Ninothree

Gave this one a blast, it feels much better. In previous iterations the aggressive/accurate AI made it feel like your soldiers were ducks in a shooting range. Finally managed to kill some creeps with my shotgunners; very satisfying. Having that extra projectile makes those attacks viable. The grenade launcher seems to be less of an insta cover buster - though I was trying to dig through brick walls so maybe I should be happy with taking out bushes. That bug happened again - where the alien's character remains standing after death. All I can say is that is consistent is that it took several hits from different weapons, then a final shot with the grenade launcher. Perhaps it is something to do with dying then taking stun damage from the smoke? Or the death animation for them to turn into goo? I made a soldier run too close to the fire or smoke and they got hurt - is there any way to know that certain tiles are damage dealing? (apart from common sense) Does high ground confer any bonus? It doesn't even seem that great at looking over lower level cover. From what I can tell from standing on a level one roof, the projectile was calculated as travelling half the distance on the level above and half on the level below - if the calculation weren't bisected halfway, then high ground could give you a little boost. I say this because a very small looking bush blocked a shot that, to my eye, should have sailed way above. Do aliens need line of sight to 'spot' your soldiers? I've tried sneaking around but the aliens will turn and fire, seemingly without reason to look in that direction. After adjusting the graphics settings midgame, the soldier portraits get all jazzed up. The skylight in the large building - are you supposed to be able to shoot through that, it seemed to present 100% block chance. Overall, those last tweaks made a real difference. It left me wanting to play more maps rather than desiring fixes/amendments to the game itself (although a geoscape would be nice ). I would almost be inclined to say that it is too easy now but I feel that that sense mainly stems from practising that same scenario many times. Update: tried rushing the aliens, it is not too easy, I got creamed. Also, I had a couple of crashes - though one may have been my cat walking across the keyboard...

@Pancaek That purchase comes with a 56 page manual. You know that the game is at least a decade old when it is accompanied with a short encyclopedia. Saying that, I looked up the Phoenix Point website recently, it seems that game lore novellas are coming into style.

I like the Show of Force idea - I couldn't say how it should be implemented but something along those lines where you get to arm your whole squad with fat explosives and the aim to bring down as many structures as possible. Physical object destruction and collapsing buildings look (to my incredibly untrained eye) like something the game engine can handle. Also, blowing stuff up is fun. That line of thinking should be the driver here. Designing different mission types as a variation/relief from the usual. Different objectives that would then you a reason to field an unbalanced squad make-up or play unorthodox tactics. Essentially, a few wildcard missions thrown into the game that are there for the entertainment value. Conversely, if something like the Survive and Evade mission were a ball-ache then you'd probably try quite hard never to have to do it. It would end up as unused game content.

I found that there is a knack for playing it, like thinking a few moves ahead in chess. Although yeah, maybe more puzzle than strategy - that might account for why the urge to play it drops off so quickly. Once you've discovered all the content, it gets repetitive.

Anyone else had a crack at this? It is a turn based strategy (I heard you all like turn based strategies) made by Subset games, who also produced FTL. Whilst neither of them are really in the same genre as xenonauts/xcom I think that the combat system of this latest game is very familiar. You use a couple of mechs in very close coordination to fight off an attack, with much of the game mechanics revolving around the specific positioning you take around the map. It is not a not a game that will swallow months of your free time, it is quite basic really, but I like it for its simplicity. The design seems to have isolated the bit of a lot of games where you actually make strategic decisions, then they've got rid of all the rest of the junk so it is only that interesting bit.

