[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

If you claim to find the game overly easy on Impossible (even vanilla), you are either much better than everyone else or not entirely honest. The game is actually possible to lose on that difficulty level without intentionally throwing it, due to high randomness.

Did I say it was easy? No. Apparently I mistook what you meant by vanilla, vanilla implies non-ironman. Of course, non-ironman is a cake walk if you want it to be that way. The game is clearly possible to lose, and many attempts should be loses, on ironman at least. There is a large rogue-like effect in the randomness.

If you stretch out your game, there comes a point when you can sell off some excess corpses, but most of the time it's "meet new species, kill new species, stockpile a couple dozen their corpses". They are an order of magnitude more valuable for item production, requests, production to fill requests than the pittance you are paid on the 'gray market'.

I sell off corpses almost as soon as I get them to keep the engineering projects rolling. I can still beat the game. Your contention that you can't sell corpses (and be successful in game) is simply incorrect. Another example of your assumption that you know better than anyone else. You don't.

It's poor tactics. Consumables are cheaper. Corpses are worth almost nothing when sold. So using them you don't waste as much money, which with Diminishing Returns is always tight.

It's not tactics even, it's a strategic decision to invest in multiple fighters, and to limit your exposure from satellites to only 2 continents early so that you can afford it. It also works. It may or may not be optimal, that's a different discussion. Panic is not so totally unmanageable from failing to shoot down UFOs (as opposed to ignoring them) that you can't send up a fighter and recall it if it can't shoot down the UFO. It's also the strategy of how you manage the continents, and if you are willing to let countries/continents go or not.

Which by the way comes up for every potential terror mission with intercept on mission enabled.

Which is a mod and not vanilla nor 2nd wave. Harder or easier... debatable. More UFO missions means more goodies compared to simple abduction missions.

Incorrect. That only applies in the vanilla, which you seem to scoff at.

With SW - which implies most options on, and I explicitly mentioned RD on - funding decreases with panic level. Panic 4 pays almost nothing.

Fair enough. Yet you also said you played Vanilla.

Strange then that you didn't notice that the discussion was clearly about weapons, in that case.

I did, but your comments on them were nonsensical, which is why I wondered if you were talking about something else.

Armor is simple: use Archangel for snipers to exploit High Ground; use Ghost for everyone else; use anything else only if you find the game too easy.

Again, there is more than one way to do this. Psi armor obviously, but also Titan is perfect in some situations and AA is very poor for some maps. Matter of fact I rarely bother with AA, not because it's not useful, but because I prefer Ghost for the sniper. Also depends on how you build your sniper. And again, the debate about optimal is interesting, but clearly, there are different builds which are effective.

Perks are even simpler: every time there is the right choice and the wrong one. Yes, you can make a snap shot sniper, but that's as dumb as not ending turns with overwatch.

*shrug* that's not even the best example of obvious choice, and it's not so obvious depending on how you want to play your snipers. Optimal build is great, but some of the fun is playing with a different team composition. Many people feel squad sight is just too powerful, so they play without it. Are they right or wrong? It's a game, play it how you want to play it. Kind of like in the OG, how you can just level everything with BBs and psi if that's how you want to do it.

Yes. More damage than proper weapons for other classes even.

More? Equal for plasma vs. light plasma, otherwise I don't think so. And light plasma isn't the 'proper' weapon for plasma tech either is it?

That is not so; I even presented an example of an intelligent argument in its defense. I've said a few good things about it myself as well.

But the fact is, most defense of the 2012 game that you see comes down to ignorant dismissal of everything that made X-Com - X-Com, followed by childish delight with trivial or poorly implemented features.

Almost all of the new "features" are created by taking away options and choices that were standard for every soldier in the original, and that only make sense as such, then giving them back to you as perks.

I don't see the same things you do then. Maybe we are looking in different places. What made XCom XCom is different for everyone anyway, and you will still persist to tell us that you somehow are the speaker for that topic as well.

Was it the TU system that made Xcom Xcom?

Was it the pointless and tedious equipping screen?

Was it the broken and trivial economic system?

