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The air combat section of Xenonauts 2 has gone through a number of iterations over the past few years, and with the project approaching Early Access we've taken the decision to switch to (an upgraded version of) the realtime air combat mechanics from the first game rather than pursuing the alternative turn-based model I've been experimenting with. I'll explain the reasons for this change below, but let's start by discussing the realtime mechanics and the planned improvements. Realtime Mechanics: We're already working on implementing the realtime air combat mechanics from the first Xenonauts and we're hoping to have them in the next major release (V8). This will also include various supporting strategic systems such as the ability to manufacture advanced aircraft on the Engineering screen, many of which require some extra work now the "classic" base update changed the way Hangars worked. The goal for V8 is therefore to literally have the air combat from the first Xenonauts in the second game as a starting point to test our improvements. We'll probably chuck the same planes and weapons in the game with the same stats, and fit them into the tech tree in roughly the same place, and do the same for the UFO stats. This will make it easier for both us as the developers and you as the community to spot missing features or things that aren't working properly, and it also ensures that the strategy layer has reasonable balance / progression to allow us to test the new features we're planning to experiment with in future builds: Interceptor Components: on the Aircraft screen there are additional slots for new types of equipment that did not appear in the first Xenonauts (armour, engines). One of the main things I want to experiment with is to have fewer types of interceptor but more possible upgrades, making the tech tree more interesting ensuring each type of interceptor can potentially stay relevant for longer. As an aside, it might be interesting to give each aircraft type a Power stat and have the various weapons, engines and armour types draw a certain amount of power. So even basic aircraft can still use highly advanced equipment but can support less of it than the more advanced fighters. Also, if much of the cost of an aircraft comes from its components rather than the aircraft itself, we could re-implement permadeath for the aircraft itself but make most of the equipment recoverable when a plane is shot down. Clouds: these would provide cover on the battlefield and the amount and position of them would be randomised each battle. The idea is that combatants can move through clouds freely but they would block the fire arcs of weapons (and missiles wouldn't make course adjustments while flying through them). Hit / Evade Chances: this an experimental change we're going to try, where combatants have % Evade scores and weapons have % Accuracy scores and Evade modifiers. The Evade roll will no longer be manually triggered and will just play an evade animation (without moving the plane laterally) when an Evade occurs. We'll see if this improves the game and if not we'll return to the old system where weapons would always hit if in range. The % Accuracy on weapons is somewhat required if we're going to add Pilots to the game, as the obvious thing for pilots to do as they gain experience is provide an Accuracy bonus to their weapons and an Evade bonus to their interceptor. The same is true for upgrades like targeting computers or so forth; in the old X1 air combat there's just not many variables to play with and that limits the equipment and upgrade choices we can give the player. Relative Battlefields: in X1 the boundaries of the battlefield are set at the start of the combat, but in X2 the boundaries will always be a fixed distance from the main UFO. This will allow us to set some combats up as a chase where the UFO is trying to get far enough away from your planes to push them off the edge of the map, while peppering your pursuing interceptors with fire from a rotating turret weapon (or relying on their escorts to cover for them). It's not a huge thing but in X1 literally every UFO would just turn and fly towards your interceptors so it'd be nice if in X2 some UFOs tried something a little different. Special Equipment: we'll also likely be experimenting with some other types of equipment that weren't in X1, such as turret weapons that are capable of rotating their fire arcs, or shields. Not sure how many will provide practical but we've got a few ideas! The main intention of these changes is to add a bit more variety to the air combat. One of the problems in X1 was that a combat featuring a particular UFO versus a particular combination of interceptors would almost always play out the same way every time, and there's a few things we can do to mitigate this. The addition of clouds means that the battlefield itself may cause the tactics to be different in different battles, and making weapons use % hit rolls should also ensure a bit more variation (e.g. a combat may play out quite differently if a long range volley of missiles at the start of combat scores 4 hits compared to if it scores 2 hits). Depending on how the combat changes play out, I think the strategic side of the air combat may also become more complex and interesting. In X1 you were continually building steadily more advanced planes and getting rid of the older models once they became irrelevant, but if specific aircraft gain combat experience through a pilot system and are also more upgradeable than before then I can see more interesting choices becoming available to the player. Do you replace your experienced starting interceptors as soon as a better interceptor becomes available, or do you give them some upgrades and keep them around? Or just play aggressively with them until they get shot down, and then replace them? Etc. What happened to the turn-based air combat model? Up until V7 the game featured a turn-based air combat model. The plan was to add increasing complexity to this turn-based system until we got something that was complex enough to be fun, but was ideally a bit faster-paced than the X1 air combat and used a more similar skillset to the rest of the game. The tun-based air combat in the public builds