pack.wolf

A: "Have you heard about all the terrible stuff that's happening again? Like when the aliens invaded but this time they come from under the sea?" B: "Yeah, it's horrible, isn't it? Hey, let's go on a cruise to forget about all that." Sane person: WTF?! These people don't deserve better than a torpedo. I mean, seriously. @topic: I'd rather have other additional mission types (like VIP extraction, civilian evacuation, infrastructure defense, large scale battles where the Xenonauts participate as vanguard or support or spec ops team, rebellion and terrorism handling against indoctrinated humans (using Mass Effect lingo here since I currently play it ), ...) than underwater missions that don't add a lot to gameplay (and - at best - as much as these other additional mission types) while creating a lot of problems (additional tech tree, immersion breaking, where do you put your subs (which bases get a harbour, underwater bases yes/no, ...) that other mission types don't create. I really can't see the difference between a crash site mission on land and below seas. It's the same thing in blue.

The only thing TFTD added gameplay-wise was "right click to open door". That's it. Other than that it was just new textures and names for all the stuff in EU. Sure, it was a lot of fun at the time, but let's not let nostalgia cloud our judgment to much. Adding underwater missions to Xenonauts might sound like a nice idea at first, but I think it would be rather annoying when you actually get to play the game. You'd have to do twice the research to get the underwater-equivalents of everything. You'd have to manufacture twice as much stuff to get the underwater-equivalents of everything. You'd have to have twice as many bases so you can park your subs somewhere. And for what added value? One additional tileset? Not worth it imo. I'll rather take a jungle tileset or an airport/trainstation/harbor/nuclear powerplant/hoover dam (or other dam ) for terror missions. Or, if you want to dream big, bases managed by allied states that can run missions of there own. Damage to these bases and reduction of their capabilities the longer the war drags on. More and more desolate and partially destroyed battlefields (on arrival, not after sb went berserk with the rocket launcher ;D ) the longer the war drags on. A dwarf-fortress like history for each of my soldiers. Rebellions by indoctrinated humans fighting alongside the aliens. Additional mission types (rescue of civilians/VIPs, infrastructure defense, ...) I could go on. But underwater missions? Naah...

Nightfire is right. Everybody knows the really cool organizations come up with an awesome abbreviation first and fill in the missing letters later

errm, nope ...

Jagged Alliance combat and Fallout combat is purely turn based (at least in the classic games. I don't consider Fallout 3 and New Vegas and the new JA part of the franchise, even if New Vegas was a decent game). As there are no exploration/dialogue/gameworld interaction/... elements in Xenonauts I don't think a real time mode is necessary or even makes sense. It's all about combat, there is nothing else to do. Therefore no need for real time movement, imo. edit: btw since you mention it: there is no need to search for that last alien in Xenonauts, you can just complete the alternate victory condition of your mission.

Naval artillery is way to overpowered and way to imprecise to be of any use for the kind of ops the Xenonauts run imo. And it'd be a major hassle and require to much micromanagement to actually have your naval forces where you need them when you need them. Earth oceans are vast and even nuclear powered naval craft are sluggish (a Nimitz class aircraft carrier at top speed is less than half as fast as a car on the highway). It takes days to reach wherever you want to go... Radar coverage over the oceans might be nice, but interception? Why would you want do do that, the UFO would just sink. For the same reason I don't see a benefit in stationing dropships on carriers. If you shoot something down over land you most likely have a base there anyway from where you can deploy. Even though I'm very much a fan of naval combat (I basically play the Civilization series and Empire: TW just for that) I just think the effort required is not worth the result.