Was it the layers of stats and information which wasn't really necessary?

Was it the combination of all of that?

Oh, of course, the above are my opinions, and I enjoyed UD quite a bit in it's day, though Apoc was actually my favorite XCom. It's clearly an excellent game. EU is a different game, cut from the same cloth, but taken in a different direction. Neither good nor bad, just different, which will appeal to some more than others.

It's not without it's warts, but neither was the OG. Preferring one over the other is fine, it's expected. Trashing one just doesn't make a lot of sense to me though. Implying that people who prefer one over the other are retarded is, well, retarded.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

I have completed the game on Impossible vanilla and on Impossible with SW, with M 1.99, DR and RD, and without any easymods like BA's WSE. You almost certainly haven't. What makes you consider yourself qualified to teach me on how to play the game?

I almost certainly have not done what? Completed the game on I/I? ROFLMAO at I/V. Essentially though, you are simply wrong, maybe you are not very good at the game, I don't know, I don't care. What I do know is that there is precious little reason to save piles of corpses, and piles of corpses is usually what you wind up with. Especially on Impossible, since you know... there are more aliens and all that... and... even more especially on Marathon, since, again, even more aliens over the time it takes to finish research projects.

Your fighters - and that's all you have by the time stronger UFOs start appearing, with SW+M+DR, and intercept on mission=1, it's a while before you get a Firestorm - get toasted without consumables. Getting toasted or letting UFOs go raises panic and screws up the funding.

Err... there's more than one way to shoot down a UFO. I never, and I mean NEVER, build consumables. I probably should, but meh, you don't really need to. You can just send up to 4 Interceptors at the UFO, and that's usually good enough. Granted, that's expensive (in maintenance, hello NA bonus!), but it's an alternative. Upgrade to plasma cannons ASAP, and you don't even need firestorms for anything other than a battleship. Now that's a legit criticism of the NG though, the alien ships are fairly uninteresting unless you force the battleships to come.

Also, letting UFOs go can increase panic, but does nothing to your funding, unless the country leaves as a result.

Letting UFOs go can lead to battleships showing up (and indeed people do this intentionally to get battleships), but that's not guaranteed either. Battleships can lead to panic and loss of funding if they shoot down a sat.

You haven't been following the discussion, or you'd know already.

I've followed it, you just do not present cogent arguments.

You have misunderstood the subject. It's that these specs are exactly the same for all weapons in EU12. At least UD had ammo for plasma and not for lasers.

What specs? Ammo? That's not a spec, there's simply a different mechanic involved in how they treat ammo in EU than the OG. And that mechanic is 'cleaner' in that you don't need to bother equipping 10s of clips, though you do still need to bother to take a turn to reload as necessary. Like the abstraction or don't like it, it boils down to basically the same thing in the end. Also pistols do have purely unlimited ammo without ever needing a reload. And you can even do some decent damage with pistols if you build your sniper that way.

In UD I brought along weapons other than HP because HP is easy to get a hold of on Cydonia, because for 26 soldiers you need to manage inventory tightly, and because they had utility.

Before you ask why did I need 26 soldiers, I played without save-scumming and for fastest time, so they weren't ubercolonels.

I never had to manage inventory tightly, and the utility of other weapons was purely cosmetic. I don't care why you wanted 26 soldiers either, a lot of people liked having 26 soldiers, I found it tedious and unwieldy. That's not to say it's bad, I just didn't like the micro hell it entailed. Now skip ahead to EU, and wow, a tight squad of 4-6 (or less if you want) with varying abilities and weapon choices. That tickled me in the right place.

But rather than just admit that different mechanics can be fun for different people, you want to tell me I'm retarded, and prove that EU is for dummies and no one with a brain could possibly have anything good to say about it.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

Bounties are paid on proof of kill, so you'd have most of the body to yourself, rather than choose between having it and selling it.

What are you talking about? Real bounties? How some game handles it? What?

Dude, these are games, they are not remotely close to realistic if you want to take the time to pick holes through their mechanics. If you prefer one mechanic over another. That's freaking great for you. Understand though, that your preference doesn't make that mechanic superior in any way, other than to you. So stop with your idiocy of slamming every aspect of the NG as being dumb or bad or retarded or whatever other shallow pointless argument you want to pretend you have.

