RustyNayle

I would prefer if the game has the option of pressing + or - in order to speed up or slow down each action the game is processing, that way if I really wasn't interested in audio clues during hidden movement I can nearly skip it entirely by speeding it up. If I was grinding through a quick low difficulty mission I could increase the speed during my own turn so each time I clicked for someone to move while exploring or whatever it would be much quicker, especially during civilian movement phase. If it had options you can check to auto-pause / slow down instantly when something happens that would be good. X-COM: Apocalypse did this well (although that was real time, the idea can translate to turns), and XCOM 1 or 2 with the Don't Waste My Time mod improved the game so much for me.

Other games simply call this "concealment," "cover," and a combination of both (full cover). Concealment reduces the chance to hit, and cover (including armor) reduces the amount of damage taken. I definitely like the idea of an initial "to hit" roll which, if it misses, you see what else in the area might be hit; destructible scenery, another enemy, or even a teammate. If something misses, but has enough damage to to pierce through what it did hit, then there might be another to hit chance to see if it hits what it was in the way of - then you get powerful mag weapons piercing through multiple enemies, or even ignoring cover!

I think to overcome this, any TU reservations that were clicked in the last round should be cleared by the game, and only once you start telling each soldier what to do and then select a different soldier (especially if you manually clicked for them to reserve TUs) will they start using the overwatch animation

I mentioned on someone else's thread (I can't remember which one, sorry) that if the game is going to depict a "secret war" then there would most likely be less interception of UFOs and crash site recovery. The aliens don't even need to start off with small scout ships which get bigger as the war progresses, because at first they are beaming units to and fro (a bit like XCOM: Apocalypse), using human agents to do their field work, etc When the game reaches the point that the Xenonauts have done really well on their first mission that they continue pursuing the retreating aliens that they finally discover a ship, perhaps the first time they are unable to get inside due to not understanding the door mechanisms, shields already being up, etc Later on, an allied military might have got lucky and finally hit a UFO with their anti air guns and damaged its engines for a time. This would give the Xenonauts longer to bypass the door mechanism (or enter through the hole in the hull) and do a quick smash and grab before the aliens get their engines back up and running again - retreating before they take off and the whole team goes MIA, or the aliens do something like activate internal automated defences, seal the breach and evacuate the oxygen in that compartment, etc. Finally, when the Xenonauts know enough about alien language / computers, and have the capacity to use their specialised EMP / virus tech to down a UFO and bypass all its security, then they will finally be able to sieze the craft for themselves, rather than stripping it of raw materials actually use it themselves once they figure out how, and of course capture a field leader they can interrogate. This is mid- to late-game stuff here, I'm thinking.

I talked a lot about team synergy / bonding between soldiers in another thread, I forget which one, but I really love this idea. Field officers have been trained with the ability to exert some of the above "friendship bonuses" towards all the team mates who they have experience leading (they're almost useless on their first mission though, since they have to gain the team's trust first), but between some of the grunts there could be close bonds forming as well, which allows them a limited capacity to support each other. I like the idea of one soldier throwing smoke / flash grenades and/or using suppressive fire, and his mate thus gets a bonus to dodge or even reduced detection chance during the distraction. There are obviously a lot of other scenarios to consider in which buddy tactics would require a bond to have formed in order to pull it off, and where just the normal game mechanics could be applied.

