Dagar

I got my gog key a couple of hours ago via mail. unlocking in gog was successful, but as I am at work, I did not test downloading and running it, obviously.

In general it should work, if you are early enough in the game, but you will have to unlock some research manually (e.g. Wolf and Direwolf armour), once you have met the conditions. That is not exactly straight for2ward, but if you want to go this route, I can post the how-to in the next couple of days here. Maybe @Charon can help you more, but he is more or less retired from X-Div now.

I thought about something like this for Xenonauts for the past months as well (I am not sure if I even made a post about that somewhere). I come more from a Darkest Dungeon standpoint, a game where you essentially are a monster of a human being, taking in fresh adventurers, getting most of them killed or firing them after they have so many traumas that they are useless to your mission, only investing in those really worth it in terms of equipment and therapy. I would really like this in the context of Xenonauts as a resistance force against an overwhelming enemy (not in the sense of FiraXCOM 2's popcorn action cinema resistance). If you have the possibilities, you want to put your seasoned soldiers who are not really up for the front lines any more into some white collar position. If not, you'd let them go get killed in some other organization. Or, you know, see to that yourself in some way. So I am talking about the psychologic side of the effect of violence on humans. Your arm got rendered useless by a Xenomorph's acid blood, which is bad for your combat performance, yeah, but also the trauma of the situation got you into a drinking habit mixed with morphine abuse just so you can get some sleep at night. You got violent when your CO demanded you get your head straight, thus demoted. Now you are not the cool, collected rifleman any more, but you are sent in as a high risk scout with only a pistol (can't use that second arm) nobody really cares losing. Now that's the bad side, but you might (perhaps with help from your comrades and superiors) see through that over time, get your rank and merit back, get really proficient at spotting and slaying Xenomorphs before they can come close, and get your fancy robotic arm for two handed use. All could be fine, but then again the operation on your arm got you back on morphine and weird looks from some "purist" comrades... That's more a narrative arc obviously, but your soldiers could develop good and bad habits according to what happened to them, phobias according to traumatic situations (with variety; if you encountered a Caesan in the dark while passing through a door into a building you might develop fear of Ceasans, or the dark, or doors, or being the first to storm a building...) or good perks accordingly. This would also be a more or less random thing you cannot really farm for, especially since you cannot rely on the soldier ever recovering. Some broken things stay broken. It would also be aggravated by lack of rest, strings of hard, bad missions, losing many of your fellows and so on. Going with Darkest Dungeon, you could also have a chance of some heroic perk from a stressful situation instead of the soldier freaking out. I am going to stop here, but I think the psychologic side is a really interesting one to explore, and Xeno1 already laid some foundation with the bravery system.

Not yet afaik - there is an NDA.

Finally able to get at this again, but short on time, so here it is: I would have liked a turn-based system better for all the players who cannot or do not want to handle the stress of quick decision making in an essentially turn-based game. Personally, I am fine with the X1 system. As for effects, you should always set your goal to making systems as elegant as possible, i.e. easy to learn, good to use all over the game in certain situations and an option to consider all around. Thinking about the clouds, I feel you should go the step further and allow UFOs and later planes to generate their own clouds, and also to develop weapons that are immune (or at least resistant) to the cloud cover mechanism. This could lead to a nice X-Division style arms race between you and the Xenos. And the same should apply to everything you put into the air combat system. Have autoturrets on ships? Cool, let's also be able to drop them on hovering platforms in style the style of air mines. The enemy behaviour system is giving me headaches: Having the enemy dynamically flee can lead to frustration on the player's side, so you have to be careful what to bring into there. Finally: make pilots separate from planes! They could lose some XP when transitioning to a newer model, so your interesting decision would be preserved. You could also add simulators that could mitigate that to some extent.

Xsolla at its best. I also stopped for a moment when I got the mail. But since I want a gog key anyway, I naturally clicked the button.

I can agree to that. The only thing is that Bravery should be about daring to go through with a prank on the chief scientist developed by the engineers.

Yeah, reading the Xenopedia in X-Div may be a time consuming matter, but it is worth it in multiple regards.

*bows* at your service...

