Ninothree

Panic has not really had a decent implementation. Maybe if its effects were taken in a different direction, so rather than friendly fire, your green rookie refuses to break cover and only takes auto fire. That would make you rethink your strategy and allow you to keep going, rather than suffering a wipe. The threat would still remain, because if enough soldiers panic and refuse to move, they're much easier to flank. Equivalently, facing enemies who are falling into panic would be a different kind of challenge, as they rapidly run through their ammo, and are equally susceptible to a flanking manoeuvre.

My biggest pain with voice acting is when you get that one soundbyte that keeps cropping up, driving you mad, so you have to sacrifice that soldier for the greater good. On the other hand, I do like the idea of crowd sourcing the voice acting, then selecting the best of what the community has to offer. I'm fairly sure that most of the community is from the Anglosphere but I bet there is a fair amount available from elsewhere. Also, more blood. Always more blood

yeah if LZ is too hot, just spam smoke to get to cover.

mmm mmmm I love me some technical details. Thinking about this, I might move to lower quality visuals. Smoother play is probably more important during play testing.

So is making peace or nuking the site from orbit. Neither of which makes for a fun game.

I think @indaris raises a fair point about the destructible walls. Breaching shouldn't be too easy. Cheesing it by smashing walls seems the obvious way. Maybe if the UFO walls can only be destroyed with C4 / deployed explosives that go off at the end of the turn? Or have the main chamber made of something tougher. As for the visuals, well, I'm not super hyped about the way the game looks just now either. But we were never promised AAA graphics. The selling point of xenonauts was not for the 4k crowd, rather, because it looked cool in its own right. Give the aesthetics time to come into their own. The polish comes on at the end. Also: for all of the above qualm about cheesing it, this does sound fun.

Yeah I don't know why multiple crash site UFOs aren't a thing. Especially if you're doing a dogfight against a three-UFO wing. I think part of the fun of ground combat is pushing onward with an injured team. Having to go through multiple breaches sounds fun!

I like to think that the xenonauts are a bit rude in this sense. That the government is like "hey, we gave you lots of money, can you share the alien secrets?" and the xenonauts are like "shut up and give us more money; we have lasers now so hurry up with that paypal".

It is not really a game about economics. I'm not sure it should be either. Although, I would be interested in such a game. Maybe something with competing defence suppliers, so the xenonanuts have other groups running in parallel. Those groups are also trying to salvage alien technology and build/sell weapons to each nation so that the conventional armies can fight off the alien invasion. But it wouldn't be xenonauts. Although maybe if selling manufactured gear were a thing in X2, it would incentivise you to build and defend multiple bases so that you could expand your military-industrial complex. That has a dark fascination for me.

Maybe multiple bases would work if the additional bases were forced to have a strictly different and distinct purpose to your main base.

Base building isn't that complex in these games. It is not like in FTL where those decisions about build determine your overall strategy. However, if multiple bases can be built, there is more room to play like that. I'm pretty confident that the 'best' tactic will still be to consolidate yourself in a main base, with other bases acting as annexes - but it doesn't matter what the optimal tactic is. The game will be more fun if you have the choice to do something suboptimal, like make a research base defended by one soldier and 30 rocket launchers (that base is in the USSR and that one soldier is certainly called Crazy Ivan). I vote for trusting the devs at the end of the day. But, I think the game would be richer for having multiple bases. Yet, I'll probably stick to one base in X2, unless there are some clever mechanics to make those additional bases less time- and resource-consuming to develop.

It has been said before, but XCOM2's move to guerrilla warfare really did make a lot of sense. It explained away a lot of these issues. If the desired game is one where you have a small squad fighting on the ground then the original xcom premise is very hard to justify. Forgetting the lore side of things, there is still a limit. Imagine moving 20 units in a turn based strategy. If you bunched them, you'd have a ridiculous concentration of firepower. Besides, it would take an age to move all your units. I guess some of it relates to the map size too. In a huger environment, it could be more desirable to split up a squad of 20 into smaller fire-teams. But the feel of ground combat should be that you reach the end of your turn wishing that you had just a couple more soldiers for a clean up.

I moved one dude, and then the other whilst the first was on the way. They walked through the same tile simultaneously. The game didn't like it and crashed.

This issue is pretty much why 'literally unplayable' is a meme.

I'd appreciate it if you don't use the word autistic like that.