In X1 they had customizable equipment templates which players assigned to soldiers based on their attributes / need. Here's something I'd suggest for X2: If, out of 10 soldiers, 6 have high reactions / HP and would be good at prolonged close assaults, 5 have high TUs and strength and would be good with lugging heavy breaching equipment and surprise strikes, 3 have high ACC and are good at sniping / surgical strike - with overlaps between them all. A great option would be, rather than just assigning each individual soldiers A to J their own single templates, you have three squad templates; the first would have soldiers A B C D E and F equipped for close assault, the second template would have soldiers A C F G and H equipped for smash & grab, and the third would have A I and J equipped with sniper gear. This way, super soldier A (who is great any of the above scenarios) doesn't have to be assigned only one individual template, and this need to be changed every time he's used in a different role, he can be used flexibly without as much time required to change his template / individual gear. When the player is presented with a mission briefing up the top of the screen they can make their decisions on which squad template to quickly choose, and then fine tune if they want to bring anyone else along, assign the new additions to the team an individual equipment template or just select it for that one person manually before finally sending the dropship off. If it's done the same way as XCOM 2, then it's not a "last minute info" thing as they're arriving, but it's a "this is the info we have, equip your team and let's go". If there is also occasionally an unexpected surprise after the dropship arrives that would add an interesting spin on things, in my opinion. I also like the idea that, if a template cannot be fulfilled to exact specifications according to how the player last customized it, the game will at least approximate the same equipment. I always hated it in X1 when I wanted to apply the sniper template to a soldier but the last time I customized it I used precision mags, but this time I didn't have any left for the new soldier to use (only an old precision plasma), however I did have all the other gear. I was frustrated with why wouldn't the game just give him all the other gear and then approximate the next best precision rifle to give them - or give everything else and at least give me the option of which rifle I wanted them to use rather than have to manually equip everything.

The 3PS squad game "The Bureau: XCOM De-classified" offered a great explanation for why agents start off with poor combat skills, because they're actually taken from various intelligence and civilian agencies rather than directly from the military. Same thing in MiB, and even The Matrix. It's a very common theme in the Cyberpunk genre, actually. Even XCOM 2 hints at the fact that many of these people are recruited on the fly as they reach out and/or stumble upon XCOM, and when they are rescued by a team, this is why they start out as rookies. A database of civilians might be flagged for potential use, then called upon when the situation arises, some of them might also accidentally stumble upon too much info and have to be recruited. These sorts of people have the right background / mindset that will help them handle the difficult circumstances they're about to enter into, they might even have some specialist skills, but combat training is something that really only comes with time in the field. The new "secret war" idea for X2 certainly suits this explanation better, and is something that could be developed with in-game mechanics as well - training room needs to be used on new recruits / agents that have just been activated before they even have their first mission, and is then used again each time an agent has enough XP to gain a new attribute / ability advancement.

I really like the idea of most of the Xenonauts activities being at night, as the paranoia adds to the tension of the Cold War setting. Maybe the Aliens also do not like our solar system's bright sun so tend to avoid going out in broad daylight themselves, and this is why their activities are limited to twilight / night time (it also gives them a tactical advantage over humans if they're not using night vision goggles).

I love all these ideas contributing to the tension in the overall story, but I think the mechanics of DEFCON, military, and alert counters starts to get very complicated. It definitely makes the game able to be replayed in different ways each time, but I much prefer a more set story with a fewer choices that allows greater depth of in-game plot developments (rather than just text descriptions), and I reckon these counters shouldn't actually be being visible.

@Chris, I hear you repeatedly mention X2 is going to be set in an alternate timeline where the Cold War never stopped, but I think you could just say it is a new Cold War which has developed between modern superpowers (depending on which conspiracy theory you believe, some argue that this is actually developing in reality today). The enemy could be made up of some of the same thrall races being brought along again by a another overlord (doesn't even have to be the same species as the first) to achieve a different objective this time. If the Xenonauts are recruited from secret intelligence agencies, the only ones that had the highest clearance to know about what was going on, then this could explain why they start out with poor combat skills that grow greatly during the game. I really liked this element of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (which also had a Cold War feel) – that across many different organisations potential agents were flagged and called in when needed, only receiving training once they're in the know and about to head out to do field work. I definitely like the idea of allied factions loaning specialists to the Xenonauts, so you end up with an alien hybrid psychic rather than a human soldier being transformed into a psychic. Classes / professions reflect years or even decades of training, and I always thought it was such a cop out that a few days in a special chamber in game would produce such fantastic abilities, no matter what sort of tech you use to enhance the soldier. Imagine a reprogrammed Andron on team? Or a hybrid Sebillian medic that knows how to loan his healing ability to wounded allies. That sort of thing.

