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The HEVY's effective range is barely longer than a 70 strength soldier can throw a grenade. One of the reasons to have a grenade launcher is so you can shoot explosive or smoke grenades at a significantly farther distance than a human could just throw. The main downside should really only be that you can't arc the HEVY's projectile over close by terrain like how you can toss a grenade over a wall you're next to. I'd suggest that a soldier with maxed out strength should probably still not be able to compare with the HEVY in terms of sheer distance. Otherwise, it feels slightly not worthwhile to load a soldier down with that when you can just give them a regular rifle and some hand grenades.

Me neither, but I have no compunction saying that they need a discount - if the intent is for them to be a viable option before, just throwing a number out there, day 120 (around the time I started adding medbays, training and more radars to my secondary bases). Guilty! I usually post on forums when I'm buggered by insomnia at 2AM local time and too frustrated to play games. I just ragequit on the expansion to Green Hell and am booting up Terra Invicta again for a PURGE playthrough. In my day-to-day I have to be very careful with words, so when I turn that part of my brain off... yeah, it's a lame excuse but that's the one I got. So I recognize that the language I use is condescending and inflammatory. For that I apologize sincerely. I love you all. You are my homies. And very soon together we will purge the xenos <3

I'm going to make a bit of a list of general ideas I have for what I want the game to include. This post isn't going to discuss too much about the balance implications about these additions because I'll assume that balance could be adjusted later to account for these additions. 1. Redefine modules When I first started this game, I thought "ah, modules is going to be the big paradigm shift in X2" and then somewhere along the way, I forgot they existed. Modules should be a way to define the roles of soldiers, but they currently only make soldiers very slightly better at doing what they already do. If the soldier's primary weapon determines how the soldier deals damage, modules should determine a soldier's support abilities. Modules could be limited to one per soldier (either as a hard limit or as a soft limit where modules are too heavy or take up too much space for most soldiers to practically have two) and have effects that give new ways that a soldier can be useful. Alien corpses and captured aliens are also sort of underutilized in the game, so I thought modules could also be related to those. Here are some ideas I have regarding modules that illustrate the idea of what I mean: - Detection module - The unit carrying this module can detect enemies that are a small number of spaces away from him or her, regardless of intervening walls and barriers. Detected units This module might be linked to psychic powers and require dead or captured Psyons to build and require Psyon interrogation technology. Units using this module might be useful fighting inside of buildings and can prevent you from walking into a building and getting immediately killed by an alien hanging around a corner near the doorway. - Stealth module - The unit carrying this module is significantly less likely to trigger enemy overwatch. A unit with this module would be good for moving first, scouting, and breaching dangerous doors. The enemy that this module is related to is Wraiths, so this module might require wraith corpses, captured wraiths, or wraith interrogation to build. - Targeting module - When the unit carrying this module hits an enemy with a shot, it confers a sizable accuracy bonus to all subsequent shots taken at that unit by anyone until your turn is over. Units carrying this module would be your first attackers with the best hit chances to then help your other units attack. I don't know which alien this module might be associated with. - Medical module - Medkits no longer exist for everyone. Only soldiers with a medical module can heal now, significantly limiting the accessibility of healing for xenonauts soldiers. This could be a module related to Sebilians or a module that you start the game with. 2. Sectons and Mantids are kind of meh One of the great things about Xenonauts 2 that it has over Xenonauts 1 is that almost all of the aliens have very interesting differences that imply the player uses different strategies against them. All except Sectons, Mantids, and Cleaners, I'd say, though the Cleaners get a pass on this front. Sectons have an accuracy bonus for being close to each other, but there is not really a way to forcibly separate Sectons standing close together, so it doesn't really impact the way you'd play. Even worse, in all my 33 hours of playing this game, restarting campaigns a few times to try out different strategies, I have never actually encountered Sectons close together to see their eyes glowing because the aliens tend to be distributed around maps when they spawn. The secton power has never mattered in my 33 hours playing this game. The Mantid enhanced vision has also not mattered that much in my experience. Maybe it is a playstyle thing, but I do not find myself sneaking up on aliens from outside of their view enough for it to matter that the mantids can see almost all around them. But also, it strikes me that mantid vision does not open up new strategies for players to use against them, it actually shuts down a strategy a player could use. Now, I don't know if the "lore" and therefore the special abilities of the aliens are considered to be already locked in and it's too late to change them out, but I would like to see something for both races to spice them up a bit and make them as interesting to battle against as the other races. Perhaps this point might be a bit connected with the next point... 