You like one set of mechanics over another. Yet you argue as though your opinion is the only one which matters. I didn't present defense of the NG before because why the hell would I? I'm not going to convince you of anything, your minds already made up. It's just entertaining to see people like you spin out of control when someone challenges your personal convictions.

In EU12, they are explicitly sold on the "gray market", but you don't sell most of them because you need them for items (which on the correct difficulty you do need).

Incorrect. But hey, don't let your opinion of how to play the game intrude on reality.

This, then, only counts as fan explanation.

And your opinion, then, only counts as a summers breeze opinion. Seriously, do you actually think you're that special that you can discount everyones opinion which doesn't agree with yours?

By the way, that's a rhetorical question.

Only for two classes there is even a choice at all. And it's little more of a choice than Plasma Rifle vs Heavy Plasma in UD.

Say what? A choice of what? Weapon? Armor? Grenade/scopre/kit/arc???

Plasma Light Rifle (that's how it is called) only has enough damage to kill a weak opponent with two hits or a critical. Plasma Rifle has enough damage to kill weak opponents normally, midrange opponents with a critical.

The probability of scoring one hit is higher than that of scoring two hits even with the 10% bonus. Since everything in the game, you and enemies, has so much damn health, it all comes down to just how fast you can wear off theirs before they wear off yours.

It becomes rapidly apparent that you have not spent much time playing the game on a meaningful difficulty, or with the latest 2nd wave options. Which is fine, since you don't like the game, I wouldn't expect you to spend time playing it. So then why are you babbling about it as though you have clue one about the difference between Light Plamsa and Heavy and why you would choose one over another depending on your squad composition as well as individual soldier statistics?

And all non-plasma weapons become useless the moment you have plasma. They don't even have a token benefit like unlimited ammo - which mattered within the 80 item limit, even if unintentionally. Or explosive capability like you got from Heavy and Auto cannons.

I actually brought some lasers and even starter tier weapons with me to Cydonia. They still had utility.

All weapons in the game have unlimited ammo. You mean time between reloads I suppose. Foundry project ammo conservation. *shrug* You brought along junk because you wanted to pretend that load outs mattered in the OG. The hint is that they didn't, other than for folks who wanted to pretend that they did. And look, that's great if that's how you wanted to enjoy it. But it's not exactly a great selling point.

Look, I can equip my dudes with zillions of useless items because it makes them feel more like a real soldier to have back up weapons and 10s of clips! Even though mechanics wise it was meaningless to actually do this.

So why bother with laser cannons at all?

1) 20 million is enough to win the game if your monthly bottom line is at 0 and you don't lift a finger to earn a cent more.

2) It's 5-6 months till you start seeing net profit on them. If you already have loads of heavy plasmas, you'll have won this playthrough well before that.

Which is part of the reason why many people felt the economic system in the OG was broken and silly. I'm not going to argue that the system in the NG doesn't have it's own particular issues, but that doesn't mean that the OG was any better in that area.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

Hardly. The new game is playable and even entertaining - and just that. I've seen very few intelligent people actually praise it; the game survives on being, today, a sole survivor of its genre, without competition or alternatives. It's that or nothing, and it's certainly better than nothing.

You know, I don't know you, but you certainly come off as a rather large female hygiene product. Few intelligent people praise it? What does that actually mean? Have you consulted all the intelligent people who have played the game? Do you just like making inflammatory comments for no particular reason?

You might have me confused with someone else.

Or confused the very reasons to play UFO - flexible financial system, full inventory, etc - with truly awful ones - difficulty bug, crashes, TFTD ship missions.

Or, consistent with your unusually low standards for excellency, confused tolerating with championing.

Flexible financial system? That's rich.

The financial system was so abusable that it quickly became utterly pointless. So you liked that you could essentially ignore all the countries in the world because their funding was completely unnecessary? Flexible. Sure, you can call it that. It's probably even correct to call it that. But flexible was broken as hell.

