Aegeri

I really intensely dislike the way mc works in this game. It's one of the things that has largely stopped me playing the game again for a considerable while.

This was an interesting read. At least now I know why the game pulls off the most ridiculous out of nowhere grenade assaults when you move near a door in bases or UFOs. I've become so petrified of doors, I run rookies with almost no equipment (but as many TUs as possible) up to them, open the door, shoot the nonsense out of the aliens (with my more distant firing line) and close it. Then run away. Oddly enough this almost entirely abuses this AI system by coincidence: As I am not hanging out near enough to the door the aliens inside just camp there like ducks at a shooting gallery. Run back, open door, close door, run away. ETC. Never leaving anyone too close to doors when I don't have to has been an extremely solid tactic. Unfortunately the way this AI works does feel very much like cheating to me. It pretty much ensures the aliens behavior is predictable in that stacking up on a door is always a dumb idea - but it gives them basically knowledge you're there (and I don't really believe it's a "guess", which results in an alien moving the precise distance to accurately grenade 3 guys it didn't know it was there). It's argued this makes the aliens "unpredictable", but I believe it does exactly the opposite: I know for a fact the aliens will camp out happily behind a door all day doing nothing at all unless I move near it in many cases. I can also abuse this completely predictable behavior by just using mobile soldiers to open, close and run away. I slowly shot my way through an entire base of Androns doing this the other day without taking even a single injury. If the aliens AI let them group up and try to come through doors instead of only responding when you're seemingly near it (as others have also pointed out) I think this would be much better behavior. As it is, I've seemingly been exploiting this aggressiveness AI feature the entire time without even understanding that was what it was doing. Or maybe they should just be more aggressive anyway? Door breaches in Xenonauts feel too all or nothing. You either do it a certain way or you just get shot to pieces as the AI gives the appearance of seemingly knowing exactly when you have no TUs.

It's really amazing to see such incredibly straight talk from a developer. Personally, I can understand your point of view and while I don't think Xenonauts main problems are unsolvable, they probably aren't solvable in ways that keep the game the one you wanted (which is clearly air centric and relies on a very fine line between winning/losing, unlike XCOM or X-COM where you can prolong the game as long as you like before winning). Personally I would like some more aliens and a rebalancing of the geoscape to make anything other than a handful of base positions genuinely viable, but again: It would be changing the game into something else. Sounds really exciting and I'm interested to see what you come up with.

That statement makes absolutely no logical sense at all. If choice A is always a win and Choice B is always a loss, then there in reality is no choice to begin with. You just have option A. If choice A and choice B are different and both viably lead to a win, they are meaningful examples of depth. The argument above was that in the first situation, because Choice B was there it meant the game had more depth, which I said was rubbish: Putting in deliberate bad trap options is just poor game design, pure and simple. In Xenonauts you absolutely have to place bases and build/research interceptors in a limited number of areas right from the get go, because despite being able to build anywhere (the supposed advantage) the sheer maintenance costs and way the game works (money wise) means it's just not viable. You're set into a limited number of actual viable choices, even if you theoretically have a whole ton of them. For me, it's gameplay and when you start tearing apart at the guts of Xenonauts geoscape in particular, it's pretty obvious how shallow it actually is and that's hugely disappointing because the mechanics of the actual game are really good. Needing multiple interceptors in squadrons, the aliens running air superiority missions, aerial terror missions are a terrific (if flawed) concept and so on, which does IMO redeem a large amount of this problem for me (hence why I still enjoy this aspect of the game). But it all simply hinges on where you put bases and realizing that you need interceptor spam ASAP: Put them in the right spots and make the best interceptors (or upgrades) you can and the game is actually rather easily winnable (as shooting down UFOs is extremely important for income). I can't help but note there is an intriguing sounding mod for actually making the aerial war more difficult. I'd really like to know if there is a way of having more than 3 bases that cover almost everything and rushing interceptor technology that can win the game reliably (EG: No save scumming that impossible to get to aerial terror mission) on difficulties at veteran or above.

I missed 6 95% shots in a row last night. It would have been comical if the alien didn't just turn around and then proceed to kill the soldier making the first (Plasma Carbine) shot that missed 3 times. Then turn around and gun down another soldier with a rifle (in one shot of course). That was rage quit time for the night really.

