Charon

Its a game. dude. We are not cross checking every value in the game for a supposedly common conception what is "real" warfare. If you want real warfare, talk with some romans, they knew how to make war. UHm, wut are you talking about ? First, why do you think your perception of reality is the only right one. Secondly, where did we promise what ? We told you this is a game, and you got a game. And what has that to do with a beta ? Dude, look to No Mans Sky and talk again. XD XD XD. I agree about the soldiers, but this is a game - you know with GAMEplay, not REALplay. For people who understand this, its not a problem to play a game as long as the gameplay mechanics are fun to deal with. Dude, this is what is called game limitations. We didnt program the game, and neither can we put in those things. Btw, where did you read that is the turned based ARMA 3 variant ? Oh, dear, you dont know how many sure shotgun kills i have missed in halo because i was nervous. Neither do you know how many shotgun shots were missed in actual combat due to battlefield confusion. Thats not possible. You seem to know what the code can do better than we do XD. I agree., but that point is about GAMEplay, not REALplay. If you actually play with mostly bazookas and loot destroying weapons you are going to lose quicker than Harry Potter can say "Expecto Patronum". They are not perceived because this is a game, not realism . I think you need to chill down and realise this is a game, with gameplay elements, not realplay elements. The story and lore about this mod is exactly that, story and lore. They are not a description of the game, but ratherundermine and set the background for the game. We are not bound to phoshoric flame behaviour if we say our incendiary grenades are majorly made out of phosphor. Neither am we bound to know the chemical reactions when those react with commonly known materials and eviornment. Looks awesome that you are with us, but realise these points.

A simple progress bar with repeatable researches which gives certain points seem to be the most viable variant of this idea. Other researches can have an array variable counter, like "needs" 10 progress points for variable X. But that doesnt really have much to do with this thread.

That sounds big. I support this , as far as i can.

Yes - the heavy ability makes vehicle crush "crushable" things, you can talk to Draku when he comes back, thats his job No - the retaken country code is currently broken, so Solver would need to fix this for future versions Yes - you can use a point defense system fo UFOs. Keep the following 2 bugs in mid though. 1. A UFO can only have 1 missile targeting system - otherwise its a CTD. 2. There can never be 2 projectiles on the map from the same weapon - otherwise its a CTD. Make the projectiles fast and with a high turn value. No - you dont need to restore any internal script folder, the game creates itself aproppriately to your current modloader

I dont know,i would be very careful to not trip anything, as the sound system is prone to crash. Speaking from the coding side if the system searches for Weapon Laser Rifle Reload it can only take one unique sound name anyway, maybe it chooses randomely, maybe it causes instability. Who knows, i dont.

No. This would need a whole concept and place in the UI, not to mention we would have to do this for every manu, and also maintain the correct information through all patches. Its better and less work to only have 1 place to look after for the correct information.

The line <Sound name="Weapon Laser Rifle Reload" volume="1.0" group="1" comment="Played on weapon.pistol reloading"> <Wave>audio/sfx/weapons/weapon_laser_rifle_reload_1.ogg</Wave> <Wave>audio/sfx/weapons/weapon_laser_rifle_reload_2.ogg</Wave> </Sound> is doubled in the sounds_gc.xml in the vanilla as well as the XCE version.

Thumbs up !

If you activate the retaken country code in the gameconfig, then any successful base raid will set the countries relationsship to the value specified in the gameconfig. This is endlessly reproduceable.

This is more or less planned for the next versions.

I know i know, but you get what my point is. XCE and the vanilla game are not different enough, so an intermediate mod collaboration which shows of all of the XCE strenghts would be a good stepping stone for players who want more, but dont want to get bored to death by teh vanilla experience, if they have already outgrown it. XCE would get all the props for making this collaboration possible and most importantly, compatible. You can make a thread where you detail what mod majorly changes things, like for instance if we would revive XNT, and give recommendations on the difficulty and player experience needed. Add some more mods and make sure that they are all compatible and accessible with only a click. I can guarantee you every player will thank you for making an concentrated thread which tells them what to do and how to achieve this. My suggestions are up. EDIT: Im outta here .