And the inventory system? Full inventory system? Where you just equipped everybody with the same load out because there was precious little reason not to do it that way? Well I can see that. Some people like that, some people find limitations (no matter how 'unrealistic') to be more interesting. To each their own. But neither is exactly an example of good or bad design, just examples of different design. You can read between the lines to see which one I prefer, but I'm not going to say that the other one was bad.

Your issues with EU are yours, but they in no way constitute a critique of what is good or bad about that game, other than from your very subjective point of view. Sure, we're all subjective with our points of view.

Some of us are just much less like the french word for shower about it.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

Frankly, I feel the opposite.

Actions may be easier to learn but Enemy Unknown's are so utterly limited that after a while, I was really wishing for Time Units to return. Time Units are hard to learn and I think that visual aids to indicate to a player how many Time Units a sequence of actions will cost would help a lot but the flexibility is worth it in the long run.

What I'd really like is a Time Unit system that give you a permanent indicator of how many units your current course of action will cost overall and the ability to reserve as many Time Units as you want for each unit. In short, merge the two.

... or if one go with Actions, don't have it as utterly limited as Enemy Unknown.

Xenonauts is frankly quite good on that aspect, with a number indicator that tell you how many time units you have left if you make your chosen sequence of actions and color-coding the paths. The only point I'll really fault is that it doesn't put label the ducking button to show how many TUs it use up but apart from that, it's actually very easy to pick up and play.

Once you understand that the number indicate the amount of TUs you will have left once at that spot rather than how many it will use up, the interface is very intuitive.

Nah... I'm quite familiar with TUs and how to use them. I just don't like using them any more I found the 2 move and perk system to actually increase tactical decision making, because the move/shoot/move cheese sequence is not possible. That and super soldiers with mega TUs just feel abusive to me, 3+ shots depending on which game... Large squad size on top of that is just level the map and go home.

Granted, I have not played a lot of Xeno, and not the latest builds, so maybe they address that somehow, but the issue still usually comes down to AI, and how it can handle it's decision making in a TU system. As I think we can all agree, the AI in the old games was... well... bad. The only real issues one had was with shots from the dark and the occasional mind control rocket

At first I resisted the new games combat model, but after putting in ~80h on it, I've come to really enjoy it. It makes the AI 'better' because it has a simpler set of rules to follow. It doesn't really make the game play any easier either, and it requires one to still use good tactics to achieve optimal results. At least on classic and impossible. Complaints about it on easy and normal are to be expected, but meh, easy and normal are really forgiving of bad tactics. Granted, once you get good at any game, it gets easy, but that's no different for any mechanic. And TUs just feel so clunky and slow, especially on a bigger map. I suppose there is something to be said for the gradual creep across a map not knowing when you'll bump into the buggers, but after doing a couple like that... wow, the next 10 times just feel like wasted time to me.

That's the other unexpected 'advantage' I've come to find in the new XCOM. The hand crafted maps, while repetitive for some (though frankly 'random' maps are also repetitive since they usually are not very well constructed), lend themselves to certain fixed positions and (occasionally) interesting and tight positional battles. The flanking mechanism forces you to not just stand and exchange shots with the aliens, because over the long run that's a losing proposition. This is so true on impossible it's not even funny. I used to think that random maps were the only way. Now I appreciate that random maps really weren't very random, nor were they very much fun when they were too big. It's just a grid with a bunch of tile specific junk plopped down on it. Once you've seen them a couple of times, you've seen them all. At least the hand crafted maps are designed for specific 'choke' points, or present a problem in areas of low to no cover. Though again, once you've played them a few times, you know what to expect, but I knew what to expect on the 'random' maps too.

Anyway, not here to poop on xeno, I think xeno looks great myself, just surprised with my own reaction to XCOM.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

It's interesting that on the 2K forums many people are now expressing how they simply cannot go back to a TU based tactical system. Frankly, I agree with them.

After trying to replay some UFO:ET missions... it was just painful. Sadly, Xenonaughts feels the same to me now. The simple elegance and simplicity of the 2 action system seems to have ruined TUs for me. Needless and often irritating click clicking

Oh well. Funny how perceptions change.

