Gazz

The new in-combat inventory screen is an improvement in principle with one minor flaw: it's no improvement. =) The current placement in the middle offers absolutely no advantage over the old screen-filling window. Switching between soldiers would already "center the view" on the soldier... if the inventory window weren't in the way. The new inventory window should be placed on one side of the screen. The remaining width of the screen (depending on resolution) should be centered on the soldier. There could be a left/right arrow button near the "close X". This button moves the window between all left and all right on the screen. The soldier is re-centered in the other half.

I would buy a spinach-flavoured donut simulation if they printed Syndicate on the box. =/

Satellite Reign - Kickstarter Gee - what a take-off...

That's the opposite of what you wrote above. "The more a soldier's willpower is tested in battle, the faster he gains." A soldier with higher courage/will can be tested for that more often without panicking. The result is that experienced soldiers get more opportunities to gain skill. So you're not basing this on courage after all. You're basing it on "learning speed". A hidden stat that probably has some relation to courage. Maybe = courage + rnd(30). This stat would never increase so you'd have some slow and some fast learners. Stat progression speed is much easier to cap with some sort of exponential falloff based on the stat value. I still think that tying skill increase to morale checks is the right approach. Scaling them with dangerous conditions is less awkward because not every action will necessarily result in a morale check. Like I suggested here, the conditions under which a "skill check" is made could influence the result. Also, with weapons granting "role-specific" skill-ups, the progression would appear to be far more logical. Close-quarters people who have to run around a lot automatically gain more AP than snipers... just by shooting aliens.

These higher ranked troops did not sign up for the military when you hired them.

So why don't you connect stat gain to the risk / reward mechanic? Stat gain only happens where the aliens can see/attack the soldiers. A ranged-only alien without ammo would not count if it's far away. Skirting the edge of an alien's effective range would not count. Gotta be maybe within 90% of the alien's effective range to gain "generic XP". The only exception is attacking and damaging an alien. That's always good. (so throwing grenades only does something if you actually hit and damage an alien) This way, XP is only gained by risking your neck... or doing something productive. Different weapons can train different stats. Instead of every shot training accuracy, stat gain could be Sniper Rifle85% accuracy 10% reflexes 5% strength MG 60% accuracy 15% reflexes 25% strength Shotgun55% accuracy 25% reflexes 5% strength 15% AP This way you could minimise the "need" for the heavy weapons specialists to run around in circles and throwing grenades to train strength. Your CQB team would also "train AP" by doing their jobs. The annoying part of any such "learning by doing" systems is that it's often beneficial to perform stupid and repetitive tasks to improve stats. (like in Silent Storm before you install the auto-train script that automatically increases a soldier's stats to what he should have at his level)

c. You are supposed to upgrade your technology, not hold on until the game switches to easy mode.

Well, the... thing... on the right side of his head is huge. It's apparently so heavy he can't even keep his head upright!

Without the checkbox working properly there is no way to tell if it's not visible state works correctly in the game. Therefore... bug report. =)

Not sure if we are but for THIS display I would suggest: Easily adjustable colour-coding of numbers. Green/yellow/red numbers - always. LMB click on a strength number to set it as the average for this stat. (Like 54 = yellow) RMB click on another strength number to set the interval.Like 50. Now the interval is 4. 50 and below are displayed in red, 58 and higher in green. 51-57 are yellow. [*] Ability to sort by columns. (already implemented - just saying =) [*] Ability to rearrange the columns. RMB click a column header and it is moved to directly right of the name column. If looking for specific stats, you could put them side-by-side...

The New Game screen has a checkbox for EXPLANATORY TOOLTIPS. You cannot operate that checkbox.

When clicking on Game Options, I get a screen with a few sliders and a long list of key config options... with a scroll bar. If I LMB drag the black part of the scroll bar, it works. If I click on the scroll bar above / below the black part, nothing happens. Not good.