Yup. I think that there is a definite need for this. The game is not about grinding your soldiers' stats up. There is very little strategy in that. Obviously there needs to be a barrier to stop you deploying super-soldiers from the outset, and yes it is fun to see you squad gradually develop into a meaner fighting machine. But some kind of compromise would be welcome, one that would let you patch up a hole in your team if, say, your sniper bought it. In terms of the cost - that really depends on the economy of the game. What would be the trade off for a soldier being trained for +10 accuracy? Would it be worth 1/10th of the $ cost of a fighter jet or would it require resource x to be recovered from the mission site? Better barriers might be less in terms of economy and more in terms of built in limitations. To make a suggestion, I'd say that the base should contain a training room and that, like the lab/workshop of the first game, it would be given a multiplier which increases in the late game. If the training room were designed such that it couldn't improve something like bravery, then it wouldn't function to entirely replace a soldier (i.e. removing the punishment of death). However, it would provide another option for improving your soldiers that didn't require you to carry out a whole ground combat mission. This way, by the final mission you might have a bunch of artificially trained grunts standing in the shoes of your less fortunate squad members but there would also be a few hardened veterans (officers) holding the whole team together with their higher bravery stat.

I think that examples of stat/skill training are inseparable from the style of character development. XCom Apoc had soldiers defined purely by stats (even being a human/hybrid/android was effectively just a matter of stats), they weren't characters, just numbers. Firaxis XCOM has character classes with different stat progressions and skill trees - you could customise your style of sniper but they were entirely replicable. AfterX (from what I remember) had characters with unique bios and even family relationships, there were still classes but training was quite open ended. Put together, it seems like a scale. On the one end, it is a numbers game - on the other it is more like an RPG. X1, being a faithful reboot, was obviously on the pure-stats end of the scale. If a system were to be implemented whereby soldiers could be selected for training packages or given certain upgrades based on experience, then it would swing the game more towards that RPG style. This is quite a delicate issue, both in terms of what players want but also how Goldhawk would position their game in relation to their contemporaries (and I'd guess Phoenix Point is going to be close to Firaxis XCOM). Personally, I'd say that the versatility of Xenonauts is one of its advantages. Why shouldn't the shotgunner get expertise with smoke grenades or a medkit? But then, I'd also vote for a stat system as complex as pokemon where progression is based on the enemies you fight, the character's nature and even the genetic lines they are part of - though I feel that breeding soldiers in xenonauts would upset much of the core fan base. Whilst I concede that the realistic approach for X2 would not be that far along the scale, it is undeniable that a lot of the fun and investment the player has in the game (and the attachment they have to each play-through) is grounded in the development of the soldiers beyond just their weapon upgrades. This also highlights the flip side of the discussion, in how much punishment the player should take for losing a soldier. In AfterLight, it could even mean losing your R&D resource. Pretty painful really. But then, that game was based around the premise that players would tend not to permit with loses. Losing a stat-based Apoc soldier wasn't much grief at all though, their 'clone' would be waiting at base camp. Unfortunately I'd say that X1 kinda suffered from the disadvantages of both ends of the scale - highly trained soldiers were a chore to replace (esp if you wanted them to have a good reaction stat) but the ground combat mechanics weren't lenient to keeping every soldier alive throughout the game (e.g. one shot reaper kill). Training should be a a fun part of the game, not a grind. I'd say that a good compromise would be to have training packages that are unlocked via research, and that these could be given to any soldier. So your rookie with the top-tier-Acc-training-package could stand in for a veteran on the rifle range but wouldn't be an all-round soldier until they gained in mission experience. So what I'm saying is - should Xenonauts 2 lean towards the RPG style of character training and how can that remain interesting in a play through that can incur substantial loses?

Yeah I wouldn't advocate using air support in-mission, that would feel like cheating. But I think that there could be some potential for the level of armament your dropship has to affect the drop you can actually make.

