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Definitely true. XDiv has that rule where Terror Missions have all aliens start outside of the immediate houses, which tends to lead to this interesting "oh crap, where are they, hide, hide!" situation, that, in reality, just makes that first less likely to ruin the player so hard they quit the game. I kinda feel like we needed to either be able to send more people to take those hits (See XCOM Rookie Cloud Cover), or improved armor that can take a couple hits, even if the enemy count goes way up as a result.

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Any odds of more indoor areas, though? Malls and such?

All of the CE mods make for a fantastic experience, however.. X-Division has been hands down the best experience I've had with the genre in general. Reasons: Armor- Armor feels like it does what it says it does. When early armors can only resist ballistic, and successfully negates a couple shots from a Sebillian ballistic pistol, it feels fantastic. When the Wolf description says it can survive a 50 cal, and successfully does so when you test it on accident, it feels fantastic. When you get a suit of Predator, and they can survive 3 rounds of fire from all over the map, it feels FANTASTIC (incidentally, those two predator units still died on stream yesterday, but dang it, they did great until I tried to capture a Xeno Queen in the middle of a Terror Mission). Point being, you knew roughly how much of what kind of punishment your armor loadouts could take, and it allowed for more offensive defense, if that makes sense. Weapons- Everything fires more, at worse accuracy, but for more damage. There are more considerations for damage types, and each weapon has a role it fits very well. HMGs can fire two Suppression bursts, Miniguns dedicate a whole turn to firing 40-120 times, shotguns shred armor and can hit TUs, SMGs can shoot into TUs as well, but can use a shield, pistols are super cheap and portable, rifles can handle sniping or suppression, while snipers mostly just miss and get insulted, but do a ton if they ever do hit. Fights feel very active and alive, plus bypassing armor is a major part of gameplay, resulting in more varied loadouts. This leads to random experimentation, and the likely effectiveness of some fantastically weird builds. Research- The slight randomization of the tech tree unlocks every round is used to great effect here. Every different class, weapon, ufo type, component, etc has different pieces of different puzzles, and it creates a constant reward loop of capture and discovery. Random missions don't feel like you're there for another corvette and 65k, you're there because they might have some new tech, or some components for a new jet, or you want more fibres to upgrade your vehicles. It's a fantastic feeling loop, and probably my favorite part of the mod after armor doing it's job. AI and Randos- The AI is improved in some fun ways, and tends to be, while still predictable, more surprising in it's approaches. They tend to find more reasonable hiding spots, and almost feel coordinated at times. On top of this, there's up to 4x and many civilians and other locals running around, which leads to some amazing moments where you get to see the rest of the earth keeping things together. One of my favorite moments was the other day, when a base gets attacked, and the rifle guys are there taking turns suppressing shielded ceseans over and over, ultimately keeping half the map pinned until we got there and promptly electrocuted everything. You see cops clearing floors during terror missions, and most of the locals pouring into your dropship, trying to leave. It feels so alive. Air Game- Every UFO has different types, different loadouts, and these update for every phase of the invasion. They feel like they came ready, and the kinds of options of planes you can make feels like two sides adapting to each other. Early scouts are fast, so you make maneuverable planes. They start to dodge and get side guns, so you make faster ones. They get air mines, and suddenly dedicated rapid fire dps builds that can get them through their defense gaps feel appropriate, etc. Changing loadouts constantly feels great if the enemies do it too. In summary: It addressed every problem I had with the original. Units dying one step out of a drop ship? Armor does its job. Maps feel dead sometimes? Locals everywhere. Advanced tanks dying to a single shot? Nope, they can take some serious punishment from the front. Units panicking in optimal positions? Noticeable Leadership bonuses. High HP units? Sensible health, but in armor. Air game consisting of being able to survive entirely on Corvettes until Marauders? Nope, you need to adapt to a lot of different UFO styles, and this whole bit is crazy expansive. Plus who can say no to having Robot T-Rexes?

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I'm sorry if this has been covered already, Chris (or anyone who happens to know), but are there any plans for unique maps for certain areas? By this, I mostly am referring to certain cities that we would assume to end up being important alien targets, e.g. Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, and so on and so forth. While that would be neat, I am not necessarily requesting, I'm just curious on what stance, if any, the team has on that.