3. More alien "auxiliaries" In Micropose Xcom, alien species were associated with an auxiliary unit that they sometimes brought to supplement their forces. Sectoids had Cyberdiscs, Floaters had Reapers, Snakemen partnered with the dreaded Chrysalid, and so on. In Xenonauts 2, we somewhat have this concept, too, but the auxiliaries are not tied to race as much. I've seen Wraiths with Servitors a lot and Psyons are arguably the auxiliary of Sectons (or the other way around) but I've seen Reapers with both Wraiths and Mantids. Cyberdrones seem to appear in any kind of terror mission, but only terror missions. I think it would be good to expand the auxiliaries because they are good at providing a different sort of challenge and it really gives you the feeling that the aliens are a coordinated military force that brings specialized equipment. Perhaps Mantids can have an exclusive auxiliary to better define the race, as their compound eyes just aren't doing it. In any case, here are some ideas: - Attack lizards for Sebilians. Sebilians have a bit of a problem with just getting picked off at range, which does make players feel cool and tactical when they take advantage of it, but also makes Sebilians somewhat unscary. Fast, swarming attack animals for sebilians that move in packs (maybe 2-3 of these will try to move together as they wander the map and attack the same target) might be pretty good for overwhelming players who try to out-snipe the Sebilians, and for chasing players who try to shoot at the Sebilians and then duck behind cover. - Or alternate to the above, a larger Sebilian subspecies that carries a machine gun. It is still poor at hitting enemies from range, and being large, is also an easier target to hit (like a Cyberdrone), but it has buckets of health and regen and is good at suppressing Xenonaut soldiers. - Exploding suicide drones. You can make them fly or you can make them skitter along the ground uncannily (the skittering one might be a good auxiliary with Mantids to spice them up). The aliens seem to, as a whole, underutilize explosives. The tricky thing about explosives, I think, is that they don't have a lot of counterplay. If a Psyon can throw a grenade at you and blow up your cover, and then you get Swiss cheesed by her buddies all before you can take another turn, that's not very fun. But if the aliens had suicide drones that you could feasibly shoot to stop, I don't think it'd be so bad. - Some kind of flying/climbing sniper that needs to set up. An alien with a straight up sniper rifle that behaved like our sniper rifles would be kind of frustrating to play against if your soldiers can just get picked off by aliens you can't even see. However, I imagine it'd be nice to have a type of auxiliary that can move from rooftop to rooftop (and in fact, its AI should prefer high places with good vision), then takes a turn to transform into a sniping mode, letting the player have a turn to see it and react against it (either by hiding or counter-sniping). That might give players some time to have some counterplay. - The Mentarch is actually a pretty interesting enemy as a unit with few TUs, but powerful armor and a big gun. Since the Mentarch itself must stay inside the spaceship, a new, Mentarch-like unit would also work. 4. The Cleaners should do stuff and be threatening Here's my experience with the cleaners. You have a mission to go into their base and grab and their intel. You don't have to for awhile, but you could. So you just wait until you feel nice and ready and you have the good guns and the good armor, and then you steamroll it. After that, you're offered two more missions for them. You wait until you feel nice and ready, you go in and steamroll, and repeat. Cleaners are basically a punching bag right now. Yes, I'm aware that they're supposed to be increasing panic in their regions unless you destroy their cells, but that's too much in the background to matter. I think the philosophy behind the Cleaners should be that Cleaners do something to give the early game some spice. Then, by the time you've eliminated the Cleaners, the aliens have taken their gloves off and are sending more varied and powerful ships at you. Now, I don't know how it'd go. I think it would be kind of tacky to have the Cleaners give you some kind of random debuff every week or month until they're taken care of, or just every once in awhile, you see some kind of notification that the Cleaners did something bad. On the other hand, it might be too much to say the game should have an entirely new espionage system with characters, buildings, and new mechanics for fighting an intelligence war against the Cleaners. But at the same time, making the Cleaners more involved and creating a new system within the game for dealing with them might be a good way to differentiate X2 from X1 on the campaign map. But, in general, the cleaners need to do something to not just feel like a punching bag.

