Leaderboard

I really like Mazex's design. When I play I don't think of my soldiers as weapons or numbers, I'm not moving a team consisting of shotgun, rifle and sniper into position, or numbers three, five, and eight. I usually think of their names first, then what weapon they're carrying. Typically I tie each name to a particular weapon, i.e, the same two people are always snipers. Having all the information, name, number and weapon on the screen in a single panel would make it so much easier to select and plan who goes where rather than having to hover my mouse over a weapon image. The flags are a really nice touch. I know its not information that can be considered critical to the game mechanics, or design, but it just makes it all a bit more real. It's a detail that contributes to the fantasy of an international team of soldiers. I find this hard to explain, in the first Xenonauts, by the end of the game, it was like I had a bond of some kind with the soldiers, I knew their names, strengths, weapons they used, when one of them died it was a a serious blow. They weren't just numbers on a keyboard. I played so carefully, I never saved the game to raise the emotional stakes. To have more information about them, even a country flag, I just think it would be really nice. It's like dungeons and dragons, we're choosing to enter a fantasy, the more real you can make the fantasy appear, the more details you can give us, the better it is. Also when you start playing it's easier to remember who has what when you have a unique visual identifier that's more than just a weapon symbol, e.g I know Jackson from the U.S is my sniper, or Carter from Brazil has the shotgun, use her to storm that shack.

Fantastic funding - my only disappointment is that the orchestral soundtrack isn't highly voted. Having an orchestra record the music really makes a difference, and that's the one thing that modders cannot really implement.