I definitely like the idea of any soldier / a medic coming to the aid of an ally that has been incapacitated, and a screen coming up which says if they're dead, bleeding out, stable but unconscious, can easily be patched up and revived, etc. If there were even animations of using a defib / CPR, bandaging, administering painkillers, stims, etc, that would be amazing – definitely at least make sure you don't just do a generic “spray healing stuff” animation like XCOM does, that was terrible. In Xe1 you could only restore half the damage done by wounds, if you could add in a system where wounds randomly affect one of aim, TUs, etc that would add to the realism. This same examination screen mentioned earlier could actually be brought up when looking at an enemy, so you know if something like a regenerating reptilian is going to get back up and shoot you in the back, but also if you incapacitate an alien with conventional means then you can stop it from bleeding out and bind it in order to carry it home instead of needing special stun weapons. I really like the idea of scientists and engineers being brought along on missions (you already mentioned possibly using them to defend the base, I think someone else mentioned training officers accompanying the team) - as a medic yes, but also as xenolinguist / hacker, K9 or drone handler, operating mounted weapons and other scanning equipment on the dropship, using heavy weapons, etc

I would much rather see K9s used in the game instead of vehicles of any kind. They wouldn't level up, but drones (tracked or hovering) would logically replace them later on. If there is going to be a soldier synergy / bonding system, then particular soldiers could gain benefits from working with a K9. They are great for morale as well as spotting / subduing enemies! As you said Chris, it won't be easy to bring dogs into the game, but I really think it's worth the investment, if you want to different things to help forge your own franchise!

If the Xenonauts somehow discover the aliens' agenda, then there could be a late game race to find this hidden tech on Earth. Various regions on the geoscape (underground, hidden in plain sight, underwater, even nearby in space when the tech allows, possibly in an alternate dimension) as well as examining each nation's cultural and historical records (eliminating regions on Earth one by one) in the race to find more and more sites containing this key to winning the conflict and bringing peace to Earth - and maybe the aliens too, before they entirely enslave us and we can't help them resolve their own plight. I'm personally tired of having multiple base sites and building structures in each, I think one large base with many air bases is not going far enough, and I'd prefer to go all the way to having story missions where new base sites are claimed (some hidden Earth tech bunkers, some from a clandestine NWO organisation, some from invading aliens, some from the ancients), with each new site having new tech to research, new base structures to add to research / manufacture / scanning / training, etc This really ties in nicely with the Cold War theme, where the "not knowing" about the other side's purpose, intrigue, discovering spies in your own midst, double agents, and questioning everything you know to be true, why you and your leaders even believe in. The only way to stop a Cold War is for each side to find peace, and conflicting ideologies must be torn down and middle ground found. This would be a much more satisfying end to me, rather than destroying all of the aliens outright. There could of course be a faction within the aliens and/or the clandestine NWO government that needs to be destroyed by a united Earth / alien force, but outright genocide seems pointless - that's exactly what creates the tension of a Cold War (aggression against the other side, but not wanting to actually fire because the other side firing back will only end up obliterating both sides).

I really love the idea of discovering ancient alien settlements on earth. This Cold War which the invading aliens are engineering could be set up as a distraction so that world powers destroy each other, leaving the aliens to search through our historical records, do deep scans of the geoscape, even do large scale archaeological digs, and so on in order to find the "precursor tech" hidden on our planet. This would help explain why there is no full-scale invasion, as the aliens are not in fact a large scale military force, they are only a limited team of scouts / scientists trying to (re-)gain tech that will save their species (a la Ethereals desiring human genes), give them the upper hand against an even greater foe than themselves, or enable them to rediscover a way home. That they don't even consider diplomacy with humans is explained simply: they are aliens. They have a completely different way of thinking to us. Their long isolation in deep space / in an alternate dimension and sheer desperateness may have made them completely cruel, and the experiments and conflicts they have been involved in with each other could have caused them to no longer care about others, but the end always justifies the means. On another thread I mentioned the idea of psychic aliens having a hunger to feed on the negative emotions of others; fear, anger, paranoia, etc This would explain why they keep thralls from differing conquered races alongside them (they actually thrive off the negative interactions between them, and are intrigued at the different ways they interact with their masters), and why they are willing to go to great lengths to engineer a political environment on Earth from which they can benefit, rather than just nuking Earth from space and take what they want. They need the people of Earth alive for some reason, and if their culture and historical records somehow contain info that will help find something hidden on the planet (or elsewhere), and if they feed off such a people's psychic energies (like cattle!) then this is a great explanation for this.

