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This will be my final feedback for now since my playthrough has come to an end. This is all my own opinion of course. What I like, someone else might dislike, and so on. Anyway, here we go. I'm 100% sure I'm going to miss stuff, but let's start with the good stuff: New 3D engine (just wish the terrain wasn't that flat) New animations Awesome new music The combat in general is enjoyable. Much like Xenonauts 1 I like that UFOs are slower on the geoscape. Feels more realistic I like that the planes now track UFOs correctly I love that you have to equip planes now which makes them more individualized More to build with the engineers, which leads to more customization overall Combine different armor parts Armor will protect your men The new vehicle (MARS) is cool. And I like it's cheaper to repair when destroyed, instead of having to build a new one The economics of the game are much more brutal. I love it It seems you have to sell stuff to survive. This I like The aliens look cool, I like the brutes Reaper zombifying looks way cooler UI improvements when recruiting, now you see their face even The grenade arc looks better, and it looks like you are throwing something in a 3D world Xenopedia UI, like the extra info tabs you get in the top right corner when looking at a subject The alien base looks cool. I like the small flanking corridors General writing (Xenopedia stuff) Now to some negative stuff: Reaction fire galore, which slows down the game. Will expand on this below Alien base central command (second floor). It's way too open, and suicidal (frustrating) to attack Baseball grenade (throwing grenades in a straight line) No increased accuracy when crouching (In general, removing complexity is bad) Can't close base (alien) doors. I understand why this was changed from a gameplay/balance viewpoint, but it makes little sense otherwise. The door only got an open button? While the game is 3D, shooting seems to be "hitscan". The animation for the bullet feels fake, it's just there for effect. I have seen bullets pass through objects, units, and other things, that should have blocked the shot if it was a true 3D-rendered object in the world. Think Silent Storm game No date (months, years) on the geoscape. Feels very nondescript just having day XXX The setting. I like it, but I prefer the cool 80s NATO vs. Russia in Xenonauts 1 Why do we have pilots, when the pilot gets deleted with the plane if you decommission it? It seems like a pointless addition if that is that they are going to be Less detail in the environments, especially when looking at the human base tiles Beyond what is said here, and what has been said in this thread earlier, my main issue with the game is that it seems the best way to play is to play defensively/passively on the battlefield. And that seems to apply to the aliens as well. With that I mean - hunker down and wait for the aliens to come, and unleash hell on them with reaction fire. The aliens use these exact tactics as well, except for the suicidal half-blind Sebellians. One of the cool aspects of OG X-com, Terror from the Deep, Apocalypse, and Xenonauts is that there is a lot more movement involved, especially in TFTD. You move around on the map in these games, which leads to cool stuff, like actually having to explore which gets you to see different kinds of buildings/terrain. And it forces you out of your comfort zone. Phoenix Point and Battle Brothers (even if it works differently) have the same problem as Xenonauts 2. Phoenix Point has very small maps, and often more than half the map is already revealed when you load in. Often you spot enemies at the first turn too. There is no exploration, no tension, you go from geoscape to action immediately - and the best decision is just to hunker down and wait for the aliens. Now Battle Brothers are designed around this concept, but on some missions, you have to move around, and I always found these parts very enjoyable. Walking through a forest, looking for bandits, or some other horrible beast. After a while, the passive nature of Battle Brothers gets to me. It feels more like chess at times than an immersive game set in a harsh medieval fantasy world. Anyway, I find exploration and the tension that comes with that is currently missing in Xenonauts 2 (not entirely), much thanks to the incredibly punishing reaction fire (and small maps). This works both ways - the best option is to let the aliens make the mistake of moving, instead of you. That is all. I'm looking forward to future releases!

I find accelerated weapons definitively not worth the cost. They were barely worth it when you got an infinite amount of them for a single cost, now it actively feels like a trap. Now that we have to manufacture aircraft equipment individually not only do I have less money and resources to spend on luxuries like accelerated weapons but more importantly I don't have time in my manufacturing schedule for them. I found myself constantly reevaluating my manufacturing priorities based on what new research I built and what new fresh hell I found myself against in either the ground or air combat. I found I could make it to laser weaponry from basic ballistics without too much problem with heavy use of snipers, demo charges, and shotguns for UFO assaults.