To me this is the old "game system balance" vs "realism" discussion. Do you want a system that is easily conveyed and functions with quickly learned rules or do you want a system that is harder to wrap your head around but orients more towards actual physics and tactics? There is a reason that in real life assault rifles have a single shot mode and either full auto or burst (or both). As conductiv already said, single shot is for accurate, ammo saving fire when you are not under a lot of pressure, much alike how sniper rifles are usually portrayed. People who do/did not serve in the military or are not members of a gun club might not find this intuitive, but the truth is that with a standard issue assault rifle today you can easily hit targets 200m away every time. I was able to hit 500m static smaller-than-man targets with a not perfectly aligned G36 over 50% of the time. There rarely are scenarios where you need sharp shooters, which is why most military don't have them in their regular troops, because the range where ARs stop being effective is so long that it almost never occurs that you would need a more precise weapon. At the same time, the urge to get yourself out of line of fire is so big that even ARs usually suppress really well at these distances with burst fire. The reason why LMGs are a thing in regular units is that a) they have much more ammunition at the cost of weight, setup time and support needs, so they can suppress for longer times when ARs need to pause for reload regularly and b) since suppressing the enemy more means you get suppressed less in return, making it easier for your riflemen to take accurate, single shots at the enemy, or use the uncontested space to get closer and flank. C) is also their usually higher caliber for better penetration and stopping power, should you need it. That said, LMGs are also fired in short, accurate bursts instead of just spraying bullets over a whole zip code (as @Coffee Potato would say), because some bullets flying really close past you are much more effective at getting you down on your belly than hundreds flying all over the place. Seasoned shooters with both weapon systems know that and use short bursts and single shot fire accordingly. So, let's say you want to go for realism. That would mean that an AR should be really accurate if the shooter is stationary, shoots single rounds and is not under significant fire from the enemy, i.e. he can stick his head out for a second or two without getting shot. At the same time the AR could deliver reasonable suppression, especially when coupled with more bursts from the same or more soldier(s). That does not mean Sniper Rifles are useless. They could be used for the occasional REALLY long shot and for cover penetration thanks to bigger caliber and specialized ammunition. Their downside would be that you could basically only fire them once a round at most. I do not have experience with Sniper Rifles, but the two snap shots do not strike me as likely being sensible. If you shoot that thing, you want to be sure to hit. Getting bullets in the general vicinity is other people's job. The LMG is, in comparison to the AR, a rather stationary setup weapon also delivering short bursts with higher cover penetration and suppression that does not run out of ammo in a considerable time frame. We ditched the mag fed LMG pretty much at the second World War already, and the only time this comes up today is with an AR with slight modifications to make it more LMG-like (like with a bipod and a drum magazine). As for pistols, they should have a niche role for the heavy weapons soldier's sidearms and maybe for frontline NCOs (with the latter needing their whole own system for that to make sense). They are used in a police context for being the minimal option for ranged lethal power projection while also having controlled, single shot fire and a quick drawing time, which is not really a factor if you already expect resistance and have your guns at the ready anway. That said the "sidearm" option also can be fulfilled by having the sniper/LMG gunner carry an additional AR, which is also how military often times do it. Now, after that wall of text, I'd find it much more interesting if you left all the options to all the applicable weapons. There are Marksman Rifles with burst options, a skilled LMG gunner can squeeze out single shots or the weapon directly supports it. At the same time, a rookie with an AR will often times auto fire and burn through his ammo fast needlessly. That is also why the M16 introduced burst mode as a replacement for auto fire, because with triplets you tend to hit and suppress rather well while somewhat limiting your ammo consumption. It would be cool if you would just order your people to shoot single or burst fire, with their experience and stress determining how well they are able to aim for the single shot and how many bullets they send downrange for the burst. More aim and more bullets would consume more time units, obviously...

I agree to your statement. I think that if CAS is to become a thing, it would have to be well balanced in terms of costs (material and opportunity), precision, effects and use limits. I can only speak from X-Division experience, but in that scenario I would find it okay if I had to equip a fighter plane with a special one-time use air-ground weapon that costs materiel and time to build (binding engineers), send it alongside the troop transport (which means range limits as the fighter usually has less fuel), then have it shoot that stuff on demand, but with a one turn delay, and it likely doing more of a suppression effect than killing due to accuracy limitations and cover. Targets in buildings would not be as effected, even more so in the UFO. Also, you'd risk killing civilians, but that is always a danger present. Basically, it would be a high cost larger radius rocket with high suppression effect. You could make it even harder by having to have a soldier throw out a signal flare or grenade for the CAS to hit its mark. Basically, it should come with costs appropriate to the effect granted.

I'd love to see civilians in cities running around with TV's in their arms...

@Juan just FYI, there are air game tutorials out there on youtube somewhere. If that does not satisfy you, you could also look at the first couple episodes of any X-Division Let's Play. That should give you a pretty good grasp on how to do well.

