Alweth
-
Posts
24 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Downloads
Posts posted by Alweth
-
-
This makes sense to me. I would suggest that you be allowed to move into the square you're leaning into at no additional cost.
This reminds me of something I've been thinking about since X-COM and was thinking about again as I was playing Xenonauts. It would kind of be nice if units had a few other move options, like a strafe, for example, that used more TUs than just a simple move, but that made more sense in some situations than simply turning to run straight in the direction you want to go.
So for example, you could have:
Strafe (move one square left or right without turning) costs move + 2 TUs
Move while Crouched costs move + 2 TUs
Strafe while Crouched costs strafe + 2 TUs
These would be included in path-finding.
Maybe clicking and holding on a square would allow you to choose the facing of the unit, and the unit would choose strafe where appropriate. (Right clicking while holding could allow you to toggle crouching, but it would default to not-crouching.)
-
You should look into the Worldwar book series and the short story "The Road Not Taken" for this sort of stuff.
I posted an idea that would allow this kind of thing here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/13414-Idea-Trans-Dimensional-Xenonauts-2
-
Sounds like a bug. However, before the bug gets fixed, have you tried changing the roof display setting? There's a picture of a roof on the combat UI. Clicking on it switches it between 3 modes. I believe in Community Edition, in contrast with the base game, the roof setting defaults to full roof display, so that might explain the difference.
-
I was thinking that it might be interesting to theme Xenonauts 2 a little differently:
The idea would be that instead of aliens coming to invade earth from across the stars, that our solar system has moved into a section of space that is unstable in the sense of having lots of inter-dimensional wormholes. The aliens, therefore, aren't coming from across the universe, but from other dimensions. This would have a number of potential advantages:
+ It would allow at least some of the aliens to not necessarily have significantly more advanced technology. The reason they are able to come here is NOT because their technology is way ahead of ours, but because their homeworlds have been in the dimensional flux longer, so they've had opportunity to learn a little about how to use the wormholes, while humanity, being previously in a relatively stable section of the universe, has just not had any opportunity to study it.
+ It could mean that the aliens are limited by randomly appearing wormholes to visit Earth. This would explain why alien visits are infrequent and small, at first, but get more common and larger as the Earth moves deeper into the unstable zone.
+ You could even spin some or all of the alien races as earlier explorer or colonist-like in their visiting of Earth. They may not know what they're doing so much, and the alien UFOs might be like Columbus, setting out into the unknown, not knowing whether they'll make it to anywhere or whether they'll be able to make it back to their home world even if they do.
+ This could mean that there are a variety of UFOs coming to Earth for a variety of reasons: explorers, researchers, colonists, "missionaries" (whatever that would mean), slavers, miners or other UFOs just here to loot the natural resources, refugees fleeing a more menacing alien race/nation, UFOs that were just sucked through a wormhole randomly, and, of course ultimately a full-on invasion could come.
+ This could also mean that Earth is overlapping with multiple other alien races and civilizations at the same time. So maybe the Ceasans are fleeing the invading Sebillians, who, in turn, are running from the Andron which are controlled by the Praetors. The Reapers are just wreaking havoc on everyone (except the Andron). That, of course, is just an example of how you could set it up, but it could allow for a large variety of complex background setups.
-
I think that is would be a good idea to let the player choose whether he wants to advance in alien weaponry (and well all alien tech) technology or to see if the human race can come up with better ideas with the current technology that we have. E.G better ballistics and explosives. I would also like to see a wider range of ballistics weapons e.g. SA80 and Famas assault rifle. sorry I am just pro human and I think that instead of taking ideas from aliens we could create owner own, plus the game producers could get creative with new and weird human weapons.
The problem that I have with this idea is that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Can a small group of human researchers really come up with completely new technology that will allow us to repel an invading alien force with way more advanced technology than us? It makes sense for humans to come up with some new stuff, but to go up against much more advanced technology with stuff that is our own original invention? That doesn't make much sense.
...unless Goldhawk wanted to make it that the aliens don't really have much more advanced technology than us, but for some reason have managed inter-world travel anyway.
-
I was thinking that an alien that could climb up walls would be neat. It wouldn't have to be a new type of alien. It could be something that Reapers or Wraiths have.
-
What if air support was defensive rather than offensive? What if the aliens would dispatch their own UFOs to help the shot down one--UFOs that would drop bombs on you, fire at you, or drop reinforcements, and having your own airbases nearby would prevent the aliens from doing that stuff?