For what it's worth (though I know many will disagree), the 2 action system does not feel dumbed down or limited at all to me. Rather, TU systems feel over complicated and offers too many ways to 'cheese' various scenarios. That and TUs just play so slowly, and feel more prone to misclicks since you have to be far more of a bean counter to try and maximize your movement/shots/actions. That's just not really fun to me anymore.

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

Wha?

There's a cut scene for every autopsy...

Kind of the same every time, but it is there.

I dunno though, bailing on a game because it doesn't have the kind of autopsy pics you want? Your call man, your call...

[The XCOM veteran's two main reasons the XCOM:EU game is bad.]

Don't need too...

You don't need to research plasma weapons either...

Does everything in a game *need* to be done?

All you need to do is not to lose more than 7 nations, well, and win some tactical missions, and research the priority techs, and build a couple facilities and the skeleton key, arc thrower...

Need...

Such a silly word.

My personal want, is for XCOMEU to change the bomb missions to base/hanger defense missions. So the aliens invade a hanger/base, set up a bomb, and you have to send your troops to defuse it before they blow up your hanger.

Main base defense would be fine too, but meh, not the biggest deal of any thing. Some people just like more 'builder' game play I suppose. To me, it just takes more time away from the tactical missions. If the tactical missions aren't any good then the rest wouldn't matter to me anyway.

[Me senslessly beating xcom eu (2012) with a stick]

Different strokes...

I love it, but I don't have an pretensions about what it was supposed to be as many people over on the Take2 forums seem to have.

I think it works really well with the design they chose, the reduced amount of micro tediousness which is a downer for some is a major plus for me, the tactical combat with the cover mechanic is different and enjoyable.

That said there are certainly some issues, and some room for improvements. Then again what game these days doesn't come out that way (to varying degrees obviously).

I think there's plenty of room in the TBS world for XCOM:EU as well as Xenonauts.

[Am I only one sick with comparasion to XCOM?]

I do normally actually hate "If remake is same as original with few new things, whats the point" argument, but XCOM is series that was while ago thought to be "dead" because of crappy sequels that have nothing to do with original three. Those kind of series need new games instead of old games remade. Series can't survive if it doesn't get new fans and its hard to get new fans by just remaking old game for old fans.

I don't quite follow your logic.

A new game will attract new fans simply because it's a new game. Whether it borrows heavily from something in the past or strikes out on its own direction.

What we are talking about in this genre is limited in just how far it can go before it's no longer 'Strategic Management and Tactical Squad Battles' anymore. The name and the story are the least important aspects (unless the story is simply horrible). The game mechanics and the look are what will ultimately sell copies *and* keep the community playing it and pimping it. A name can carry a lot of initial sales though, but look at what happened with MoO3, and MoO was the gold standard for space based 4x, but that is no longer true because MoO3 took the name and the IP and then proceeded to shit all over them with broken mechanics and uncompelling game play^1.

Xenonauts is *not* XCom, but it is a spiritual successor. It will attract new fans to the genre (hopefully), but would probably have attracted even more if it could be branded as XCom. UFO: ET2 is also *not* XCom, but it too will bring new fans to the genre, just as the latest actual XCom game will. None of them are direct remakes though, but most fans probably don't want a direct remake anyway.

^1 for the record, I enjoyed MoO3 with the fan patch and some of the mods, it became quite a nice game, but the facts remain that its launch and subsequent mishandling by Atari and Quicksilver pretty much killed that franchise for the present. And that was a decade ago...

[Am I only one sick with comparasion to XCOM?]

Well...

It really isn't about the mechanics, it's about the IP related to the story/background/universe/...

Clones still 'copy' a ton from their source material, but they (rarely?) borrow any of the actual background. Then again there's really only so many ways you can make story for games of this ilk, so there are bound to be similarities, but the names will be different, and there will be other tweeks.

All of that is pretty immaterial in my opinion, what matters is the actual game play. Whether I'm on Earth, Mars, somewhere else doesn't matter, just give me intelligent bugs to shoot on interesting maps and I'll forgive just about any sci fi cliche.

