Leonatus

Could there not be other effects of armour on soldiers besides vision range? How about a hit on timeunits (say 5-10%) to show its bulkiness or not being able to kneel. Both are maybe somewhat less crippling than reduced vision range in a game with universal squad size. Leo

Huh, yeah, we are talking game engine here, are we not? I hope we are, otherwise it's going to be hard to talk if we can't agree over explosives bringing more destruction than 9mm bullets and fists. That's why in mining people use dynamite instead of kicking the rock to gravel. If we are talking game engine then I already agreed to let it fly. So the engine doesn't support different damage types to let stuff withstand bullets (even lots of them) but give way to higher tier weapons. That's an ok reason to give. Leo

While i can understand UFOs being indestructable because of some game engine/balance issue or plain laziness/lack of ressources the background explanation is just dumb. It's not like anti air weapons are all that strong to begin with. Certainly the real world stuff like Sidewinders and the basic machine guns are nothing to write home about and UFOs are being shot down with these all the time. So if they can (obviously) damage UFOs a pack of C4 or a rocket launcher with armour piercing warheads would abolutely be able to affect the alien hulls in a meaningful way. Games like these often require suspension of disbelief in many ways. We can take one more. Although it was quite fun in the old game to create backdoors with fusion bombs. Leo

not any kind of desert though. Chris specifically mentioned US and middle east deserts. African and East Asians deserts are out of luck, apparently. There be dragons, I guess. I'm really excited about the map designer. I wonder if he will be worth the extra money that was needed to 'unlock' him and how we will be able to tell the difference. It should be interesting to see if he designs a bunch of fixed maps of if he will create some kind of randomizer to automatically change the maps on its own.

Yeah, that would be nice. Alas this has already been discussed here and was basically denied. I usually build the second base not that far away from the first so I get some support and the Chinook would sometimes be able to reach UFO wrecks that were crashed by the other base. That way the second base can contribute before it reaches full strength.

I seem to remember reading somewhere, that the ground combat save feature has been removed from game and that this is intentional. Wether it will return in the future or not is anyones guess. My money is on 'no'. Leo

Agreed. The same goes for sniper teams who are just to unwieldy for the basic mission. If the OP is familiar with sniper teams as he claims he knows that usually a sniper fires once, then gets the hell out. He also is as far off as his weapon allows where Xenonauts missions are pretty much close quarter from one house to the next and keep pushing until the aliens are dead. Well, you shot that argument down yourself. Pun intended. The Barret is an anti material rifle. Much too large and cumbersome for Xenonaut mission. It's being used against mines and hazardous stuff that patiently waits for people to drag along the rifle and work it into firing position. Hardly the right tool for Xenonaut teams.

I think he gets that. The problem is that the crashes are so severe right now that we can't really play at all which prevents us from testing those brand new features.

That's not the impression I got from the reaction in these forums. In a quite similar thread we discussed monetary issues with producing stuff with the intent to sell them for profit in mind and most people got foam mouthed and called it an evil exploit because it wasn't a documented way of making money. In fact it went so far that the mere possibility of making this an option was shouted down because it would ruin this game for everyone. And their dogs. It would probably cause global warming, too. Incindentally the man in charge seemed to agree with this sentiment so we are looking at having our hands held quite a lot.

hm, one possibility would be a special ammo made from alien alloys that would up power and range of the guns. The need to manufacture them first and their continuous drain on limited resources would then keep them from pushing laser weapons aside. Also it would be very easy to put the special ammo into the game as there is no requirement of new models. Only a picture and some text.

yeah, what he said. * According to Chris, terror missions are supposed to be hard, but we do not know, just how hard they will be in the end. Right now you spend most of your turns watching your guys panicking (like picknicking, but with people dying) around. I hope that this will be adjusted some time down the road. Until then, don't get too attached to your soldiers, or your campaign. (* Written when stone drunk, so when in doubt, disregard) Leo

Well, another option to go about this is to make sure that at least the first terror mission is somehow within reach of your team. Due to the heavy penalty of not showing up it's otherwise a serious coinflip effect that can severely hamper the campaign when one or two terror missions just so happen to be out of range for fledgling organization. Or maybe just lighten the repercussions for the first lost terror missions. Leo

