TheTuninator

Great to hear! It should still be quite possible to achieve something similar to the maze-like layout of the original X-COM ships. Just throw in some walls, random compartments, LoS blockers, etc.

Sorry, when I said "come back" I was referring to the chairs in X-COM.

As long as the community can map out interiors I'm not too worried. I'd just really like to see the chairs come back as a prop. They're a small detail but go such a long way toward creating the atmosphere of an alien ship.

Your idea is the best possible solution to preserve realism and meet Chris's needs for gameplay at the same time, but I would prefer to pay at least some fee rather than $0. Even a trivial fee of $4-5000 would lend believability to the notion that we're digging up parts and slapping them on a new airframe while still being affordable to even a player in the most dire of economic straits.

Oh, that was your proposal? I thought it was Gaudlikke's. I really like that proposal. It actually makes sense from an immersion perspective. I might still prefer a nominal reconstruction fee, but immersion-wise it's very palatable.

I agree, which is why I would like a separate difficulty slider for the air combat. Saves Chris the headache of balancing UFO strength within the overall Geoscape balance and also largely alleviates the problem of air combat being too hard; if you're getting your ass handed to you and you feel like you cannot progress, you have the ability to weaken the UFOs to a level where you feel you can compete. A separate UFO difficulty slider is a win-win as far as I am concerned, and I can't imagine it would be too difficult to implement, right? All it'd need to do is tweak UFO weapons damage and HP. Xenonauts' air battles are far more enjoyable than those of the original X-COM; it's simply a matter of giving the player the ability to select how much of a challenge he wants to face in the air.

I'd be fine with the default air combat difficulty being similar to X-COM's in that all the game requires for most UFOs is for the player to show up with suitably advanced aircraft and weapons in order to shoot down the UFO without much risk of losing a fighter. If you don't want to do anything past manually firing missiles and the occasional roll, you should still be able to clear most battles with no more than moderate or, at worst, severe damage on the standard difficulty. A UFO difficulty slider that modifies UFO HP/weapon damage is pretty much necessary at this point, and would be nice both for those who want to be forced to employ real tactics in their air battles and for those who just want to get to the firefights. Most of us on the forums are well acquainted with the tactics necessary to triumph in air combat, but it's necessary to realize that even most X-COM fans will not be coming into this game expecting that they will need to employ advanced tactics in air combat in order to be successful in the larger game. Overly frustrating air combat is likely to be a potential turnoff even to the more hardcore potential buyers because they're coming in expecting challenge on the ground, not in the air. Indestructible planes will solve this problem somewhat, but players are still likely to become very frustrated with constant plane losses if the air combat difficulty cannot be tweaked to match the ground combat difficulty.

If worst comes to worst, you can always just drop the difficulty of the air engagements substantially for release by nerfing the UFOs a bit. It's not like X-COM had very difficult air battles as long as you brought the right stuff, after all. People will be comparing Xenonauts to X-COM, and as long as the air combat isn't punishingly difficult it should stack up favorably; seeing your planes and the UFOs fly around on a grid is a lot more satisfying than X-COM's presentation even if all you do is click "fire missiles" at the appropriate time.

Hey, don't let this thread sell condors short! Condors can be pretty awesome. Did you know that the Californian condor has a wingspan of roughly ten feet? I like the name.

Oh, I know, but that still brings up realism concerns. How is enough of the plane left to salvage if it takes a pounding from a battleship? How do we salvage a wreck in a timely fashion that goes down in the middle of the Pacific, and why would we even bother doing so when exposure to the salt water has probably ruined whatever is left of the plane? What about planes that go down in the Arctic, or the Sahara? I'll gladly try the feature out and see how it feels, but I don't think that recovering the same plane is the optimal solution for preserving realism. If it must be done, so be it-balancing the economy is a monstrous task-but I would strongly encourage you to attempt to implement a feature that is a bit kinder to the player's sense of immersion. Obtaining new planes for free or greatly reduced costs from international backers makes much more sense to me than recovering and repairing a plane that has been shot to hell and crash-landed in some remote corner of the Earth. This could be as simple as changing some of the pop-up text while keeping all of the gameplay effects intact. Like you said, though, let's try it out first and see how it goes.

