stem11

OK. Unfortunately I know little about what can/can't be done in the game so I write my ideas in the hope that you will find something useful to make mod better. I think after you've finished mod I will try to play with some changed parameters myself and if I find something interesting I'll let you know.

Using different armors with different stats is not what I am thinking of, since you always can put it on any soldier. I suggest to make str attribute and soldiers experience more important for heavy soldiers if it is possible. In my game I have many experienced soldiers and if I want some of them to use heavy weapon I completely ignore their strength because it has no meaning to be strong to use heavy weapon (paradox?) – just put on power armor. Therefore I am trying to find a way to make some differences between strong and weak soldiers – enhance flexibility of strong soldiers (e.g. to use both heavy weapon and heavy shield) or make some small penalty for inexperienced weak soldiers while using power armor with heavy weapon. But maybe you are right and this situation can't be fixed only with balance changes.

This could be powerfull vibro/electro/impulse/wave shockers or a chemical sprayer - heavy two-handed weapons with 1 tile range, high damage and ammo. Maybe it can be done like a flamethrower with the same animation but with 1 tile range and green/blue flame. It is an analogue of a ranged heavy weapon to use with power armor (the only melee-like weapon to use with power armor as it doesn't support shields) but without suppression, with high accuracy, very short range and higher damage. It can be a separate branch with autoupdate. Strong soldiers: shield with heavy melee weapon with good armor (power armor if possible), power armor with heavy range weapon and much ammo without penalty, power armor with heavy two-handed melee/very short-ranged weapon with much ammo without penalty. Weak soldiers: shield with pistol/leight melee weapon and moderate simple armor, heavy one-handed melee weapon with good armor without shield, power armor with heavy ranged weapon with 1 ammo and with small penalty, power armor with heavy two-handed melee/very short range weapon with 1 ammo and small penalty. Under the spoiler I put some rough ideas about how I see it.

Again about soldiers creativity. I suggest some balance changes to implement strength as the most important attribute for a heavy class. In the current game to make a heavy just take a soldier with any str attribute and give him power armor – he will instantly get 100 str or more – it's like a cheat. I mean to allow the use of best armor with heavy melee/range weapon and best melee weapon with shields only for soldiers with high strength. Details are under the spoiler.

Now I see – it will be interesting to try. Is it possible to autosold all old weapons before replacing?

And what about game length? The game tends to be very long, but there will be only 2 weapon updates for each branch (if MK1 is default). If you get MK3 too early in the game – this weapon will be too weak in the end, in other case you will need to play the most part of the game with original weapon or its first update MK2.

Nice to see, that you made it. There will be many different types of weapons – to balance all this is not easy task. Will all tiers be useful throughout the whole game (not like 0.98 where the next tier was always better than the previous)? As I see you decided not to use infinite number of weapons and all previously manufactured weapons will be lost? Also if I need MK2 shotgun should I research MK1 pistol first?

I mean to make it depend on soldiers stat. For example, if soldier has 40 accuracy after wearing armor he will get + 20%, so his accuracy will be 48, but not 60.

Then I think the best solution is to wait. Drages, I have thought about soldiers specialization. In game most soldiers are universal – sniper, assault, rocketeer, etc. I think it would be more interesting to make soldiers more diverse and use more thoughtfully strong and weak sides of their abilities. I mean that a soldier shouldn't be universal - if he is a good sniper than bad heavy and melee. I don't think it is possible to implement special skills and abilities for soldiers depending on their exp without a whole lot of work, but maybe there are easier solutions? Maybe it is possible to create some pseudo-classes via stats. For example, make sniper (high acc), heavy (high str), scout (high TU) and assault (high reflexes). I have some ideas but it demands creating soldiers with highly different initial stats. Is it possible to regulate initial stats so that if one value is very high so other must be very low? Or to generate soldiers using different stat rules (some soldiers with high acc and low str, other with high str and low acc)? Or, at least, that the sum of generated stats will be equal (like 35 acc+75 str = 75 acc + 35 str)? Also some types of armor/weapon increase stats of soldiers (like +20 to accuracy, or power armor which gave high strength), so that their own abilities are not taken into account. Is it possible to make armor/weapon stats as percent of soldier's ability (like +20% to accuracy)?