Ah yes, the t-word. Why of course, people not agreeing with you must be trolling. So, you're not a numbers cruncher and thus the game should be tailored to your preferences while all the others can mod it to their needs. You do this quite a lot, don't you? Slamming down your opinion as fact and claiming that it's the way that everyone would like best? Surely they wouldn't know, what's best for them. Therefore everyone not agreeing with you is also going against the good of the entire game and all the players. Just like you did in the 'fog of war' thread. Not surprising really, I guess it's kind of hard to score a four digit postcount without being severely opinionated. How will postponing do any good? We're not argueing the finer points of adjusting monetary rewards for missions or looting. We're debating about the entirety of the 'production for profit' concept. Sure it's quite early to do so but it would be good to know if it's an option at all before trying to balance the other ways of money makeing. Leo

We'd have to see how the difficulty with the terror sites pan out first. Right now terror missions are suicide either way because of the funny way the morale system works. Maybe terror mission will be doable with a small crack team that has been honed since day one.

Hi there (I'll send ahead that until beta testing the weapons tweaking isn't yet an issue and considering this I think the balance we have is pretty good.) Now. Very nice thread. I do disagree with your assessment of the shotguns, however. A very major difference to sniper weapons is that shotguns are light on the time units. So you can be very mobile with them, emphasizing their close quarter role much unlike the sniper rifle. And they put many aliens down with the first shot which is something the asault rifle does not do. One factor that makes the machine gun so very useful and one that will hopefully disappear soon, is that right now most aliens are playing turret defence during the whole mission. This produces scenarios were you turn around a corner and have to put the alien down with this very shot so as not to receive hot plasma love to the face. Once aliens start moving on their own and now put everything into reaction fire with eyes in the backs of their heads, smaller damage portions with increased mobility might get more effective. We shall see. Otherwise full agreement to most of your points. The assault rifle could indeed have a faster rapid fire option (or maybe another spray option with more bullets?) but I would also vote for an increase in accuracy for the aimed shot because that one is lacking, too. The small stopping power will keep it from replacing the sniper rifle. I stole this suggestion form someone, I think because I remember reading it somewhere else. Leo

hmm, dunno really. I'm from pre kickstarter. There was a page here where Chris explained how it worked. I remember activating something via Desura. I'll look it up.

I always thought, that a rough layout or even a more detailed map with everything except people and aliens would make sense. This could be offered depending on day/night time or if it's an indoor mission. You could even factor technology into this by getting access to cool scanners that allow a preview of the battlefield. Discovering the battlefield as you go is kind of fun though. Also we don't know if something like that planned at all and if it's too much of a drag to implement. You´re right about the excitement, of course but I always thought that this is what the Iron Man game mode is for. Seems kind of redundant now. And not everyone enjoy this tension. If you get to play once or twice a week it's nice to make some headway instead of repeating the same mission six times because your guys fall prey to the famous plasma shot from the dark.

Really now? Including optional game content doesn't force anyone to anything. In games like this there are often ways to go about the game that could or couldn't be used, depending on the gamers preferences. In the old XCom there were certain pieces of equipment like the motion scanner oder incinerator ammo or even laser weapons (which one could avoid by hurrying on to plasma weapons). All these could be useful, but were hardly neccessary to beat the game. That's what optional means. Same with production for profit. It could be used to good effect if you went for it but wasn't exactly a must have because there were other options to get money. Few people even knew about it back then. And yet, production for profit didn't wreck their gaming experience as it would with yours, apparently. I'll skip answering your comment about changing the xml files. All of these comments apply to you just as well.

No, it's really not the same. Including it means opening up a variety of possible strategies for people, not including it just means you forcing your opinion on others. By adjusting the selling price and the construction time of a product it's quite easy to control just how many months it would take for a built workshop + living quarters filled with technicians to pay off and by how much. Once it's ascertained just how much money is neccessary for this game, balancing this should be not much harder than balancing everything else in the campaign. Leo