[Am I only one sick with comparasion to XCOM?]

My two favorite squad based tactical combat games are XCom:Apoc and JA2 (including Wildfire here...).

Mostly I like these games because of the squad based combat and the 'advancement' of the troops. Throwing in research and air combat and other stuff is fine, it doesn't detract from anything when done well, but ultimately to me, if the missions suck, I won't bother with the game.

I don't much care if you're shooting other mercs or aliens or animals or hello kitties.

Now it's nice to have a good setting and story and all of that, even if it's not strictly necessary (to me). I don't mind the comparisons to XCom though, I mean what else do you compare it to? It's not a completely novel game in terms of either mechanics or basic story/setting.

[The OG]

I agree, the post about underwater missions was not stupid...

[The OG]

0 Friends

NastyNative has not made any friends yet

[The OG]

Now now licker. Please keep it civil, lets not stoop to that level.

Hehe...

You feel me though... right?

[message received]

[The OG]

Well I love them!

What you gonna do about it.

Lick me to death....

I don't need to do anything about it. It is highly unlikely that they will be in this game, so I will be happy and you will be a douchebag.

[try to release Xenonauts final version much earlier than the new XCOM ENEMY UNKNOWN]

Yeah, the animosity some fans are going to feel at the Firaxis game seems misplaced to me. Well, maybe not even misplaced, just meaningless.

The more the merrier, lets you decide which you prefer, or if you enjoy both even better!

I'm not that interested in the Firaxis project though, just from some of pub I read on it makes me think it won't quite capture the style I want it to capture. But then again, I'm free to not buy it as well, and not have to vent about it missed feature X or totally botched lore Y.

[The OG]

I hate underwater missions, they are totally freaking stupid.

That's my homage to UFO: UWM.

[Oil and why it is an awesome idea.]

Ok then. I surrender. I hereby authorize the implementation of maritime oil rigs and associated features into the game. Now all we have to do is sit and wait for it to happen.

I, for one, hope that we are sitting so long our asses fall asleep and we forget all about this...

[Naval Combat and other platforms]

I would guess that cold war era navel assets would be far to easy for UFOs to attack with any kind of long range advanced missile or torpedo technology, which one assumes they would have, or develop.

Already it's a bit of a stretch to think that cold war era aircraft can match UFO 'fighters', but that's gotta be that way for the game play to work.

Otherwise I agree in principle with Gorlom about the importance of gameplay over realism. This is one of those areas where I don't see so much what the add to the over all experience is. Then again I'm not really all that interested in ships or navel combat either, so I admit my bias against them

[Fun with AI]

If you have multiple ways to complete a mission and you choose to hunt down every last enemy then that is your call.

Indeed.

It would be more rewarding in gear recovered and reputation gained I imagine.

However the reward for NOT hunting down every last alien is that you can go do something else with the time you have saved.

And that's my gripe. Perhaps not with Xenonauts, since I don't know how it will handle this, but systems which reward tedium just feel wrong to me, no matter the level of reward. Granted, what I find tedious others may not, yet my experience in 20 years of playing XCom like games, strongly suggests that finding that last hiding bug is *not* considered fun, after you've done it dozens of times at least. The solution to me is not to set arbitrary surrender levels (though that's one idea), but rather to have an AI or mission design, in such a way that there is no last bug to hunt down on the other side of the map.

You are assuming that the ground missions will be tedious and want to add mechanics to compensate for this.

I prefer to think that the ground missions will be more interesting and not need a tedious method to artificially shorten them.

Once the AI and alternative victory conditions are in place we will see.

I'm not assuming anything. I KNOW that missions which frequently wind up forcing the player to do a time consuming bug hunt after the meat of the battle is over are tedious. I hope that Xenonauts avoids that, better by simply not having it happen, but if that's in the design then the alternative VCs will hopefully be well thought out and balanced.

I also don't want to see a VC where you can run one guy to some spot and have him stand there for 3 turns to 'win'. Well outside of a specific mission. I'm more worried about the 'routine' downed UFO missions which compromise a large % of all missions in these types of games. Special missions can be set up however makes sense for them depending on what the goal of the special mission will be.