But then, I can point out that is identical to XCOM:EU as well, but I don't consider that adding a large amount of meaningful "depth" either. In fact, in Xenonauts I don't agree with research at all: You absolutely need to get up to better interceptors as fast as you possibly can (the Foxtrot in particular) or you will end up failing to shoot down the larger UFOs. Manufacturing is similar: You need to get straight onto those interceptors as well as soon as you can, because condors will not cut the mustard for very long. Your initial "How do I get into a winning position" in Xenonauts is as linear, devoid of choices and confined as the remake. There are clearly superior choices and IMO, you need to go down the route of researching better interceptors and building optimal base facilities/new bases quickly to realistically succeed. These problems are made because of the ridiculous maintenance costs and how much funding you lose by letting UFOs go (especially when the corvette swarms turn up). Once you have a stable situation, you can do whatever you want but that's the same with EU as well, outside of building towards satellites rapidly, but still it's every bit as linear in the important geoscape strategies that win you the game initially. Building the same three bases in the same three places, the initial building 2 radars, an additional 2 hangers and so on every time you start in Xenonauts are incredibly basic but "obvious" options. Base placement is what wins you the game however: Because without good base placement you cannot shoot down the UFOs, maintain coverage of many funding countries at once and importantly end up with RNG determined effects like an aerial terror mission you can do nothing about. Also I feel that the straight off research you should be doing is getting better interceptors ASAP, especially because tactical missions are not the be all and end all of Xenonauts. Actually, my main mistake on my first two playthroughs outside of my base placement was failing to realize that the interception part of the game was much more important than tactical missions. Winning tactical missions is irrelevant when your planes are outclassed and you can't shoot down UFOs. Of course the conundrum is that yes, I could play on normal which is more forgiving in the air and so on: But normal also makes the tactical battles boring. Veteran and above have the most interesting tactical gameplay, but their difficulty means that you get forced into linear set strategies or you aren't going to get out of the early game capable of actually winning. So Xenonauts gives an illusion of being deeper than it is: Which is the point I've tried to make. Xenonauts has only one valid geoscape strategy: Shoot down everything you can. To accomplish this, you absolutely have to do the same things base position, design and research wise. Once over the initial hump I find (even on insane) it wasn't impossible to stay ahead of the aliens or keep up with them - but you can only do that by following a narrow set of strategies initially to ensure you get there. That's a big flaw.

Ahhh. Here I was thinking I was entirely dense or hadn't found the right explosive. I've got to say, making them immune to damage is an incredibly bad design choice and I feel necessitated the door decision as a result. Definitely going to try that mod though.

I don't mean blowing up the door: I mean the actual walls of the UFO. In the original X-COM, I can't remember a time where I ever used the doors of the UFOs once I got explosives and particularly, flying armor. I would bomb a great big hole in the roof and go to town from the command center of the UFO downwards. I've tried using tons of C4 to blow holes in UFOs (not the door) and nothing works. Am I just being stupid or is this something you can't do? If you can't do it, I don't want the system as it is to change then because that would be ridiculous (Xenonauts already favors defenders incredibly heavily). If you can do it, then I think that it might be pretty fair and really encourage taking along C4/rockets.

I'm not comparing the easiest difficulties: I'm comparing veteran onwards, with classic onwards (which are both difficulties designed to be default difficulties for people who have played turn based games before). I've never played normal in Xenonauts myself, but I honestly didn't have a hard time with veteran at all outside of realizing base positions were crucial. I mean easy in XCOM:EU is practically impossible to lose. In fact, I can't even figure out how you would. It doesn't suddenly mean that because you can do anything you want suddenly the geoscape has many valid strategies. The limitations become obvious the harder the difficulty is and both games demonstrate this point. You can in fact do both! You can have real actual depth AND not make it artificially difficult by having poorly communicated bad mechanics. Being able to implement more than 1 strategy to actually win it. Which is, in fact, the flaw in Xenonauts geoscape on higher difficulties. Realism =/ Good Gameplay. And in reality, optimal base placement would probably cover countries with the highest resources important to the war effort amongst other things. Not to mention most countries would be sending their own airforces up etc etc. The entire base system is a completely artificial mechanic and so any "realism" argument you try to bring into it is basically abject nonsense from the start. But that's the point. That decreases depth dramatically. Optimal, much better positions degrade depth and ensure a linear game where if you don't do the same things over and over, you lose. This is because, as mentioned, maintaining multiple bases is downright impossible on the harder difficulty levels. False choices are actually much worse than not giving you choices at all. You might think trap options are good: I don't. I think more valid options is infinitely better and Xenonauts failure is pretending like there are a ton of valid choices. When there are 3.

Reading this discussion, I think the genuine problem here is that you can't blast holes in UFOs to make new entrances (or at least, all the C4 I've tried hasn't made a dent). If you could blow holes in a UFO like the original and make new routes in I don't think this is an issue. But as it is, I don't think you can and so therefore to prevent doors to UFOs being murderways you really have to leave it like this.

Oh. That would have been nice to know...

Yeah, I avoid Andron Battleships: It's not even remotely worth the effort. Just shoot them down and recover with an airstrike.

This again, relies on seeing them first and 90% of my deaths to them are when he pops out a door (or around a corner etc) and just nails someone. It's just one of those things I've learned to just say "Whatever" and move on. I expect 1-2 casualties a mission on larger UFOs to being blown up to them. Hence why privates are always going first these days and why 2 of my dropship slots have the nickname "The revolving door"....

