in open warfare (a plot that is highly unlikely, but that's what it is). Instead, they try to weaken humanity with covert operations to a point where they can take over. Xenonauts are the only organization consistently knowing about the Alien threat and trying to prevent them from reaching their goal. From this knowledge, there are some things that immediately come to (my) mind. How would the Aliens weaken us? Well, obviously, the Cold War going hot would be very efficient. Other than that, by sabotaging military equipment, replacing high ranking officers and enforcing demilitarization politics, all within the realm of covert ops. As such, it should be one of the strategic goals of the Xenonauts to prevent the Cold War from escalating, and thus keeping a balance of force and a pacifistic mind set in the major populace and politicians. With this in mind, each region could have a (public) alignment value showing where on the US-USSR spectrum their sympathy lies, and a (maybe unknown or possibly obtainable via intel missions) military readiness value condensing all the factors mentioned. Xenonauts would have to balance the first value globally, while keeping the second value as high as possible in each region or risk an alien coup there. Alien regions could provide them with additional infiltrator manpower and resources for their effort.

The Cold War is infamous for one thing of relevance here: proxy wars. The US and USSR didn't directly do much fighting but they supported opposing factions within non-aligned nations. Maybe that could play into region alignment - in each region, one of the factions that the East or the West support could actually be controlled by aliens. So by fighting their proxy war, one of the major powers could be giving the aliens more ground. It is the xenonauts job to root out which factions are aliens (maybe they use clones or brainwashed humans as a front), then sabotage that faction somehow (covert strike operations). If the xenonauts are too brash then they risk retribution from the major powers, if they are too slow then the aliens take power of enough regions to begin their endgame (tripod attack )

As I mentioned above, I'm not keen to move the game away from the Cold War setting because we've established a franchise and I don't think we've exhausted (or even properly used) the current time period yet.

Fire support sounds good. The dropship could lift off once the troops disembark and dissapear, loitering in the air above. You can call it back to land AT THE SAME SPOT at any time. You can also go with the new X-Com way of grappling up/down via rope/crane, without having the actual dropship land on the ground. This also mean you can call it in to "land" (hover above) on different locations. There are many possibilities: - equipping it with a gun allows you to call in fire support (there has to be an associated cost, a limit or a cooldown. Possibly all 3.) - equipping it with sensor equipment allows better view of the battlefield and alien detection - equipping it with a medivac module increases the chance for troops to be criticialy wounded rather than die.

Dear Goldhawk Interactive, dear reader, this first post aims to present my personal thoughts about Xenonauts 2 and the path the game takes from the information that is given until now, but I invite you to discuss the matter, disagree with me, add points or do whatever you feel appropriate. I am not an expert in the first game (I am still in my first campaign), neither in the old XCOM games (I played a bit of Afterlight and Aftershock), but I am quite familiar with XCOM: Enemy Within, Long War and XCOM 2. However, I really enjoy Xenonauts and I want the second part to be a success. Xenonauts 1 aimed to recreate the feeling and gameplay of the original XCOM (or UFO). I cannot really comment on how well this goal was achieved, but I like the outcome. Xenonauts feels like a solid and round gaming experience, which has some rough edges that I generally take to be amicable characteristics that make the game stand out rather than flaws. From what I have read so far (and I have read the majority of forum threads here) X2 wants to reimplement X1 with better graphics, smoother gameplay and better story. That involves leaving out a fair chunk of mechanisms (which in itself is not bad; "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."), including vehicles (or at least the bigger than one tile ones from X1; entities like drones or SHIVs from XCOM EW might be there), the workshop/lab duality, the story driving research, multiple bases the consequential progression of your area of influence, and troop transport aircraft. Other mechanisms are altered, like the base layout (slots instead of a grid), the air combat (from single aircraft to squads, more tactical), a perk tree for your soldiers unlocked by 'achievements' in the engagements for soldier progression, the randomized tactical map layout, story and goals for the player and the aliens. New things also are to be added, like the Psionics system for humans (which already was in the original XCOM) and more mission types. You, Goldhawk team, have established a new franchise with Xenonauts, that primarily was there to satisfy gamers that wanted that 'old XCOM' feeling back. Most of the ideas I read about X2 point in a direction of cutting everything that did not work well in X1, and adding mostly better graphics, comfort and story and its related mechanisms. Your crowd of people are players of the old XCOMs and openXcom for the most part. I think, in general, they are like me in believing that better graphics are nice, but secondary at best. Comfort functions are good and in some places direly needed (like showing which obstructions my shot will have from a certain location). Story in a 'real' Cold War setting is very promising, but from what I read, this might not be all that well implemented. The bottom line here for me is: you take a bunch of choices we had in X1 (paragraph of things cut) and seem to not replace them. Strategic and tactical games are all about choices the player has, even more so if they are turn based (as you have unlimited time to choose). Where is our East vs. West balancing? If the Aliens try to weaken mankind, the most obvious way would be to make the Cold War go hot. Where are our benefits in more aligning with the Soviets or the Capitalists (i.e. making more missions for them, strengthening their military and independence)? Why are there 5 slots each for management, research and military in the base? Why not make all slots available and let the player choose what he wants to build in them? With more buildings than slots, these will still be meaningful decisions, just more free than in your plan. Why are soldier perks collectibles that are tied to achieving something on the battlefield? There is no real choice there, a sniper will always have to ramp up kills to get these aim perks. What about achievements that give us choice of perks? What about trade-offs of the type '+5 aim, no damage grenades'? Just fulfilling mini missions in the missions is not a real choice, at most a choice of prioritizing. Why have multiple weapon tiers when there are clearly better ones? Instead of limiting our use of tiers by imposing an artificial ammo infrastructure on us, why not make them differ more? Laser weapons could be more accurate and long range, plasma could penetrate armour better, mag weapons could have a chance to panic the enemy, coil guns could have a higher chance to suppress. Even if damage increase during the game should be a thing, why can we not upgrade these systems to have similar damage output in the end to use these unique properties? Why can our soldiers have all their TUs with 30kg of equipment and less if they carry more, but not the other way around? Why only one base raid mission when the aliens clearly could start multiple attempts? Why not a choice between translocator or troop transports? Or both, but none of it that well. In X1, I built one base with only scientists and a second with only engineers to help their respective output and keeping the infrastructure streamlined. I also had multiple bases with squads in order to answer to multiple simultaneous UFOs shot down. Not all players have one main base in X1 and only bare bones secondaries for scanner coverage and pilots. With only one base, fixed slots for buildings, instant deployment and access to the whole globe from the beginning, you leave a hole in our decision space that should be filled by new, meaningful and thematic choices. I have read little here that resembles these filler choices. Sure, the whole stealth vs. going loud aspect of the geoscape is interesting, but inevitable. You only choose the point in time you do it, and this choice will vanish with experience (namely knowing when you are ready to take on the base assault). What X1 missed for me was some comfort (like waiting for dawn before going on a mission and the already mentioned shot preview) and more equipment (night vision, smoke vision, heat vision, armour that makes you harder to hit, repair kits for shields, more rocket variants, a camera drone to scout, ...), not that R&D were one and the same or a perk system instead of the rank ups and stat increases. I know from experience that one's own vision of a product can differ vastly from what a customer might want, and I am just one of them, so please take this post as what it is meant to be: one person's opinion. Just take away from this wall of text that there are people out there that care for depth more than they care for a shiny wrapping. And depth in video games is usually created with meaningful choices. Best Regards, Dagar