So, just completed Build 1 and I liked it a lot! Obviously still has work to do but in great shape. So I'm going to be posting some ideas. All are free to use, I don't want any rights or credits, etc. etc. Anyway, I love research from capturing aliens. It was so fun in XCOM, it was fun in the Firaxis games, it's just fun! It's a little bit of flavor. Obviously there's the advanced medkits and regen module, and the mentarch, but here's some more ideas. Mantid - Compound Eye Module Engineering project, tactical module grants 180 (or 120 or 270) degree vision. Cool, flavorful, fun. Not sure it's great, but hey that's where this should be. Secton - Squadsight Module Allows anyone with a Tactical Module to fire at anyone in LOS of another person with a tactical module without penalty. Could be hard to code, just my idea based off their ability. Alternatively, +3 accuracy if within 5 spaces of another person with a Secton upgraded module. Psion - Mesmer Grenades Small radius, cause non-robotics to stand up, lose all time units, and walk a few squares in a random direction. Reaper - Reaper Claws Absolutely deadly close range weapon. Like really super high damage. Bonus if it uses the idea at the end Servitor (requires EMP to allow capture) - Heal Beam Secondary weapon, lets vehicles carry a 3 range medkit that can heal other vehicles too. Cyberdrone - Cyberdisk Vehicle Floating/hovering version of the Mars rover. Bonus idea - Rather than unlocking everything for manufacturing, manufacturing the upgraded modules requires captured aliens. So more Stalker or Healing modules requires more captured Stalkers/Sebillians, Reaper Claws need Reapers, etc. Gives a good minigame for capturing, and makes capture stuff more enticing to bring. Anyway, great game. Want ot post more thoughts after I have more time to digest.

Goldhawk Interactive is looking to recruit a Gameplay Programmer to join the team working on Xenonauts 2. If you think that might be you, please read on! Job Description: We are looking for an additional Gameplay Programmer to join the team working on Xenonauts 2. You will be working in C# within the Unity game engine to implement new gameplay features and help polish the game under the mentorship of our Technical Director. As we are a small team, your work will have a big impact on the final game! This role is fully remote and can be either full-time or part-time (to a minium of 15 hours per week). The ideal candidate would have approximately three years of programming experience in the games industry, but we will also consider motivated candidates with less than this (some of our best programmers joined us while they were still students!) Given the varying levels of experience we are prepared to consider, the salary for this position will be negotiated on an individual basis. The following skills are essential: Fluent English Excellent knowledge of C# programming Familiar with Unity3D Familiar with Git (or other version-control software) Prior experience of video game programming, either professionally or in a hobbyist capacity (e.g. modding, game jams, etc) It would be ideal if you were: Familiar with Entity Component System frameworks Passionate about strategy and tactics games, especially the X-Com subgenre Situated in a European timezone If you are interested in applying for this role, please send an email to chris@xenonauts.com with your CV. Applications for this role will close on Sunday 20th August. EDIT: Applications for this position are now closed.