A small chance of [important event] is no good gameplay. A perk/item that automatically prevents soldiers from bleeding to death or gives a soldier 2 "free turns" of bleeding - that's something that the player can work with. But replacing a game mechanic with a random roll? Nah.

Realism is a terrible argument for (or against) a game rule. One basic problem is that the currency in Xenonauts is $. A real currency. If you use a real currency then a real fighter jet like an F-16 does cost upwards of $15 million while you get a Ferret for under $100k. Ingame, their cost would be on the same scale, though, instead of being off by a factor of 150+. XCOM:EU solved this by not using a currency at all. In that game you use credits. It symbolises prestige, actual funds, political considerations, and trading favours, all rolled into... credits. That way a soldier can "cost more" than a fighter jet if that's what game balance demands. It's not illogical because it's not a legal currency and has no exchange rate to any real currency. If you change a single character in the game frontends, immortal fighters are not necessary because you can adjust the cost of a fighter to below that of a tank if you want. That also cold-stops the inevitable follow-up request for immortal soldiers. Or clones. Or whatever you want to call them. =) And no, having "$" in the game does not make the game more realistic. Not if a fighter jet costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. You would get a great RC model for that price. =)

Who said that it is? If I remember the Kickstarter feature list right then "weapon effective ranges larger than sight ranges" is not mentioned as a set-in-stone feature. If it results in more interesting gameplay (and night missions without stupidly short sight ranges) and makes ammo an actual consideration then I don't see the problem.

I'd prefer having a strength stat - and having it increase - but the increase can be so slow that a soldier might gain 4-8 points of strength during his entire career. Maybe a bit more if he's on the weak side. I would even put a hard cap on the strength points that a soldier can possibly "train". Something like... Max.increase = ( 100 - base.strength ) / 7 A soldier with a 30 base.strength could get up to 40, with 55 base.strength up to 61. And yes, strength should be a modifier on top of the base carrying capacity that would be expected of a trained soldier. Maybe... Carrying capacity = 22 + Strength / 10 kg You could still have "strong" soldiers who have an easier time with a heavy weapon. Variety is good and the strength stat would be meaningful. With this kind of progression, the starting values for strength should be more varied, though. Maybe 2x d50 or 3x d33. (dice =) In many games, soldiers double and triple their strength over the course of a few weeks or months. That's is so many kinds of wrong. =)

I think Waladil's suggestion has merit. If you give a soldier a freshly produced weapon, it comes with a full magazine. It will have one full magazine mission after mission. If you want reloads, you have to produce "spare magazines". Much more expensive than current mags but once the soldier has 2 spare mags, he will have them for however many missions he goes on. You still have the decision. You have the cost. You have limited ammunition on the tactical level. You do not have the micromanagement. And eventually all those reloads become useless when you upgrade to the next weapon tier. =) Once you get to the highest tier and have everything... cost stops mattering anyway so why bother the player with it? IMO, rocket launchers don't come with a free reload because there are multiple options.

And I was so looking forward to a few games to round out the franchise such as XCOM (FPS) XCOM - Lurkers From Below (bass fishing simulation) XCOM - The A-Bakening (running a muffin shop with turn-based, tactical baking) XCOM - Intruder (play as telemarketer for magazine subscriptions with the option to "research" new products such as insurances)

DCOU or Secret World are fun for a while but eventually they go the way of every MMO... and become a daily dungeon grind.

If space is too tight, there could be tooltips. Those can also be added without messing with the existing UI. An alternative would be to display TUS (56) for a +1 and TUS (56) for a +2 or more increase. Or... TUS (56) for a +1 and TUS [56] for a +2 or more The latter would be more visually distinct but require explanation via tooltip or somesuch.