I kind of just learned to deal with this by hanging snipers back and shooting them at a distance where possible. They are by far the biggest pain in cramped UFOs, where they can just pop out a door and the AI has no problem with using them at point blank range. It does make sense these things can threaten predator armor soldiers or tanks, because they are basically rocket launchers (designed for this purpose). It's just immensely annoying how accurate the aliens are with them and that you often can have no way of dealing with it beyond being psychic (the infamous pop out of nowhere and one shot a guy).

But this is also equally objectively bad game design: If placing my base in Europe, as I did in my first game, basically consigns me to an instant loss eventually (because I would need other bases to cover different regions) while there are about three (or so) completely optimal positions - why bother with the whole "Have fun with a completely RNG dependent aerial terror mission you literally cannot stop that ultimately loses you the game". For example people criticize, with good reason, Firaxis' remake for the general lack of strategic depth on the geoscape. Every time I start the game I basically do the same thing every time: I rush for arc throwers to capture aliens and everything I can do goes into getting as many satellites as possible. It's a reasonably boring and one-dimensional strategy, but it works on every difficulty - including the hardest (and in fact, is arguably one of the only ones that works). Xenonauts on the other hand has exactly the same flaw: A boring, one dimensional and linear geoscape game. When I want to actually win the game I now know I need to build about 3 bases, reasonably quickly, in 3 parts of the world. One around North Africa, one around mid America and one a bit above Malaysia or so. You want to build bases to cover as many funding countries as possible, maximize your interceptors to area ratio and avoid the mass upkeep expenses that too many bases would provide. Doing anything else is basically going towards a massive funding deficit - due to needing more bases, with more interceptors - and an ultimate loss. Firaxis' XCOM actually has the same issue that Xenonauts has: If you don't follow an optimal good strategy on impossible or classic, you basically consign yourself to a loss. Same with Xenonauts: Don't learn and follow an optimal base building strategy, you lose. They're both equally linear and boring: One just disguises itself better than the other. It will give a unique playthrough: You'll be UNIQUELY unable to win the game and it's simple trap game design. Meanwhile, every time I want to win I can win with three bases and it's so efficient, there really isn't any point to doing anything else. These optimal base positions are the Xenonauts equivalent of the remakes satellite rush: A boring one-dimensional strategy that always gives the optimal chance of victory. This isn't even remotely true on higher difficulties, where panic will absolutely destroy you faster than anything if you don't do the right thing (which is, build satellites). In fact, you'll lose a game in the remake faster than Xenonauts when you stick your base in the 'wrong' place on classic or impossible. Because it's objectively making the game more limited and less strategic by sticking in "Haha, you fell into our devious TRAP!" and it doesn't improve gameplay whatsoever. There are positions in Xenonauts where once you know about them, there is no reason to ever not build a base there. They are so beyond efficient they are basically the default best places to put a base and doing anything else can severely cripple your playthrough. It's a really bad limitation and the higher the difficulty the worse this limitation becomes: Until Xenonauts has an entirely limited "build" to each game on the geoscape every bit as rote and limited as what the remake does. The difference is that XCOM is just more up front about its limitations, while Xenonauts simply lets you continually fail until you discover the hard way what they are. And having immense "trap" options does not mean Xenonauts is deeper: Depth is acquired by having multiple valid choices. For example, in the original X-COM I can support multiple bases with various purposes easier because it's considerably less punishing on you in maintenance costs. You can also manufacture some items, notably the humble laser cannon, to provide money. Heck, a great strategy in X-COM is to build a secret base somewhere and fill it with engineers whose job is to 24/7 build laser cannons to support your war effort. Xenonauts doesn't allow you to do shenannigans like this, so every base is a massive drain on incredibly limited resources: So you can have few bases. Meaning the few bases you have need to cover the most territory: Because the air war in Xenonauts is 90% of where the game is won or lost. This means that the number of valid choices in base position and strategy is grossly limited unless you want to deliberately make the game harder (all power to you if so) or you just don't realize the game is heavily flawed in this region. Being able to generate money more easily by building things or lowering the investment of subsequent bases would probably make other strategies more viable. As it is though, unless you know what to do the air war can be lost on month 1 and you won't even realize it until the game grinds out to an inevitable loss. You call that depth: I call that bad game design. I really enjoy Xenonauts overall, but the severe limitations imposed by the way the air war and geoscape work I have found very disappointing. The actual air war itself I think is great and a massive improvement on any X-COM like game that has come before it. However, the complete lack of depth in valid choices for base placements and the sheer difficulty canyons you fall into by "doing it wrong" really removes a ton of the interest/fun from the geoscape layer of the game. Edit: And no, I totally don't want to see "Manufacturing laser cannons to ignore the entire games economy back". That's an even worse option by far.