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Just to elaborate a bit on my suggestion: This is more or less exactly what I thought of. In some window where you either spend some time waiting (geoscape in X1, loading screen) or where it thematically fits (barracks, base overview) you could add a scrolling (base internal) news feed the backers can participate in filling. But instead of having the news feed merely blare out the names of backers or their characters it would be some kind of text the backers chose. They could effortlessly get their name in there if they wanted. Fitting the theme these texts could be about outside world news ("Freak storm hits office building in Germany. Lone survivor Bruno D. claims 'ugly monsters made me go blind', not the lightning."), memorials ("Mass for deceased Sgt. Dagar today at 2 P.M. No open casket display (you would not want to see that)."), internal messages from staff (see my previous post), security messages ("Re-playing movie scenes of burglaries with laser rifles and bath room mirrors prohibited. You do not want to lose a toe like Sgt. Dagar."), other announcements ("Movie night starts at 8 P.M. Today's movie: Independence Day.) and so on. Of course you would have to approve these first. But this is easily implemented, can feature a vast amount of messages, is a nice thematic addition, and even if it is expandable by modders, the backer's message still would be in the vanilla game (and likely all mods to come). The downside would be that messages might not make sense at a certain point in the game (e.g. the above one if you have not researched laser rifles yet), so you'd either have to implement checks with the unlocks on the research tree or campaign progress or keep them so general that they could apply at any point in the game.

I am happy to announce the release of Xenonauts: Community Edition 0.35. What is the Community Edition? The Community Edition is a source-modified version of Xenonauts, produced to improve the stability and gameplay experience of Xenonauts, as well as to give modders access to more features. X:CE contains hundreds of bug fixes, crash fixes and quality of life improvements, while remaining very close to the vanilla gameplay. More information about X:CE in general can be read here. How do I install X:CE? Steam users - Switch to the Community branch in Steam by right-clicking on Xenonauts, selecting Properties, going to the Betas tab and selecting Community. No access code is needed. Other users (including GOG): 1. Download X:CE for manual installation. 2. Extract the X:CE archive into your game installation folder, overwriting existing files. 3. Launch the game. Answer "yes" if prompted to update load order. The game launcher should display X:CE 0.35 in the top-right corner. Can I continue a vanilla game in X:CE? Yes, X:CE can load saves from the vanilla 1.6X version of Xenonauts, and older versions. You can then continue the game with X:CE. The future of X:CE With the release of 0.35, the Community Edition is nearing the end of its development. I'm aware of a few more minor bugs, and I've received a good list of various small issues to look into. Some of those I'd like to fix, and surely something will crop up in 0.35 that necessitates a fix. But with Xenonauts 2 now entering a more mature phase in the development, I don't foresee much active work on X:CE beyond an eventual 0.35.1 with some minor fixes. Minor update 0.35.1 (May 5, 2020): A minor update was pushed to address Reapers one-shotting vehicles, and the psionic combat still sometimes using the wrong old formula. As was the original design intention, Reapers should now need 2-3 attacks to destroy a Hunter car. Changes from 0.34.3: Version 0.35 brings a lot of improvements for modders, new translations, and a few general fixes. New translations: The French translations have been updated, authored by Rodmar18. The translations are for X:CE itself, and some mods. Traduction en français Le mod communautaire X:CE 0.35 comprend une extension et une révision totale de la traduction française, à la fois du jeu de base et de la plupart des mods inclus. Le lanceur du jeu devrait automatiquement détecter la langue de votre système d'exploitation (le français), mais il vous est toujours possible de choisir votre langue dans le gestionnaire de mod de ce lanceur. Rendez-vous sur le forum de Goldhawk Interactive pour discuter de cette traduction car elle est tout à fait perfectible. Mod updates The bundled Fix Pack has been updated and renamed to [XCE] Xenonauts Fix Pack. The rename avoids a conflict with Steam workshop, which has an older (and buggier) version of the mod. Bug fixes and general changes: It's now possible to rename bases. Click the base name in the base screen. Psionic combat calculations fixed to work as originally intended in the game design. Previously it would essentially be random rolls only slightly affected by the soldier's and the alien's stats. Now the psionic strength (for aliens) and bravery (for soldiers) contributes 50% to the score calculation as intended. From a player perspective, you should actually notice higher bravery soldiers being more resistant to psionic attacks now. "Go to base" will open the workshop view after a manufacture has been completed. "Go to base" will choose a base with idle scientists after a research has been completed. Afterburner in air combat now has "A" as a keyboard shortcut. Zoom in/out shortcuts will also work in air combat. Correct alien base name will show in the dialog window when a dropship reaches the base. The "incendiary burst bug" is fixed. The bug was - if a weapon of incendiary type fires a burst, and first hits terrain and then an enemy, then the shots hitting the enemy would do extremely high damage. Fixed a rare bug where destroyed airplanes in transfer would forever occupy hangar space in the new target base. Modding enhancements: Reaper zombification is now damage-based, that is, Reapers zombify when target HP is 0. It's thus possible to have them do normal damage. The base game now just sets the Reaper weapon damage to a very high value to ensure instant zombification. Item transfer time between bases can be modded in gameconfig.xml. If Xenonaut base retake missions are enabled, they can be made to happen in the Xenonaut base tileset in gameconfig.xml. Previously only the alien base tileset was available. Morale cap for ground combat can now be customized so mods can enable morale of over 100. More flexibility for radar ranges - up to 13 are now supported. The LockManufacture command has been fixed to work reliably. Fixed escort chances for UFO missions in the AM_*.xml files. Only mods with more complicated AM_ files were affected, so this is not a base game change. It's now possible to specify alien sight range per alien rank. If rank sight range isn't specified, the race range is used instead. Base evacuation feature completed: if retaking Xenonaut bases is enabled, then personnel and planes from lost bases will evacuate to other bases. It's actually visible on the map with planes flying out, etc. New alien abilities for aiprops: Infiltrator and Ghost. Infiltrator makes the alien look like a friendly unit - green cursor, no reaction fire, and so on. Ghost makes the alien act like an object, no special cursor at all, but it can be reaction fired upon if moving. gameconfig.xml can now control the various speeds of air combat. For X:CE 0.35, I want to again offer a big special thanks to @Charon and @Rodmar18.