never got to the stage where it became fun. After the last iteration it was obvious that air combat needed proper 2D unit movement (rather than just 1D moving forwards / backwards) if it was to be interesting enough to support the more complex strategy layer that Xenonauts has compared to XCOM or classic X-Com. With overly simple air combat not only are the interceptions more boring, there's also less scope for research and UFO behaviour on the rest of the strategy layer too. Unfortunately, when we set to work implementing this it became clear that trying to handle complex 2D movement in a fast-paced way was going to be impractical in a turn-based system. Obviously asking players to issue orders to all of their planes every few seconds wasn't an option as every combat would take hours, so we instead developed an "automated" move system based on auto-calculated moves towards your target enemy unit (or movement waypoint). We were hoping it would provide a realtime feel while retaining the turn-based system under the hood, but in practice it didn't work well - it was difficult for the user to understand what was going on and it didn't feel as natural or responsive as the X1 realtime system. This is a bit of a shame, as the turn-based system we had planned had been paper prototyped and worked rather well as a board game. But if the fundamental building blocks of the system don't translate well onto the screen, there's point pursuing it further - it seems like we've taken the turn-based model as far as it could go. The best thing to do would just be to pluck out some of the interesting systems and merge them into the X1 realtime system. I certainly think there's some scope to do this. Ideally, I want to try and minimise the amount of time players have to spend pausing / unpausing to try and pick the optimal split-second to do something (like rolling their planes to dodge incoming fire), so making Evasion auto-trigger on a % roll may help a lot here. Adding more variety to the air combat in general should also improve the experience and replayability for everyone, and new ideas such as clouds and the interceptor components actually work equally well under the old X1 realtime system as they do in the current X2 turn-based system. Conclusion: When development began I couldn't see many improvements that could be made to the X1 air combat, which was one of the reasons I was reluctant to use the same system - I felt like I'd be serving up exactly the same thing all over again. After all this experimentation I'm now pretty sure the air combat can be improved, and it's just a question of whether we can improve things a little (by adding clouds, relative battlefields etc) or if we can improve things a lot (by getting hit chances / components / pilots to work). Perhaps if I spent a few more months working on the turn-based system we'd make some kind of breakthrough ... but the game is now approaching Early Access and we need to make a final decision on what system we want to use because the uncertainty is holding back the strategy layer. It's a pretty simple decision; the X1 realtime system currently works better than the X2 turn-based system does, so we'll be going with the X1 system. Anyway, I'm sure some people are going to be very happy with this change and I'm sure some other people will be a bit disappointed. I can understand both viewpoints, but really the most important thing here is that a decision has been made and in the next build we should be able to start balancing and properly playing the strategy layer. Hopefully that at least is something everyone can get excited about!

I have to say this shows why Goldhawk is an amazing studio. There's a real willingness to try new ideas, but without necessarily committing to them - you can admit when something simply doesn't work. And offering refunds to people who specifically wanted now-changed features is very admirable and honest. On the gameplay front, while I liked the bold ideas behind the "shadow war" on the Geoscape and all that, I'm also really pleased with where the game is headed now. X1 is one of my favourite games, and I'm definitely in the camp that will be pretty happy with an improved X1. While the strategy layer is currently an almost exact copy of X1, I'm very happy about the improved tactical layer. There's a bunch of really small improvements but it adds up, and the boxy destructible UFOs are my favourite feature.

I can guarantee you that dealing with runners and campers is a very lame experience. Do you know why people in ego-shooters dont like campers ? Exactly. If you get a good position the defender has all the advantages, while the attacker takes all the risks. Thats even more true in a game like Xenonauts where moving up to a position will cost you TU, and in the moment of the encounter you only have 50% of options left. Think about it like a camper camping for 30 seconds, and the first opponent wandering into his zone will be frozen in place for 30 seconds. Thats what it would be. Camping good defensive position and retreating when you are discovered would be the best tactical approach for the aliens, and the worst gameplay experience for the player. If there is a pacing issue, the map is too big, or the aliens too few. In X-Division we solve that problem that we divide every map into 3 distinct phases: 1. Fight on the map 2. Fight to get inside the UFO 3. Fight for the command room That creates a very nice pacing, since the aliens are so aggressive they will sooner or later find you will mean: 1. All aliens on the map will make a fast or slow approach towards you. Which means a firefight until you killed the last alien. 2.Break and safety until you enter the perimeter of the UFO 3. Once you engage the UFO the aliens will defend the UFO while taking maximum advantage of their defensive position (doors, etc ... ) 4. Break until the command room and relative safety. 5. Firefight in (into) the command room. 6. End of mission This creates a nice pace of firefight - break timings, where players mostly know what to expect. One of the core principles in X-Division. This stands in opposition to Xenonauts, where aliens could literally be anywhere and strike anytime. Making the player always having to advance slowly and methodically, which leads to the pacing problem.