As the UFO disassembly thread goes on and @Max_Caine suggested here, it would be really cool if UFO disassembly would be done in situ, i.e. in the country the crash and mission happened in, and you could assign personnel in a strategic op, since it directly would result in more game system interaction (here: Ground Combat - World map - Research / Manufacture system). To also tie that to relations, I propose the following: The affected nation of course also wants to get the good stuff out of the UFO, especially if its Air Force, Army and civilians were suffering over the course of the mission (entailing UFO appearance, behaviour until engaged and ground mission success and survivors). That means that they just may be glad you handled it so swiftly and cleanly and let you take whatever, or that they may feel overlooked in the bounty phase. That means you could agree with them beforehands on taking just a limited amount and leaving them the rest, or even having your specialists take it apart fully and giving them part of the loot. Or maybe send some escorting soldiers and make it quick, if you really want to make sure you get everything you desperately need, at the cost of relationship, of course.

X-Div gives you the UFO basically as an item. You can either choose to sell it (for a higher profit than you had gotten from just bombing the site, which is good as you definitely get something more out of taking the risk to do a mission) or disassemble it. Disassembly (dsb from now on) gives you some alloys and alenium, and also different UFO sub-systems. These in turn can be used to build new, advanced planesof some kind. So e.g. the amount of Asierus and Foxtrot (both use the same resources) is directly linked to how many (small and medium) UFOs you managed to raid. There is also the boon of being able to build the Firebird, one of the best general purpose planes (remember X-Div differentiates what planes are good against which enemy) for each of the Landing craft (huge ships, e.g. Terror Carriers). There may be more, but I am not that far into the game. Finally, you can also downgrade these systems to some extent in case you need more basic planes faster.

Have played both of them. What kinds of tactical options does Minecraft offer, exactly? I would not categorize that as a tactical game, maybe aside from Race for the Wool game modes and similar. Seems you are just pointing at blocky, minimalist games for some reason, which I am totally not averse to. Duh, that is hardly surprising, as the people visiting the forum are fans of the first game in majority, and fans are most of the time critical towards changes in a series. I am not saying that any of the criticism is unwarranted though, just that praise naturally is rare in such situations, especially if the developer tries to change/improve things. Don't be, you did not. Where you read that from I don't know, bu I'm sorry I've offended you with my opinion, which seems odd from someone who has no problem sharing their own repeatedly and even argumentatively on this very forum. quentially the rest of your sentence is pretty meaningless (but yeah, I like to discuss things, voice my opinion and argue with people. I don't view that as a bad thing). I asked you to point me to a thread where that was voiced. Especially interesting would be some comment from Goldhawk stating that they are aiming for that mechanism as a consequence of this "loud minority". You failed to deliver the evidence so far, so I am not yet changing my mind. Try again. If you fail, I accept your change in opinion. Again you are assuming things I did not state, and which, if you think about it for a second, obviously don't make sense. Why are you even doing that? I am trying to have a reasonable, if flippant discussion here. I'd prefer you not watering it down and sidetracking with baseless, emotional claims. I can assure you I do. I have the equivalent of a B.Sc. in Media Computer Science. Maybe blocky UFOs can become a visual identity for X2? That's okay, I can wait and support the developers when I have seen and liked the end product, as I always do.

Didn't get that memo apparently. Though thinking about it, it may be that somewhere in the past someone already corrected me in this regard and I just forgot. Age and all...

I thought a lot about that, too, and while I think this will not find its way into X2 (or we had heard about it by now), I think that a good relationship system has the potential to be the umbrella for everything you can do on the geoscape while also giving a nice balancing puzzle. Let me elaborate: - You can get influence (standing for good relationship) with a country by helping them. That comes naturally when shooting down UFOs over their territory, going on missions there, saving them from Terror attacks, but can also be done by helping them help themselves, like selling them advanced weaponry for a good price, lending some aircraft for a couple of days or exposing them to the truth about the alien invasion (bold because this aspect to me is very important in the narrative of the game). That also could lead to relaxing the necessity of covering the whole globe with radar and plane hangars; if you give a country the means to defend themselves against the aliens, that could be good enough for them. - You can spend influence on other stuff like @Coffee Potato already mentioned, but I'd also expand on that a little bit. You could ask more cash from them (or sell them equipment for premium prices), aid in missions or the air game, lend you some scientists, but you could also ask them to support other nations you are struggling with. For example, if I have good influence with Chinba because I just saved Peking from getting nuked after a Terror attack, but now the aliens are bombing russian soil which I can do nothing about, because all my planes are being repaired, I could ask our good friend China to send a few aircraft over to help the russians help themselves. Voila, using one friend to make a second one, and their mutual relationship should increase as well (we are in the Cold War after all). - That would be all nice and dandy, but also, as already stated in the last sentence, we are in the Cold War. Give your newest technology to Mexico while keeping the USA out of the loop will make certain leaders and generals not too happy, especially when they find the rumors about the invasion doubtful at best. To them you are just some shady agency who helps their neighbours get a sharper stick, and that's not what neighbours like to see. So you'd have to also balance the influence on different nations, you can't just go all out on just saving one part of the globe. In the worst case, that could lead to nations knowingly welcoming the Aliens as a means to balance the scale in the intra-human power struggle, which is something the Xenonauts definitely do not want and could make your campaign go downhill really fast. After all, if the War has to go hot, we want to make sure it's the right enemies they are all targetting.