The OP has some valid points. Particularly concerning the importance of the title for impulse buys and getting noticed in the first place. Even if you restrict yourself to only looking at new releases from one particular genre (and I don't think there are a lot of people only interested in one kind of game) there are still far too many to look into all of them. That's basically the reason why reviewing websites and magazines exist after all - they boil down the information to a manageable level. And even then there is still so much of it sites like metascore thrive... While Xenonauts is a good title, it isn't as catchy as X-COM: Enemy Unknown (which was a genius name on many levels: X-Files reference, name modelled after real life organizations, subtitle suggests horror and combat elements). In fact I would like Xenosquad better because for a computer game a reference to Laser Squad resonates better with me than one to greek mythology, despite how much I enjoyed reading Homer and the like in college. But it's a title I can easily live with. It's probably going to get a subtitle added to it before release anyway, mayhaps one that hints at combat and horror. Then everyone will be happy

Supported Gazz back then, supporting you today

Will it be possible to add tilesets as mods? With XCOM any additions had to replace vanilla ones, which was really a shame. Our planet has such a diverse landscape, it would be very cool if we could have a method to capture as much of it as possible. It would also open the door for new types of missions: We could have to defend objectives when the aliens attack infrastructure like airports, train stations, power plants, hospitals, ...

First of all, mooned an alien probe patrol made me lol What I mean with 'AP left total' is all the AP the selected soldier has left in this turn (i.e. AP total - AP spent). Whereas 'AP left -reserve' would be AP total - AP spent - AP reserved for reaction fire. So AP left - reserve would tell you how many AP you could spend after reaching your destination and still being able to reaction fire, while AP left total would tell you how many AP you could spend after reaching your destination if you decide you use the reserved AP too and forego reaction fire. So the first value would tell you stuff like "I can still open that door and ambush an alien that walks into my FOV with reaction fire" and "I can still turn and crouch once I'm there and can reaction fire when an alien turns that corner". The second one tells you stuff like "If I have to retreat once I get there I can get THIS far if I forego reaction fire" and "If I chance upon a target of opportunity I can use a grenade instead of reserving points for reaction fire". Basically the first value equals the green movement overlay while the second one equals the yellow one. edit: A display of 2 values x / y might be confusing. Maybe displaying it as x (+z) would be more intuitive. x would be the AP you have left once reaction fire points have been subtracted and you get to the place, z would be the amount of points reserved. Example: Soldier has 60 AP, 15 of them are reserved. You select a path with movement cost 40. The overlay text at the end of that path shows you 5 (+15). So you know you can spend 5 points once you get there for further movement/crouching/turning and still be able to reaction fire; plus you know that if you deselect the reserve once you are there you can spend 20 points on running away/tossing a grenade/...

Maybe displaying AP left - reserve / AP left total would be useful. So you would know how far you'd be able to run away once you turn that corner and figure out there's no way you will be able to take out that armada with your puny reaction shot.

I'd like to expand on that. Could we get an options menu where we can tick/untick a whole bunch of trigger conditions to slow the game down to 5s? Maybe make it appear when we right click the clock or sth. otherwise, +1

Oh, sorry, my bad. Seems I've been playing XCOM to much... again

Now that I have thought about it some more, it'd be really great if we could have percentage left in addition to the number of ap's left. Because of weapons using a certain percentage instead of a fixed amount. AP left / AP total is kind of similar to this, but then again you still have to calculate that for yourself before it becomes meaningful information.

I'm not sure about this. It might create a false sense of 'sure, I can do that this turn' when in reality there's a civilian/piece of rubble/alien/whatever in the way you can't see from your current position. Could be a source of frustration. Afair JA2 had something like this (not sure if vanilla game or v113 mod) and I didn't like/use it all that much. Tile visibility and 'shootability' overlays on the other hand were quite useful. But that's just my opinion. Feel free to disagree and/or convince me otherwise

I've suggested something among those lines here. I'd appreciate your thoughts on the subject!