But, as you say, we will have to wait and see what the missions feel like once the AI/VCs and more tile sets are in.

[Fun with AI]

Are all missions going to involve securing a UFO?

If so, then yes, it's already in there I suppose.

As to the question of mopping up.

If it's a difference between tedious game play and non tedious game play then I will chose the later every time. But you are phrasing it as there is an actual in game reward which requires me to spend more time to achieve it. No matter how negligible the extra benefit of taking out that last alien is.

Not knowing the exact mechanics hinders me in guessing at this, but assume you get more experience by getting that last alien, assume you get more 'money'... bypassing it is a negative on your advancement in the game (hence my notion about grinding). That's not to say that I (or others) wouldn't bypass it anyway, but I see that kind of game design as poor. If the only benefit is the entertainment of hunting down the last bug (that is the experience is the same and the reward is the same) then it's simply up to the individual if they wish to use their time to hunt the bug or move on to whatever is next. As soon as there is a tangible 'in game' benefit to performing tedious and repetitive actions, you encourage the performance of those actions. So, either design the game to not include tedious or repetitive actions, or make those actions optional.

That is sort of beside the discussion of Xenonauts though, it's a more general 'complaint' I would have with any game.

[Fun with AI]

I disagree with the way you use reward. It's a punishment if I have to do the mop up to get everything that's available on the mission. That is a sign of a badly constructed game play mechanism as far as I am concerned. But you're right, that the game already has different ways to end missions, so much of this may be moot. On the other hand, I dislike grinding, and what you are describing is essentially grinding, and yes, there is a tangible benefit to grinding if you can stomach the time investment. I'm not sure that building in grinding is a good thing, but some people may enjoy it, though frankly if it weren't there they wouldn't miss it.

Though I'm not quite sure you understand what I would like to see. I'm not so interested in the auto-end of a mission once the aliens are reduced to some number, I'm interested in not having to chase them down as they hide all over the map. So if you have maps constructed where the aliens are all present in one (or two...) locations for the show down then this question is indeed moot. The issue isn't ending faster by routing the other forces, the issue is being able to finish a mission without having to comb the map to pick off stragglers. If some missions will be that, then fine, when all missions devolve into that... not fine. This is the perspective I have gained from playing these kinds of games over the past 20 years. Cripes... yes, really 20 years!

Anyway, the hunter/hunted idea was a way to have some variation in missions while also speeding them up. Hunted is not 'run away and hide' hunted is 'stop advancing and engage from a defensible position. Its all predicated on both forces being interested in engaging each other, not on one faction being interested in trying to hide from the other for as long as possible. We're not playing hide and seek after all.

UFO:ET (I think) had a setting where the last one or two aliens, no matter where they were on the map, would simply charge the player so that the missions would end sooner rather than later. This wasn't a perfect solution (and may also have been considered unrealistic by some), but from just the game play aspect it helped a lot to end missions without having to run all over the map looking for a bug. Granted, you could just sit tight and end turn until the aliens came in sight, but meh, once you were at that point the mission was really 'over' anyway. I don't see the need to even play it out really, that's why I'm not opposed to the concept of 'surrender' or 'suicide' or 'beam me up' or whatever you want to consider it.

If others think that that 'steals the ending' then make it an optional setting. Or just pop up in the mission 'end mission' or 'continue'. You are free to enjoy it in your own way, as am I

[Fun with AI]

The reward is hardly enough to call it "rewarded"... It's an extra weapon and point. and assuming the AI coder does it right it wont be tedious.. Some people migght find it tedious but most likely they would find anything tedious and be in a minority.

If there is a reward then you are rewarded. If the reward is meaningless then there's no point in having it in the first place. If the reward is more subjective, like some people want to hunt the last hiding bug, while others do not, then make that part of it optional. This is entirely an issue of game play to me, I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but I've been around XCom and other alike games enough to have seen the complaints about how boring and tedious many people find it (I among them) to have to do repetitive combat missions which are only made longer due to having to catch that last hiding bug.