I like math, so I did go off and do some calculations here. The first break-point where the upgrade can save you two generators in one base is at 501 total power consumption - that needs either four upgraded or six non-upgraded generators. 36 slots are available in a base. I'm going to assume minimum viable hangars in the main base is 4 (dropship + one wing of interceptors), so 8 slots spent there. 4 slots on generators, + 1 on the access lift, leaves 23 slots available to consume power. 3 radars is a no-brainer, as they're by far the most power-hungry building, giving us 180 spent. Spending the remaining 321 power over 20 rooms is... difficult. That's 16.05 power per slot - the only things higher than that (other than radars which we already maxed) are training and med centers (25 each), and defensive batteries. Labs/workshops look close at 15 power, but you need one living quarterss per two of those, so only actually come out at 10 power per slot effective use. Med centers are capped at 1 (useful) per base, training centers need living quarters for troops so only 12.5 per slot effective use, and there's no value in a base that's nothing but defensive batteries (what are you defending at that point...?). I can't get an actually useful design out of that. Closest is some kind of five quarters, five training, medical + nine batteries setup - I guess for a player who likes human-wave tactics but hates base defense missions? Otherwise reaching the power total takes either a 2x2 of labs, workshops and quarters and then 8 training and/or med centers (why? we can't fit any soldiers in this base...), or dropping the hangars entirely and building a base that's 100% dedicated to research and production (which gives you well over 100 scientists or engineers to do... something?). Saving three generators in one base is... not gonna happen. Those designs above are only barely above the power threshold for the last generator to be needed so they have a lot of spare power available. Note: I'm definitively not saying that alenium generators actually need a buff. I can't find a base design that would justify them with our current set of buildings and time available - but we're in a progression-locked early access version right now. All it would take is one or two late-game buildings that draw 50 or 100 power in one tile and they suddenly look better. If I can offer some unsolicited advice (risky business, I know...): @bonerstorm it would be a good idea to tone down the phrasing you use. I do think the core of what you're saying is usually right, but you've repeatedly said things like 'mandatory' and 'literally impossible' for things that have turned out to be 'optimal but not strictly necessary' or 'quite difficult'. That gets under people's skin, as you can see in this thread. Say the same thing with less definitive wording and you'll be able to spend more time on the actual point (where, like I said, I think you've generally been doing OK). @bifohe6676 (and anyone else watching this debate) just insert a mental 'probably' or 'I think' anywhere bonerstorm says 'definitely' or 'guaranteed'. There's usually a decent point being made underneath that, and it's not worth getting into an internet argument over that kind of wording.

The trade off vs. grenades should basically be the HEVY can shoot much farther but grenades can be arced better and land direct hits on enemies behind full cover.

Goldhawk Interactive is looking to recruit a Level Designer to join the team working on Xenonauts 2. If you think that might be you, please read on! Job Description: The primary responsibility of the successful candidate will be designing maps for Xenonauts 2 using our in-house map creation tools. Ideally, we would like to find someone capable of taking control of the entire level creation process - not only creating maps, but also identifying new terrain tiles that would improve the maps and providing guidance to the 3D environment artists that create these assets. Additional competences are always valuable in small teams, and we put a lot of value on candidates with diverse skillsets that can contribute to the development process in other ways. Extra skills such as game design, writing, coding, art, project management, etc are all things we would consider a significant plus on any application. We do expect a candidate to be able to demonstrate some kind of prior game design or level design work, but modding or personal work will be considered if you have no previous industry experience. However familiarity with strategy / tactics games is absolutely necessary, including good knowledge of the X-Com subgenre in particular. This role is fully remote and we are willing to consider candidates located anywhere in the world. We are willing to consider both full-time and part-time candidates (minimum of 15 hours per week). The salary for this position is £27,500 / $35,000 per annum full-time equivalent. The following skills are essential: Fluent in English A passion for game design and the willingness to learn new skills / tools The ability to create maps that present interesting tactical choices, while also looking like realistic environments Strong familiarity with strategy games in general, including the X-Com subgenre in particular It would be beneficial if you: Have previous experience in level design Have previous experience using Unity3d Have previous experience using Git (or other version control software) Were sufficiently familiar with 3D modelling software to be able to experiment with / block out new terrain assets that you would like produced for your maps Live in a European time zone If you are interested in applying for this role, please send an email to chris@xenonauts.com with your CV. EDIT: applications to this role have now closed. Thanks to everyone that applied!