this + 1

If all else fails, try Internet Explorer. I'm running AdBlock plus with both Chrome and Firefox and some other stuff that stops tracking, opts out and so on. Every once in a while I come across some site that doesn't work properly. Usually after opening them in IE I can do whatever I came there for to do. It's probably because of my paranoid settings most of the time. The game might be available on Steam (the devs certainly intend so) but Steam is really picky sometimes, so there are no guarantees. I don't think it's realistic to show up there before final release, since I don't recall any indie game ever being accepted while in alpha or beta. Anyway, if you buy now on Desura you will get a Steam key (if you want one) whenever it gets accepted there. Kickstarter might be a nice idea though, FTL is nearly finished and they still got on there just recently to raise some cash to finish and polish the game. So it works for stuff that's well on it's way too. Plus, I like the site since it's gonna give me a Wasteland 2 at some point in the future

I like Desura. Especially since I found out that it can be used to install mods for games I don't even own on Desura. Just yesterday I installed Planetfall for Civ4 (which I bought via Steam) with it. So at least for me the pros (no worrying about physical media, automatic updates, mods for Desura, community features for Steam, ...) outweigh the cons (can't sell the games I bought when I no longer play them, issues when I'm somewhere without internet access). Guess it really depends on personal taste.

Sounds like a cool idea. The impact on overall balance and difficulty shouldn't be too big, since it should be quite rare to loose a battle with unconscious soldiers (at least if XCOM is any indication. When I loose a battle it's most likely due to a blaster bomb ripping apart half my squad...). I guess it's one of this "icing on the cake"-things that we may see when the core game is done.

In my opinion all soldiers hired are highly trained specialists. But since they face a completely new kind of enemy they are basically rookies, despite their status in regular armies. The rookie training program brings them up to speed with the special tactics and equipment developed to counter the alien invasion. So I'm not in favor of a kind of JA hiring system. They are the best of the best available, but that still might not cut it against the invaders. That would be quite neat! I like this idea

erm ..., no. Please don't. Sprinting might be nice though. Jagged Alliance 2 had that option. And sneaking and crawling, but those two would not fit so well imo.

Hmmm. Interesting, but I'm not sure I agree. Con: One could argue that the base's power plant can only support so many buildings. I'm not sure how a good interface for multilevel building would look. It might be tricky to pull of, because there would be a need for 4 versions of each building (top with building underneath, top without building underneath, basement with building on top, basement without building on top) so there would be no missing/strange staircases in base defense missions. Pro: It would definitely open up new possibilities for defensive base planning, that could be interesting. me = undecided

I can support not having to manufacture/buy small arms ammunition (and even the weapons themselfs). A elite force of a few hundred soldiers tops with a lack of bullets or guns? Not very likely. I could live with not having to manufacture/buy ammunition for the starting heavy weapons (and again, even the weapons themselfs). This is readily available tech, can be easily explained by the stuff being provided by the funding nations. Everything alien though or researched gear ... not so much. It's completely new tech, there are no factories for it, no contractors to produce the stuff. It takes time to set up manufacturing infrastructure. Any one game will probably not even last so long that it would be realistic for a completely new manufacturing plant to be planed, built, equipped, and staffed and starting production. So I say no to infinite alien or researched gear and ammunition. It might even be a nice twist to not be able to produce alien gear and ammo yourself but having to get by with what you find on the battlefield and researched gear based on human technology. XCOMUtil provided such an option (you could still manufacture ammo, but not the weapons) and it fit very nicely with the game imo. my 2c

@Gauddlike: I partially agree with you there. Accidental use of the reserved TUs should be prevented. That's why I'd like some kind of overlay warning message and a required second click to actually fire anyway. That would still cut the number of clicks from 4 to 2 (plus it would remove the need to move the cursor, which takes a lot more time than the actual clicks). I'm not saying to remove reserve altogether, but rather to streamline the interface. @Gazz: That's a neat idea, hadn't thought of that. Very nice! I guess one solution would be to implement all the different solutions to this issue (second click, modifier key, visual indicator instead of reserve) and add an option to the configuration menu to choose one of them. The first two should be easy and quick to implement, the third one might need a more significant amount of coding. Even if one or more of the options would get dropped again before final release it would be nice to have them in for a time. So everyone could gather experience with all of them and provide feedback as to which method they preferred.