I can't really fathom cost reductions breaching player sense of realism and immersion as an argument for indestructible interceptors when the proposed solution is that my interceptors which have sustained damage from high-powered, hyper-advanced energy weaponry somehow manage to successfully break off and return to base no matter how badly they are shot up. Air combat is too difficult for the average player and demanding in Xenonauts at the moment, but making interceptors indestructible will be far more damaging for my personal sense of immersion than any price reduction, no matter how steep. Am I really to believe that a modified F-16 can survive direct hits from a battleship's plasma cannons, or break off and escape from faster, more maneuverable and better-armed alien craft? Costs are ultimately an abstraction. In all my time playing X-COM and Xenonauts, I've never once had the cost of an item yank me out of immersion in the game. What does yank me out of my immersion is when gameplay does not behave realistically. Interceptors being cheap or replaced for free I can easily rationalize away as government backing, especially since no item in X-COM or Xenonauts has ever really been "realistically" priced. Aircraft magically surviving engagements that I know should have destroyed them? Now that's damaging my immersion. Making interceptors indestructible for the sake of preserving the "realism" of prices in a genre where prices have never been realistic is simply misguided. I understand how much of a pain balancing the economy must be, Chris, but if you're concerned about player immersion and realism you absolutely cannot have interceptors that always manage to break away and return to base no matter the context. As far as Gaudlikke's solution goes, I find it much more palatable than a magic, fool-proof emergency disengage. In fact, I rather like it. As long as my planes can be shot down I am 100% okay with any path the air combat takes. My only issue with your initial proposal, Chris, is that rickety human aircraft managing to survive and break away from engagements with enemy vessels that are superior in every regard is simply impossible to swallow while maintaining a sense of immersion. Gaudlikke's solution preserves my immersion, as my planes are still being shot down and must be replaced, while also greatly easing the pains of air combat.

It's a bit of a silly thing, but one of the details I miss the most are the chairs. The ships feel so empty without them.

I don't see the problem with the names, at least in the case of the Condor. If you're concerned about the name not being aggressive or badass enough for a fighter aircraft, I would point out to you that two of history's most famous fighter aircraft were named the Camel and the Pup. "Condor" sounds cool and is a perfectly fitting name for an aircraft cobbled together out of spare parts and used to force alien ships to the ground where the Xenonauts can harvest their resources. "Foxtrot" is a bit odd due to NATO nomenclature, but the Condor is fine.

I do agree that UFOs could use significantly more clutter and cover in the interior. As you observe, I shouldn't be able to clear out a good chunk of a UFO by raining fire through a doorway. My men should need to go inside. I've often missed the prop-filled interiors of X-COM UFOs as well; the clutter made the ships feel more alive and lived in, and touches like chairs in front of consoles really lent the feeling that you were trespassing in another species' world. The cavernous empty spaces you find in some Xenonauts UFOs are unfortunately rather bland by comparison. I understand if UFO interiors cannot be given a dramatic overhaul at this point due to needs to prep for launch, but should Xenonauts be financially successful enough to justify continued work on the game I would strongly urge Chris and the team to consider overhauling interiors once they've had time to grab a breather post-launch. UFO interiors are a huge part of any X-COM style game, and revisiting the Xenonauts interiors to make them more like the UFO deathtraps of X-COM would greatly improve the game. Xenonauts has absolutely gorgeous UFO exteriors; the interiors should be just as neat!

I agree entirely. The original X-COM very rarely required you to sortie, return and rearm, and sortie again, at least on the difficulty I played at, and air battles were a very short affair. You often didn't even need more than one fighter; I still meet people who never realized that you could engage with more than one interceptor at once! I'm of the mind that nothing but the very largest UFOs should require multiple sorties to take down. Air combat exists to provide some tension and realism in the lead in to the game's meat and bones, the ground battles. Air combat should be challenging and fun, but not overly long or very arduous. A 3-plane sortie, competently handled and appropriately equipped, should be able to splash most UFOs in one engagement. Chris himself has said that air combat should be a relatively minor part of the game, and if I need to burn the majority of my money on a large wing of interceptors and string out anything less than battleship-class UFOs over multiple engagements the air combat is eating up too much of my attention. At the end of the day I'd prefer that the dev team err on the side of making air combat too easy rather than too hard. Save the real brutal difficulty for the ground battles. Decoupling air combat difficulty from the overall difficulty setting, if feasible, would be a very wise move. Even something as rudimentary as making an "air combat difficulty" setting that simply tweaks UFO HP values and nothing else would get the job done.