-
I was not aware anything like that was in any Metal Gear game. The blame actually rests on Spiderman.
-
Also, regarding air support - instead of integrating it into the mission, why not have it as a pre-mission warm up? You could assign a squadron to an event, order them to do something and when they've done it, then you can teleport troops in. That way squadrons get a bit more utility, but they don't affect a mission mid-game.
I like this idea. Only airbases within short enough range to do something before the team has to arrive would be relevant. This would be another way of making mission location matter. What if, for example, tanks or certain other heavy hardware/special technology, couldn't be teleported in but could only be dropped off by aircraft? It could add an interesting twist to a mission if you could pick up a gatling-laser, but only if you could find it on the map.
-
Things I like about the ideas in the OP:
1. It leads to more varied squad loadout.
2. The idea of customizing and upgrading weapons throughout the whole game sounds fun.
Concerns I have about the ideas in the OP:
3. Seems like it would make you want to play a strategy where you dump all your best gear on one or two "superheros" and then the rest of the squad basically just acts as fodder/backup/scouts for the hero(s).
4. One of the flavor things I really enjoy about the X-COM games is the feel of mastering alien technology and using it against them. This system feels a bit more like you're just benefiting from powerful stuff you've got your hands on. Doesn't really feel like you're unlocking the secrets of alien technology.
5. It almost feels like the equipment receives more gameplay focus than the humans that wield them. You can upgrade and customize the weapons, but the soldiers just kind of blunder along into a few perks as the game progresses, otherwise being fairly interchangeable. The result is that it feels like the equipment has character, while the characters are just cardboard cutouts. This just feels wrong to me.
I think some of the negatives can be worked around, though. Here are some thoughts on how to do that:
6. Another way to achieve 1 above is to make sure that newer equipment isn't just as good or better in every way as older technology. This has to be done carefully, though, because it's always anti-climatic when you finally research that new technology only to decide that you don't really have any use for it on your team.
7. How about if resources that were severely limited in the early game could be replicated once late-game technologies were unlocked. This would eliminate problem 4 while still maintaining a lot of the strength of the idea, especially if this were used in combination with 6.
8. To reduce problem 5, you could have bio-resources in the form of alien symbiotic parasites. These would enhance the soldiers in bizarre ways, but wouldn't be reproducible. They could stick with the soldier until death, reasoning being that they can't be removed without killing the soldier. This might make problem 3 worse, though.
-
Here's one option for implementing Xenonauts 2 coop. It's a little strange, but I think it could work really well from a purely gameplay perspective without burdening the game design too much:
Game plays as normal, with all players being able to give full commands. When a GC starts, one player chooses to take command of that GC. Here's where things get strange: The other player(s) can continue playing the global view as normal, including speeding up time, and starting another mission. The rewards and the results from each mission would only come in once a mission was completed, perhaps with interest on the reward so that it wouldn't hurt too much for the global time to go ahead a lot while a player was in a mission. This would require more squad members so that you could keep playing without a whole squad. Basically, everyone would generally be playing a mission, but those who weren't would be controlling the global view until a new mission came.
-
I am not committed to the idea of airstrikes being in the game, however, if I were to try and balance them so they could be in the way I would balance airstrikes would be to a) make them cost money, and b) make them negatively effect the score and opinion bonus for completing the mission. This would allow the player to take another path between beating a mission and complete failure.
HOWEVER, even if airstrikes don't make it into the game, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think there's a variety of other air supports that could be added to the game. I think the benefit of making mission location matter is quite a good benefit, and so it's worth fighting to keep. Here are some other, hopefully less overpowered uses for air support:
+ Locate an outdoors alien/UFO
+ Provide light or drop flares
+ (With technology) scan for living creatures
+ Allow use of other special technologies. For example, there could be a personal, close-range teleportation technology that requires the presence of some airborne hardware that's too large to send through the teleporter.
And as already mentioned:
+ Suppressing Fire
+ Evacuation
I guess this would complicate the interaction of the global game and ground combat more than might be worth it, though. Although, I could see even that potentially working.
-
New thought: What if the teleportation technology that the Xenonauts had access to was only "temporary spacial displacement technology" meaning that the Xenonaut squad could only be teleported to a location for a limited number of turns before automatically being recalled. It could take more Power Level to displace a Xenonaut for longer. (There could be two ways of handling this: requiring the player to, in effect, "bet" up front on how many turns it will take them to end the mission, or you could simply have the overall power drain as long as the Xenonauts are out, recalling them all to base when power runs out.) This would effectively put a time limit on the missions, but this could be combined with the ability to partially complete a mission. If you kill all the enemies before time runs out, you get more of an opinion boost. If you kill less than 75% or don't get the leader or something, then you lose the mission. Anything else is a partial win.
