TheTuninator

I think we can all agree that "the way the game is intended to be played" is without save-scumming, no? I've seen no indications of Xenonauts being designed with save-scumming in mind, nor have I seen any posts from Chris indicating that he wants the game to be played with save-scumming. That's what I'm referring to; the game is intended for you to play without save-scumming. I don't really think there can be any debate on that matter. Beagle's already addressed this, but I'll point it out again; you're not supposed to be able to obtain medals like achievements, as that's clearly not what Chris intends them to be. They're not something you obtain for completion's sake, but rather simply a cosmetic award for your soldier to remind you of something particularly awesome he did and facilitate further development of your own internal narrative for the game. Everyone who plays the game can get the Sole Survivor medal; it may not happen every playthrough, but it's not supposed to happen every playthrough. Per Chris's comments, medals are a commemorative piece, not a goal in and of themselves. They're not meant to be something you try to get, but rather something which reflects events which naturally occur in the game. If you want to try to get them deliberately, fine, but that's not why they are there. And Chris has already given his feedback; he's selected the "Sole Survivor" medal as one he wants in the game. Indeed, that's been one of the ones he's wanted since the OP. I've read the OP, and I've made plenty of medal suggestions of my own; I reserve the right to provide reasons in favor of retaining a medal that I like if you are arguing in favor of removing it.

It is realistic to get them, though. I'm on my first playthrough of X-COM, and I've already had the "one soldier lives" scenario happen once. The problem here is that you are linking your own personal play preferences with in-game design direction. It's not realistic for you or Gorlom to get that medal, because you'll just save-scum or reload your way out of losing your squad (and, again, I have no problem with people choosing to do that). However, for other players who prefer to roll with whatever punches the game throws at them and, by doing so, play the game the way it was intended to be played, it certainly is a realistic medal to get. It's important to separate our own personal play inclinations from the game itself. I'd also like to echo Beagle's post: We should not be looking at these in terms of "how hard is it to get these medals?"; we should look at these in terms of "what is awesome enough to deserve a medal?" Having only one soldier finish out a mission is awesome, ergo it deserves a medal irrespective of how difficult that medal is to achieve.

Yes, but it's supposed to be very hard to get; that means the medal is working well!

Chris talks about it earlier in the thread, but essentially, the psi powers in X-COM gave you the ability to mop the floor with the aliens wherever you found them, thus removing most of the tension and feeling of an uphill struggle from the game. By removing psi powers for humans, he aims to keep the player feeling that they're balancing on the razor's edge between being overwhelmed and succeeding right up till the end of the game.

Well, I'd assume that there would be a baseline of at least a medium or larger UFO, or the medal would be rather devalued; one guy killing a single alien who popped out of a Very Small UFO is hardly a feat for the ages. Also, Xenonaut loading screens are/will be about as long as a "Hidden Movement" alien turn, so waiting through loadscreens is not really more difficult. I'm sorry, but I really don't think medals which the majority of non-savescumming players find valuable and hard to achieve should be limited for the sake of the small minority of save-scumming completionists. That's not a knock on your playstyle preferences, everyone plays a game differently, but asking game options to be tailored to your deliberately game-breaking style of play strikes me as rather inconsiderate. You have adopted a style of play which by its very nature breaks the foundation of the game (and, again, that's totally fine); if you're going to embrace its game-breaking nature, than you need to embrace the fact that this is not reflective of the way the game is meant to be played. As Gauddlike has pointed out, it's more or less impossible to create a medal that can't be save-scummed, because save-scumming breaks the game. I don't think I've seen a single medal design in this entire thread that couldn't be save-scummed if you put in enough time.

Sounds cool! I, too, stumbled across alien race names in the files and was wondering what the "terror units" were going to be. Good to know!

Right, and save-scumming one guy through an entire mission to kill like 8-20 aliens would also be a highly intensive process in terms of having to repeat turns over and over again. You'd have to really want someone with the sole survivor medal to do that. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that save-scumming breaks the game, period; that's why I'd really prefer that it not be taken into account whatsoever in game design.

So Psionic Strength is being folded into Bravery? Interesting.

Oh, that was a conscious design decision? I hope that can be modded, then; I liked the ridiculous misses X-COM threw out from time to time.

Eh, no offense, but I don't feel the "survived a fatal wound" replaces the "sole survivor" medal very well; they're both there to recognize very different events. That's not to say "survived a fatal wound" is a bad medal; they're just very different. Also, I don't think it's unrealistic that there actually could be a sole survivor; I've had this happen to me, and one of the most widely-circulated X-COM war stories, The Legend of Patrick Stewart, features a sole survivor moment. Granted, it's very rare that you won't just reload or abandon the field, but that's what these medals are supposed to be; very rare. You could easily savescum the "fatal wound" one too, just keep running one of your soldiers in front of the last alien over and over again and reloading until he finally gets it. If you savescum with enough dedication, you can do literally anything; that's why the game shouldn't be balanced with savescumming in mind at all. It breaks the game by its very nature.

