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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/12/2023 in all areas

  1. I just finished making a document with lots of data for how many shots a shield user can take as opposed to a normal soldier with no shield. This is tangentially related to my other topic I made the other day about making shields have a better "game feel". This document is free for anyone to use and it has no conclusion in it, so anyone reading it can come to their own conclusions. I made a lot of assumptions and my equation for my data is potentially very wrong. I also only took into account enemy weapons up to the Alien Mag-Rifle, soldier armors up to Guardian armor, and only used the default shield as I don't have the stats of any of the equipment past those. If anyone knows the stats of any equipment past the ones I have, then feel free to tell me the damage, armor penetration, and armor destruction of the weapons and tell more the armor of the armors and advanced shield. If I made a significant math error as well, feel free to shoot me a message here or on the Xenonauts 2 discord. I hope this might make discussions more about the hard math more than the shields just "feeling" bad to use, so the balance issue of shields can be addressed much more easily. And before anyone says, I know I put way to much effort into this for something that might not be used at all. But I'm proud of it, so that's the thing that matters the most. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p4Vfc1unY_59aSDWYPETrUEthFNrvfeh_hlbXt0fSXQ/edit?usp=sharing
    1 point
  2. Hello Devs and Goldhawk Interactive: Thank you for making your demo open to the public for feedback. That shows a great amount of trust in your userbase. I hope you are not disappointed! I played through the demo once on Steam and I had some thoughts as a new player to Xenonauts (but someone who played UFO Defense and ...the one that took place underwater that I don't like to talk about). -My game did crash in the middle of the tutorial. I hope you are getting bug reports! It happened right after I killed the first wave and before the second wave was to show up (it worked the second time) -The narrow view amount that each character can view feels bad. Is it 90 degrees? It seems like they should be able to see more into their periphery, and at least they should be able to show the terrain in there periphery, even if they can't see creatures in their periphery due to combat vision or something. Games should provide interesting choices, but when almost all of your moves are move+look+look, there is not choice, just a prescripted way on clicking. -Related: It seems weird that when we drop, we don't have ANY idea where anything is. It seems like we should have at least some of the map visible (even if fog of war has already closed in). -The strobing "hidden movement" screen is unpleasant. I know it's a throw back to the original x-com, but in the original x-com it didn't blink on and off. May I recommend 1) letting us move the camera around the map while enemies move so we can plan, and 2) replace the blinking hidden movement screen with a bar along the bottom or something that says "hidden movement". There's no reason to cover up the screen. -I got a rescue mission which ended abruptly. One of my characters was surrounded, three move characters were closing in on an enemy and it ended, no injuries. If that is going to happen, we should see the enemies teleport away. Otherwise it stands to reason we'd need to fall back to the ship or eliminate all hostiles. -I'd like tool tips or explanations for the many abbreviations used in game. It would also be helpful to know what the various ranks are and the order. -It'd be nice to see the portraits in the soldier management screen (even if we have to mouse over them like any other screen). Also, during tactical missions, I think there should be a small portrait (perhaps their rank insignia too) instead of just a gun; if I have a squad of two types, there's no way to know who is what, since their guns are all the same and their numbers change every mission. -The Medkit use is a bit fiddly. I let a player die out because I couldn't figure out how to use it. It wasn't until I got a second character there (I thought she couldn't use it on herself), that I realized you can't click on the square like other items, you have to click above the square. Related, it took me a while to figure out how to cancel grenades, it would be lovely if a right click did it. I have noticed that sometimes escape works to cancel out, sometimes it doesn't (dialog boxes). Sometimes enter or space moves forward, sometimes it doesn't. Adding more keyboard functionality would really help with accessibility. -What are the yellow numbers above people's heads? A google search says that in X1 they are psionic damage, but it happened when soldiers (and aliens!) ran through smoke. That could have an explanation somewhere that I possibly missed. -The maps seem flat. In the original x-com there were stairs and levels. I played xcom2 from firaxis and that did a great job of making levels feel meaningful. There's nothing like the feeling of setting a sniper on the top of a building in cover to snipe everything that people can scout, or getting an assault caught in an alley, and sending a bunch of other soldiers up to the second floor to all rain death down on the aliens on the ground. I know this is early access and probably more maps are coming, and I hope that there are many designs of maps, some open middle, some alleys with buildings on each side, some flat, some with many perching places etc. It can be a fun puzzle to navigate the physical environment. -The farm map also seemed computer generated. One of my favorite parts about x-com and firaxis' xcom 2 is seeing familiar environments, hunting aliens through the familiar environments, and, let's be honest, destroying those environments. I grew up on a farm and the farm seemed to be randomly connected pieces. There was