I realise now that after moaning last time that I couldn't jump down from the higher level, I didn't even do that this time. Sigh. Although I did check the pathing for that action so I feel okay. First time I played it, seemed to be fine but it crashed, the last thing I saw were some damage/stun numbers appearing above an alien corpse that was under some smoke (it had just been grenaded). I think I had the report log enabled but other than that I can't help. Second time, no crashes. I pick up on a few bugs: At one point I could target and hit an alien who was several tiles deep into the unrevealed map Another alien I grenaded to death didn't have the death motion and remained in a standing position for the rest of the game I've got screen shots of those but they not particularly informative. Third play, I started messing around with the settings. I found that if you up the gamma you can see the unrevealed map in something akin to 8bit colour. Also you can set the contrast so low everything is grey - I mean, it is not a bug or anything but that is a niche audience you're looking after there. After playing with the settings some more, I pressed enter to confirm changes but instead it ended my turn i.e. the hotkey was still affecting the game outside of the menu. Then, when I was done being silly with the graphics and carried on playing, all of the character portraits had turned to low resolution images. That is about it for bugs, the rest that follow are just observations: The top tile of the floodlights can be seen from far away so that block sits in the unrevealed map looking a bit odd You can't move your soldiers diagonally between friendly units, can make things a bit awkward - a 'switch places' option would be great! In previous games, if clicked to turn round without enough TU it would turn you as far as possible, just makes a clunk noise now The eye option to show fog of war also makes some walls dark No image for medkits on the soldier In the optional overwatch screen, you don't have any info about the soldier firing, e.g. what gun they have etc. I grenaded myself.

The route you could go with this depends on what the geoscape does to spawn ground combat. There are a few issues to work through - why bother putting your soldiers in the aerial dog fight? Currently, there is no rush, almost never does the situation occur where the ground combat mission will expire before the final UFO of the wave gets splashed. You'd be a premature fool if you managed to get your transport full of veteran soldiers shot down But then you could also ask, why put much design effort into the transport craft at all? If all it does is move your peeps from A to B in safety, they may as well be on the bus for anything other than aesthetics and immersion. I do think it is worth playing around with the idea, if the geoscape can be altered to suit. For example, if GC missions expired quickly, then you would need to put a troop transport in with the wing of fighters that down the UFO. The transport would only have some token defence (in comparison to the actual fighters) but it could land as soon as the UFO is downed, before the aliens can dig in or repair. Alternatively, drop zones themselves could come into the foreground of the game, with the option to strafe some areas of the map (or something that fighters can't do) or else have a limitation like only putting down half a squad if your Mi-24 can't defeat whatever anti-air batteries the enemies have in play.

That thing looks pretty nasty but I've seen Robot Wars, I know that if it gets flipped on its side it'll be little more than target practice.

This does make sense. Also, just sitting in the same place would also help your aim, as opposed to having just run up a flight of stairs or something. I think the real question is how much would it make the game better? Whilst you might want a boost to your aim stat, and you may deserve it when you've got a soldier making a third attempt at one particular shot, the downside is that it could promote a more of a static feel - everyone digging in. Besides which, the different types of shot (snap/aimed) are the implementation of that aim boost - firing madly for three turns shouldn't be any better than taking time over one precise shot.

ugh, annoyed at myself for play testing but not thinking to blow up my soldiers with grenades. I mean, it's obvious now you mention it.

I'd say that differentiating a weapon tier, such as lasers, by the variable that their range is unlimited would give them a nice unique feel. Although if one tier were to be differentiated by this variable, would MAG weapons be just as good a contender? I mean, they would suffer bullet-drop but only as they pass the horizon as far as I understand (and I'm not confident I understand a lot!). So if your advocating realism then both tiers might have to have that same property which would reduce their unique feel - at this point you may reduce the quality of gameplay which (IMO) is more important than realism. Another issues issue is how you make the extended range of lasers/MAG balance nicely. As has been said above, accuracy of the shooter is still going to drop off at those extended ranges so the weapon damage would still be fundamentally limited by the hand-to-squinted-eye coordination of your soldiers. In that way, a long range laser could retain utility as your sniper gets a better and better accuracy stat, however, at the latest stage in the game laser weaponry is two tiers obsolete so lacks the necessary stopping power to put down an elite alien. Balance. You'd only be able to cheese it on really open plan maps.