This is a problem which definitely needs addressing, as the original X-COM let tailing interceptors which caught up to a pursuit join in. The need for this is of course slightly alleviated due to Xenonauts' inherent ability to launch fighters in squadrons, but the option to have a fighter returning from patrol or another pursuit join in on an existing furball would be nice.

Very, very well done post! I honestly wouldn't want to see psionic powers added at this point in development, as there's simply too much else to work on, but were they to be implemented this is a system I would be more than OK with.

Good post! Personally, I don't feel that there's much weapon parity at all once you get past Caesans (and that's good!) I need to pump a Sebilian full of M-16 and M60 rounds before he drops, but 1-2 plasma rifle shots will do for my guys. Map variety is definitely a concern, but I'd chalk that up to the small amount of maps in the pool right now. Given how easy community mapmaking is, I am not concerned about long-term map variety. Agreed that squad sizes are a bit too small. Six men plus a vehicle is tiny enough that a bad play or two can get you wiped even on a mere Scout mission. I wouldn't call the ground combat easy, though there is definitely room for improvement, mostly in alien behavior; I'd like to see Sebilians act like the beastly tanks they are and rush my troops sometimes instead of retreating, for one.

Not to be a grammar nazi, but you say "precision and LMGs have to deploy" in the OP (emphasis mine). If you just meant that it was an additional option, might want to change that!

I might just be hearing this wrong, but it sounds like local forces (at least the farmers on farm tilesets) make alien death noises, not human. Again, could just be my ears, though.

Honestly, I didn't really care for psionics in the original. At first it was a real hoot to mind-control aliens and have them shoot their own buddies in the back. After a battle or two, though, you realized that psionics simply resulted in your entire squad sitting in the dropship with no risk to themselves while the aliens killed each other. The total lack of risk to your own troops, or indeed their total lack of participation in the battle at all, simply wasn't satisfying. I had a hell of a lot more fun roof-breaching UFOs with flying armored soldiers than I ever did with psionics. I wouldn't mind if they were in Xenonauts, of course, but I probably wouldn't use them.

Nope, but when you can't reach a significant amount of early-game missions (and take a big funding hit as a result) that is really frustrating. Before Chris upped the range, local forces would often invite me to assist in raiding crash sites or terror sites that I could not reach. Watching your dropship turn around 2/3rds of the way to a terror site, followed by the message that "Country X has used a tactical nuke and are furious at the Xenonauts' refusal to intervene" is just infuriating. I didn't refuse to intervene; the game didn't let me! I just don't see any reason for the dropship not to have global range, especially under the current funding balance where setting up a second base is quite difficult. Sure, you can say that you should have to set up a second base for full coverage, but that was never the case for the original X-COM and I think it worked quite well. A second base offers you added fighter coverage and a faster response time, which may be the difference between doing a terror mission at night or during the day and is more than enough incentive to construct one. I'm with Sathra in that I really don't see the point of refueling; it's an unnecessary mechanic that will just add more weight and force Chris to waste time on something we don't need when other areas of the game need more work. No need to overcomplicate things!

Yup, but I would respectfully submit that there is a difference between additional optional abilities and the ability to actually play ground missions that the game is asking you to intervene in. Not being able to do missions is really frustrating, but fortunately the range in the v18.2 beta seems sufficient enough to reach most, if not all of the map.

Did smoke grenades deal stun damage in the original X-COM? I can't remember.

I don't think that LMGs should have to deploy; though it's much more realistic than X-COM, Xenonauts still gives me that "action movie" feeling, and it's pretty common for action heroes to spray and pray with LMGs while on the run. Having the option to do so in order to get increased accuracy is good, but then, that's what we have Crouch for, right? I dunno, seems like an unnecessary mechanic to me.