[Ugliness of the Xenonauts...]

You'd be wrong there. Both NASA and NORAD use such screens.

NORAD is 1960s tech friend. my microwave has faster processor than all of norad combined.

[Ugliness of the Xenonauts...]

Pedantics really, the point is real war rooms have a 2D screen\monitors of large maps, not a globe that you can`t see at once exactly because it is less efficient.

`Feel` is not enough for something that is actually less efficient than a 2D screen. Although it don`t kill the `feel` for me at all. I have a dozen good games of world empire building that use a 2D map screen, Civ 5 is one example. Age of Wonders 3 is another.

This is just rose tinted specs again.

well how many war rooms have you been in? or are you just basing your idea of a war room on movies like Wargames? As I already mentioned, for things like ICBM launches, an actual globe (or part of it) is advantageous.

even in original x-com, it's possible to have multiple ufos spread all over the globe. there is no awareness issue, since you can easily rotate the globe and track all ufos. not that tracking ufos is meaningful, since it's precise position is not important. you simply want to know which region it is in and then send interceptors after it, after which you just wait till interception occurs.

most combat operation takes place over a theater, where a 2d projection is quite accurate. the game takes place over a globe. you can't have realistic fighter interception paths or the idea of air and space in general without a spherical (or speroid). Since the primary gameplay of the map is actually the aerial interception, not having a globe is actually very relevant. you can not do things like fly over the pole to intercept a target, something which would be done in an actual aerial interception scenario.

As for the world empire building game that uses 2d, that is more of the fact that tiling doesn't work very well on 3d more than anything else.

and most importantly, a globe is much cooler than a map.

[Ugliness of the Xenonauts...]

war screens have latitude lines. and nobody uses the projection that xenonaut uses for warscreen, especially since nukes from russia to the US will come through the north pole region, the projection will make it difficult to accurately ascertain the situation.

The globe made you feel like the world is at your fingertip, that you are a leader for a truly global organisation. The globe was the first thing you see after the menu in x-com and it made a huge impression.

[Ugliness of the Xenonauts...]

All the flaws you listed are very much accurate.

The lack of a geoscape globe is totally unacceptable. It was very characteristic of the original x-com, and is very cool. even new XCOM has a floating globe. The projection really brings a lot of issues with it, with 2d projection.

and the game is very slow, and boring. enemy turns take forever, moving units take forever and with 10+ units it became tedious.

very disappointing