I agree more range would help. Right now I think you'd be better off with a high strength soldier with a pistol and grenades, than the HEVY. Also the grenades themselves aren't powerful enough and the upgrades are quite a long way off. Maybe giving the HEVY more penetration or destruction compared to regular grenades would help to make them worthwhile.

Hello everyone - we've reached the end of July, so it's time for our monthly development update. It's been an exciting month, with Xenonauts 2 finally launching into Early Access on July 18th. The launch has been a huge success, with the game selling over 40,000 copies in the past two weeks, and the whole development team is really grateful to anyone who supported us by buying a copy! Here's what we've been up to this month and what we have planned for the coming month! Critical Bugs & Performance Fixes: Almost all of this month has been spent fixing critical bugs like crashes or anything else that ruins the gameplay experience for players. We actually thought the game was pretty stable going into Early Access, but going from a pool of twenty to thirty regular testers to having tens of thousands of players exposed a LOT of issues we were previously unaware of. The last couple of weeks have therefore been rather intense, as we've had to patch the game numerous times to address these issues. Thankfully the worst of this should now be behind us; we released 1.28b on Friday which improved performance and has fixed the bulk of the critical bugs. Work continued over the weekend and we've now fixed the memory leak players have been encountering and also (finally) managed to find and fix the annoying bug where terrain objects would sometimes get destroyed but not visually update (leading to units being able to shoot or move through what appeared to be a solid object). Our immediate priority is to finish up the last couple of crashes we're aware of, and fix a couple more serious gameplay bugs - e.g. grenades missing when displaying 100% chance to hit. This should leave the foundations of the game in good enough shape to move on to other tasks. Loading Times: Once that is done, we'll be starting work on optimising the load times - hopefully this will happen towards the end of this week. There's not much more to say on this point beyond the fact that we're aware of the issue and we'll be working on it soon. Milestone 2: We're then planning to spend the remainder of the month working on Milestone 2. This will be the first major update for the game and it will involve changes to the campaign, which unfortunately means it will break save games (although you can continue to play your Milestone 1 campaign on the Legacy branches if you want). As the programmers have a lot of bugs and usability improvements to be working on, I'm planning to focus on the air combat balance and the pacing issues in the existing campaign for Milestone 2. This is likely to extend the playable time beyond 180 days but it will not introduce additional UFO types to the game - it's more likely that we'll be expanding the role of the Cleaners at the start of the game instead. The first Milestone 2 build will likely arrive on the Experimental branch in the next two or three weeks, where it will go through a number of iterations based on player feedback before being released onto the standard branches. Expanding the Team: Finally, the income from our Early Access launch means we can now expand the team to speed up development. The first positions we're looking to fill are that of a Level Designer and a Gameplay Programmer. If anyone is interested in applying, I've linked the job posts below: Level Design job post Gameplay Programmer job post Overall, July was a great month for the project and we've really enjoyed seeing people playing the game we've been working on for so long. We look forward to delivering more upgrades in August!

Devs said it is in a very rough state at the moment (V1.28) and they will overhaul/balance it in a future patch.

Clandestine Icelandic military operations in a nutshell.

IRL nobody would point the thing so that it goes off to 3KM away instead of hitting the stall. It's still the most useless weapon in the game aside from the obvious meme stuff like knifes. I'm amazed that it survived until now with no changes. I hope the design team isn't happy with how it works.

This is a video game, not IRL. Give the thing an arc. I find myself not using the thing at all and just having a high strength guy filled up with grenades. I get much more use out of that trooper over a grenade launcher.

Like I said, it upgrades +25% for each of the two techs. It just doesn't change the icon. What kind of arc are you thinking about? IRL 40mm grenade launchers will arc, but they're direct fire weapons. You don't shoot them over walls or up in the air unless you're looking to get court-martialed for war crimes or friendly fire gross negligence.

No, researching or not researching the plot techs doesn't affect how quickly new UFOs turn up. There's an official answer from Chris here: Seems to be a common area of confusion - there's some discussion over in that thread about possible ways to fix that, but no real conclusions.