I don't have any valid complaints with XCOM, either. Like everyone else I would have liked more maps but that's simply a cost factor. I just don't know why they abstracted hidden movement so much. Do consoles have such weak CPUs that they can't handle even that? All it did was create bugs. The "running to cover" is a direct result of that but by itself it's not a negative thing. It's the same as aliens always being in cover when you encounter them. They merely went for a more "cinematic" solution. *shrug* That they dumped a boatload of pointless micromanagement? I can't thank them enough for that. Do I put the grenade into the 3rd belt slot or into the right leg pocket? Oh come on! Who cares?

I left out penetration on purpose because I see no need to fix what currently happens if something is hit. =) Height is covered in the generic "tile density" value. It's an abstraction but a necessary one if you don't want to have an actual 3D collision mesh in addition to a drawn tile. Some obstacles are tall but slim, others a waist high wall, yet others a window in a wall. Only one of them can even use a height property but all can be represented by a generic density value...

15° is still a lot. All the "hits" - regardless of their percentage - are dead on target while the "misses" go off on a wild angle? That looks broken. There are 2 basic approaches. Target-centric.Game calculates the chance to hit this particular target. The problem with that is what to do with the bullets that don't "hit the target". Ideally they just vanish by impacting on indestructible scenery like in your average FPS. Bullet-centric.Game calculates the chance of the bullet going where you aim it. It could be displayed in degrees of deviation but I'd consider that too technical for gamer consumption. I would still represent it as a probability... only the game does not do a dice roll and directly compares to this number to determine a hit. (Displayed) hit calculations would have two stages. The others come after that. Chance to hit the target tile.Simple trigonometry. Angle a at range b covers the width of 3.71 tiles. (always calculated as a 90° tile width) Base chance to hit the tile is 100 / 3.71 = 26.95 %. Chance to hit the target inside that tile.Every "thing" in the game has a density. Let's say a standing soldier covers 60% of an entire tile's cross section. 60% of 26.95 = 16.17 % This is your chance to hit the soldier in the tile. It's what the player is shown as a %. Firing.The game tracks the real path of the bullet based on accuracy / angle only. As the bullet passes through tiles, it only does a "collision check" with those tiles where it passes within 1/2 tile's distance to the center. That way every tile has the same width from every angle and a corner of something slim that sticks a tiny bit into the bullet's path can not "suck up" the bullet. In other words: The "collision mesh" of every tile - regardless of content - is not a cube but a cylinder. When it passes through a tile, the density of this tile's content determines whether it impacts or not. If someone is standing behind a stone statue pedestal with an 80% tile density, that's great cover. Try to flank that target. OTOH, it's not a great idea to take cover behind that birch tree with a 15% tile density. That only "head on" tile widths are used eliminates the bogus hits where a bullet visually passes through a tiny corner of the tile your soldier is standing in... resulting in a hit. At a 45° angle, 30% of the tile's real (sqr(2)) width do not exist for the purpose of collision. Cover hits and friendly fire.There is no difference to hitting the intended target! Friendly fire is not friendly! If the bullet passes through the tile, it has a chance to impact based on the tile's density score. Shoot through a 60% cover tile and it has a 60% chance of sucking up your bullet. Simple. A bullet that doesn't hit alien 1 (including flying right through it because it missed the collision check) can hit alien 2 right behind it. There it has the same chance to impact with alien 2 as if it had been fired at alien 2. Sure, you may have a 100% chance to hit that target. Your bullet is heading that way alright. But if it has to pass through 60% cover to reach the target tile, your chance can never be higher than 40%. (being in cover rocks) When determining the hit % to display to the player, the game would have to raycast to the exact center of the target tile and factors in the probability of hitting something along the way... including cover. Secondary materials.A waist-high wall has 2 materials. The wall and thin air. A wall tile with a window has 2 materials. On a "collision pass through", the secondary material "glass" is hit. That way there is no super-special handling of windows vs regular tiles. (except for the window breaking but that's a function