a cabbage patch, a field full of desks, a paddock (?), a bunch of hay bales on a stone floor, and a building full of water bottles. It seemed disjointed. I understand this is a beta, so I hope there is improvement on making the environments feel more like earth. -It seems that people once rescued should run to a rally point, like our ship maybe? Perhaps you can use that relay system that you mentioned in a blog for monsters but adapt it for humans--have a "safe point" that humans try to get to once rescued by the soldiers. They ran randomly around the map and frequently were killed by hostiles. Overall the graphics are very beautiful. The environments have colors that all fit together and look almost pastoral. The smokes and the trees animations look great. The portraits are great! I can tell that a lot of work went into these. I wish I had known about the kickstarter! There are some great lines from the insufferable scientist (the aliens have sub human intelligence, like an engineer). I like the aerial combat, it's simple. Having mutliple ways to end a mission is GREAT, instead of hunting that last alien around the entire map (who is always in a corner overwatching), just holding on to the ship for several turns is amazing! Also, I really love the end of tactical mission "level up" screen! It's really well designed and has lots of useful information. It also feels great to see how everyone improved (and bad in a good way to see who was lost). The tutorial was great, too! I was familiar with most of the mechanics already, but not all of them, and it was quick, enjoyable, and effective. Please forgive the wall of text. I really enjoyed the original x-com and firaxis' xcom 2, so I had a lot of ideas while playing. I had fun playing xenonauts 2's demo, and I am cautiously optimistic to see the game develop. It's been on my wish list for several months now and I eagerly (and patiently) await updates.
    1 point
  3. I have a long-ish thought on one of the mechanics here. Just a preface, I am a long time XCOM EU and XCOM2 (and long war and long war 2) player. So I am new to the xenonauts world in general. Let that be the grain of salt Here's the main thought: These games suffer a LOT from the massive gap between save scum and no-scum (ironman-ish). You know nothing going into a mission. Let's count all the major things you don't know: 1. You don't know the types of enemies you'll be facing 2. You don't know even the general placements of enemies. 3. You have no idea how many of them there are. 4. You have no idea what the map even looks like (despite a helicopter having just flown you into the area?!) 5. You have no idea what is inside various buildings 6. You have no idea where the objectives are. 7. You have no idea where to send most troops or any reasonable distribution/defensive areas to take Then guess what, if you play some of the mission, and then decide to restart. What percentage of those things do you now know? ALL of them! (or at least some to most, depending on how far in you got) I believe that this is a huge problem as it more or less forces players into a binary decision of playstyle even though there are more than 2 types of players (you either save-load or you don't). Fact A: Some players love ironman and love not having info. The game meets their needs. Fact B: Some players love ironman but hate not having any of that info. The game does not currently meet their needs. Fact C: Some players love loading saves, and love not having the info on the first go, but love having the info on the second go. The game meets their needs. Fact D: Some players love loading saves, but they want the info to stay hidden even on future loads, so as to not feel "cheaty". The game does not currently meet their needs. Fact E: Some players love things the way they are, but wish more of that information was available prior to the mission in the first place, and didn't require playing and save-loading to get said info. The game does not currently meet their needs. (I am somewhere between player D and player E, for what it's worth.) But there's this huge gap between loading a save and not. Because once I have ALL that information, the mission is now MUCH easier, and maybe all I really wanted was a second try or maybe I just wish that info had already been available in the first place, since it's achievable simply by loading the game anyway. How do we solve this issue? Some ideas in no particular order: 1. Give the player vision of the maps layout/obstacles, but still under fog of war (not building interiors). This makes sense anyway, you just saw it all from the helicopter! 2. Give the player more info on enemy count/makeup either prior to the mission itself or upon landing. This again could make sense since you saw some aliens chillin around the place as you flew in and landed. (i don't know if the game already has this mechanic in place or not via technology. But either way, it's the issue of "info available from save-loading") 3. Give an option for "semi ironman", which allows for restarting a map completely from the beginning, at will, but it's randomized again. So you don't know everything about it. But now you'll at least know the enemy types and rough numbers, and you get another shot at it. 4. Other types of ways to feed the player information from the list of 1-7 above *without* needing a load a save to do so. This in turn means that loading a save isn't as much of an egregious advantage. This may also in turn require difficulty of the game to be slightly higher. In closing, I believe the difficulty differential between information pre and post save-load is too drastic, and it forces players into a binary playstyle that doesn't fit some players (myself being one of those middle people). Ironman by itself is not a catch-all option, and is too extreme for many players, and those of us who avoid ironman are left with few options other than forcing ourselves to NOT save-load, which approaches being ironman anyway, or save-loading and getting massive advantages.
