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This is honestly the first time I've ever written a topic on this forum so forgive me for any inconvenience I might do. Idea: In the first Xenonauts game your interaction with your squadrons was merely maintenace and logistical services (such as re-arming or exchanging armament, decommissioning aircraft and obviously purchasing and researching new types of aircraft). What if you were able to interact with the pilots of the interceptors themselves, just like a regular soldier, each pilot belonging to the Xenonauts project would have their own feed and info such as names, nationalities, past military services and so on, but pilots could have their own set of skills and capabilities for the commander to take in consideration, some of these could be awareness, vitality (or endurance), survival and cunning. So, would pilots come as more of a challenge or benefit to the player? Well it would be a mix of both, having unique pilots with different pasts and personalities would challenge your capability of management and taking advantage of those same personalities during interceptions, a commander that is capable of selecting the correct individual for the specific task has an advantage over any other aircraft in the air, but it is this same individuality and instability that might pose as an obstacle for less "seasoned" commanders who were used to similar aircraft with exactly the same statistics. What would be the assessments and dangers of having fully interactive, individual pilots? Well to start off, there can be as many skilled pilots as there can be incapable individuals, it is up to the commander to see which skills are more important for his/hers fighting style, pilots would also occupy space in the barracks just as any other regular soldier; there would also be the "unfortunate" instance of brilliant pilots dying due to a streak of bad luck or just a mission that wasn't well planned, but sometimes pilots could survive a crash landing and this could bring a good opportunity for a new type of ground mission, search and rescue. To finish this off, I'd just like to thank all who took their precious time to read my suggestion and I'm sorry if I committed any mistakes regarding the template of the topic or the fact that I might've accidentally mentioned something that someone else already said. Addenum 1: Skills? Awareness: Situational awareness is actually a skill that should be practiced by the player him/herself, but again... Pilots would be required to be extremely perceptive of the environment surronding them and dictate the future of the decisions and options they might take while conducting a mission, pilots with high awareness would be able to dodge and take evasive maneuvers faster than other pilots. Vitality (or endurance): Pilots should take intensive training regularly, individuals unfit to the task wouldn't be able to resist as much shock and G force as trained pilots would. This skill dictates the pilot's chance of survival in case his aircraft is shot down. Survival: Survival training will guarantee the pilot's capability of self management and tending to personal needs in an hostile environment, not to mention that the pilot will most likely be hunted down by search parties conducted by the enemy, thus revealing a catastrophic scenario of capture or even death. A pilot's survival skill would determine the time he would be able to survive alone in an hostile environment until he is rescued. Cunning (optional): At last, a pilot should be an example of ingenuity and wisdom, either from tunning with his own aircraft to meet his needs and extend the efficiency of it's systems to the capability of saving fuel during flight. Addenum 2: Downed pilots? Yes, there would be a chance of survival of your pilot if his/her interceptor was shot down by alien craft, this would be determined by the vitality skill or just a random chance. After the pilot was downed, the player would have the option of risking his men to conduct a rescue operation on the pilot's known crash site, just like a regular mission the player's squad would spawn in a corner of the map and scout the crash site looking for the downed pilot, depending on how fast the player managed to conduct this operation would determine how many enemies are present on the map, the player's objective would be looking for the remainders of the downed aircraft expecting the pilot to be nearby, if the player managed to find the pilot there could be two situations: situation 1, the pilot would be in a good health condition and able to return back to the helicopter by himself or controlled by the player, the pilot would have a pistol for self defense and his/her skills in combat would be randomly generated (so pray for good AP). situation 2, the pilot would be in a critical state requiring the player to carry him/her back to the helicopter.

Am I the only one who thinks geoscpae should be kinda cluttered? I mean, showing the entire world during an alien invasion, it SHOULD look like all hell is breaking loose and you can barely keep track of anything.

Hear, hear - Earth was full of AD sites even at the time of the cold war - oceans not so much, but you can't come 100 miles within a shore and they will fire at you if you're not identified, and have a radar signature. And if they launch fighters, those fire missiles too - so no need for anything fancy like drawing all those fighters. Just draw the "hot spots" (bases/SAMs/anything) as an area on the map, and if the UFO passes over, it takes damage with some minimal anim. Later the UFOs can begin to eradicate such spots - but they also have a learning curve, as we're similarly alien to them as they are to us! And yeah, if I were an alien, I would return to base for repairs if I have sustained structural damage.

First Post and all, had to come out of hiding after reading this topic as it was always something I felt would be nice and immersive. I also struggled with shooting down ships in the beginning-mid game, something like having the region (if relations are positive, or the region isn't too damaged) send up a conventional fighter or interceptor to help out in the mini-game or improve the auto resolve chance (I use auto resolve almost exclusively). This can be scaled for difficulty, IE., it easy-mode an aircraft will always offer to assist as long as the region isn't too far gone, in Normal the fighter only offers assistance if the region isn't too far gone, your auto resolve chance is below X% and it either gives you an extra T1 fighter (maybe t2 after the tech starts to seep into the government's hands) or bumps up the auto resolve chance by X%. I also wanted to mention I agree with the OP that I felt as if base placement should matter, but I just couldn't think of a meaningful way that I think everyone would enjoy.