That's exactly how it does work already. Baseline shields have 80 hp, and will break after taking that much damage. That might be half-a-dozen small hits if the enemy keeps low-rolling damage, or it could be one crit from a plasma rifle. Upgraded shields have 160 hp, and again will take exactly that much damage in however many hits are needed to reach that total. Ignore the 'shields can only take one hit!!!' talk - a lot of players only pay attention to the enemy high-rolls on damage, so they talk as though every enemy shot is always guaranteed to do 80-100 damage. That's simply not true.

It's not even a grenade launcher, its a lousy rocket launcher disguised as a grenade launcher. What kind of grenade launcher doesn't arc?

What's not to love? It does similar damage to the pistol, takes a buttload of time units, never upgrades (even when other grenades get upgraded) and doesn't arc so it can just go flying past aliens (which is funny because direct hits barely do damage). Oh right here's a playtip - delete the Grenadier loadout immediately. Anything you can do with it you can do with thrown grenades too, and you'll have a real weapon. Gets outright embarassing when the plasma grenades hit for 75 and the grenade launcher is still hitting for 35 because... reasons. Just needs to be rethought entirely.

Overall* as a xcom/x1 vet, I miss my rocket launcher. The only role my HEVY is supposed to do is knock down cover at range and it just doesn't do that well. Ideally the outer ring if the squad is the SH/SG/AR guys supported by the MG and RF in the center of the formation. The grenadier is supposed to knock down cover for the formation from the center but im finding it sorely lacks both the range and accuracy to do so. They don't have a shredding effect against amour they do bonus damage to heavy units due to penetration but that's about it. Overall I find they are less a support unit and more of an assault unit that has support capabilities. So far ive found most success by having the GL and MG anchoring my wings and the RF in the center picking off units with SH and SGs taking point and ARs filling the gaps.

From what I can see there is no kill tally on the mission debriefing. I miss that.

flechette rounds for the grenade launcher would be nice as well, to have another usage option for the grenadier - CQC combat (single shot, a little more effective than shotgun, with range of 16 tiles)

I was defending my base, and I stopped to get in a little extra target practice at the training facility when I noticed something about the firing range...

Oh yeah no doubt, I agree with you on a MARS being quite the mighty thing to always bring (if you can afford to buy one) like I said in my first post, but putting all those actual tactical considerations into neat linear theoretical equations is not something you can just whip up like you can with the pure budget cost That is the kind of thing where you need a hundred, if not a thousand battles to analyze All I wanted to test with the calculations was where we stand on losing a MARS units from a purely budget point of view compared to expendable rookies with only infinite starter gear (aka zero extra budget or alien materials spent on them) acting as some kind of kamikaze reckless HEVY grenadiers. The high relative cost of losing even one MARS surprised me, I felt like it was high before I ran the math but it seems it is even higher than I thought! But I don't think this means that the HEVY in its current state is viable as a MARS replacement, because as we all seem to agree the actual tactical value of a MARS is higher still, so the lower costs of HEVY grenadiers alone is not enough to outweight that.

@DaviddesJ: The historian Part is well known to the most of us. That´s very interessting and give an deeper insigt to the World-Situation for that Countrys to us. Some of us older and mid-age Founders / Main-Beta-Testers and Gamers here have experiance of the cold war, about the Fact, we grow up in that time until the German reunification get done. Sadly some of the former East-Block-States didn´t have learned from the History and the Failures get done. They sadly repeat them. But that goes into political. Our Problem is, that the Language (cyrillic skript) are for 90% of the normal Worldpeople unspeakable and unreadable. That´s what we mean and why the Names of that and that get differently spoken / written. To make it for the full world playable every Devleoper-Studio / Publisher have to use in Games the World-Language (English) for producing the Games. Then it will get translated to different languages (like German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Ukraine and so on). I played and play too the old Star Wolves-Row (Dev and Publisher is from Russia) as well as the Sherlock-Holmes-Games (Dev is Ukraine). You see we aren´t racists. Short said: It don´t make Sense to fight about languages. The official Translators will make it correctly for People which wanna play it in their Language.