I think it is a good idea but not for upgrades (this means only 1 upgrade instead of 3 and many weapons in manufacture menu and in store). It is better to use to give player choice of alternative weapons, like what he prefers – to increase accuracy of a weapon or to increase its damage. In general, I think it can be left as you suggest – with autoupdate and infinite number of weapons (with high demanding manufacture), until something will be changed in code. You could additionally implement some ultimate unique weapon near the end of the game (in addition to your infinite ordinary weapons) which needs to be manufactured and will be limited. As a some temporary solution you can keep 2 types of weapons – the new one will be limited and the previous one will be infinite. For example, you have now infinite number of some weapon. You finished research of MK1. Then you get new manufacture option – manufacture MK1. If you complete this manufacture you will get 1-5 units of MK1 weapon of each type (rifle+pistol+...). This will not replace your current infinite weapon, so you will have 2 types – infinite ordinary weapon and limited MK1. Then, after a while new research of MK2 weapon will appear – this will give you infinite number of MK1 weapons (here MK1 can replace ordinary weapon in stock and MK2 can replace MK1 weapon) and new manufacture option to produce MK2 weapon in small amount. Here will be a choice – you can use more powerfull weapon with higher price or less powerfull but free.

Will this option after completion disappear from manufacture menu or you will be able to downgrade your weapon by completing some old manufacture?

Drages, I have some questions. Is there 2 weapon branches each consists of 4 weapons and each weapon has 3 undates? Do you want to autoupdate all weapons like: gauss MK1 > MK2 > MK3 > updated gauss > updated gauss MK1 > …? Will outdated options like update MK1 to MK2, MK2 to MK3... be in manufacture menu despite of "update weapon to another version with one manufacture" ? Is it possible to move outdated options from one category in manufacture menu to another?

We will see who will laugh in the end . Could you change stats of existing weapons, so that, e.g. all gauss rifles without replacement will get additional bonuses after research? If it is possible than you could omit MK1/2/3 and manufacture it as simple gauss rifle. You could also make beg/mid weapons as infinite and the ultimate version as unique. The other idea is to manufacture ammo to somehow balance infinite number of weapons. Instead of 100s types of weapons you could have 10s ammo types. You could also add the possibility to manufacture new ammo types from previous (if you can't remove them from manufacturing menu). I don't like this idea much but I think it is better than have nothing to manufacture at all or have the manufacture menu cluttered with 100s useless weapons.

I see there is an interesting discussion about weapon system. There are many attractive suggestions. IMHO it will be difficult to balance many different weapon types with quite diverse properties. I think, it would be easier to unify all weapons and broaden the idea of alien resistances. For example, laser rifle for Androns can inflict the same damage as plasma rifle for Ceasans and ballistic weapon (as universal weapon) half that damage but equal to both of them). This will help to better adjust game balance. Moreover there will be no one universal/superior weapon to take on a mission – each time a player should choose proper weapon according to enemy species. Differences can be left in weapon types, for example: sniper rifle – long distance, high damage, low ammo, high TU, high accuracy; shotgun – very short distance, med. mitigation/damage/suppression, low TU; rifle – med. distance, med. damage, med. accuracy, low TU; cannon – med. distanse, med. square damage, low. accuracy, low ammo, high TU; heavy weapon - med. accuracy, med. distance, high damage, high suppression (imho suppression is very useful to prevent reaction fire, maybe even increase its chance), med TU, etc. Several lines of weapons could be, for example, kinetic (as suggested ballistic-gauss-MAG), beam (laser-lance laser-precision laser), plasma (plasma-alenium-wave) or something like that. Each line (except universal kinetic) will be very effective against some alien species but useless against others. Each type of weapon could be autoupgraded after corresponding research to improved version like nextgen laser rifle which will give some bonuses to ammo/weight/accuracy. There also could be some weapons which will only autoupdate without having separate lines like flame-thrower or chemical weapon.