I like your idea of having some kind of famine of ammo. There would need to be some restriction to stop you hauling a whole backpack full of clips but it would create a nice feel if conserving ammo were a serious factor in the mission. Usually your intent is to protect your dudes and deal damage from safety, so you can afford to miss a lot so long as you don't get hit yourself. This scenario would add that sense of terror to the mission if you had to put yourself in harm's way, in riskier than usual situations, to conserve precious bullets. Although going for melee kills against fully fledged reapers is perhaps a little too suicidal so some new fragile version might be needed. I guess that this would be Xenonauts answer to the Lost in the XCOM expansion, with the twist that you wouldn't have your soldiers nailing multiple headshots per turn but rather they'd be beating off an unstoppable tide. One of the perks of Xenonauts is that items like clips of ammo exist in ground combat as distinct objects, so part of the mission could be to loot dead soldiers (from the regular military of course) as your progress through the map. As you say, this could all tie in to some main objective about a device of some kind - maybe even to set a bomb yourself to stave off a reaper infestation.

I was thinking that maybe that map isn't very forgiving of shotgunners - it has a lot of open space and not much in the way of corridors. I'm not sure on the details of the shotgun's damage-distance profile but it does feel that they don't have much of an edge on a rifle unless you start your turn at very nearly point blank range.

Bugs: I had one unit, Ling Zhou (shotgun) consistently not appear as a green hash when obscured by a roof or other object - other units seemed fine The shotgun pellets emit from the foot of the soldier Possible bugs: The smoke left after grenade fire doesn't engender the green hash so units actually do become harder to see (is this intentional?) Cover doesn't seem to be blowing up, despite repeated grenade attacks (grr!) A unit was suppressed by fire on the other side of a wall (I can rationalise that by thinking of bullets hitting the wall but it feels that physical dividers should have an effect) Comments: Units standing on a roof appear the same as those standing underneath, not huge but it does give the wrong impression. Also, I couldn't find how to manually toggle the visibility of each level (can't remember if I tried the mousewheel) I really liked the overwatch option to fire or not, but it seems you only get that choice at first spot - I was hoping to be able to wait till the alien stepped out of cover or something but I can't think how you'd build in the interrupt in that case (tapping space during their move might work but is a reaction kinda thing) Immediate tiles of cover are ignored but other tiles of the same object get in the way - seems odd that you can fire unimpeded across a 2x1 bush but not along it Couldn't jump down from a level up to the ground, ladders aren't as fun for ambushes I couldn't distinguish the death noises in the alien turn - just having a black screen feels a little lacking although maybe the in-the-dark feel is better Overall, shotgunners didn't seem that effective. It could be because they aren't veterans with TU high enough to get right up close. Nevertheless, it felt quite hard to get them somewhere useful and even then they had low percentages - obviously misses got them zapped. Could just be that I'm used to Firaxis XCOM though! Also, being used to Firaxis XCOM, the cover mechanic here feels very different and in a way, less intuitive. I'm not raising issue with it but it made my first play of the demo frustrating. All I'm saying is that it could put off players who are new to Xenonauts - maybe the tutorial could explain that you can't lean around corners - that is a very natural thing to do in XCOM (having the fog of war enabled made this much more obvious so maybe default that to be on) Is good though, it looks very pleasing. Unlike XCOM it doesn't have animations that make objects or the camera go through other objects. The downside of that is that it is not quite as satisfying to kill enemies but I do like the aesthetic and the less arcade style.

You'd have to turn a lot of the game mechanics on their head. You'd start with the advanced tech so research would be a much smaller part of the game. Instead, it would be more about developing your potential to send more and stronger waves of attackers to Earth. So base building and research would swap in terms of their importance. Also, you wouldn't be training your soldiers up to higher ranks but sending them to their deaths with the intention of doing as much damage as possible on the way. Combat would be less about xp and research artifacts, and more about grinding down humanity one farmer at a time.