This is EXACTLY what im talking about. Why dont you revive the XNT as the new intermediate experience. Policenaut fixes up teh code, adds his addtions, adds whatever he wants, makes and CHECKS the list of compatible and recommended game mods, and VOÍLA you have the new intermediate experience with the least amount of work. You even get an incredible balanced and well behaving game and AI on top. I think this may be a misunderstanding, if people ask for mods we recommend X-Divison, if they ask for a decision between vanilla and XCE we say XCE. As you said, XCE is not a mod so we cant really recommend it as such. The middle stone is missing because all mods which could do the job are outdated. Well, i wouldnt be comfortable until XCE is not the default game, and the vanilla game gets its place under the "Beta" tab, if you know what i mean . If XCE gets that place than i would call it reasonable to talk about those mini changes, which this thread should actually be about. Sry about that . The main problem here is that Goldhawk Interactive should get the props. So i would rather switch the whole game out and make something like: "Xenonauts" Goldhawk Interactive improved by the Xenonaut Community Edition then make the intermediate stepping stone as the next recommended playthrough.

Continuation. But all the different mods are pretty overwhelming, and players hardly get any help on choosing what to take and what not, let alone to pray that they are 1. compatible, 2. not outdated and 3. find the right modloader place. The modmerging system solves a lot of problems for modders, but for the average guy it is as complicated to choose what to use and what not as ever, once they start adding more than 3 mods. And prey that they work together ! This is the reason why so many people choose Xenophobia as their first mod to play, because it looks like the biggest additions, with the least installing/compatible problems. In the same way XCE comes with a lot of mods recommended to install and activate, there could be a joint "Extended Community Editiion" which lists and maintains a set of mods which tells the player EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. And also keep it compatible with everything. This is the reason why i dont think you should get bound too much by the vanilla experience.

Ditto, Ditto, that are my words. Without the negative aspect. Ditto, Ditto. Heres the first tooltip that gets displayed upon the first GC: <Tip showOnFirstGroundCombat="true"> We advise you to play the Xenonauts Community Edition ( XCE ) before playing the X-Division Mod. This mod introduces new mechanics, new content and an extended campaign which can be confusing and overwhelming for new players. v.099 is in BETA state for testing. </Tip> This has been in place since the 0.98 version. I believe the climax has already been reached. If you look at XCE and all teh mods it adds it can hardly get better. More maps, more fixes, more sounds, improved Xpedia entries, thats all you can basically add without altering the game too much. But i think the vanilla experience is good at the thing it does, and you reach the point where slightly improving on things is just a matter of oppinion. Btw why is nobody talking about XNT ? As far as i know it tries to stay incredible close to the vanilla game, features an incredible good balance, and only adds and tweaks a few additions here and there and doesnt feature an incredible amount of additional content. It has a good bleeding system, and etc ... . I guess i im the wrong guy for it, but you heard my ideas . X-Division is just a continues work on the things which have already been build. First came XCE to unlock and enable so many modding possibilities, after that XNT tried something bigger, without XNT there would have never been a Xenophobia, and without a Xenophobia i would have never felt compelled to mod in the first place. So im saying every additon is cool, and every contribution matters. X-Division is just the consequent evolving of the modding possibilities which were present at that time, and 2 years ago it would definitely not be possible. Maybe we would have build something similar to XNT, and without the 34.2 version X-Division would have never seen the light it does now. So EVERY contribution matters. I mean we used @Max_Caine pictures as the main menu beackground for some versions, and it just looked freaking awesome, and still does. His lore+ mod is so important because it vivdly shows how a game can be improved. All of this mods and ideas MATTER and lay the foundation for future mods because it INSPIRES the future authors. Thats immensly important. My basic outline is this: Random guy X hears about Xenonauts and buys it to play it. He never heard about XCE, or maybe missed it, or thinks he wants to try the vanilla experience first. This is the point where i do believe the vanilla game shines the most, because it is very good at showing what Xenonauts is about. We all agree about the basic fundamentals of the game ( 1. air supremacy, 2. granting technology sites, and 3. get your squad on the last mission experience level ) and that they may not feel ... mature enough. But the basic feature of them is that they are easy to understand, repetetive and accessible enough. For us it may feel not challenging enough, but for people who never played X-Com styled games it is pretty challenging, and a good start. This motivates people in the same way you start with a beginners karate course and not a profi one. This is the reason why i believe the vanilla game is the best at what it is doing. The main problem here is not to improve on XCE, but to advertise XCE as the main game because it doesnt really matter if you started with the vanilla game or XCE, both are great at what they are doing, but they are not different enough to play again, because: After the vanilla experience the player has learned fundamental principles of the game, and may be ready for more. He hears about XCE and thinks its its own mod. He starts to play, but basically it is the same game with some improved things, there are just not enough new things to challenge the player. This is the point where i see a lot of potential in an "Extended Community Edition" mod, to serve as an intermediate step to grasp the interest of the player. Personnally i recommend Xenophobia as the middle stone, because it is hard, has an incredible amount of content and most importantly is INCREDIBLE funny. It features the seriousness the XNT team put into the mod, with the cracyness of all that unbalanced things the other mods add. I still recommend the game as the feeling between playing Duke Nukem together with Saints Row 4. Xenophobia is so immensly important because it shows a collaborated experience what modding can all add to the game, and its main feature is to let the player experience all those cracy things. It opens the heart of the player for the fun part Xenonauts can provide. Unfortunately Xenophobia is old, and hardly compatible anymore. So this opens up a new place for a new kind of intermediate experience.

