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Finished up the 200 days of Milestone 2 on Soldier difficulty. The difficulty level was too easy for me, and that might affect some of my impressions but I've tried to consider that in my feedback. Overall The game feels too much like a game right now. The tempo, pace and challenge are all too proportional to the players progress. Combined with the world and player assets feeling somewhat uneventful or missing something charactful. Being largely a backdrop for the game mechanics. Its a minor thing and possibly aesthetic, but the bright and clean aesthetics of both your troops and the battlescapes also add to that lack of character feeling (I do like the artwork though). It may be player preference, but little details and mechanics which exist not solely for the gameplay or balance can add a lot to the atmosphere and immersiveness. Things like OG Xcom's black market finance system, or new xcom's battlefields feeling like you're dropping into an existing fight with carnage all about. Further to that, xenonauts 2 rarely hits that feeling of fighting against an unknown threat of superior technology. Even higher difficulties look to ramp up the challenge with ever larger hoards of aliens. It often feels like you're going toe to toe with the aliens, and with a modest amount of research and retroengineering are quickly deploying equally effective, if not more effective weaponry and tactics. Which is incongruent with the lore which tries to paint xenonauts as an underground force, operating on the skin of its boots. On to more specific points. Strategy Layer I think the pacing and interaction on the strategy layer is too sparse. UFO wave system leads to periods of intense activity followed by long periods of lulls. I think the lulls could be good to give the player breathing room but because finances are tied to UFO missions and monthly funding and there isn't a lot of player actions to take and these periods become fairly dull. The loop goes a little like this; - Player gets mission, gets resources and sells to fund engineering or basebuilding. Wait. - Monthly funding comes, engineering or basebuilding options are chosen. Wait. I also think the alien actions feel very gamey at the moment. it very much feels like the UFOs appear, and fly around waiting to be shot down. There doesn't appear to be any real agenda to what they are doing, other than gradually spawning larger and larger UFOs for the player to interact with. Not only that, but there is almost never a UFO spawn before the player can realistically engage with it. For me this detracts from the idea of an unknown threat, or superior technology and agenda. The lack of landed UFOs also misses a unique opportunistic risk/reward aspect of other titles. Basebuilding, radar coverage and funding/panic models leads to a very one dimensional approach to gameplay. The very limited resources means every base build must absolutely maximise radar coverage and there is no compensation for choosing objectively worse or interesting locations. Leading to 2-3 bases along the equator or thereabouts every game. This might be a soldier difficulty, but I also never really felt the need to consider where my base was going other than getting coverage of funding zones. There wasn't any particular area where the aliens seemed to focus that might force me to react with a base - the lack of conflict hotspots make the battle feel global but also removes player interaction with the game state. It feels like as long as you don't make dumb base location choices, you'll largely pick up most UFOs and if you have good enough aircraft you will shoot them down. Finally, Aliens don't seem to react to your actions in a noticeable fashion - like moving operations or actively reacting to xeno actions. I got 1 base attack for each base in my playthrough, no more and it seemed to occur as a random chance when a wave was spawned. Air Combat Aircombat feels OK. I don't crave a super complex air combat system for the game. It does seem a little too easy for human aircraft to shoot down UFOs with conventional weapons and UFO weapons feel very underwhelming. UFOs actions are simplistic and unresponsive to xenonaut aircraft - they don't speed up or try to reach unassailable altitudes. Different UFO behaviors could add a lot of spice to the air game. I do think that the choices for equipping fighters could be refined to provide more tactical decisions - such as torpedos/missiles leaving less loot from tactical missions or even outright destroying the UFO. Cannons could provide reliable crash sites but carry much higher risk to the fighter from UFO weaponry. There airgame balance to date has felt a bit binary - either too punishing with aircraft repair times and costs or too easy with even destroyed craft and pilots just being rebuild in a matter of days. I appreciate this is a bit of a WIP area and might expect more polish. Tactical Combat The core tactical combat feels very good. But