I think if you're thinking of retaining the RNG seed like nuXCOM does, you should at least have the option of being able to disable that (i.e. "enable save scum"), rather than assume all players want this. The flexibility to choose such an easy tweak in the game does make a big difference to many players' enjoyment, rather than assuming everyone wants to play iron man, etc

I would actually prefer less stuff able to fit onto the dropship, including no vehicles at all (or perhaps only tracked / hovering drones). I like the idea of Xenonauts not as a conventional military force, but as a fast response team. They would be highly trained and have specialised equipment, have to travel light so they could get on board the dropship and fly it as fast as possible to the strike zone, and the idea of bringing armored vehicles, heavy rockets and even artillery, seems quite ridiculous to me. It also simplifies gameplay if you just have soldiers and their own personal gear versus similar aliens. Otherwise you start to verge on a military simulation game.

This sounds and looks fantastic! Sorry if I'm not leaving these comments in the right place, but I've been reading through so many posts and just wanted to get my thoughts down before moving on: I read that you really wanted to evoke the Cold War feel, which is interesting given the current politicking between democrats accusing Trump of working with the Russians (I don't know if you've heard much about the theory of NWO wanting a war there?). To help with this feel in your game, why not assign the players only to one side (I would be interested in the Soviets), which enables you to develop the story better from just the one perspective for now. Then, you can have intrigue against the other side start to increase, eventually the player starts to figure out that aliens are involved, that some of the info supposedly incriminating the other side itself was fabricated by the aliens, and in fact the aliens have also been working with a clandestine NWO type organisation influencing your own government which is trying to topple world powers so they can rise up and take control instead. It would be nice to give the players the opportunity to choose one side or the other, but this will create a lot more work for you if you have to be able to tell the same story from both angles. I would definitely prefer that you spend your time developing a deeper plot with great story-driven missions, now that you want to do something different with X2. Elsewhere it was mentioned the idea of a secret war, with aliens beaming themselves to sights and/or using human lackeys instead. If this is the case, I reckon coveted alien weapons and craft should definitely only be able to be captured at great risk from live aliens, or very painfully reconstructed from pieces left behind after the weapons / craft self-destruct. I don't think full reverse engineering should be possible, certainly not construction of these devices from raw materials as we do when we adapt alien tech to advance some of our own initial ideas. If the aliens are very few, and not using a lot of craft to get around, then perhaps mid- to late-campaign, the player just captures a working alien craft and this is what they now start to use for more effectively intercepting other ships and/or transporting their own troops. Certainly, being able to travel to another dimension or into space (esp. if a hyperjump is required), and then successfully passing through alien security, they will need a fully alien craft rather than constructing their own hybrid.

In another thread, I asked if it was possible to have terror missions with aliens planting bombs all over a large sky scraper and/or cruise liner, and currently in the process of planting more if you don't get to them in time. Fantastic in theory, and reminiscant of XCOM:TFTD or Apocalypse, but how easy it is to put it into practice is a different story

In Xenonauts 1, I actually only used the rocket launcher as a LAW. My strongest most accurate solly would carry it, and would also have a backup gun in his backpack as well as possibly a stun baton and/or medpack if possible. This didn't leave a lot of space for the rockets themselves. I would usually have an explosive rocket pre-loaded, and maybe a stun gas rocket in case I wanted to use that. Otherwise, after shooting 1-2 rockets, I would just dump the launcher on the ground, swap guns, and move forward. I think I actually ended up giving him a pistol as his secondary weapon, since they did so much damage in X1 (and enabled easy dual wielding with baton or medpack)! Anti-personnel grenades are usually unshaped spherical blasts and full of shrapnel for killing lightly armored enemies, high explosive grenades might have a bit more umph for penetrating armor / damaging cover, but the explosives in rockets are shaped and great at penetrating hardpoints such as armored vehicles or even structures. I think LAWs are a great idea for Xenonauts who are not frontline soldiers per se, rather a fast response team that needs to travel light so many of them can pack into a dropship, and they need to be mobile and adaptable in the field, ready to respond to whatever is going to happen next. I think efficient deployment and accurate aim of a LAW should require very specific training, this would stop every soldier from carrying one.

