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So I've been stuck on the end game of X Div for months, and it got me thinking about some of the Xeno 2 ideas that were discussed. It got me thinking about Age of Empires 3, and the supply requesting system there. You could argue War of the Chosen did something similar too. Point being, it'd be nice to tell the funding council that you're low on Alloys, or Rookies, or basic guns that the cops have by now, and want to get some of that instead of part of your income. Or maybe this could be what you trade favor for. It could be neat, it might have already been considered, but I've been out of the loop for a while, so it'd be nice to discuss.

In OG X-Com, you could manufacture alien alloys. This is a feature that wasn't present in Xenonauts (I can't remember how nuXCom did it). This did get me thinking about whether it would make sense for there to be certain types of weapons that truly require alien resources, and certain types that can be "built" with domestic earth technology. For instance, you might be able to study Alien Alloys and this allows you to produce an inferior (but still quite good) "advanced human alloy" for lack of a better term. This would be the basis for the first tier of weapon plating upgrades, and would represent the kind of technology that can widely proliferate globally, because it does not require extremely rare and limited Alien Alloys that can only be found in UFOs. Similarly, I was thinking it might make sense to have the earliest tier of "proliferatable" technology be simply optimized human technology. For example, you study the first alien corpses and busted up equipment, and you are able to get to experimenting on what existing technology might work better than off the shelf stuff. This might conclude, for example, that feeding denser tungsten ammunition out of higher calibre weapons is better suited to fighting them. So instead of M16s with Steel ammo, you're now switching to a 7.62x51mm weapon with dense ammunition for your infantry. This then changes your ballistic weapons for "free" (because it's existing off the shelf tech for the most part) and act as your first basic upgrade on the early weeks of the game. It might also be interesting to have these maintained as kind of parallel research tracks - you're choosing whether it makes more sense to focus in on getting your elite troops equipped with the very latest tech, or whether it might make sense to take a research detour into upgrading local forces with some less powerful but mass producible technology. The Xenonauts could still use this stuff in some ways because your rookies may not have enough plasma rifles to go around. An example of the parallel research might be that top tier alien-based guns are Plasma, but top tier human-derived guns are Gauss, which may not actually be superior as it is in X1, but in fact a bit worse, but is cheap and easier for humans to make. Your rookies would be running in with mag-weapons and human-alloy armor, while your elite troops would be running in with alien based exosuits and plasma rifles.

The Research is good and gives you many posibilitys to get your first Upgrades. But I agree with you to upgrade not so fast with Alien-Tech (like the Alien Alloys). There should be a Step between used Human Tech and Alien Tech. You can upgreade Human Materials with lightweight Materials and much more Protection against Bullets. You can upgarde your old Cevlar Vests to Spider Silk Vests. The Idea isn´t new and get testet in the Industry. Spider Silk is lighter then Cevlar, gives a little more Protection and is more flexible then Cevlar. One more Thing is speaking for it to. It´s harder then Steal, which can be an protection Upgrade for the Aircrafts and your Transports too. And you could create a new Fighter / Transport as a Intermediate Step on that Material, like the Racining Cars which uses not erverydays Material in special Area. The Idea with the new Tungsteen bullets are cool too. That could be combined with the Alien-Magnatic Technology. For that you reduce 1 normal Alien Weapon which are mostly in your Storage (like Pistols, Rifles). After you have done the Upgrade for your Standard-Weapons incl. the Aircraftgun to that new Standard, which are not fully Gauss Weapons, the best Weapenupgrade for normal Guns are done. For fully Gauss Weapons or Coil Guns you need the Alien Alloys like in the Game involved. But not only, you have to interrogate Soldier Aliens and Technicans for more advanced Research of the Alien Magnetic Weapons. That´s the higest Ballistic Weapons you can build for your Soldiers and for the founding States. Coil Guns use Ammonation from Alien Allios, which are harder and more effective like Tungsteen and are build up from the full Magnetic-Alien-Weapon-Technology. Laser Weapons are the next Upgrade-Step like now in the Game. They are more effective than the upgraded Standard-Weapons about the high burning Laser Beam, but not so effective like the Gauss Weapons. For the Laser-Technology you need Advanced Ballistics, advanced Safty-Materials (Spider Skil Vests and Armor), Research of Laser Weapon Documents from the founding States and Laserweapon-Prototyps from founding States, which are worked on them. You can upgrade them later to a better Variant, which have a little bit more firepower with new knowledge of the Alien-Power-Tech and Materials. That Weapons can be called Laser Weapons Mk II or similar. They are still under the Power from Coil Guns, because of Safety-First-Device. After that the Gauss Weapons or Coil Guns get availible after the requirements are done. Plasma Weapons you can research at last, after you have done all interrogations, prevouis Weapon-Techs, prevoius Armor Techs and so on. After that you can upgrade your existing Laser Weapons Mk II to Plasma Weapons and build new ones. Plasma Weapons require all the Knowledge you can get from Interrogation, Laser-Weapon-Research, fully Alien-Plasma-Weapon-Reserach and Power as well as Materials from the Aliens.

To be honest I prefer the X1 Caesan than new one, the X2 one is more cartoonish and i still think a slim little grey man is authentically better than some pet-like goblins considering the background settings. X1 alien races did a really good job and i cant see why changing them. I did like to see more human enemies like enemy within, the idea of fighting human terrorists can let you take a break from fighting endless waves of Reapers and Androns, and i really like to see the lore of such organisation if they have any. Also I'm having an idea of doing alien vehicle, so instead of always fighting foots soldiers and grunts, you can also destroy alien APCs and alien Tanks, It would be interesting if the aliens bring their own tanks to the party, although this might be impossible because even human vehicles are cut from the current build.

Contentious topic: realists versus the fantasists. My take is that if you're going to make a sci-fi game, then make sci-fi enemies. There is definitely scope for a theme where the aliens use mundane looking foot soldiers that are cloned humans (plays into the secret war and explains how the enemies can survive in the environment). But I'd be disappointed if there were nothing that looked startlingly alien once you get past the front-line troops. Ideally, the big boss type aliens would be something really monstrous, something that picks up on anxieties around the way insects move or the the visceral grossness of internal organs. In that other thread I think someone mentioned breaking the norm of aliens being two-armed, gun-toting bipeds. Androns could certainly get an update to look like the T1 model from Terminator, although even that has something of the human upper body about it. Sebillians did have a good effect of looking tough, but they also gave off vibes of a crocodile wearing half a suit of armour. I think you've got to lean one way or the other. Either it is a bio-engineered somewhat nonsensical fighter species (like a Reaper) or it is a regular tool-using species that grew up the old fashioned way, in which case it has to have some kind of hand(s) and sensory organs but you can go wild other than that. I think the things to avoid are the drooling types (like in Alien) or the types that are so clearly a blend of some animal and a human (like a lot of Star Wars races).