The Disgaea game has a system that might help with the first point. If X-2 has some sort of soldier perk system, along with stats, then the soldiers you hire could have stat increases over time, but still lack perks. They won't be entirely useless, but they will still lack notability. Regarding point 2, I think X-1's system is already an improvement over the Xcom games. In the original game, you would hire a bunch, then fire most until you got the guys you want. It all comes down to the fact that there are soldiers you want, but are relying on the throw of a dice to generate soldiers. Maybe you could "request" or "head hunt" for soldiers proficient in certain stats, at a premium. Point 3 is interesting. Being able to refresh the list at will would allow players to min-max their soldiers, at the cost of time and frustration. But if the list if full of nobodies, your options are limited. A whole minigame could be planned around this mechanic, where you have to leverage your political weight in order to draw more recruits from countries or something, but I think in the big picture, the X-1 system is a good compromise. Maybe you could build a building that serves as a recruitment facility of some sort (think of Men in Black), that doubles or triples the length of the list. Or maybe each additional base lengthens the list.

I had a go at suggesting this during development for X1, but it didn't seem to go very far. So I'll try again for X2

Hi all, I’ve started this thread to flag up something I feel is being overlooked in current discussions about improvements to the game. More Mission Types and Secondary Objectives have been mentioned before but don’t seem to be getting the attention they deserve. More Mission Types and Secondary Objectives seem to me to be a (relatively!) simple way of adding a huge amount of variety to the game – far moreso than new tilesets, which Chris has explained are “EXTREMELY time consuming and expensive to make – they’re the most expensive component of the game by some distance.” Here are some ideas for what could be new Missions or Secondary Objectives. These have been taken from other threads and aren’t all my own ideas – I’m not trying to plagiarise Defend a landmark. Capture alien leader. Assassinate alien leader. Escort VIP (e.g. politician, scientist) to exfiltration area. Destroy alien transmission beacon. Rescue downed pilot (not necessarily your own). Free prisoners. Rescue local soldiers under attack by aliens. Defend supplies. Clear command post of all aliens. Activate Surface to Air missile site via panel in control room. Rescue hostage. Carry wounded civilian back to your chopper. Retrieve information local agents have compiled about aliens. Destroy alien mind-control device causing humans to fight you (once destroyed, the humans could turn into allies). Eliminate cultists (humans working for the aliens). The rewards for these could be as varied as deemed appropriate. Examples include: Improving end of round score. Improving relations with a particular country. Cash bonus. Stash of equipment (e.g. 10 packs of C4 or equivalent). New Xenonaut. Unique weapon (maybe just an existing one but with slightly improved stats to avoid new artwork). Revealing location of alien base. Research boost. Temporary manufacturing time reduction. I freely admit that I don’t know much about programming or the ways in which games like Xenonauts are made, but here are some justifications I believe to be accurate: Most of these would need little if any new graphics, which seem to be the most expensive aspect of production. I could well be wrong about that, of course! They’d add a significant amount of replayability to the game, and make each mission far more interesting. Especially if some Secondary Objectives are revealed mid-mission as you stumble across them. It’s genuine variety in gameplay and not just largely superficial changes, as tilesets essentially are. They could add to the whole feeling of immersion in the Xenonauts world; making small-scale battlefield decisions that impact the global war. More decision-making would be required by the player: do you order one of your valuable troops to take an injured civilian back to the chopper, thereby increasing your reputation with that country, but losing him for the next few turns when the aliens are about to counter-attack and he’s needed on the frontline? They seem like such brilliant things to include, it’s puzzling why they’re not high on the wish-list. It’s likely that I’m missing something, like the actual scale of the task from a programming perspective, but aren’t things like Kickstarter designed to raise funds to make these sorts of things a reality? All thoughts on this matter are much appreciated!