indaris

Yes, I'm quite comfortable with physics and ballistics and actual stories of combat experience as well as my own experiences with firearms and hunting. Thank you for noticing. Barrel length, cartridge type, caliber, optics and of course shooter skill make a huge difference in what is an "effective range" and that's without any sort of terrain or cover and concealment considered! I've never seen a gun used in a "lab environment" though, perhaps you could explain more about that and post these articles about "average foot soldiers" in a conflict between peer opponents in a highly different combat environment than the small unit operations depicted in this game. The answer of course is that getting closer incrementally increases your chance to hit and penetrate armor, just like this game, imagine that! I suspect you mean Designated Marksman Rifle or DMR, which is the correct term for weapons that have been intended for a specific role but the term "Sniper Rifle" is about as accurate as "Assault Rifle" or "Samurai Sword" and if you're going to talk about this like you know anything about it, try to at least get the basic terms correct. You'll notice that the wikipedia link you shared actually has a warning at the top that the article is not properly sourced, which of course it isn't, because that's not a real term used by anyone but people who play too much Call of Duty or know nothing about it beyond Hollywood. A "Sniper's Rifle" is not a specific weapon, it is whatever rifle the sniper is using. It could be .308, it could be 7.62×54mm (if you like soviet stuff), it could be .50 BMG or even .338 Lapua and those all have very different ballistics and penetration characteristics. In any case, you can read an article here about what the US Army expects for M4 effective range and why they considered introducing a weapon platform that was capable of accurate point fire up to 500m using a larger caliber cartridge (the eternal debate, I suppose) after a decade and half in Afghanistan. Hint: It's because half of all firefights took place at ranges longer than 300m. Read the whole thing before you reply, it already addresses everything you're likely going to say.

That's great, but you're wrong. Pistols have a better range than shotguns do in general but of course it depends a lot on the caliber/gauge, ammunition, etc. You shoot 00 buckshot at 50 yards and there's a decent chance you miss your target entirely or only one projectile hits which doesn't do as much as even 9mm would at that range. Not to be rude, but I don't think you've ever actually been shooting in real life or handled a gun, so your opinion is really just your own fantasy rather than anything based on reality. The game ratio is fine despite being gamified. A real life ratio of effective combat ranges would be more like this. Pistol 9mm: Shotgun 00 Buck : Rifle 5.56 : Rifle .308 is 50 : 40 : 400 : 800 or if you'd rather, 5 : 4 : 40 : 80 but that wouldn't be very fun to play on a map this size. As in real life, you'd spend most of your time just using rifles and machine guns. Also, there's no such thing as a "sniper rifle", buddy, those are just rifles too with larger calibers and long range optics. Do you also think aerial combat isn't realistic enough too? Give me a break. The game combat is perfectly fine as it is. Edit: Just for your education, I included a little series of images to explain why 9mm has better range than 00 Buckshot and I hope the images and the notes will explain that for you, since I assume you already understand the kinetic energy equation.

Anyways, dumb argument. You're trying to compare apples and coconuts here and assuming because you can peel an apple with an apple peeler it will work just the same on a coconut. All of this is dependent highly on the ammunition used as well as the details of the weapon itself. The game doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to have a role for every weapon so there's nothing that serves no purpose in the game. It's already not particularly realistic when it comes to ranges simply because most players don't want to have fire fights at 200 yards which is what would happen in real life. Why not complain about the lack of tanks or mortars? The current set up is pretty good so I don't see any issues with it, but I only have 112 hours in the game so far (not including X1) so what do I know?

Against modern fragile plastic drones, sure. Against alien alloy armored anti-grav drones, they'll be no more effective than than a handful of gravel. Shotguns occupy a weapon niche in the game that allows for assault troops to set up ambushes at close range or rush into enclosed spaces and blast aliens at close range. An actual laser weapon of any kind would be far superior to fighting drones, real or alien in real life.

I also think they're a bit disappointing. It would be nice, especially early on, to have longer range interceptions to help cover other regions when you only have a base or two. 50% fuel increase would be reasonable, I think.

It's been a while since I posted, but I have been keeping an eye on these updates and I'm very excited to hear that we're getting close to a true release. Thank you for all the hard work, even if it has taken a long time. I'm still glad I backed this all those years ago.

I took a look at this. 10 years of development hell. Looks awful. Designs not creative at all, stolen from better franchises art concepts. Less features than the original. Extremely outdated GUI. Poor reviews all over the internet. Overly defensive team and tiny zealous fanbase. Hard pass.

So good to hear! I'm rooting for you guys!