Those settings do nothing.

Thanks for the comments, guys. Yes, I think for the £100 reward it'll have to be something related to the game content. Ideally though it should be something that costs us very little developer time to put in the game, because the £100 tier is only £25 more cash than the previous tier and that really does not cover much dev time. It also should not clutter up the game if, say, 100 people decide they want to buy that tier. For instance, one of the big crowdfunded games (either Divinity or Pillars of Eternity I think?) let you put a dedication in the game that appeared on a tombstone. This is something that costs the developers little time and doesn't overly clutter up the world even if there's hundreds of them. Something like naming a staff character in a research report is better suited to a £500 tier because that's limited to 5, and involves quite a bit more dev time to make it work. I suppose a possibility might be to incorporate some kind of news feed that prints out relevant "news" from the world / within your organisation as alien events happen - kinda similar to the little text you get when a UFO spawns a Geoscape Event in the first Xenonauts. That's something where we could easily slip backer names / characters in for minimal effort and also be able to scale well. Would any of you be interested in that? Or yes, a memorial wall with a section for "past" Xenonauts that died before the game and incorporate the backers into that somehow. I'm very reluctant to add in anything that affects game balance, so having "pre-order" weapons etc isn't something I'm particularly interested in.

There's several tabletop games a lot like that. There's also X-Com: Interceptor, but there's a reason nobody recommends it.

In Xenonauts-1, what did suppression mean? That you start next round with either half of your TUs, or none of them, being virtually pinned down. As part of a more general morale system, the suppression sub-system could be reworked a little. Instead of loosing blocks of TUs, "suppression" damage could proportionally give the percent of TU loss for next tun. Then a dice could be rolled to determine how much suppression damage is converted in actual morale loss. As for me, indeed, there is no conflict between morale and suppression: it's like bravery. Suppression bar represents your reflex resistance to instant stress. Being shot at, being wounded, being engulfed into a burst of explosion, eventually being surprised or at risk of being in awe face to some abomination: all of these situations could contribute and suppress you. If you fail your check, you can be briefly paralyzed, or simply slow down (i.e. loosing only a few TUs). Suppression loss should be negated quite rapidly. Morale, on the other hand, would reflect your over time resistance to hostile situations, when you have time to think and figure your fate : being badly wounded (risk of death), loosing teammates, etc. Morale loss would be harder to heal. Indeed, some severe morale loss would require real medical care at the hospital. Some actions would restore a little morale: meditation, medication, execution of an alien officer, or simply knowing that your team has managed to destroy 70% of the enemy so far.