Another thing I always wished were possible is dual pistols akimbo style, with mag pistols that have little or no recoil, which act as a single weapon so don't each require TUs. Not because it's realistic or whatever, but just because it's cool.

I love this idea of each weapon type having tiers as well. I reckon that each initial weapon type (rifle, shotgun / carbine, MG, precision, and explosives) should have a more advanced equivalent. In the examples above * Lasers only have rifle and precision, with a pulse attachment being a later equippable mod which lowers accuracy but increases effective clip size. * Plasma only has shotgun and explosive * Coil / gauss has rifle, carbine, MG and precision so remains flexible, but while an improvement on initial ballistics still might not do as much raw damage. The ammo is of course modded with special ammo equipment which could help make it on par with other weapon types when used for certain purposes (e.g. incendiary, hollow point, armor piercing, stun, etc). They might also be more easily modified with attachments such as scopes, laser sights, stocks, etc to make them more accurate.

I think the idea of terror missions, and other types of ground skirmishes which required the aliens to have a craft, should all be 2-parters. You are trying to establish the idea of a secret war, with limited aliens that are trying to engineer conflict among the humans instead of directly getting involved. Since they're not attacking from space, there's no need to introduce smaller craft and escalate them towards the end of the war. The aliens can start off with large powerful craft as in XCOM 2. You can have ground skirmishes minus UFOs to start with (aliens beaming into / away from site), then have impenetrable UFOs that the aliens retreat to - you're trying to kill / stun as many of them as possible to sieze corpses / live aliens to interrogate, as well as their weapons and other tech to research before they board, and possibly any civilians / VIPs they're trying to abduct / take hostage. Later when either Xenonauts or local military forces manage to breach a landed UFO, they can enter the outer chamber of the UFO, but still don't know how to operate the inner doors (perhaps they're hidden as well?), so you can't get into the inner chambers. Thus it becomes a rush to smash and grab what you can before those aliens fortified in the inner room/s get the ship up and running again, seal the breach and suck out the oxygen, or something else along those lines. Again, once Xenonauts / airforce manage to shoot down a UFO, Xenonauts have more time to test the knowledge of alien computers the scientists have been able to glean and finally hack through the doors and sieze the ship before the aliens activate the self-destruct mechanism. Perhaps this takes multiple attempts before it is finally achieved - adding to the tension of, "Will it finally be this time?"

Perhaps a sub-region the player is about to expand into could actually change their allegiance from their original country region (which the player had good relations with) to a neighbouring nation which is controlled by the aliens / clandestine government. This could have been through conventional terrestrial invasion, peace negotiation overseen by the UN, or political upheaval.

The idea Chris was getting at is a cold war between world powers being complicated and eventually overshadowed by a higher war; the former being symbolic of good vs evil, which really is happening in the secret war. I think someone already mentioned the aliens might want a nuclear winter because it assists them in terraforming the Earth to a climate more suitable for them. Perhaps the praetors are psychic aliens that thrive off aggressive emotions and/or desire to see how far humans will go to achieve their goal, to see if it's worth adding their DNA / culture to their own gene pool / thrall society. Maybe they just love death or somehow profit from it by harvesting psychic souls or something?! I thought I read in one of the threads that Chris was planning on having the aliens beam themselves to the planet and only use small craft initially - a bit more like XCOM: Apocalypse, where they were coming from another dimension and couldn't survive here long or send big craft through right away. The smaller the alien fleet, the more they value their own lives, and the more they want to engineer a war between human forces so that they don't have to send their own troops to destroy us. This is where the idea that the aliens don't want to colonise the planet Earth, they don't even want its natural resources, but maybe what has brought them there is the race to find something that another ancient alien civilisation has left behind (similar to the Precursors from Star Control). When the Xenonauts discover this, it becomes a race between them and the aliens to gather key tech for their own development in order to gain the upper hand against one another. If this is what they're after, then engineering a war between Earth's greatest powers would be a great distraction which allows them to go on many direct archaeological digs / searching through Earth's cultural and historical records to find what they're looking for.

Everyone on here seems to be concentrating on high expense, but if your bases aren't in a good location to successfully detect / destroy as many UFOs as possible over your funding nations, that might also explain why they're reducing their funding and you are not ending up with a profit each month