Meh. I'm no tactical genius, and I don't really blame the game. It's just not fun gameplay. So, how would you tackle the turrets? You can't close the doors. You can't move away from the door after opening them. You can't shoot them, you can't grenade them. Everything triggers reaction fire. It's either smoke, but that cripples your own aim. Shield? I don't get the shield in Xeno 2. It does not absorb damage the same way as in Xeno 1.

I have attached a strategy layer save from my v24 save on day 300, roughly 2 weeks before I lost via orbital strike. I hope the save helps contextualize the points I will make about the game in it's current state, particularly the air game. I started this campaign with the test out the viability of shields/pistols and aircraft guns and see if using them enabled fun new playstyles. Let's start with shields and pistols, this was a failure imo. In short I don't think they are a viable option in the current version of the game and need more consideration. Both the shield and pistol have their own issues that combined make for a poor toolset. The shield is heavy and can only 'block' shots from one side, even that is giving it the benefit of the doubt as with the change from X1 you can still take significant damage on first shot even if the shield is hit. This means that the cramped corridors of alien bases and UFOs where I would need the shield the most are still better suited to someone with a shotgun who at least provides some kind of threat. That brings me to the pistol. I am not sure what purpose it serves. The 15 round magazine and poor accuracy/range makes me think it should be a rapid fire weapon of some sort but it costs too much TU to fire. Not to mention getting close means that I am more liable to killed by alien fire on their own turn or block my other soldiers from killing the alien. This issue got worse as the campaign went on as there is such a long gap between regular shields and assault shields so you quickly feel like even the theoretical armor bonus of shield doesn't do much for your soldiers. Nearly every time I used a shield soldier I found myself wishing I had someone with a shotgun and within the first 100 days I wound up doing just that and never looked back. On the aircraft guns side, the results were mixed. Tactically they are a great option and opened up the possibility of a single wing of fighters being able to take 2 air combats and win, which is certainly not an option with torpedoes. Fuel becomes the major limiting factor and you have to juggle your aircrafts health more which adds a little more depth and fun to the air combat (I am one of the crazy people who enjoys the air combat). The problem is on the strategy layer. The cost of outfitting your angel interceptors with laser cannons is double the cost (2x250k + 1x100k vs 2x150k) and nearly double the cost of the interceptor itself as the armor is necessary when you can only use your weapons in range of the UFO guns. That combined with the extra refit time from health and fuel means you are definitely cutting costs somewhere to make this tactical approach workable. This is made worse by the fact that torpedoes have less need for upgraded fighters so you have more leeway on when to upgrade your fleet vs going the guns approach. Put simply while most air combats were made easier by using guns over torpedoes that advantage was far outweighed by the strategy layer concessions I had to make for that approach. I think both the pistol and shield need something. For the shield I was thinking an innate resistance to reaction fire (or maybe fire in general) to simulate the extra difficulty of hitting the few parts of a soldier not covered by the shield. For the pistol I think removing stun guns entirely and making the pistol able to accept both lethal and non-lethal ammunition would be a huge bump in it's flexibility and give it a real purpose. Each new pistol would give you an equivalent non lethal ammo option (ie stun laser rounds) which would help with scaling alien hp and the advanced stun research could allow rifles to have the same flexibility. I don't have a great solution for aircraft guns other than changing the cost, which isn't interesting imo. Another option is increasing the fire rate so you can kill UFOs much quicker with the same amount of ammunition which will help with the health issue but not fuel. You could boost the speed of fighters with guns which might help with the fuel from both reaching the target and the actual dogfighting. user_day_300_manual_save-122.json

Very good point about the exploration and tension! Couldn't agree more.

I watched a new video. Impressions: buildings are very fragile. An explosion from a hand-held multi-shot grenade launcher destroys brick walls in a large radius. Getting a grenade out of your pocket, pulling out the pin, swinging and throwing it at the target - all this takes less time than pulling the trigger of a machine gun and firing three bullets from a machine gun. Scientists, having received the corpse of an alien, somehow determine the reaction of an alien, the accuracy of an alien, the courage of an alien and other properties that can only be determined on a living alien.