the gameplay loop gets very repetitive. I didn't find the need to change loadouts much, or adjust strategies for different aliens. Civilians just feel like extra meatshields to reveal alien positions. Missions felt identical, a crash site, alien base or terror site all felt exactly the same - deploy from dropship, find and destroy X number of aliens. This is both an atmospheric as well as gameplay observation. A suggestion would be to have a crash site/terror mission feel like a warzone with damage and active combatants on both sides that the xenonauts are dropping in to clean up. A landing would be more like the pristine mission we have right now and alien bases should be dark, alien and terrifying. Aliens and alien weapons on the whole feel too weak. The use of magnetic weapons for early aliens working alongside cleaners is great, but the full escalation to a range of more devastating weapons should be apparent, possibly alongside the appearance of a more warlike class. It wasn't long into my playthrough that I felt totally comfortable with 2-3 xenonauts operating together could happily handle 1-2 aliens, and while increasing the number of aliens will alter that, it feeds into my overarching feeling of fighting an equal or inferior enemy. Aliens combat, other than a planned AI change, could use another pass on numbers v power. I think individual aliens should be less in number but more difficult to tackle. Human tactics like flashbang and smoke should initially have only mild success vs aliens, which could be improved with autopsies and interrogations. There is also an opportunity here to have aliens with differing levels of susceptibility to flashbangs, smoke, armour pen, thermal damage etc. This could be a mix of species or technology. I feel like the fidelity of the 3D tactical map and ability to zoom is underutilised by having most UI relevant elements text only. The appearance of the models is almost secondary - some minor variation between classes exist but its largely superficial. Alien classes should also be unknown until interrogations are complete - even the simple addition of naming the units during tactical battle I feel removes a lot of the mystery of the early game. Night missions are a real missed opportunity. I think there is a chance to make some very atmospheric missions at night. Or even strategic opportunities - maybe sebillians are terrible at range at night and have less TU. But during the day are terrifying opponents due to increased TU and resilience. Smoke grenades and flashbangs are far too reliable a disabling mechanism and combined with shields currently feel like a crutch. Doesn't matter what alien you encounter, the approach is flashbang and shoot, if you can't kill, smoke and close distance, kill or stun if possible. I find this adds a lot to the repetitiveness of the battles, with only cyberdrones and servitors requiring a slightly different strategy - although ironically for cyberdrones it's the same strategy, but with extra steps. I can't shake the feeling the game wanted that RNG - shit goes bad feeling of OG xcom but then at the same time introduced very reliable mechanics in throwing. Which to add a minor pet peeve, I find shooting accurately much easier than throwing something to the right spot further than a couple metres away so the accuracy and reliability that xenonauts throw items right out the gate is a little jarring. This also removes much of the desire for explosives. Given grenades often wouldn't kill things, it was preferable to use smoke and flashbangs which were very reliable protection from retaliation. Positives This is all to say that I've found the game really enjoyable and compelling. The story framework is there and the art and graphics so far are fantastic (I just want more!). I love the armour and weapon design and just hope either later on or via mods we can customise it just a bit. The core gameplay loop is good, only compromised by how often you go through said loop. The cleaners are a great addition with some cool missions and a great way to slowly transition to alien invasion. More hinted interaction between the two would be nifty.

Your assumption is that people already know how to play the game and optimise for various things. Lab spam? Do you mean making things and selling them? Why would any normal/casual player ever think to do that? If you want to do that and it makes the game easier then that's fine but you shouldn't have to do that to make ends meet.

Have you ever heard of a detective story that kept something like a villain unmasking counter on every page?

Completely agree. It's too gamey and breaks immersion. Same with the Cleaner progression counter. It should be way more vague rather than exact percentage. This could of course be made a difficulty level dependant and a toggleable option the same way the enemy health is currently.

I agree, using the word "endgame" is breaking both the immersion and the 4th wall. Neither should be done without a very good reason.