To the second point on refuelling: it did seem a little silly that you could fight half a wave but would have to nip home before going back to finish them off. It wasn't exciting and it broke immersion somewhat. I remember needing to take trips back for something as little as a tiny handful of autocannon rounds. Obviously there needs to be some challenge in the air war to make it a game but I'd say that if you're only managing a half dozen craft, the challenge shouldn't be logistics: the refuelling/rearming wait time isn't an interesting aspect of play. As for your point on lore related research: in another thread on weapons, Chris stated something to the effect that the player shouldn't be facing a decision between researching lasers or filling their xenopedia with lore about the invaders. On a second play through, you wouldn't feel as compelled to study the lore, so you'd get all the combat tech first (in a recent play of XCOM, I did just this and played most of the game with top tier weapons - it became a drag). I guess the issue here is that the single research tree is the helm for too much development. It is the only way to get at the story line, progress through stages of the game and upgrade your gear. These are qualitatively different so probably shouldn't fall under the same umbrella. Xcom Apocalypse had two research divisions, so you could be studying the alien life cycle whilst also designing a new fleet of interceptors. One side of research would seem more important than the other for a while but their significance would alternate as the game progressed.

I think the above nicely echoes what has been said: there are a lot more variables in play than just damage and rate of fire. I'd say that a good contender to differentiate the weapon tiers would be to focus on which classes of gun are available - so lasers wouldn't have their own variants of pistol, shotgun, SMG, rifle, LMG, sniper and rocket launcher, instead they might have just two or three models which have entirely different effective ranges than conventional ballistics. That way there is never an out-and-out upgrade but rather another type of weapon, which fills a particular niche, that you can add to your arsenal. Then, building on those distinct classes, the uniqueness of the weapon tier can come into effect. So the short range laser (which is neither a pistol nor a shotgun) could have an added suppression effect because it is blinding. The short range weapons in the plasma and MAG tiers may end up being much more powerful, but you'd still keep that little blinding laser around for those situations or play styles that call for it. To promote the player to invest in further research tiers, the late game could introduce enemies which aren't susceptible to the blinding laser, so you can't rely on that tactic alone. Possibly, it would be better to think of the unique tech effects then create weapon classes to fit. In either case, what I'm getting at is that the motivation to progress needn't just be about pure damage output (you kind of already get that as your soldiers' firepower increases with accuracy).

Well I think terror missions have a little more to them than just kill everything, there is that secondary objective of keeping the civilians alive. Although it is a very secondary objective; you are quite at liberty to ignore it, so returning to the kill everything scenario. Nevertheless, they do prompt you to explore the map rapidly before the aliens kill everyone. I seem to recall that the aliens are usually a little more well-armed too, but sadly they don't carry terror-specific weapons like flamethrowers or Imperial AT-ATs. Firaxis XCOM has a bunch of mission types, they do mix it up a little, but I guess there is a fundamental limit to what ground combat can let you do. The XCOM2 missions essentially involve you getting to a certain location on the map and pressing the 'interact' button, hardly inspiring variety. OK, that is a gross oversimplification, there are fun variables like stealth, misdirection and squad composition. But I fear that the Infrastructure and Bomb missions would fall to the same blurring effect - that they could be devolved to 'go here' then 'kill everything'. This is why I was pressing for your other idea about the mood and feel of a mission. At the end of the day, no player is going to think for a long time about the specifics of the mission objectives when they can all be reduced to 'kill everything'. Unfortunately, when the player stops engaging with whatever differences have been implemented, then the underlying game starts to feel repetitive. The Bomb mission would need to have something like a timer to make the player approach it in a different way. The fact that a lot of players don't like timers is, in some ways, a good thing - those are the missions you dread because they challenge the way you play. I mean, there are alternatives but they all have to force something on the player. Some artificial intervention that means you just can't use your regular tactics. The added challenge of the Bomb mission could be that the whole facility you fight in is full of volatile materials, so you can't bring explosive weapons; or that the Psi-Bomb gives all combatants a penalty to a specific stat, say aim, so you have to make it a close quarters battle. Getting back to terror missions, I think that tactical impairment could be that your soldiers are more likely to panic, maybe having their morale/bravery linked to the number of civilians that get splashed or saved.