IMO the most difficult parts of the cleaner base is the initial push and the final room. For the initial push I wait a few turns in the initial area to see if the cleaners will push through themselves and get done by reaction fire. Once that is done you have one soldier open the door and the rest far behind. If you find an enemy then have one of the soldiers out of line of sight throw a smoke grenade at your exposed soldier (which won't trigger reaction fire) and then pull that scouting soldier back in hopes they don't get killed. You have to scout very carefully and once you fine a turret use the large blast radius of grenades (I prefer the demo charge over the regular grenade before you hit alenium explosives) as guns below laser don't do much to the armor. For the final room I open both side doors and only shoot at cleaners who are facing the other way. For example if I open the right side door and there is a cleaner facing it I shoot at them with the soldiers from the left side door. Not only does this not trigger reaction fire but the soldier will turn around so I can then shoot at them with the right side soldiers. I try to ignore the turrets in this room initially and hope I can line of sight them but very often I fall back on the strategy of smoke grenade and pray. Chris mentioned that there was a bug that caused too many turrets to spawn which is great news but this will probably be the most difficult mission to do once we go back to 8 starting soldiers.

The first mission does not seem too difficult because: the aliens mostly stand in one place and do not run to attack. There is always time and opportunity to choose a convenient position for shooting from a long distance (out of the alien's field of view), and there is always time and opportunity to choose a convenient position for throwing a grenade (a shot from a grenade launcher) near the place where the alien is standing (without showing up in the alien's field of view). There is also always time and opportunity to realize the numerical advantage of soldiers over any open doors. But this tactic is too long (it takes more time than 10-20-30 minutes) and the player gets tired after several such long battles. And I would also increase the number of soldiers the player has (for similar missions) at least up to 12. So that the soldiers can be divided into three groups and control the corridors on the left, right, front.

In order to play well, you need to study the mechanics of the game, the physics of the game space, the capabilities of aliens and your soldiers, the properties of weapons and shelters. All this is achieved through numerous trials and errors. Can a newcomer predict how far an alien grenade will fly? How quickly will the aliens react to your movement with a return shot? The way we see this fight on the video is how everyone who has recently started playing this game will fight. Also, the mechanics of Xenonauts 2 differs from the mechanics of Xenonauts 1, so everyone will have problems at first. And if you add a timer to the battles, then even those who wait for hours for a convenient moment for a well-aimed shot will also have to play at about this pace. I can capture an alien base with 1-2 soldiers, but spend a day of real time on it. And I can capture the alien base in 10-15 minutes, but spend 10-12 (or more) soldiers on it. It all depends on how long I agree to wait (prepare) a convenient moment for a shot.

That is in general my go to tactics for Xeno. But the problem is that I can't close it when I fail to kill the things on the other side, which happens often enough. When you fail, your whole team is trapped there open for retaliation. I know it happened at times too in Xeno 1. Sometimes the engaged aliens would come through the door and grenade you. But yeah, I admit, It's not the most careful play. I learned a lesson. I have to utilize smoke much more, but it's also a question of carrying more smoke.

In general, the mission seems a tad too tough, especially the turrets. But you could have managed by playing a more carefully for example by moving all units behind a door, end turn and open it at the beginning of the next turn, maximizing your firepower.

I was able to see it at a slow speed. However, I can't say anything about this because I have no experience of throwing objects indoors. In this situation, I no longer like the fact that the viewing angle of the soldiers is 90 degrees, although the soldiers can turn their heads in all directions. I would suggest adding such a tactical technique (control button) to the game as an "observation". In one mode, the soldier turns his head and sees at an angle of 180-360 degrees, but not too far. In another mode, the angle of view is 45-60 degrees, but the soldier sees very far. In the middle mode, the soldier sees as it is now in the game. Switching the "surveillance" mode takes time. It seems to me that the problem of grenades in the game is due to the fact that for weapons, the scale of the firing range (in comparison with reality) is reduced by 10-30 times. And for grenades, the scale of the throw range is reduced by 2-3 times. In general, I do not yet know what to say about the range of grenades in the room. Perhaps a real ballistic formula is used, and not reduced proportionally in scale by the throw range. (The height of the arc should be as when throwing at 20-50 meters), and the flight range is 2-3 times less.)

Lol, it happens so often in Xenonauts, and other X-com like games. Mission start out well, then suddenly you take 65% losses to one alien or something like that. You can feel the rage building.