One of the problems with Xenonauts 1 is that you're pretty incentivized to go super slowly and carefully so that nobody on your team is killed. This mechanic would act against that. Especially if, at the end, when time is running out, a Xenonaut can get downed but still be saved back at base when his teleportation runs out.
-
I like racercowan's idea of allowing airstrikes during GC from nearby bases. It means that the same mission in different locations relative to airbases (or missile silos) you control would be easier or harder. This would give you something else to think about when deciding whether to do a mission or not.
The way I would envision it working is when you go in to a mission, if there's a nearby airbase with the right kind of aircraft, a countdown starts: after X turns (X is higher the further away the airbase is), you have the option to order airstrikes or other stuff on an area. An airstrike would occur the turn after you order it. If a GC took long enough, the air support would have to return to base to refuel, so you'd have a limited window of opportunity to use your air support. Different kinds of aircraft could provide different kinds of support. Like a helicopter could provide suppressing fire or evacuation (assuming the teleportation technology only worked one-way). New technologies could provide new kinds of support, like gas bombs.
-
That page is out of date. Early Community Edition features were brought into Xenonauts proper, but Community Edition still has lots to offer, and I would recommend making it the main version you play. In addition to the changes mentioned on that page, Community Edition has more interesting and varied ground combat maps, more information in the Xenopedia, UI improvements, and some bug fixes and balance improvements.
-
I was just wondering if there's any plan to have human psychics in Xenonauts 2 like in the X-COM games?
-
Regarding kabill's suggestion. Why not just throw out the stat system completely and just use a set of traits (innate characteristics that the character comes with) and perks (things that are learned on the battlefield)? This way the player doesn't have to puzzle out exactly how relevant a difference of "3" in reflexes is, instead, they know that some people are significantly more reactive than others.
So characters would be recruited with something like one to three descriptive traits (some good, some bad, some mixed). Here are some examples:
Fast (Can more further in a turn.)
Slow (Can't move as far in a turn.)
Big-Boned (Increased HP, throw distance, and carry weight. Bonus to using heavy weapons. Slower moving over walls and through windows.)
Scrawny (Reduced carry weight and throw range. Penalty to using heavy weapons. Harder to hit. Moves over walls and through windows at reduced TU cost.)
Accurate
Inaccurate (Although I wonder if this would make sense for a soldier to have.)
Reactive (Increased chance of reaction.)
Slow Reflexes
Brave
Coward
Short (Harder to hit. Enemies receive more cover from intervening objects.)
Tall (Opposite of short.)
Pitcher (Increased throw range and accuracy.)
Encouraging (Squad starts ground combat with increased morale.)
Annoying (Squad starts ground combat with reduced morale.)
Nimble (Snap fire, throwing, and inventory actions require less TU.)
Butterfingers (Snap fire, throwing, and inventory actions require increased TU.)
-
There are some great ideas here. This is my take on the original post, incorporating the best of the ideas from this thread with some suggestions of my own:
The Iceland Incident
I think the Iceland Incident should be the discovery of a teleporter, but instead of it being a teleporter like those possessed by the alien invaders (hereafter alien empire), it should be a teleporter from some other long-gone alien civilization. The initial activation of the Iceland teleportation device can be what attracts the alien empire to Earth. They are aware that some sort of hyperspace-affecting technology that is different from their own is being used. They come, initially, to investigate and, hopefully, acquire it for themselves.
Waves of Alien Arrival
There would basically be three waves of alien interaction with Earth:
Wave 1: Investigation
In response to detecting the teleportation technology, the alien empire sends what is basically a research mothership. This mothership starts sending research and scouting missions to Earth. Their goals are to: try and locate the teleportation technology; evaluate whether humans are worthy of subjugation or simply extinction; and see if there's anything else of use to the empire on Earth.
At this point, the nations of Earth are still basically covering-up the existence of the aliens.
The gameplay focus during this part of the game will be on shooting down and recovering alien technology for research.
Wave 2: Terror
Having determined that humans are not a significant threat to the empire, but having been unsuccessful in locating the teleportation technology. The alien research mothership switches to a strategy of attempting to terrorize the human population in to simply surrendering. At this point, existence of the ETs is revealed to the general population.