Judging from the recent set of postings from people, I suspect quite a few people didn't know about this thread until the recent kickstarter e-mail (myself included). Looking at the date of the original post, I suspect Goldhawk are already a decent way into programming the changes outlined. Despite this, I will add my own comments albeit late. In context of my views, I haven't played the original and have only periodically played the new game so by no means an expert - hence maybe a little bit of a wishlist on my part but... Most of the following is on the assumption that it is still turn based although quite a bit would work in a non-turn based system. Interceptor Components "One of the main things I want to experiment with is to have fewer types of interceptor" - the common idea is to have three types of interceptors consisting of 1) a small, highly manoeuvrable craft that is hard to hit but is limited on the amount of weapons it can carry. 2) a heavy "bomber" that is slower, less manoeuvrable but can carry heavier hitting payloads 3) the "middle of the road" craft. From a tactical point of view, you may choose a heavy bomber with a couple of the smaller aircraft who do the closing down and acting as a decoy while the heavy aircraft gets into range. This may play out interestingly with "This will allow us to set some combats up as a chase where the UFO is trying to get far enough away from your planes to push them off the edge of the map". Depending on what UFOs you identify as intercepting, you might well choose a different combination of interceptors. One idea to put forth is the idea of having a two pilot interceptor where you have one pilot responsible for flying and the other for weapons. This would be an interesting variation if you go down the path of pilots with individual skills - you might get a better impact from a good pilot and gunner flying together but eggs in one basket etc. Clouds "The idea is that combatants can move through clouds freely but they would block the fire arcs of weapons (and missiles wouldn't make course adjustments while flying through them)." - this makes no narrative sense. Unless the missile is TV-Optic guided like a Maverick anti-tank missile, there is no reason why a heat seeking or radar guided missile would get confused by a cloud. What makes narrative sense would be to classify the clouds in the following way: Light clouds - has a relative small aiming penalty when firing cannons or any weapon where the pilot would presumably put the target in the cross hairs and pull a trigger. Missile act as normal Heavy Clouds - can be used to hide in with high aiming penalties when firing cannons to the point you 'd probably avoid using such weapons. Thunder Storm - RARE. As per heavy clouds but with the added penalty of playing havoc with the electronics and aiming systems of missiles. There could be visual clue that a bolt of lighting will happen in the next turn which may alter what you planned to do next. Special Equipment: "we'll also likely be experimenting with some other types of equipment that weren't in X1, such as turret weapons that are capable of rotating their fire arcs, or shields." - arrrrrrrgh. Turrets on a plane, god no. Logically these turrets are computer controlled so would either be 100% accurate and OPed or as bad as the turrets in Star Wars or the original Battlestar Gallatica which despite being radar and computer controlled never actually hit anything except for its own ship and only actually hit when the craft flew directly at the turret (and even then took several shots before it hit). Special equipment I'd like to see (and I'm not an expert so some of these might already exist) External fuel tanks to increase the range of crafts. JATO rockets - these are used in real lift to help heavy aircrafts take off on shortish runways. In X2 then this would mean the aircraft could go from the back of the screen to 2/3rd up and enable it to be in range for its cannons in one turn. Each rocket is usable once per mission. Parachute - kind of an anti-JATO rocket that means an aircraft close behind the UFO and in danger of being destroyed can rapidly lose speed and drop out of the battle. Usable once per mission and when used almost guarantees you won't be hit upon retreating. "Fake Damage" pod. In WW2, some submarines had compartments which when released would see a load of oil and metal float to the surface and to fake a sinking so that the destroyers above would stop dropping charges and leave. Maybe a device that fakes damage to the aircraft so that the enemy assumes is fatally damaged and will target a different aircraft instead? Cloud Projector - if you are going to have clouds then you could have a projector that shines a light of your ship in front of you and "project" an image of a ship in front of you. This might fool some types of enemy weapons. Pilots "With regards to pilots I'm just thinking that each aircraft gains experience in combat and can level up perhaps three or five times, and gains +Accuracy on its weapons and +Evade on the plane. " - this doesn't make narrative sense. Why would an aircraft get better because it survived a mission?? It would make sense to keep the aircraft itself remain the same (with the same default characteristics if you copied the 3 aircraft types I mentioned earlier) but the pilots improve. As per the soldiers you could have a skill for flying (modifier when avoiding attacks), shooting (modifier for shooting accuracy - different skill for missiles and cannons?) Stamina (less important in a fight, but pilots need to sleep and recover between flights and the better the stamina the quicker to be at 100% when next flying) Bravery which determines if a pilot will fire missiles at the maximum range or is prepared to get in closer when the odds of hitting is maximised. On top of this, some pilots might get random "specials" such as: Quick reactions - bonus to evasion 20/20 Vision - not impacted by aiming penalties in light clouds (see prior comments) Mechanic - is able to make minor repairs in flight and therefore recover a small amount of aircraft health (repairs capped so not OP) Short Sleeper - suffers from Short Sleeper Syndrome which means they need minimal sleep to function. Linking together all my air module comments, upon identifying a UFO in the sky, the first bit of strategy is to decide on the aircraft type (three small aircrafts to take on a drone or scout type ship or some heavy hitters against a bit battleship?), the type of pilots (so you might use one small aircraft as a decoy with a Quick Reaction pilot with a couple of big hitters) and then have a decision on weapon make up. "Obviously asking players to issue orders to all of their planes every few seconds wasn't an option as every combat would take hours" Here is an idea that would make it work - you only actively control a single fighter and at the beginning of the fight at turn zero you issue orders of how you'd want the rest to fight. So if you are fighter one (on the left hand side) you can select fighter 2 (on the right hand side) and give the order: FOLLOW ME + IMITATE with such an order, when you move your fighter forward and shoot a missile, fighter 2 will also move forward and shot a missile. If in the next turn you hold position and shoot your cannons, then fighter two will also hold position and shot their cannons. Other variations could be: FOLLOW ME + FIRE AT WILL - will copy your position but will shoot if a weapon is in range. FOLLOW ME + FIRE AT OPTIMUM RANGE - will copy your position but will shoot once once it has moved a block closer than the maximum range of the weapon. For fighter three (in the middle of your fighters) who might be a heavy hitting fighter, then the order might be: SHOOT AT MAXIMUM RANGE at which point it will advance until in missile range and will fire off missiles each turn until it has run out - at which point it'll advance until it gets into range of it's next weapon (say cannons). Other options could be ADVANCE AND SHOOT - fighter will keep moving forward and will use the most powerful weapon that is in range ADVANCE AS DECOY (PURE) - fighter will make itself the most advanced fighter and will adopt evasive manoeuvres (bonus to evasion - maybe the ship could do a wiggling motion to reflect this) ADVANCE AS DECOY (POT SHOT) - if the enemy shot at a different fighter in the previous turn, it'll fire a weapon to get the enemy ship's attention that round. KAMIKAZE - the fighter is a shot away from dying and is too close to run away then why not Thunderchild it heroically? And congratulations you get the "Ram Raid" achievement. There are other simple commands you can do - "ATTACK NEAREST" if there are multiple enemies etc. Once you have selected the order then the computer will carry it out while you focus on just your craft. Of course there is always the option to radio new orders (that'll come into effect the follow turn) The main complaint is the need to constantly give three sets of (probably identical) orders every turn *yawn*. There is nothing to stop you from creating a set of default battle plans in the hanger that you can select based at the start of the battle. "If an aircraft is shot down shouldn’t there be a chance that the pilot ejected? Perhaps new missions to rescue downed pilots"? (copied from someone else's post) If Chris isn't into the idea of you wanting to rescue your downed pilots in principle then it would be a great one off side mission where the reward is one kick ass elite pilot levelled to however far you are in the game at the time. Edit: an idea I forgot to add: Camouflage painting of your aircrafts. If have a choice of paint colour schemes for your aircraft: Sandy - makes the fighter harder to see and hit if over a desert Blue - makes fighter harder to see and hit if over the ocean Night Sky Black - make fighter harder to see and hit if fighting at night. Snow White - makes fighter harder to see and hit if fighting over the north or south pole. Green / Brown - makes fighter harder to see and hit if fighting over the Amazon rain forest etc. Depending on where your base is might see your fighters doing more combat over certain terrains more so there might be a minor advantage in your colour scheme, although you will probably be punished if painted in Snow White at night and vice versa.

If an aircraft is shot down shouldn’t there be a chance that the pilot ejected? Perhaps new missions to rescue downed pilots?