[X2 Personality]

For Xenonuats 2, what type of personality are the developers trying to go for?  It seems it might be similar to the first one. If so, then it seems like its going to have a conflicted personality, which means the more subtle things like the music, artwork, and atmosphere won’t quite match the vibe of this game. I want to make it clear that I really enjoyed this X1, but X1 personality sometimes took me out of the experience and it could happen again with X2.

With xenonauts 1, its was a  hard core focused tactical experience with heavier inspiration from the military, which gave me the impression it was supposed to be more realistic and grittier, and to some extent show how horrifying fighting aliens really is. This was reflected in the gameplay, which is nice because it makes it more distinct from the original xcom.  

However, the game’s artwork’s was very comic book like with a brighter color palette to match. This comes off as more light hearted than a military simulator should seem. It likes the difference between frank miller’s comics vs the 1950’s batman comics. The music, while good, came off as very light hearted too, there was no tension in the music. For instance, the air combat music had a very positivish vibe, which conflicted with the fact that your trying to fight off an alien squadron.

Lastly, the aliens themselves felt conflicted due to the artwork and to some extent the models.  None of them seem intimidating, at all.  Granted, from a gameplay perspective some of them are terrifying.  I’m not saying the models need to look vicious or need gruesome animations but the color palette needs to be darker. I’m not quite sure ift the problem is just with this or some the alien enemies themselves. Perhaps a new enemy type could be made to push a more gruesome, viscous vibe?

I believe most of these aspects could be changed but having a darker color palette, slightly more gruesome, gritty, realistic artwork, and a more tense/erie focus on the music.  This would definitely make xenonaut’s more dintinct between fireaxis xcom 2 and the original. For some inspiration, take a look at Metro 2033, Metroid ( especially super Metroid), and  halo reach. For enemy inspiration, take a look at  Doom & Aliens   (especially 3 and the 2016 remake ). For instance, imagine if the aliens took human corpse and turned them into a enemy similar to the revenant.

[The "secret war" idea]

 

I like the secret war idea, however, I suggest using a military perspective to develop this segment of the  story.  Historically, its often desirable for a military to learn about their adversary prior to committing any forces. Often times a military will send a recon team to  investigate, infiltrate, and sabotage the potential adversary. Using this logic, it would be reasonable to assume that the aliens would want to learn more about humanity before committing to an invasion and send a recon team. So, the goal of the alien recon team would be to identify humanities strengths and exploit its weaknesses. They would accomplish this by sabotaging defense manufacturing centers, steal military intelligence, and turn the various countries against one another. So, the game would begin with the secret war stage where the xenonauts must counter the alien recon team. After a certain amount of time, the alien recon team will request reinforcements, which triggers the full alien invasion and the secret war segment of the game would end.

Regardless, it looks like XN2's story is definitely  to be an interesting one.

[Air combat?]

Are there any details about Air combat yet. I've heard that they will expand the feature but haven't heard or seen anything definitive yet. For instance, will it be behave like the minigame in XN1 still or will it expanded to be a  turn based combat between the player's squadron versus the alien in a map similar to ground combat?

 

Also, are there any thoughts on implementing recruitable pilots feature for air combat? If player's could recruit, level up, and give perks to pilots, it could potentially create some interesting strategic options. For example, if a player had several planes that where unavailable due to repairs or rearming, a player could add a pilot to the plane to reduce repair/rearm time via skill perk. Or  a pilot could provide stat bonus the planes like reduced fuel consumption or a leadership buff. I was really impressed with the air combat feature in XN1 and I'm looking forward to what Goldhawk will do for XN2 so any info would be appreciated.

[Xenonauts 2 - Air Combat]

The improvements Chris is suggesting seems like a step backwards because it ditching the minigame system and more importantly the air minigame interface. The interface was very unique and gave me the sense I was the commander viewing the radar screen at possible bogies, this added to the immersion. Also, since the player could pause, the minigame itself behaves as a hybrid real time turned based minigame. Thus, here are some viable alternatives.

The majority of micromanagement in the air minigame stems from the player having to manually position planes. Instead, I suggest you provide various commands such as the one below. For all commands, there should be a small cooldown time (5-10secs) , which forces the player to choose carefully. By incorporating commands and alleviating the player of having to position, this would make combat quicker, visually appealing, and ultimately more strategic. Providing an example of commands, the player would first select the squadron on the right hand side. Then he would select from the list of possible commands such as evade, long range attack, protect base, distract enemy squadron. Please see the figure at the bottom for a visual idea of the proposed, improved minigame.

Lastly, the auto resolve feature needs to be balanced. There should be a healthy balance between using auto resolve and using the minigame. Basically the idea here is that, when player’s encounters new alien plane types, bombing runs of super critical alien infrastructure, base/city aerial defense. Unless the player commits lots of squadrons, The auto resolve feature will have a low chance of success so the player will prefer to engage using the minigame. As the player’s pilots gain experience against specific fighters, research, and advances their air tech, the auto resolve feature improves for pure air battles only.

Optionally, it would be great if there where varying objectives in the air minigame such as aerial base/city defense and aerial bombing run. For instance, during a minigame, there could be randomly generated AA guns near the base in the field of the view that can assist the player against enemy squadrons. The AA guns could be selected by the player and have their own list of commands.

[Xenonauts 2 - Strategy Design V8]

Hi guys,

Instead of having Xenonauts 2 take place in an alternate reality, why not have it take place in the same universe as the orginal Xenonauts in the present time? For example, it can be stated that after xenonauts emerged victorious, nations pulled their financial and military support over time. Thus, the xenonaut division grew ever smaller. Then, the aliens sent a specialized task force for revenge and took out the majority of the xenonauts in the 90’s, wiping out most of the remaining organization, expect, the few who were stationed at the secret facility Chris mentioned in Iceland. This may give the xenonaut sequel a proper sense of continuity. Also, in the original xenonauts I got the impression that most of the advanced equipment and research where restricted to xenonaut personnel, which suggests there was a lack of abidance of advanced material and alien tech knowledge in the world. By providing xenopedia backstory entry in the sequel, it could also explain that alien material is highly corrosive and only has a serviceable life span of one to two years. Basically, the aliens wiped out most of people who fought in the first alien war because of lack of support and loss of tech. Also, approximately all advanced material and research on aliens is gone. I believe this would give a more plausible explanation as to why the xenonaut organization and the world must reprepare from scratch against the second alien invasion.

[Xenonauts 2 - Strategic Scale]

Hello

I really like the idea of the Xenonaut organization being focused as highly specialized task force. Instead of making all the ground combat missions large scale, perhaps only make terror missions large scale. This may create diversity amongst the various ground missions. For instance, a funding nation’s city may come under attack by a massive invasion force. So the nation requests the Xenonauts to assist the local forces. At the start of the ground mission, the local forces and the aliens could be preparing to fight or are actively fighting. Ground missions should contain 1-3 squads (consisting of 4-6 friendlies) fighting against the 30-50aliens and have numerous civilians fleeing to safety. This could be a viable option to making ground missions huge and magnify the significance of the terror missions. To make the experience more memorable, friendly ai squads send requests to the player such as “support us at this location”, “flush out the enemy at this location”, please "provide medical assitance to soldier x", etc.