What was it, exactly? I honestly don't think it's a problem that needs to be adjusted for; if you want to spend five hours savescumming a single soldier through a mission and thus strip the medal you will receive of all value and meaning, more power to you.

Ingame shots do tend to spread far less than squad fire does in X-COM, but I think that's actually a problem which needs to be addressed.

If you are savescumming with only one soldier for the sake of a cosmetic bonus with very limited gameplay application, that's your choice, but the game shouldn't be designed to reflect the incredibly small minority who are willing to abuse savegames to that degree. I find myself more or less in complete agreement with Beagle's post; you've stated the points I previously tried to articulate masterfully well.

It makes sense to me. "Aimed shot" means you're taking a second or two to line up the shot, while with the others you're just whipping off fire at the alien as soon as you see it.

New intercept window looks great! Using the actual UFO art sounds fine, I'm sure it will be very pretty.

I don't really see the problem with blue jumpsuits; it fits right in to the Cold War atmosphere for me. I can understand why someone might find Xenonauts to have a bit more of a "tactical" feel due to the realism of its weaponry and vehicles, as opposed to the vaguely sci-fi equipment of X-COM, but I like that personally; it makes the game feel much more grounded in realism and makes the contrast between humanity and our opponents that much starker.

Given that there's a fairly accessible map editor, I have no doubt that the amount of available maps for the game will dramatically increase after release due to community mapping.

Why is it premature? It's not like the basic text files of the game are going to change between now and release, and I see no reason not to get started modding as soon as possible. We're afforded a unique chance to be able to play Xenonauts as it develops and give our own feedback and contributions; modding is a great way to do that, as well as helping out Chris and the team by adding additional content to the game. Plus, if Xenonauts has a thriving modding community on release, that can only be good for the game. Yeah, I'm thinking about throwing that in, though by 1979 I felt it might have been a little dated. Still, I might.

Good to hear! I've been doing some tinkering with the game files to try out different AP values; hopefully, I can contribute to game balancing in that regard come beta.

The most important thing is to make sure your F-17s get into enemy range before the MiG (they can tank) and, very importantly, make sure that you fire off missiles in multiple salvos. If you fire off all your missiles at once, Scouts will just dodge them, and then you're up a certain creek without a paddle. If you volley them, the second wave will usually catch the Scout. You can keep missiles from all going off at the same time by right-clicking them and toggling the color indicator to red; that will keep them from automatically firing.

Well, I think ideally the medals would be set up so it just wouldn't be feasible for soldiers to get that many of them due to difficulty; that way you avoid the problem of "medal farming" to begin with. Chris doesn't really seem to want soldiers necessarily to be able to collect more than a few medals.

The danger should be alleviated somewhat once actual bulkheads get thrown into the bridge; the problem is just that right now there's no internal terrain, so the whole crew can open fire as you storm in. I like breaching UFOs being highly dangerous, as it should be; I feel the problem right now is just that it's too dangerous on account of unfinished game features. Flashbangs will have to be handled carefully; they'll be nice to have, but it's going to be quite tricky to balance them so as to avoid giving the player too powerful a tool for stunning and capturing aliens early in the game.

I'm inclined to agree with Beagle; I don't really think Xenonauts needs much more than X-COM has to make players attached to their soldiers. I wince when one of my soldiers dies in X-COM, and all I've done is give them a name. I wince because I remember everything they did, and it hurts to know that I won't be able to be awed by their exploits any more in the future. A "diary" where players could jot down notes about what the trooper has done could be cool, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the best avenue for Chris to focus the team on; as an indie dev, they can only do so much, and it feels rather extraneous. The medals system will cover that area after a fashion, anyways.

I honestly wouldn't mind getting screwed over by random placement so a UFO could run away every now and then if it ensured that the actual combat engagements, which will be far more common, would be more varied; however, I hear what you're saying. Maybe a different/preset spawn if the UFO is just trying to run, as that would represent the interceptors just overhauling it from the stern instead of breaking formation for a dogfight.

I know there's a big update planned for air combat, but I've been thinking about this a bit and figured I might as well offer some suggestions Currently, most air combats play out pretty much the same way due to the spawn placement of combatants. You're either on a stern chase of a fleeing scout, or flying head-on into a couple of UFOs at a time. As there's very little room to maneuver, you pretty much always do the same thing; this is very different from ground combat, where even combats on the exact same alpha map can play out completely differently due to differing spawn locations for aliens and the crashed UFO. I propose that air combat have a semi-randomized spawn placement as well, to simulate the chaotic nature of an actual "furball" and allow players some room to maneuver their fighters to gain advantage. In order to minimize the chances of one of your $300,000 fighters getting a horrible spawn and getting blown up right off the bat, this could take the form of just placement at any point along the player's and alien's map edge, like so: (Red represents the player spawn, green represents the UFO. Bit counter-intuitive, sorry) Thoughts?