If gunners can only shoot what they see then that's fine, I can kite enemies back to the dropship. It's not hard because enemies are predisposed to behave aggressively - they will seek my troops out. This is especially true in raids and terror sites. If the issue is the LZ is hot, then the solution isn't to make special cases which are open to abuse beyond their intended value, but to re-jig the map so the LZ isn't hot.

In the "Features" subforum, Chris has elaborated on the new "Operations" feature, which likely will include some measure of this in the game. Not sure if that is directly what you are suggesting or what the planned "Operations" will be entirely, but if you haven't checked it out yet, you should give it a look.

It isn't the behavior of something in the real world which is degenerate. It is the supremacy of using effective, invincible rapid-fire weapons to cut down opponents that have no chance of defending themselves that is degenerate. The moment you have to start introducing special cases to prevent games devolving into giant kiting sessions something has gone wrong.

I'm not really interested in putting turrets on the dropships; it's probably pretty easy to do (I imagine the X:CE guys could unlock the functionality for modders fairly easily) but I don't think it's a good idea from a gameplay perspective in vanilla Xenonauts 2. X-Com is about fighting with your soldiers, rather than machinegunning your enemies with your helicopter. That said I can see it fitting better into one of the longer and more hardcore mods like X-Division.

Hey Chris, thx for this topic.. as i gave many years to X-Division, i want to share what i wanted to create for my dream X-Com style game.. X-Division's main point was about the "enemy" rather then the player even there is tons of additions to the player side. So i want to explain my thoughts one by one.. Enemies..: 1. Variety.. many and different enemies.. as the game got "phases", the player needs to see different mechanics/types of enemies with every phase.. not just with more stats of the same things.. when the player go to the next phase, he should react to new ones as "wtf is that"... he should reconsider his tactics, game play.. he needs to find new ideas to win.. for example, at second phase, i gave power shields to ceasans, at third phase i gave them big bossy xenomorphs.. i tried to add totally new enemies at every phase to surprise player base, then at next phases i added new abilities to the old ones when they updated.. aliens which moves underground... 2. Harder.. all the Xcom style games got the same difficult problem.. the game starts very hard, you get even at mid, and later its cakewalk.. because you got better weapons and armors to resist enemies even they got more stats.. it should be balanced. I tried to balance this within the phases. As the X-Division is much longer then base game, you have some time in a phase enough to simulate the game itself. At a phase, you start very weak. You try to catch aliens, try to survive rather then winning.. then you got the tech and starts to match with the aliens.. then later if you got enough high level items, you can fight and win against them. BUT when you pass the second phase and you start to react with "WTF", you feel weak again.. because they are an alien invasion army.. they are better then you, they should be.. and you cannot surpass them just in some days.. 3. Horror.. this is an important point too. You need to be horrified when you saw them.. it could be the shape, it could be the weapons, or maybe size.. but you need to feel fear.. I feel that at Terror from the Deep.. at that deep sea missions with dart weapons, i feel very weak when i saw that crapman.. i still hate them.. so i added xenomorphs and some more to the game.. they fit so great.. who would not fear when they see a big xenomorph queen?.. I added side robots to androns.. robodog, roboreaper, roboREX.. i added them a repair abilily which you need to kill it again before it's fully repaired.. we hidden them into the boxes as sleep state to wake up late at mission, when you feel just safe as you think you cleaned the map already.. XCE, solver and charon added hiding mechanics to game which is so great to create this atmosphere!.. Possibilities are so much with just some code tricks.. i hope you consider to add them to next game.. 4. Bosses.. for a tough and fearsome enemy, you need to have bosses.. big ones.. even an ultra mega skilled caesan with a huge weapon, would not enough to consider an ultimate enemy.. so i think at least 2x2 sized enemies are MUST.. look to all Xcom games.. new xcom, old xcom, project phoenix.. people are to be excited to see them.. to fight against them.. 5. Gadgets... game should have some nice inventory items for special things.. an energy shield for 360 defence with own HP.. something for hiding.. something for teleporting.. something for more stats, night vision, heat vision..this is not for only players, it will help to create much bigger variety for aliens.. 6. Dodge mechanic.. for fast aliens or fast melee soldiers.. everything should not relay on more damage to survive.. like a weak caesan with tons of HP to survive at late game (they should have really power shields) or a reaper which is just flesh but can stand against plasma cannons.. Players..: 1. More type of weapons with more abilities.. the game engine should allow every type of weapon combination.. like shotgun, flame thrower, grenade launcher, one shot launchers, mines (which i never use).. more shot options.. auto-shotguns, miniguns, multiple rocket launchers, energy based unique ones (like you got 30 energy rounds at your magazine, you should able to use a special laser shot witch consumes 10 charge from 30.. same weapon could have a autofire option for 1 shot 1 charge and single shot for 1 for 3 charge.. so you can have a heavy laser which can melt armor, or a sniper with autofire ability.. this is my dream for energy weapons but any of the xcom games done this..).. 2. Different type bullets for same weapons.. a weapon should able to use different kind of bullet types with different damage types.. 3. Balanced melee fighting system.. cool melee weapons with some unique abilities.. combined with special armors.. there should be a reason to carry a blade or knife when you can just spam shotgun.. could be combined with stealth mechanic.. 4. Unique weapons per weapon types.. lasers can have gattling minigun, plasma can have a short range cannon with aoe... Plasma based laser magazines.. acid bullets.. blabla.. 5. New weapon versions for every phase.. every phase should have its own grenade, rocket, plane, magazine types.. so player should choose some of them for research in limited time.. 6. Randomized research.. this is great for replay value.. new xcom got this right.. old xcom got it right.. you get something and when you research it you get something new.. with possibilities.. like you got a caesan weapon officer alive, at every research you can learn one type of laser weapon.. some surprise, hard to get, low chance researches.. why not?.. please at this mechanic to modding at least! 7. One time manufactures.. able to erase manufactures at modding.. same to research.. a research or manufacture should able to lock ro release another manufacture or research.. 8. Vehicles.. at least small mechs with human pilots.. could be used as heavy armor with "unique" weapon branch.. they should able to use at least 2 weapons.. Game..: 1. More Phases.. at least 1 more then x-1.. 2. Non-Ufo missions.. random missions which you got different goals without ufo.. ---------------------- Those are main reasons for X-Division and some of them could not be happen because the game did not allow me.. I hope those helps.. thx!