The gameplay focus here will be on doing damage control (stopping terror missions, etc.) so that Earth doesn't surrender. Of course, you'll continue to research stuff.
Wave 3: Invasion
When terrorizing the humans into surrender doesn't work, they call in an invasion fleet.
The goal here is to survive long enough to implement Operation Endgame (or whatever the Xenonauts 2 version of it is).
The Strategic Game
What I would like to suggest for the strategic level of the game is that the Earth be pre-populated by different kinds of locations: airforce bases, research centers, , perhaps factories, other kinds of resources, etc.
You start the game with just support from one or two countries/regions (maybe the UK and Iceland/Scandinavia). Having the support of a country/region gives you access to that country's bases. At the beginning of the game, other countries are operating under a "we can do this ourselves" mentality and are not interested in cooperating with you. There would be two ways that you could gain the support of a country/region: A) certain actions you could take would improve their relationship with you, for example: sharing new technologies with them, spending money on lobbyists, supporting them when they ask for help, etc.; or B) if the country gets beat up enough by the UFOs, they'll ask to join you. However, if a country gets beat up by the UFOs, many of their bases will be destroyed, so it's preferable to get a country/region to join you by the first method. Gaining the support of a major country might also bring with it special bonuses, like the USA and USSR might have special top-secret technology you could gain access to. You could include the cold war tension in here, by making it difficult to gain the trust of a soviet-allied country if you are too cozy with the USA or vis-versa. Obviously, the support of powerful nations would be harder to win that the support of poor ones.
The regions that weren't cooperating with you would still attack and shoot down UFOs, etc, but they wouldn't perform much research or recover resources, so as the alien threat strengthened, they would increasingly start losing to the UFO invasion.
They downside of having a country/region cooperating with you is that you would have to then protect that region, or risk having them turn against you. If enough countries turned against you, you'd lose, especially in Waves 2 or 3 of the alien invasion.
Power Level
I really like the idea of Power Level for the teleporter, but as described in the original post, it seems like it could still enable a kind of grindy gameplay. If you think about it, the optimal strategy would still be to try to do every mission, but do it with as few people as possible. So, here's my suggestion on how to modify it.
I would say keep the idea of Power Level, but add the following. Every alien ground combat would be first met by a local "first response" team. This first response team would use technologies that you've shared with the defending country to effectively auto-resolve the GC. However, you would also have the option of expending Teleporter Power Level to send "support" from your squad. In the "support" role, your squad would not be at risk, but it would provide a boost to the chances of the auto-resolve succeeding, in exchange for Power Level. Only if the local forces fail would you then have the option of coming in to do it yourself. In any case, as long as the ground combat is won, you would get the full reward as if you'd done it yourself. The one thing is that that country's forces would gain experience instead of you, but since you'd be recruiting from the pool of their forces, ultimately, that could be to your advantage too.
Mini-Achievments
Another thing that could be done to help alleviate grinding is by having a set of sort of "mini-achievements" that would contribute toward GC "first response" auto-resolve victory chance. For example:
If you've completed a mission against a type of alien, all GC auto-resolves get a +10% chance to succeed against those GC involving that alien type. If you've done it without losing a single squad member, you get a +20% chance instead. If you've completed a mission against a small UFO, you get a +10% chance to win an auto-resolve against small UFO crash sites. If you've completed an industrial mission, you get a +10% chance in industrial locations. Overall this system would make it more likely that you'd manually play missions that are unlike missions you've completed before, and skip over the ones that are like missions you've completed before.
Xenonauts 2 - Strategy Design V5
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted
This is all sounding pretty good. Chris is basically allowing the player to choose each turn between building four long-term sources of power: base power, technology level, power core power, and economic/political power.
I think Chris' general rule of making the player trade off is a good one, but I don't know if that's a good idea for research. In Xenonauts and the like, research is the main mechanism by which gameplay evolves over time, especially the tactics you use in the ground combat missions. It seems to me that by allowing the player to go light on research as a strategy, unless the other advancements are equally interesting from a gameplay standpoint, you're allowing the player to an option that will be infrequently taken and frequently regretted when taken. Things could be even worse if it ends up being a strong strategy.
The problem, as Chris pointed out, is that research is currently a no-brainer. You want to research everything that becomes available to research, except in a few cases where meta-game knowledge would cause you to skip certain technologies. But I think choosing between technologies is a more interesting choice than choosing whether to pursue research at all.