@Policenaut Basically what i was saying is why dont you start on the "Collaborated" Improved Community edition ?

Oki.

Sry to break it to you, but this has all been done before. Tiny tweaks and changes everywhere. The 200 mods are a testament to this. If you want to make something you could take what you need from every mod and put your own ideas ontop - balancing will be hell though, and this will be the main work. This is where most people give up, its too much work. If you consequently follow your interests, you will land at something similar to X-Division, just to see that providing a "whole" experience is too much to handle alone. You need a visual guy, a programmer, at least 2 faithful testers, 1 UI programmer, 1 XCE guy to support you like Solver, a mapmaker, 2 writers, one for the research and one for the Xpedia, and on top of that a faithful community to support you. If you have all that you can put your own ideas into shape. Without that you wont be able to finsih whatever you started - because it will be simply too much work to do alone. And your mods are great, but can you tell if all of those are compatible with mod X or mod Y ? After that comes the maintenance and the support. The next XCE version could silently break one of the mods. This is why a lot of too old mods are ... too old. Think like Blizzard - gameing is a service, not a product. Your mods may lose all relevance in a year if not mantained. Software fades faster than anything else, and the next windows version could break everything again. And most people just get a new windows version eventually. This is as likely as the an Amen in the church. Because of all of these reasons i believe its good to contribute to something bigger, as the whole community works on a single project. Nobody´s forcing you to abandon your own ones, but integrating them into something bigger simplifies it.

X-Division already uses that. 50% of the aircomabt relationsshipbonus gets added upon a successful GC to smooth things out. But its an interesting idea to actually make it the major income source. You could make the UFO relationshipbonus incredibly small and the GC bonus gain to an appropriate level, like 1000%, to make a difference.

Being part of the team means that you have your own thing you want to contribute with. Everything is welcome, as long as it fits. We are currently looking for a mapmaker to totally rebalance and build every single map from scratch, and this is the place i would like you to have, although i understand you want to do different things. As soon as you want to contribute with something you can get access to everything, im working on my own mod apart from X-Division too. Ill keep my ears open for you.

