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Even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to once again criticize tactical maps we currently have in X2. Many of them still feel like shooting galleries instead of real places. Maps need more: Verticality Visual story telling. Have the map itself say something about what has happened. Does this place feel like a real place or a map in a game? Larger, more interesting buildings with many floors. More urban maps. (tends to be more interesting than a random jungle) Variable pacing: large open areas -> tight close quarters. Better "paths" through an area with sense of progress. Need of surveying the area -> Seeing an alien in a third floor window - how can I get there? Completely different map layout styles within a single biome so they wouldn't feel so samey. Having more complex maps will really benefit the game by giving players more interesting scenarios to play through. I checked the old X1 maps I made back in the day. You can maybe see and feel the vibe in these screenshots I'm looking for:

> I hadn't encountered that before in Unity games, but I suppose it makes sense. Wouldn't that make it easier to upgrade though? Yes, it does in general, however the issue is mostly in the third party plugins we use that also then need to be upgraded. Personally I would like to upgrade, even if just for the tooling and speedups that Unity now has. The problem is mostly that we simply don't have the budget at the moment and given the length of development the focus is and was on finishing the game. > About the hooks: if I want to have code execute every time the game uses a specific method I'd need to patch that method, and I haven't found many hooks in that native C# part. For instance, I would like to execute something when the strategy screen is loaded, but there is not something like an event I can subscribe to (or is there?) The core of our game is an ECS framework I developed that you will find under the Artitas namespace. The `World` class in this namespace is the general entry point to managing an ECS instance. This framework has two aspects: high level communication through messages inheriting from `IEvent`, which any `System` can listen to by annotating methods with `Subscriber` - and low-level event handling based on changes to entities through `Family`. In general we setup mechanics in `System`s, with each System listening to certain events and setting up various Family-s to respond to events. A System can listen to any event, define its priority, and if needed stop event propagation. To get an overview of compositions of entities we use, look into the classes that end in `Archetypes`. tl;dr: look at the inheritance of `IEvent` for all the high level communication you can hook into. A `World` can have `System`s registered and unregistered at runtime - the main way in which we want to support modding. The core entry point of the game is `XenonautsMain`, with `StrategyScreen` & `GroundCombatScreen` being the core entry points for each section of the game. In those Screen classes you'll find the setup of the World and its Systems. > Executing Harmony.PatchAll gave a System.MissingMethodException about System.Reflection.PropertyInfo.op_Inequality. But for some reason I was being quite dumb and was building against .NET Framework 4.8 instead of 3.5 (Harmony luckily still supports that), so changing the build target actually solved it Yeah, that'll be it :D. I'd love to be able to upgrade :')

For me, it would be perfectly acceptable and I think I'd prefer my camera not moving on its own even at the cost of missing something sometimes. Your point is valid though, but that situation wouldn't happen all the time, only sometimes, and I could live with that. I do realise that some (or even most) people might not like it that way, so adding it as an option is probably the best, everyone can decide for themselves. Or, if you made it possible to zoom out in the tactical, not moving a camera wouldn't be a problem at all. I just don't like it, it obstructs the view, but I can still see what's going on near the edges of the screen, it blinks on and off as @Skitso mentioned. I really don't think it's good for anything. As for the sounds - if there are some general sound my soldiers are to far away to locate, I don't think it's necessary to even play them at all and any invisible actions during enemy turn could be simply accelerated - I don't really care that someone opened the door at the other side of the map, it's not relevant at the moment and I'll find out that door is open when I get there, so every time the game wants to display that "hidden movement" screen, it can just not move the camera anywhere, calculate the outcome of an action and update the map without telling me it does that, because I can't see it anyway. It would make enemy turns shorter too, so less waiting for my next move. OK, maybe when that action takes place close to my soldiers you do it the normal way (minus the hidden movement). During enemy turn, especially early in the mission, I mostly see nothing at all, because almost all the aliens are far away, so I just rather look at my soldiers or explore their immediate surroundings that I can actually see to plan my next move. It's not that much of a big deal for me, but as I said above - if something is to far away to be seen anyway, there's no point in automaticly moving camera there, and if it's close and I can see it, I'll probably move camera to see it anyway. Or the game could move the camera where action is right now, but still let me reposition it if I wanted to. I do enjoy the game, it's obviously unpolished right now, but that's expected at that stage. Those things above are some minor annoyances, not a deal breaker at all; the most annoying being not having access to menu at all times and hidden movement, though I could probably live with that hidden movement thing - but menu really needs to be available always, eg. if someone has to quit the game during enemy turn or air combat etc. they shouldn't be forced to Alt+F4 (and many people probably don't even know that shortcut anyway these days). Overall, I'd say that playing X2 is fun, but it's... I don't know, cumbersome at times, eg. whole soldier management in bases feels like that (equiping them and assigning to dropships and then placing them in dropship), just like there's to much clicking and to many screens to go through to get things done. The biggest problem I have with X2 is how missions are right now, the worst being alien bases. Downed UFOs are OK - they are short and have a simple objective, though I think maps could use some more variety (eg. when they crash in rural area, it could not contain a barn sometimes, but just an empty field and some trees an bushes for a change). The least interesting missions for me however, are alien base invasions. They are always the same and feel more like a chore after a while. I've been thinking why is that, and came to conclusion that it's because the maps themselvs are simply not fun. They are all pretty much the same and it doesn't look like we're in a proper base, it's just a collecion of some randomly connected rooms with random stuff inside. I know it's an alien base and they don't necessarily follow human logic so it might be OK for them, but it's not fun to play on that kind of map. It should have some meaningful structure that we could see - storage rooms, laboratories, security checkpoints, generator rooms, UFO hangars, barracks, holding cells for captured humans, command center etc. Also, right now we can pretty much go around in circles and play cat and mouse with aliens, while this should be a propper assault - so we should clear room after room and advance, and then encounter another line of defence (because they should be at least somewhat prepared for us, or at least try to mount some defences as we attack) and so on and then reach our final goal and secure whole base. I think more linear structure of the map would help with that, like we enter at one end and have to reach the other end, there could be some branching paths of course or multiple ways to reach certain point, but not everything connected to everything randomly. Those missions could also use some more objectives, not just "kill everyone". I mean, securing the base should be main objective, but maybe - I don't know - aliens are trying to evacuate some important stuff or personnel in a UFO and we have to stop them before they escape, or they activated some force fields and we can't get to command center so we have to blow up a generator or two to disable them, or they have some humans captured and we have to free them quickly or they get executed - stuff like that. The most fun mission to play for me was that one when we have to get data sticks from Cleaners office - it was cool because it's different, we have a meaningfull objective and some soft timer that doesn't make us fail if we're not fast enough. We need more missions made like that.

Please don't tie it to the difficulty setting and make it an option instead (on/off/vague/cursor hover only). Maybe where it defaults could be set by difficulty setting.