Yes, pretty much. In the old XCom, the funding nations gave nowhere near enough money to support more than the absolute minimum of bases. For several bases and the manpower and equipment to cover the entire planet additional income was mandatory. I for one didn't produce for profit in my first two playthroughs. Didn't need to, thanks to the ridiculous amounts you got for the heavy plasma rifle. Later, when I had the idea of producing stuff just to sell it tried a third playthrough just for this after doing some number crunching. The trouble with the funding nations is that they very much set the entire pace of the game. There is no way to really influence it in any significant positive way. It will rise a little bit if you do your job and will take a nosedive when nations drop off the council if the player botches some significant missions which makes those do or die in every case. This puts a hardcap on Xenonauts operations and dictates largely the amount of your bases and equipment before the game even starts because there is no real way to up your finances. That could be intentional of course as it makes the campaign easier to predict but for me the amount of freedom the original XCom offered in how you approach the game, even if some were not intentional, made the game so very addictive. So most people here claim that they don't care for production for profit but that is absolutely no argument to leave it out as long as it is really only an option. Leo

How's that a counter intuitive learning curve? You get a smaller, faster transport and thus the missions you reach with those are getting harder because you don't have as many people with you. Sounds very intuitive to me. A couple of words in the Xenopedia can explain the pros and cons of the plane easy enough. When the game gives you many options on how to approach it it's hard to avoid some bad ones. Finding good ways to play is half the fun. I think that people who complain about difficult missions due to some specific tech will complain about the lack of a battlescape save option first. Really the biggest problem here is that it would be a lot of work to put into something that's more of a niche option of playing. But if you improve the flier too much it would probably replace the Chinook completely. Leo

Yeah, maybe. Your point being? Don't like it, don't do it. Either let the terror missions pass and suffer the ill will of the council but keep your flegling team in pristine condition or go for the blaze of glory and sacrifice a couple of soldiers but get the funding boost. The transport wouldn't be available until two or three months into the game, so people would have some idea of what they are doing and how they want to go about the game. Some people prefer few (one) elite teams were everyone is a tough hombré and others might split their best guys up and create several teams around the globe to cover more ground. This is very much dictated by how much work the player is willing to put into the tactical missions. Elite teams often means repeated reloads of the more difficult missions until most if not all people get out alive. The approach with dividing the best guys into several teams means a more relaxed play thanks to having recruits and tanks as bullet catchers. With this you could get more missions done and probably in less time but you wouldn't get that group of demigods in the late game, that many of us are aiming for. Whatever floats the boat. Leo

Given that the Chinook is a rather primitive transport by Xenonaut standard I was hoping that there would be another transport that could be researched quickly (say, after getting alien alloy). One that uses some advanced forms of tech but isn't yet Alenium fuled. This tranport would have to be built and could be limited by additional factors like smallish size (6 guys, no tanks?) but have improved speed and range to get the crack Xeno team to terror sites, when neccessary. It would make single base play an option where now one is pretty much forced to build multiple bases. With the limited loadout it would then be players discretion to either go through the trouble of having several bases with teams or saving some money but having a harder time on critical missions early- to mid-game due to smaller teams. As we don't know the tech tree so far, something like this could already be planned, but I would like some aircraft that close the gap between basic earth tech and Alenium powered killing machines. This was a problem with the old XCom, too. Leo

Yeah, there's a difference, and you are very much on the pc side of things. But no worries, you're right. Nobody is going to argue against political correctness. You put quite some work into assigning fitting military outfits to the respective names to immerse those soldiers into the real world. How will this work with the girls? Are you throwing those former assignments out or will we have Emma Wilson from the Dublin Knitting Club? Or maybe fantasy formations? USFMC? Royal Femines? Fallschürzenjäger? Female soldiers were fine in the (then) fantasy settings of the old XCom. Had Xenonauts happened in 2020 this wouldn't be an issue but here it seems weird that you seem to work so hard to make the setting feel true with the artwork and the hardware but suddenly throw it all away, when it comes to women quotas. Oh well, it's your decision. Especially now, as you already have my money. I probably wouldn't mind so much if you hadn't put this up for vote only to go against it later to suit a vocal minority.

I still wouldn't call it an exploit. It gave you lots of money but so did selling off the alien stuff. It was often neccessary to counterbalance the erratic behaviour and the 'gone-is-gone' mechanic of the old games funding coucil. And with widely powerful psychic soldiers and Blaster Bombs that let you autowin certain missions who can really say what was a good intended mechanic and what was an evil exploit? If Goldhawk truly sets the foot down and says that 'production for profit' is out and with selling alien stuff being what it is now, I can't see how the money that is available could possibly finance more than one base with any reliability. The council in old XCom in no way gave enough money to win the games without resorting to other exploits either. Then again it's probably too soon to talk balancing. Leo