Like i said, the suggested mod is the minimum of difference to the vanilla game, and the maximum of teh things you want to achieve. Read them. I think you miss the point. UFO DSBs are not about a second strike team. PERSONALLY i believe it to be a VERY BAD game designing step to let the player grind for more resources simply because they need to so to be successfull. No, the second strike team is necessary because of the diversity of the mod, and because it is so hard. Let me stress one thing here: Pulling out is an often and necessary tactical choice, which should be used if you need it. Its part of the game. Let me elaborate. At the beginning of each phase, and they are 4 of them, there will UFOs spawn which you wont be able to beat. Be it because you simply dont know their features or because your arsenal is simply 1 phase behind. It could be because you dont have enough anti fighter aircraft, or for different reasons. Whatever the reasons, at the beginning of a phase there will be UFOs you can shoot down, and some you cant. There is a lot of diversity in this, and there is an incredible spawn from weak UFO crews and army strong UFO crews. You naturally start with the UFOs you can get down, where there are a lot of differences as well. And from the ones you get down you start with the GC ones you can actually be succesfull in. From them you aquire a bit better tech, and have a bit more chances in either the GC or Aircombat. The point im making here is that the faster you get your hands on better technology the faster you have better options available to battle the invasion. A dropship can maximally do 2 missions per wave, and not everything goes as planned. Sometimes you experience a squadwipe. And all of this is part of the game. A squadwipe is not the end of the game, it just happens. This way you slowly claw your way up, until you might have a team that can take on a Battle Cruiser Crew, or a Bomber Carrier UFO Crew. Then the next phase starts and your options and possibilities depend on how well you performed in teh last phase. If you performed well you will have more room to approach the challenges. If you failed last phase you will propably face an even tougher uphill battle. You are always gradually losing or winning. The game isnt about to leisurely and stupidly grinding for the last mission. In X-Division its a normal sight that you lose a soldier and dont think: "OMG, i need to grind for this again." There is no winning button anymore, and there is no instantly loseing button anymore. The whole experience is made up by thousand little decisions you do all the time. If you need a second strike team or not, that is up to you. This chains you Solver. I already gave you the perfect solution for the vanilla game and you seem to dismiss it as "Not close enough to vanilla". Like i said, the vanilla and XCE experience is as close as you can get to the game idea. Without changing something, there might be no improvement, and even if, it would be an mini itsy bitsy teenie weenie ... i think you get the idea. Than you have to introduce reasons why GC is important. Like i said, the only reason GC is important is To get access to new technologies To grind for the last mission If you dont change up those factors you will never change anything. But changing those factors means to change the vanilla game. Realise your demise, you aint getting out of it otherwise. Possible factors for the GC are Relationsship bonues. This more or less equals money, but its a special kind of money as it gets awarded in iterations GC loot. = money again To aquire unique loot to make unique weapons, to have different tools to have fun with in more GC missions. The DIABLO principle. Fight to get better equipment and use better equipment to get a different experience to fight for better equipment. Again this leads you away from the vanilla game. Thats actually it. Apart from grinding for better game performance If you follow these steps consequently you will arrive to what X-Division is today. If you dont change up the vanilla game you wont change its flaw, BECAUSE the vanilla game is already the best working experience in itself. You can barely improve on that. If you want my honest oppinion, i believe the thing which offers the biggest improvement to the vanilla game is my 164 high quality sound aircomabt chatters. This changes 0 things and puts the whole game to new hights of enjoyment. Easy as that.

This is exactly like X-Division started too. A few changes here, some tweaks there, and all of a sudden you see the necessity for feature X, and some balance at point Y, and ofcourse some unique things. This is what i want to, and what X-Division basically is, or rather my vision of it is. I see X-Division of a project where EVERYBODY can contribute to a experience, no matter how small or big it is, and a lot of people are doing this right now. This is why i want you for the team @Policenaut. If you make some content why not integrate it into X-Division, a joint project ? The main reason i want to integrate everything into 1 experience is because the modloader system simply doesnt cut it. We have people asking on reddit what mods to use and which are compatible with what. AND they are right about this. To fully understand if something is compatible means you have to look into the code, and check for yourself, but first you have to understand the code. 95% of people wont do that, and it shouldnt be necessary for them. There are so many mods for xenonauts, but its mostly about people asking if mod X is compatible with mod Y. I believe the reason why this whole modding fails is because there wasnt a joint venture in all of this., and i dont know about XNT, although i have played it as a part of Xenophobia. Sure Armored Assault is a great mod and expands the vanilla experience, but as soon as you want to add another vehicel changing mod you will most likely get an error that you cant cope with. And thats the way with most mods here, they are all fractured and nobody is even sure if those 3 mods fit together. I want to see all the content here merged into 1 experience, where people get support, and not 200 fractured and outdated mods. So i am all for a middle step between the vanilla experience and X-Division, where you put in as much content as you see fit. But this also needs some maintenance over the years, and some people caring about this. Like i said, X-Division is a structured team, why not take advantage of a structure and support which is already there ? Nobody will force you to do things you dont want to. Its rather a give and take where you can do the things you like, with the people who know something, and the testers who want to have a better game. Ditto, read what i wrote.

