[Xenonauts 2 - Strategic Scale]

Instead of twenty scientists or engineers, you might have two hundred

The number of engineers could be increased too, but I feel scientists shouldn't be increased by the exact same amount. [...](scientists or teams have their own skill levels, so players would want to hire the best when they're available).

Totally agree with SoulFilcher, scientist progress is due to special minds like Einstein or Hawking not due to a couple of hundred of mediocre scientists. That leads to a scientist team formed by tens of mediocre scientist that you pay wages for, lead by a scientist mind that you acquire by other methods like special mission, nation favors, etc. (in terms of investigation progression mechanics, 15 scientific can be equal to 1 scientific mind, but you also need 1 scientific mind to progress in some technology branches... or something like that)

Is there any way to square the circle? Can we have the game feel like large-scale war when the player only controls small teams of soldiers?

Xenonauts - and X-Com for that matter - has always actually been about air supremacy. In both games, you vary rarely fight the aliens on the ground as an actual invasion force; ground combat is almost always for the purposes of retrieving alien technology. As such, the small scale of the ground combat missions doesn't matter because the aliens aren't dropping vast armies on the ground and therefore don't need to be engaged on a large scale.

Totally agree, they are a small taskforce with specific objectives, (like SEALs) not a small overpowered team to fight armies... at least at the beginning.

[Debating Xenonauts 2]

Vertical Terrain - we should have hills etc in the game, rather than purely flat maps with buildings offering the only verticality.

Seams a nice idea, but be careful, getting out of flat floors changes both the programming and gameplay. I mean maybe it is just a little improvement to the game that requires a lot of resources to implement it.

Your biggest asset in this game is the setting. […]Different groups could also have different starting equipment and research.

feels like you need to capitalize on that tension a lot more. In the game everybody just goes, "oh, aliens? Isn't that what Xenonauts was founded for? […] Hawkish military brass on both sides probably would have read the initial unidentified air contacts and attacks as the handiwork of the other superpower and resulted in at least a brief shooting war.

risk moving the focus away from the big old alien invasion and turning the game into more of a political simulator ... and it sort of flies in the face of the "we're all in this together" wordwide X-Com vibe.

I love the timeline of the game, but I agree that the game doesn’t use the setting at all. The world is divided at that period and picking up staring sides NATO or USSR seams the right idea. Fighting the war in separate sides until the aliens beat the shi*t out of you, or a major event happens (let’s say at the middle of the game progress) then founding X-Com and sharing NATO and USSR resources, funding, manpower, research progress, bases and technology.

I can’t imagine the USSR or USA waiting for the X-COM to defend their airspace at the first stages of the invasion, it just feels out of place.

Also the ICBMs could be shown in the game. Imagine if the planet is surrounded by UFOs but they can’t enter the atmosphere yet because they are adapting, the right move for NATO or USSR is to launch all those ICBMs towards UFOs. Maybe it just would be translated into the game with an event entry, saying that “we launched 100 ICBMs to the space but 95% of them were shot down by UFOs defenses” and showing a nice art picture of the event.

Also, the SR-71 could be a good reconnaissance plane to overcome the lack of radar arrays at the beginning.

I also love the idea of patrolling the skies. Maybe using refueling on flight or landing on a random military base (not X-Com base) to refuel.

And I would like to mention also the submarines, which were, after ICBMs one of the most feared weapon at the time. I know they are almost useless on an alien invasion… but they would be also the last survivors in case of total annihilation.

Game takes place in an alternate timeline, and may be set in ~2005 rather than 1979 (although the USSR did not collapse in this timeline)

Can you tell us why? I love 1979, it seems the perfect time for an alien invasion. The game itself is an alternate timeline, why adding an alternate timeline starting point paradigm?

Even if you do move to 3d-engine, I think you should at least keep using 2d portraits

Totally agree, 3D portraits always look so cloned

Unit experience progression should be nonlinear so that noobs gain stats more quickly than experienced soldiers. This would make full wipes more tolerable and prevent having so many over powered veterans.

Simply the best idea I read so far, but I just reviewed the first four pages...

[[V1.59/X:CE] German Weapons Pack [V1.2]]

Thank you PaulJay, awesome addition, they had become the standard equipment for my soldiers.

[(Mod Update) XNT Into Darkness V6.0 - "Hellgate" (DISCUSSION THREAD)]

First of all, congrats for the mod you have done. I've been playing it for a week now and experiencing all the bugs mentioned here, the game has a tendency to crash after big explosions, and that is somewhat annoying, specially when setting up a perimeter around the dropship with C4, and demolishing everything on the path to the UFO entrance

But I would like to report a bug which crashes the game but can be worked around:

-When I'm working on the project corvette dissembling (which take up the space of an hangar) if I go to the aircraft equipment tab the game crashes no matter what. When the project is finished the bug is resolved.