    1 point
  4. I'm making another topic on shields, this time describing my grievances with the current system that I now feel after debating with others online and doing some of my own research (see my topic on Demo v3.03 shield data for that research). I said a couple of days ago that I really enjoyed the current shield system and that it mostly buffed the shield compared to how it was in X1. I still agree with that in most regards; however, I feel the new system is inherently flawed and the way shields become their most effective is when you have a lot of armor to begin with. The shield does not inherently allow a soldier to survive x amount of hits, but here, shields seem to become more effective as your soldier gains more and more armor. Here's an example. If a soldier with 60 hp is already getting 2 or 3 shot by most weapons, than a shield will not allow that soldier to take that many more hits (1 more probably). However, if that soldier is well armored and can now take 6 or 7 hits, then the shield gets exponentially more effective as each shot is getting more and more negligible. I described this phenomenon back in v25.2b when I stormed the cleaner base with guardian armor. My soldiers in guardian armor were already taking only single digits-20 damage every shot the cleaners took at my soldiers, but my shield soldiers reduced incoming damage by another 20 (as shields were nerfed to 16 armor in another hotfix soon afterwards). This means that they only took negligible damage and could easily juggernaut through the entire mission with no effort. I originally thought this was an issue with shields being too powerful, but now I think it is more of a system issue that affects the whole game. A soldier with low level armor at their point in the game does not benefit enough from using a shield to consider using it and a soldier with high level armor at their point in the game will take so little damage with a shield that the game almost becomes laughable easy a certain missions. I feel like this was never the intended purpose of the shield and that the shield should always allow for a soldier to be able to take x amount of extra hits. This is why I think the shield system should be changed to a mix between X1 and X2's mechanics. I think that shields should block an incoming attack entirely and have its own hp stat, but the shield has some armor on its own that reduces incoming damage to it (say the shield has 60 hp but has 10 defense for example). This way, the way shields work is more intuitive to the average player, the shield will allow for any soldier to take extra hits- not just ones with excessively high armor already, and the shield can better contend with the rapid upgrading alien weaponry because it has an inherent armor stat as opposed to X1.
    1 point
  5. Just looked in-game, the tooltip is pretty clear saying 'provides... additional armour in 180-degree frontal arc'. I've been trying to use shield guys as a tank like in X1 that don't get damaged with shield blocking shots. I don't think 16 frontal armour is worth 50 weight and lack of firepower; having 10 more smoke in lieu of shield would be more effective. I now don't see what utility a shield guy has over any other class that has to stay out of sight to avoid getting hit. The soldier didn't actually bleed though. The animation just showed a blood spurt from his chest without any damage. It looks scary but the soldier is fine. It is unclear if the shot was a miss that looked like it hit or was a hit that caused no damage. Maybe x/y/z damage text is needed where x is total, y is absorbed by armour, and z is real damage.
    1 point
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