Throwing in my 50 cents here. Most of the things are ones that i have addressed here: and heres a quote: In all honesty, i think X-Division addresses all those issues, and adds a lot of content. Heres the question: Could you make the same improvements without the content ? The answer: Propably not. One example: A second strike team is useless because You dont need it You dont need it You dont need it Its a waste of time and you are going to win with and without it anyway, only your Team A is important X- Division addresses this in a roundabout way by: Making you need more bases for the game because of the global coverage, and because you simply need more space to build labs/workshops Making Base Assaults UFOs night unbeatable More bases means you need more staff to protect them in case of a raid, means you have to moderately update your armour and weapons too The increased resource need means you need to raid more UFOs, until you find a stable balance of resource consumption and resource gain Could you make this for the vanilla/XCE game ? Propably not, because you simply would change the game too much. This is the main problem - the vanilla game is just the vanilla game. Its the best solution for what it wants to achieve. All that the vanilla game is about is Achieving air supremacy Raid technological granting crashsites Train your team for the last mission Thats the vanilla Xenonauts in a nutshell. If you would change this you would change the basics of the game, and thuse drift away from the vanilla experience. What i can think of off the hook is Increase airplane maintenance cost so that it is no longer sustainable to build airplanes, but that GC loot has to balance out the negative cost. - Or another method of making airplanes not viable. Increase GC loot money Increase the landing chance, duration and UFOs that can land Make the dropships faster, OPTIONALLY with less range so more dropships have to be ready any time to cover the whole globe. Dont forget to fix the valkyrie so it can pull out. Give the dropships about radar range for this, or a bit more. Increase the air supremacy missions to force the player to have anti fighter aircraft if he wants to take off with his dropships. Buff the the interceptors and their numbers. Increase the bomber mission UFOs, which never land, to force the player to build anti bomber aircraft and thuse have a high maintenance cost. Increase bombing relationship damage OPTIONALLY make the game harder The idea behind this is that the player needs anti fighter aircraft, to even send dropships to the landed "normal" UFOs. Thuse bringing his maintenance into the red. Additonally, he needs some anti bomber to prevent the bombing UFOs from simply bombing him out of this playthrough > the balance gets even more in the red. To balance this out he has to make successful GC missions. Because of the low range he needs more than 1 squad More than 1 squad means he needs more ressources Put all of this together and tweak the individual points and there you go ! Heres a picture to illustrate this: Now someone only has to make a mod out of this idea, and balance it and you are halfway on it to majorly change the game. You can thank me later for suggesting this.

+1 Im all for it. This could mean a lot. And we already got some dedicated modders, why not spending some time to track down some individual guys. We should talk to @Chris first about this though. And Solver needs to give a green light too.

I know, and this really hurts me because ive already set up my sound workstation perfectly, to produce high quality sounds for the aircombat endlessly. You should really take a look ( and a listen ) to those sounds to know what i mean. They sound so gorgeous and are so needed. You can also watch my latest developer diaries to get a taste. I guess i will publish them as a small package first, to minimise stability issues. Btw i m only talking about aircombat sounds, i dont add GC sounds. GC sounds seem to be fine as long as you dont add ambient sound. If you want to fix something it should be the buggy loading of GC, but i dont think thats possible, because honestly, i dont even know where we should start there.

@YaK Can see if never loading a GC save changes things in your next playthrough ?