I'm glad you thought of this thread, it was something I was thinking of starting myself, but I've been spamming the forum a bit too much already. One of my favourite Xe1 mods is Tactical Armouries as it did a great job of using asymmetric weapon upgrades to give each tier its own strengths, which is something discussed on this forum that would be good in Xe2, e.g. lasers more accurate and high damage but lacking auto (hence best at long range), ballistic retain flexible fire options, mags have better burst fire and armor penetration (and the mod also gave the aliens advancements in armor as the game progressed), plasma had very high damage but low ammo and less fire options. Kabill also tweaked the way suppression works so armored sollies/aliens can actually be suppressed, and encouraged pistol use by making inventory swaps and grenade use while using two-handed weapons cost more TU, and they only took up 2x1 inventory space rather than the entire belt. All of this, with solly carrying capacity also being reduced, really made you think about what each one is carrying (overall a great middle ground towards some of the potential changes discussed for Xe2 while still using the basic mechanics of Xe1). X:CE - simple things like mousewheel support and sort by column in base, faster alien turns and improved Lore+ was great. Any amount of extra effort put into the story and feel of the game rather than just the engine and game balance help with a more immersive feel, and give you more ability to create something noticeably unique right from the get go. Enhanced Crash Sites - you have already mentioned elsewhere you want to make UFOs destructible (which Fire in the Hole! did for Xe1) so we don't need to talk about that, but I liked it how with this mod there could be a big fire already on the map, which actually affected which route my sollies had to take on approach to the craft, which helped make up for lack of map diversity until I started using some of the other maps, and even gave some smoke cover to one or both sides, making it more replayable. It also made the whole thing more realistic and immersive. I'd love to see using chunks of a UFO that has broken up on impact as cover. Anything that makes assaults on the same UFOs different on each mission is good. 120 degrees view angle , as it was annoying having keep right clicking to look around a corner here and there, and repeat this every few steps, rather than just incorporate a mechanic for sollies' peripheral vision, their constant "heads on swivel" so to speak. They still had to turn to shoot of course. Hold the Line - made ranked officers more important for defense against psionics since it reworked the morale system. Projectile Overhaul - made the game look a lot better, with projectile look and movement that matched the weapon type. Laser bolts were a bit buggy though.