I can see that, but I'd argue that the best solution for that problem would be better presentation rather than altering the underlying system, which, while not perfect, to me has proven itself in X1. To achieve this, I'd propose two things: first of all, EVERY action is plannable like movement and shooting is right now. That means that you have an in-between step where the game tells you, among all other vital information like chance to hit, what that action will cost before you have to do it. One example here would be crouching (hover mouse over the crouch button) or opening doors, but also melee. If you have that, you can easily expand such a system to a more advanced planning stage where you can combine multiple actions based on what you know about the game world at that time, e.g. running to point x and shooting with a snap shot will cost Y TU and have a Z % chance to hit. That way, players would not have to remember TU costs, and also see available LOS/LOF before they even commit to the movement action, an aspect that also causes frustration in X1. Second would be a good graphical representation of what fraction of TU you are going to spend of the available pool, possibly with a "reserve TU" mechanic where it tells you if you are about to spend too many TU for what you want to do at the end of the turn (e.g. keeping TU for reaction fire as in X1, crouching, closing a door...). The important thing here is the visual presentation in contrast to numbers. While I am a sucker for numbers, colour coding (green to yellow maybe) or a "progress" bar representation on your TU can go a long way intuitively telling players what they are going to spend without number crunching. The important thing with all these visualization systems is that you bring consistency to a maximum, which the X1 sadly did not really have.

@indaris: I am on Chris' and stewpidbears side here. Good tactical options (and breaching walls certainly is one, no matter how much you want to discredit it) are worth way more for me than good looks; if that were otherwise I would never have picked up Xenonauts after playing the FiraXCOMs. I think it is kind of funny that you claim that the ship design is the way it is because of a "loud minority" of a few players, when a) you are clearly the loud minority here, pomping around with wanting a refund and b) to my knowledge that design decision came from Goldhawk themselves, not necessarily from the community. But if you can point me to a thread where dozens of fans want blocky UFOs instead of round ones, I would be happy to change my opinion about that. Your whole wall of text frankly is full of hyperbole and lame comparisons. The art style of your o-so-beloved Xenonauts 1 was not even remotely on par with contemporary games, and that is okay for me, and it seems it was okay for you also. Oh, as an example of blocky aliens: The Borg from Star Trek. People like them, by the way. Concerning your refund: I can take your key off your hands for a few bucks, if you want.

You don't know what kinds of people exist. I had a comrade in basic training who managed to lob a grenade he was meant to throw 25m right in front of his own sandbag line. A live, real, hot grenade, not a training potato. Apparently he never learned to throw balls as a child.

@VladossXThe mod is no longer maintained by anyone, so there is no educated help here. I'd say you should try re-installing and following the installation instructions TO THE LETTER (there are nice things like version numbers to check for and e.g. the vanilla game to start once before X-Division is installed). Also compare the checksums to see if your download is valid.

I disagree. And I have also done "my military duty", as if that signified anything. Yes, Xenonauts are a secret organization, but not so secret that there is a chance that their existence is still in question to the aliens after the first few missions. Xenonauts are also a Guerilla organization against a vastly superior enemy. Do guerillas centralize all their assets so the superior enemy can take them out in one sweep? Maybe you should use your brain (just mirroring your borderline insulting argument style here). So, for me, multiple bases in this scenario make much more sense. If you now call them "big" or "small" or whatever does not really have a meaning in my opinion.

Short answer on the thematic side: Because if you don't make these goods, you lose and mankind gets enslaved. Making a prospering business out of the situation really should not be your focus. That said, as an X-Division player, I'd love to have that additional source of income if you have the production capabilities (i.e. ressources and engineers). Theoretically, you could make that into a really well integrated part of the game, where you can build and sell stuff for cheap to bolster nation's resistance, getting better relationships with them, or sell it for a good profit to build up the Xenonauts even more, along with allowing nations to copy your products or not, sending weapons as emergency supplies into crisis areas instead of sending your own troops, ...

To be clear, I am FOR a global manpower pool of engineers, scientists and soldiers. It's just that I want the possibility to start dropships from different locations, or have different dropships with altering capabilities (at least through mods) in one base. I mean, the whole teleporting stuff is pretty handwavy to begin with (e.g. we have a 'porter in every base, why not in every major city?), but it is a good way to reduce the base management tedium.