There are quite a few ideas here bundled under the heading 'Terror Mission'. Infrastructure attacks or bomb emplacements are fairly far removed from the pure terror element - they give the impression of timed objectives, which have the right urgency and would cause damage to human settlements, but I think the idea of terror is something different. Or at least, I think that it has potential to be something quite different and that should be much to do with the feel of the mission. Differences could be as Roxxed suggests, simple graphical alterations to change the mood or unique terror enemies (e.g. Reapers/Cryssalids). Terror missions are the perfect candidates for nighttime events. The added tactical difficulty of visibility along with the spooky atmosphere that effects you as a player. Though my point is to reserve that feel for terror missions only, else they'd lose their edge. Reapers are probably too much of a staple alien combatant to use only on terror missions but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make an alternate skin for them along with changes like added movement or an AI that is favours sneaking up behind your troops (or avoiding light sources). Along with what Rodmar18 says, maybe the aliens in terror missions should be suicidal, packed with explosives to really give the impression that you are fighting an enemy hell-bent on achieving maximum damage. In that vein, the aliens wouldn't need a ship to transport them, theirs would be a one way trip, so they could arrive via drop pods. This would negate your ability to shoot them down and could provide the visual clue as to where the aliens are located on the map: "I think they're in that building, the one with the huge hole in it and the alien drop pod sticking out the side... You go in first"

Could this relate to rank, so you can only send multiple soldiers if one of them is an officer? I've been thinking that the rank system could be made more significant if it actually related to a soldiers ability to command other soldiers. Alternatively, the case could be that sending a higher-ranked soldier as an agent would permit them to conduct advanced operations - such as leading local forces - whereas dispatching a squaddie as an agent wouldn't effect so much authority. I'm sure that there is a lot of room for using agents as delegates in regions around the globe: less like an x-number-of-days-covert-action and more like a continuous interaction using soldiers as a resource.

I'd say there is a fair bit of potential for making the map more interesting. It could add to the atmosphere of the Cold War, if the USSR or the US had their influence in various countries/regions around the globe, and those allegiances fluctuated with geopolitical events (as far as I'm aware, this is pretty much what was happening in the Cold War). Redrawing some familiar boarders would be a neat way to emphasise an alternative-fiction universe. As for your second point in particular, I can see that increasing the number of areas by using sub regions could make for a better geoscape, one that feels more like a world, but I think that it might stretch some of the gameplay mechanics. If you have 10 regions, each split into 2 or 3 of sub-regions, then it is not inconceivable that one or two of them might never see a splashed UFO or otherwise spawn a mission. It depends on how you want the regions to function I suppose. On that note, I am all for making the geoscape game a bit deeper too, as well as just the map itself.

There are a couple of issues which I think can be solved with one solution. Part of the complaint is that imagined technology requires some suspension of disbelief (although flying saucers are fine right?) and the difficulty is in making the implementations of that technology fit into enjoyable and rewarding gameplay. A solution, I think, is to separate out the theoretical research and the technical design (possibly both being distinct from the nuts-and-bolts building job). The progression of the science goes something like bullet-laser-plasma-MAG, tier 1-2-3-4 (which is fine, the necessity of that being linear is another argument). But I'd say that the progression of weapons, physically, doesn't need to look like that. Instead, the weapon-groups could be defined as 1) kinetic projectiles and 2) energy beams. These aren't linear tiers and the energy beam doesn't have to behave like lasers or plasma would. It is not a wave, it is not a particle, it is a brightly coloured, subluminal flashy thing to which you can't apply your conventions (it is science fiction my friends). These two groups, kinetic and energy weapons, are the domain of the engineers. The groups both get to feel like different weapons, not just another like-for-like iteration of what went before. Functionally, the scientists enable the engineers by passing across technologies, then, the engineers use those theoretical principles in their design. The player needs to invest science resource to gain access to the different technologies but they invest design resource into the weapons of their choice. Don't like the way long range beam weapons work, fine, don't build them, but you have to research the corresponding technology to get reach a full powered kinetic sniper rifle. This has the secondary benefit of giving your engineers something to do at all times, and also, allowing you to develop your weapons at the same time as devoting your science to the narrative-progressing technologies.