I like the premise of XCOM which is that rather than have a Covenant style alliance of aliens (which I still enjoy too), they're basically a bunch of failed experiments. This allows you to have some weird designs which maybe aren't particularly grounded, but they exist because of the meddling of a powerful civilization and kept around to act as a measuring stick against future experiments. As an aside, I think people are misunderstanding what the Codex was. It's basically an AI that can deploy a holographic defense barrier allowing it to act in the physical world rather than over a network. It's like a smartphone that can attack people when they fail the thumbprint scanner. I suspect they were created as part of the occupation for some sort of purpose (monitoring or assisting the Advent troops?) so they have a humanoid shape. It's entirely possible that it originally WAS an attempt to digitize humans which failed and was repurposed for data protection.

I think it's a pretty cool idea, but I'd support it mainly in a system that expanded the air game a lot more.

I just read this and it has made me a very happy man! I look forward to playing the game on release. Congratulations on the child! I had one of my own last year, and it's quite an experience. Good luck.

I would assume that by the start of the invasion, any satellites Earth might have had are either destroyed or disabled. That would be step one in any planetary invasion. The photos and stuff would probably be available. However, to implement what you want, it's probably moddable very easily. You could just remove the initial fog to clear all of the map. You'd still have to rely on normal sight and you wouldn't know where the aliens are, but you'd have the whole map revealed already.

That's entirely down to loadout and character skill choices in Chimera Squad. You can absolutely do easy no-kill sweeps even at the end of game, but you have to choose to do that rather than just pick lethal skills and equipment.

It was a viable tactic to rush early UFOs with a squad of shieldbearing guys with stun batons and just beat the shit out of Caesarans for resisting arrest.

There's an optimal head to body ratio for most life-forms and toddler with macrocephaly is pretty far from it.

That's not how X1 worked at all. There were region-specific maps, especially the Middle East. Arctic maps, desert maps, forest maps, farmland maps, city maps and small town maps as well as middle eastern village maps and possibly others I can't recall.

Weird aliens are a great idea, but not 90s videogame aliens, which is what XCOM had. There were strange things which were basically monsters that belonged on the cover of heavy metal albums. Which is cool but... why do they exist? A giant flying eyeball? Why would such a creature evolve and what value would it have over a drone with a camera? How could it even manipulate environments on it's homeworld? The aliens in Xenonauts 1 are perhaps not super creative in design, but they are very plausible. Ixhcel as you present, is basically just a bipedial humanoid alien with extra arms. Something like the Elder Things from Lovecraft would avoid the bipedial symmetrical design. There were some designs in the XCOM reboot that I liked. Mainly the Thin Men and the Seekers. The Thin Men are a fantastic idea. It plays into UFO/Alien mythology with a decent reason, they're creepy. It's just great. Whenever possibly, play to the source material if it works. The Seekers were cool because they were obvious alien tech designed as a weapon. They had no other purpose than hunting down and killing humans who were alone. Great stuff. XCOM 2 had even more better ideas. I really liked ALL the Advent troops, but that's a specific "Aliens have won" scenario so I won't touch on that here. There are three really good designs that I love. Archons, Faceless and Codexes. Archons are on the surface, clearly some sort of vanity project or PR weapon. They're made to look like angels, but they're obviously stitched together. It's a fantastic idea with the Advent Churches popping up. Faceless are cool because, shapeshifters. It's a good idea from a gameplay and a narrative standpoint. And then the Codexes. They're so different from everything else. Basically you have these AI avatars running around for some reason, and they're repositories of data and information for the Advent. They're some sort of coordination/data gathering device that is intelligent and independent enough to act individually. That's very interesting and it's not some sort of bloated mutant blob monster.

You're correct. The Cold War element is gone from the game and now it takes place in modern times. This works fine for me personally and I don't think it hurts the game, although it was kind of interesting to see a alternate history game like this. I liked seeing the soviet stuff as it played well into the idea of both the 1st and 2nd Worlds having to put aside their differences and fight against the invaders. It doesn't hurt that the two biggest military powers in 1979 have all the cool stuff, so it's nice to see available.

Yeah, that mod is a good proof of concept. Large bombers modified to be effective against certain UFOs would be pretty cool, you'd have to be very careful and protect them against even scouts and other fast maneuverable UFOs

Aircraft carriers would be interesting. Maybe not that you made them but perhaps you could "borrow" use of them from a world power and keep a few troops and some aircraft on a carrier for extended range capability.