I only suggested my ideas. I agree with you that some of them may be difficult or even impossible to implement. I'll leave it for modders to decide whether they can/want to do it or not. It is also possible to give some alien alloys/alenium if you do manual bombing (as for alien interceptors) or decrease slightly panic. And also it would be nice to bomb landed ufos. For current balance radar ranges are OK, maybe even a little high. Your base radars (from 3 bases) will cover the most part of the ground. Also you can allow up to 4 contries to leave project, in this case even 2 bases with radars will be more than enough. I had another situation – until late game my interceptors frequently didn't have enough speed/flight range to go after ufo which was far from my base but visible to radars. I am trying to make more use of Awacs aircraft – I like it, but in the present state it has no sense (maybe only in the very beginning of the game). Some people simply sell it. In my game I have discovered all alien bases outside my borders by using ordinary interceptors. They do have small radar range, but they flight a lot on different routes. Maybe make alien bases visible only to Awacs radars, but I think it is even more difficult to implement. Such aircrafts could also be converted to a something like satellites (as for implementation it may be an airplane with very slow speed, very high tank capacity and small detection rate from alien interceptors, otherwise it can be eliminated before you manage to do anything).

Here are some ideas about adding new aircraft classes to the game. 1) In the present Awacs makes little sense but this can be amended. - You could remove all radars (or highly decrease their range) from ordinary aircrafts. You can even try to decrease base's radars range. Then it will be possible to use only Awacs and the like to detect alien bases and other alien ships outside your base's radars. But I don't know whether ordinary aircrafts will lose sight of pursued alien ufo with small radar range. - Moreover it is possible to make panic constantly increase over continents, which are mostly not covered by your radars. And as a way to decrease panic to send there from time to time Awacs-like aircrafts on patrol missions (even if they don't find any ufo there – people will be more calm). It is also possible to improve speed, radar range and fuel tank of Awacs-like aircraft via new research projects. 2) The game have airstrikes – it is very convenient. I think it could be improved by additionaly adding the possibility to make airstrike manually with more useful materials recovered. It may be done via new class of bombers which will flight to crash site and eliminate Ufo. They also could bomb landed ufos to turn them into crashed ones. They could attack automatically without fights but they will be very vulnerable to alien ufos in the air.

You are right, I remember that heavy drones are rather clumsy and are often stuck in small locations. If new units will be 2x2 they indeed will have very limited mobility. You could try to make them smaller (like with giant xenomorph) but I think it is more difficult with dragons unless you have more vertical version.

All evenings (2-4 hours) and whole weekends. Looks interesting. You could even add two varieties of this creature - with and without weapon. Maybe change guns to rocket launchers - aliens have no analogue of rocket tank (alien with rockets on terror mission - that would be nice ). By the way, the crew looks familiar . Drages, are you still looking for a buggy sebillian weapon save?

It very depends on your playstyle and how drages will adjust difficulty in the next version . I think in general it will take about 2 weeks. If you really like tactical battles and will play most ground combats, go through every terror mission, seize all alien bases – it can easily take a month.

I see, fascinating isn't it . It is difficult to recommend something other than somehow simplifying it. There are too many dependencies and I assume it is difficult to control balance and add or change something in the present state.

It is difficult to suggest something without having full research tree and seeing all dependencies. As a temporary solution you can just add to research description some phrases in brackets. For example: - If this is a dead-end research you can only add '(This research project will help us develop new/improve our aircraft/ armor/ weapon etc.)' or even don't add anything if it is clear from a description. - If this can lead to some other projects you may add '(This research project is necessary for improvement of our airforce/groundforce etc.)'. - If this is project which leads to all sorts of improvements than add '(This project is crucial for further understanding alien technologies)'. - If this is a key project for the game plot than add '(This project is crucial for stopping alien invasion)'. - You can also combine some of them: 'This project is crucial for stopping alien invasion and will help us better understand alien technologies.' Also some my other suggestions for the future:

Hello again, drages. I have completed the game on veteran (xenonauts 1.5 + 0.32 HF2 with mod 0.98.2 without hotfixes). To begin with I want to thank you and all people working on x-division. You have already made a big job and in the end this mod will be great. I would like to play the final version. Here I describe some issues which I encountered. Some minor issues (like mistakes in Ufo-pedia) I can send you via private message if you would like. All my remarks are IMHO and are based only on my walkthrough (other people may not encounter them at all). My suggestions are under the spoiler. If anybody doesn't want to know about some advanced techs/weapons or storyline don't open it. This is what I now remember. If you have some questions on some other specific issues I would be glad to answer.

Yes, it seams so.

OK, here is a geosphere save. But there are no #### in research screen here, it appears only if you enter research screen following message right after ground mission.

I can load this file in 0.98.2 (0.98->0.98-1->0.98-2).