Yeah a number is the simplest way, but that does lack a little something. It is too similar to your average RPG where you get a lvl 12 Rogue etc. The soldiers are called Xenonauts - I think we're missing a trick not capitalising upon names that could link up with that.

because I really, really, really want it! I don't think that implementing a more realistic rank system would add to the game. Rank systems only make sense when a force is large enough to require segmenting and the imposition of a chain of command. The only commandable 'units' in xenonauts are a single soldier and a whole dropship load of soldiers. Both of which are under the player's direct command anyway. (although I do think that giving the player control over who gets promoted / earns a medal would be fun.) It does seem that the currently used system of rank names is a poor choice though. They are the wrong names. It is adopting a nomenclature which has inappropriate connotations. Surely the fact that the argument resurfaces attests to that. But then, 'engineers' could be considered the wrong name. Most of the engineers I know are involved in research and design - not assembly or manufacture. A technician or mechanic would be more apt titles. Yet 'engineer' is fit for purpose because it gives the right impression of what they do. Anyway, I think the argument that a real-world rank structure is a good way to signal the experience of the soldier is quite weak. It is undercut by the fact that it gives the wrong signal. There is surely a better system (that would hardly require effort in implementation) that has the right aesthetic. Even just keeping the currently used insignia, but stripping the title, would be a step up.

I think the hand-waving explanation here is that the UFO is more of a scout. By the time you're trying to bring down a battleship, you need to be fielding some heavier gear. Although, it has been suggested that some UFOs should simply be unassailable. Which makes sense. Also, I imagine the auto-resolve is, for now, implemented without a damage function.

Hey shall we hijack this spiralling thread? It sounds like someone needs to bring up Zeno and his paradoxes! Is time/space continuous or discrete? Well Zeno postulated that either way, you run into logical contradictions. Thus, one must refute assumptions about the very nature of time and space, and reject the notion of plurality. Essentially, this means that motion of distinct bodies doesn't exist in any metaphysical sense and that the structure of reality is just one single firmament in which we all spin around (as opposed to "things" being entities that can exist in isolation). I must confess, it is a while since I wrote an essay on the subject, but I think that about nails it.

My suggestion: have the strength stat go up only in soldiers who are carrying around gear of a heavy type: rocket launchers, LMGs, padded armour etc. Those peeps have a chance to gain a +1 to strength. By the late game, those dudes are the ones bringing the super heavy plasma death cannons. Conversely, have TU progress for soldiers carrying lighter types of gear. Those soldiers get faster throughout your campaign, becoming better scouts, but less suited to packing a BFG. Pros: You don't end up making a mule of each soldier It encourages a kind of class development (by stat) but doesn't restrict it too much Drives a rationale for hiring strong soldiers Also fixes the TU development process (is it still based on how much TU the soldier uses in the mission?) Cons: More work to code and display the relevant info in the game Added complexity for the player You could end up forcing the scenario of 'heavy' soldiers who are fat and slow and can't run from cover to cover

Why do stats need to relate to levels of promotion? A colonel is not necessarily the one with the most speed / accuracy / strength. A colonel is the one who serves well over time and gets promoted the most by their superiors. Ranks are there in Xenonauts just as characters have levels in any RPG. It is to give a sense of progression. Getting promoted is superficial. Instead of calling your soldiers lvl 1, lvl 2 ... they are given military titles. In effect, all the soldiers are grunts as it is the player who gives the commands. The same is true with the alien side - there is no evidence of a properly proportioned hierarchy of ranks and taking out the leader doesn't achieve much. There is no chain of command. The aliens' ranks are determined by the difficulty setting. A harder level means you have more high-stat aliens, and high-stat aliens are signified by a higher rank.

Indeed. The air war is less about a fun bit of aerial combat, and more about a way to test your geoscape progression (coverage, R&D). This is intentional because the focus of the game is the ground combat. But I still think there is more to be made of air combat, not in terms of simulating a great dog fight (although why not), but in how the air combat plays in to other aspects of the game. In ground combat you are going in with other priorities to do with extracting resources, training your dudes, or testing new tactics. Engaging UFOs doesn't require a complex interface, but the mini-game should be juncture for enough different outputs that it is worth the player's time.

I recall there was some urge to get away from the cheese tactics of bringing everything along to the mission, or even having a skyranger inventory. If you can bring everything, then you will bring everything, and there is no element of advantage/disadvantage decision making. Whilst I agree with that principle, I also like the idea of everyone bringing a one-shot rocket launcher to clear a path out of the landing zone. Essentially, if your soldiers are running back and forth to the dropship, then gameplay suffers.

That Phoenix Point system sounds alright. Taking away the on-screen hit percentage could make the game look better - assuming that the guesstimates are enough.

From what I understand, this leads to its own problems. Well, that is not surprising. I mean that the problems it leads to are, I think, quite odd ones that make playing the game a bit counter intuitive in terms of lining up shots. I think that you have to game compromises for the gameplay, partly in terms of fun (yes shotguns should turn enemies into red mist when fired at close range) but also in terms of feasibility (what do the mechanics of simulation allow).