I don't really need to see a graphical representation of the missile damage. Adding a single line to the bottom of those anomaly messages with a bit of semi randomised text might be enough. Something like 'UFO spotted scouting power plant, local military inflict heavy damage', 'Military base bombed by UFO, local guerrillas retaliate for light damage', 'UFO reported mutilating livestock, local civilians attack for minimal damage'. The messages could be weighted to give a good idea of the state of the conflict. In my examples the local forces descriptive term changes depending on the strength tier of the region. Maybe military > militia > guerrillas > civilians or whatever terms seem appropriate. I would like a log to be available though so you could look back through the event reports. You might be able to use them to make a decision on where to place your next base. if one region is holding out well you could choose to go there if you are struggling to make your battle easier or go elsewhere if they need your support.

If local forces started the game providing a decent amount of support, but as the aliens escalate they provide less (both in absolute terms, as the number/quality of their troops drops to attrition damage, and in relative terms, as the aliens get harder), that could introduce a clock pressure element without an artificial 'end' timer; the longer you take to start dealing with the aliens, the worse the tactical situation gets.

For me personally it would be really nice to see Earth's military forces put up the best fight they can on the screen, and then gradually see them ground down in their hopeless struggle against the alien invaders. I think it's a quite visceral experience to see one allied npc aircraft after another shot down, knowing that the nations cannot replace them at the rate they are losing them. It'd strongly reinforce both the direness of the situation and the importance of the fight I am in. I also see no reason not to integrate player options into this: the allied nations send up planes to shoot down UFOs, you can send additional planes to join into a squadron. The allied nations will, sooner or later, try and deal with a crash site themselves. You can either try to be there first so you get all the loot for yourself, wait until they are there and have some allied NPCs helping you, which will then also demand some of the spoils, or just decide that you don't have the time to deal with it and the crash site disappears eventually having been cleared by the nation it is in. As far as difficulty goes - i actually made a post quite a while ago, where i looked into possibilities of keeping the difficulty adapting to player skill and keep the game engaging and challenging throughout all phases. As far as i know part of the central idea - that the AI adapts to player behaviour - is going to be part of Xenonauts 2, albeit i have no information on how significant that will be.

Pilot's experience can be implanted as an auto-resolve modifier. If successfully shot down the alien aircraft in a manual fight could improve the result from auto-resolve, then the middle/late game would be smoother. It can be something like this: In manual: - Bind the pilot to the hanger to represent the pilot team and other crews who are responsible to a aircraft, so no more click is required. - Survived Pilots in a successful mission may gain exp. - The more disadvantage a pilot's aircraft has comparing to its foe, the more likely he/she would gain exp. - Disadvantage = (tier X foe's strength * number + tier X+1 foe's strength * number + ...) - (tier x friendly's str * number + tier x+1 friendly's str * number + ...) - Set thresholds for Disadvantage in order to define the exp gained ==> low=only healthy survivor from low rank(see below) will gain 1 exp; medium= every healthy survivor will gain 1 exp; high=everyone get 1 exp As the result, in Auto: - the exp a pilot has become a modifier in auto. - set ranks for exp level and then allow pilots gain bonus modifier accordingly in auto: rank\disadvantage low medium high low + n/a n/a medium ++ + n/a high ++ + + - high rank will lose 1 exp if survived with yellow condition and will lose 2 exp if red - medium rank will lose 1 exp only if survived in red - destroyed friendly aircraft will have a 80% chance to have its pilot killed(lose all its exp), if the pilot survive from crash, he/she will still lose 3 exp. Conclusion: I believe by introducing pilots like this will make auto-resolve become more dynamic and help out those players who love the ground mission more, meanwhile it's not complicating the development too much and still able to add some flavor to the game. If the development allows, generating random traits for the pilots when they rank up will add even more immersive experience: Lucky=the pilot has 50% chance instead of 20% to survive if the plane was destoryed. Resilient=if has 0hp after match, instead of been destoryed, the plane has a 10% chance to return to the base with only 1 point of health. Dogfighter=receive additional modifier in auto when fighing against the Fighter type of foe. Tactician=receive additional modifier in auto when on a mission with other pilots who has lower rank. Wingman=receive additional modifier in auto when on a mission with other pilot/s. Engineer=the repairing rate for his/her plane get improved. Trainer=20% chance to add 1 exp for a standby lower rank pilot after gaining exp from a mission. trumaed=after match, if the plane has only red health condition, the plane will still be destoryed. But if the pilot survive the crash, he/she only lose 1 exp, and will never lose more than this value from a mission. Death squad=receive additional modifier in auto if has medium Disadvantage in a mission, but has 60% chance to have its plane destoryed after winning the battle (imagine the kamikaze style) and 100% chance to be destroyed if the battle was lost Nothing=the pilots usually don't get any special traits when they rank up so that the special traits can stay special.

OK let me make this simple. I want to give you money. Right now. How do I do it?

This thread just reminded me of this so much:

I'm imagining Earth's NPCs getting slowly eroded like the barriers in Space Invaders. Try as you might, they all get destroyed after enough time. All you can do is hide behind them for a while and try to hit that 500-pointer flying past. So dismal. I love it. In X1, the simulated alien invasion is essentially a clock. Just like in Space Invaders, it is a stream of random attacks that speed up over time. The player's strategy is to organise a defence that strengthens faster than the attack. There is not feeling to that. I mean, its fun, but it is empty. The key is to give it that living feeling. Maybe something like simulating a few big battles between the NPCs and the aliens. These battles would have an outcome without player intervention, but the player could get involved to swing it the other way. The point is for it to be a series of events that exists in their own right - like a film that you could just sit and watch. Or, you could get involved and feel as though you're making a difference.

What about little animated mini events like this? (Shamelessly photoshopped by me using Advance wars assets :P)