Sorry, Comrade. Trashman got it 100% right. Flying low over water is a death sentence inside of engagement range. You have nowhere to hide and no energy to maneuver with. Flying low avoids radar in certain circumstances, but most of those circumstances are when dealing with surface radars. If you are within detection range of an enemy aircraft, flying low will just make you easy prey, unless you're in an exceptionally mountainous area. The only time you want to fly low over water is when approaching an enemy ship or surface installation and you're trying to use the curvature of the earth to conceal yourself until the last possible moment. There are also many problems with doing it this way and arguments for approaching as high as possible instead (mainly that once they see you, you can't do anything except hope you get them first, which is why many anti-shipping missiles do this, but combat aircraft do not.) I can see altitudes being useful in a couple of different ways. You have to actually engage the UFO, so the UFO is going to generally pick the altitude where the battle takes place. UFOs typically don't react to human aircraft unless they're directly under attack or the UFOs are interceptors. A Scout UFO might be at a low altitude, scanning towns, abducting people, mutilating cattle, etc. Your aircraft/weapons could have different performance at low altitude and gain some sort of advantage from attacking from medium altitude and dropping down on top of them, etc. An AWACS plane could be in the area and provide some additional data or bonuses to attacking the UFO. This AWACS would then need to be protected from UFO interceptors which would easily destroy it if unprotected. High altitude interceptions could be necessary against more advanced UFOs and maybe even some sort of stratosphere level interceptions in the very late game or against specific rare UFOs. These are just ideas, but it's certainly possible to expand the air combat into something interesting.

To get back to the main topic, if that's the case, that's a good thing. I've said before in other posts, but X1 was an excellent game and it took the XCOM formula in all the right directions. Making a better version of that game (Xenonauts) should absolutely have been the goal from the beginning, and I think that it was, but unfortunately somewhere along the way some ideas were implemented to appease certain vocal minorities who really just wanted the game to be remade as the original XCOM, which it had already surpassed in every way. So more accurately, it was dragged backwards to the game that inspired it by members of the community and then over time, the developers realized they actually were taking steps backwards in doing so and returned to their original formula which was nearly already perfect. Unfortunately, in the state that it's in, there are still some issues that will probably never been resolved because of how it was designed. (Tetris UFOs are the most egregious example.) But having played the most recent version after coming back for a while, it's nice to see that bases and air combat have been restored to their former glory. I think the idea of changing those elements was a good idea, but they needed to be expanded rather than dumbed down.

Generally speaking, women only get involved in military operations in a large scale when you are losing badly and you don't have enough men left to fight. (Often seen in insurgency scenarios.) So perhaps in an alien invasion scenario for the survival of the species, this makes sense. You take whoever you can get who seems like they can do the job! On the flip side, sending women to die against the alien invader is potentially global suicide. Men are expendable on a civilization/species level, women are not. You can justify these things however you like.

I agree with that. I don't think psychic powers should become available to human forces, but defenses seem reasonable. (This is one thing I really like about Xenonauts is that they didn't fall into temptation with psychic soldiers. That has its place, but as the game is, it's unnecessary.)

Despite your assertion that there is no unique art style, you just described it. "Realistic" (Bland is really unfair if you're going to criticize the rest as being comicbook, plastic and neon, don't you think?) I've said this before and perhaps I'm the only one to think this, but the Xenonauts alien style is great. I'd compare it favorably with Halo. Halo designs are generally really good, they feel realistic and not cartoonish or gamey, they tell you what you're looking at in a glance. (What type of enemy am I facing? What does this weapon/ship/vehicle do?) and they're memorable enough that they stick with you. I personally think the Androns were a great addition. Alien terminators? What's not to like! XCOM aliens were... lets face it. Blobs and weird Doom demon nonsense. They were monsters made for a video game without any thought as to why these creatures would actually exist. Xenonauts tried really hard to explain WHY the aliens were what they were and the UFOs were what they were and why they didn't just wipe out the planet from the start. It was refreshing and actually pretty neat to see done in a sort of retro cold war style. In fact, the idea of the Cold War ending early because they need to deal with the UFO threat is a great concept. (Moving things to modern day is fine too, don't get me wrong.) That was a really cool idea though. I am a little sad to see Cesareans going back to Sectoid designs. Little grey men are a hilarious idea, but it makes no sense biologically speaking. The taller skinny greys that X1 had were a good idea and frankly I think the X2 team really listened to the XCOM fanatics too much in terms of designs and mechanics. (Sacrificing art and level design for the ability to blow up any square of a UFO is a losing proposition any way you slice it.) If they want to play XCOM, those games are there. Xenonauts was trying a more realistic take on that concept and a better one in my opinion. I recently was told that that air combat and base building has been changed back to X1 which I am very happy to hear about and I appreciate the team taking in feedback as I think those are superior approaches to both mechanics. I guess I just feel like Xenonauts 1 was almost the perfect game it needed to be and in making a sequel instead of expanding that perfection into an even more nuanced and perfect game, they were goaded into making yet another XCOM game which has already been remade many times and doesn't need it. I won't mince words here. I would rather play Xenonauts 1 than any other XCOM or XCOM inspired game. I backed Project Phoenix and I don't care for it, frankly. I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours in the XCOM remakes and who knows how many thousands in the original XCOM. I prefer Xenonauts 1, mechanically, visually, aesthetically, from a lore perspective. It's just a better game all around.