I'm surprised that you assume that the aliens can't be made dangerous enough to prevent it from being a tedious task of killing the last alien without some sort of special mode.

I'm not sure I said that, but what is tedious is having to catch that last alien in every mission. Aliens being dangerous is a good thing. Having to spend 10m to find and then exterminate the last one on every map is a bad thing, no matter how dangerous. But I don't think we know yet what the mechanic Xenonauts is going to use, so much of this is speculation, coupled with people expressing their likes/dislikes/concerns.

To see it from Guaddlikes point of view (and to some extent mine) can you imagine a map where you know there are 5-6+ aliens. You might engage in a firefight with up to 3 at the same time... but as soon as you kill one they all beam up to their spaceship err.. they just suddenly dissappear. It's that kind of anticlimactic Guadlike is talking about.

I can imagine that and it doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure I would chose to implement it as you described. To me the issue isn't so much some threshold where the aliens suddenly surrender, it's setting up the missions so that you don't have aliens scattered all over the map each acting on their own. An occasional mission along those lines would be fine, but the big complaint I recall from XCom was that each mission turned into this when that trigger flipped and the last remaining aliens would all just run where ever and hide. Yes, there is some suspense in going and finding them, but after you've done that a few hundred times? The suspense to me would be in finding the alien position, implying that the majority of them are there, and there will be a big fire fight. Or having them find your position. Flanking and scouting and such is all to the good as well, but that is still different from just putting an alien in each corner of the map and making you sweep the entire map to catch them all.

I'm not sure I would call mopping up anticlimactic. It might hamper your fun or bring you out of the immersion because of how tedious you find it but it still wouldnt be anticlimactic imo.

Well that's a personal opinion everyone will have. Anticlimactic or not isn't the issue, is it fun or worth your time is. Games like this have dozens of missions if not hundreds. At some point repetition will become an issue, and in particular players may prefer that the missions are able to be finished 'quickly' as opposed to spending a lot of time and turns simply moving their troops around to find the last alien. Again, scouting at the beginning of the mission is critical and enjoyable (one assumes anyway), after the big fight... having to run around all over again just seems a tad unnecessary.

That beeing said I don't mind special modes. But im against flat out mission ending surrenders and suicides that make you go "what happened?"

Well... then don't choose that option. I'm not going to get into a debate on how a game should be played though. Everyone is free to enjoy their own preferred play style.

Makeing certain functions "optional" seems to be a popular idea on this forum. Although if the devs put in every "optinal" suggestion us forumgoers come up with the options menu is going to be very cluttered as well as give the impression of undecisive devs that doesnt know what they want.

I'm not worried about this. Too many options isn't necessarily a good thing, but this is one option I don't really see a down side to.

[Fun with AI]

In Xenonauts hunting down every last alien on the map is an option, not the only way to win.

It will probably have the greatest reward because of the extra gear, experience, and reputation awarded for doing it that way.

It should be the hardest way to win as well to compensate for the extra rewards.

Uggghhhh... Making the player perform tedious actions, which lets face it, getting that last bug quickly becomes, is not something I would recommend be 'rewarded'.

Making enemies surrender or kill themselves when you start to win just seems like an anti-climax to the mission in that case.

I dunno, usually by some point in a mission you realize that it's mop up time and then it's anti-climatic to say the least. Just turns of running around trying to find whatever is left so you can gun it down. Designing the missions with specific alien behavior modes (hunter/hunted as an example) means that at the start you need to be careful to determine if you are outnumbered/outgunned, or if you have the advantage, and once you've determined that the battle is joined on the terms dictated by you or the alien force.

Of course there is a line to find between 'fun' and 'realism' [realism in the sense of how the aliens should react] in any game. I side on fun pretty much every time. I've played more than enough missions of XCom to have become frustrated to the point of quitting the games due to that stupid little hiding bug taking me 10 extra minutes every mission to find. It's not an example of good game play.

Alternatively, assuming any of the fruits of this discussion are going into the game , why not make the 'surrender' option optional? That sounds like a way everyone can profit from being able to enjoy the game in a manner they wish.