of the damage model) Sniper rifles / Aimed shotsDepending on how much you aim a rifle, the bullet gets an increasing chance to pass the density collision check of every obstructing tile. (aka cover) The sniper rifle gets an inherent bonus so it's the weapon of choice for shooting a target that is in cover. That way the sniper rifle has a seriously powerful perk without requiring massive damage or insane overall accuracy. Asymmetric weapons are a lot easier to balance. =) Other weapons like assault rifles may get a small bonus from aiming. Shotguns do not. In fact, they should get a penalty for getting past cover. Shotguns suck at the whole "pinpoint accuracy" thing. Heavy weapons would get no bonus - aiming or not. It's great when it works and you score a direct hit on the alien behind the console but heavy weapons are not that accurate. Again - a unified system that allows to differentiate weapons in a believable way. Balancing doesn't start with twiddling numbers. Half the battle is to define the mechanics and degrees of freedom in the system. Burst / full-auto fire.No longer a balancing problem. Front-loaded AP cost makes it unwieldy to use on the move like in door breaching, especially with machine guns. (use shotguns, dummy!) Having no "pass through" bonus - or even a penalty - burst fire is of questionable value against entrenched opponents... but it's great for hosing down something you flanked or that you caught out in the open. Approach a stationary MG across an open field? Nope, you don't. Depending on the shooter's skill, the stream of bullets can "walk" off target... or back to it... but the bullets would remain within the angle originally calculated, making heavy weapons unwieldy but deadly. And even the bullets that don't hit have to go somewhere, like into the target's cover... How burst / auto fire could work.The first shot of a burst is aimed - or rather as aimed as the shooter's base accuracy allows without any special aiming ticks. This gets us a firing arc and the usual hit % display. Next the game determines where in that arc the first shot will go. This is the angle where we start firing the burst. Next we look up the weapon's burst angle. This is defined for every weapon as the maximum angle that a burst can "walk". Within that limit, a random angle around our starting angle is chosen. This is the next point in the process. The first 3 rounds of the burst walk towards this 2nd angle. So yes, you can actually miss the first shot and then walk the fire even further away. That's where real machine guns come in. The 4th and following rounds in the burst walk back towards the intended target at a speed of [1/10 weapon burst angle] per round. This direction of movement is only determined once and does not stop, even if it should walks over and past the intended target. Length of burst would be a key balancing factor of machine guns. This system unifies hits and misses and eliminates the completely unbelievable hits/misses. Shooting at a tank (maybe 80% coverage per tile) it would be pretty impossible to miss because you can hit 2 or 3 "tank tiles" in a row, each with it's own 80% chance. But if only one tile of the tank is sticking out behind a corner, that's a different ballgame. Shoot at a wall and your chance to hit the wall piece you're aiming for is the same chance as the bullet landing in the target tile when aiming at an alien. Only the wall has 100% coverage so the bullet will always impact there... It's all the same thing in this system! The main problem that I see is that Chris probably won't want to toss out the old system wholesale and replace it with a different one. =) I just don't believe that a "small fix" as suggested in the OP will do anything useful. My system isn't 100% realistic or accurate, either. That is intentional. It contains a lot of abstraction which makes it easier to judge a shot without checking the hit % display every time. The more obstacles in the way, the lower the chance to hit the target. A rookie shooting past 3 trees at an alien in cover? Don't bother. Cover and obstacles mean something even if you don't have the "in cover" state. Auto and aimed fire work asymmetrically which makes it much easier to find roles for both without resorting to extreme and unrealistic values for damage or accuracy.

If the formatting of "<timeline name="main" frametime="35">" is always the same, you can do a multi-file search&replace. Something like Textpad 5 will do that. 1. Use the windows search to get a list of all relevant files, 2. drop them into the editor, 3. do a search&replace in "all open documents", 4. "save all open documents". If you didn't close them, you can restart at 3. and keep experimenting with like zero effort.

It's always been "sometime 2013". And there are about 150 pages of thread asking when it will be released. =P