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Sheepy

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Everything posted by Sheepy

  1. The research queue is in most similar games for more than the purpose of starting a new research. It give players a tool to plan future researches, remembering the decisions through game loads and save transfers. Example: play a while, go to holiday, come back after a week, check research & production queue to be reminded what was the plan. In addition, it allows the carefully planned research to happen in the background, so that it can be executed with minimal disruption. For example, when I want to wait for an UFO, mission, or manufacturing, I can mindlessly click "continue research" (focusing on the event I want), instead of browsing through all research projects again (and be distracted). Alternatively, imagine a game state where there is a backlog of small researches that you'd like to clean up. With research queue, you loop through the list once and throw them to the queue as you go. Unpause, dismiss popups until something interesting happens. Without research queue, you will be forced a screen jump every game day or two (or less), and you'll need to scan the list every time to pick the next research. The later is bad UX. The mental fatigue / frustration will add up. So... there is a plan to bring research queue back, yes?
  2. To be fair, Tftd is a bit more than a new coat of paint. Two-tier missions are far more common. Melee weapons. Engagements may happens both on land and sea. A bigger research tree... which messed up. The new coat of paint is also more than a high def repaint. The undersea tileset and the tight ships creates a more terrifying atmosphere, true to the name. So, yeah, I'd say X2 can use a few enhancements too. I haven't heard of any discussions of two tier missions in X2.
  3. Try UFO:Afterlight. I think they got many things right, especially its armour and weapon variety, diverse but not overwhelming. You need to switch both, kind of forced but in a sensible ("realistic") way. I am counting on X2's modular weapon and armour system to do the same, or at least lay a good enough foundation to mod the rest A seemingly minor system enhancements sometimes go a long way.
  4. I remember I was against the more radical ideas from the start, such as the abstraction of strategic layer. So while I feel the same, I think it is a good direction. The X1 formula may not be perfect, but it is tried and proven (esp. the air combat!), and has ample space for refinements. We may no longer see in-development screenshots like before backer builds, but the combat preview has enough improvements to keep my hope up. Yes, I also have reservations about the refinements - would multi-base plus rooms plus staff turns X2 globe into a mini-civ, for example? Well, since X2 is done in unity, its game logic will probably be much easier to mod. That is another hope, too. All that we need is for X2 to provide a good base and become a success (even a moderate one) so that enough modders will be interested. And if it fills the niche of xcom clones instead of the "new xcom" clones, X2 have my bet.
  5. Multiple strike group + Making characters more distinguished = crazy micro-management that is not fun for most ("average") players
  6. The company "Forward Defense" invented a a new rifle that has five barrels and can fire them together and rapidly. It can sustain a high rate of fire for a long time, by using ammo bin as firing chamber and jettisoning them, effectively using them as heat sink. There is no mention of ammo weight or jam handling, but that looks like a perfect fit for an upgraded Earth-Tech rifle in a game. It even use the new 6mm ammo to make things interesting. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23552044/fdm-technology-four-barrel-caseless-rifle-army-prototype/ https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2018/01/jeremy-s/forward-defense-munitions-l5-caseless-ammo-5-bore-rifle/ Edit: Updated title
  7. If I remember correctly, the plan is no more builds until backer preview is ready, a few months before early release.
  8. I'd say apocalypse and afterlight has the most impressive 3D battlescapes among the xcom clones I've played. Apoc has multi-story buildings that can cascading collapse in real time, which is still very impressive today, and afterlight has many, many, many truly multi-level maps, from human-build platforms to alien bases with caves or tunnels to dialect alien mazes (yes that's a plural). XCOM 2 has some nice 3D maps too, but they are not as mult-layer or as challenging to navigate as Apoc and Afterlight.
  9. I can think of another very interesting option. It's just off or on. Alien Weapon Self-Destruct And if you set it to on, you better bring more stun batons!
  10. Instant full regen reminds me of one of those "I am invulnerable until you find the tricky way to kill me" bosses. Except that there is no tricky way from what I heard and you better pray that your sniper hits with her 60% chance shot and your machine gunner hits with most of his 38% shots. May I vote no?
  11. That's the approach that results in bad ports. Like multi-thread, translation, and modding support, platform support is best done early. For example, if the game use lots of windows-exclusive unity plugins, then it'll have a difficult time porting to mac and linux, much less consoles. That said, Xenonauts is not neo-XCOM or Rome Total War. I would like to see it done on PC first, but perhaps DLC is more likely to happen after that than console port.
  12. I don't think there is plan to implement auto-sidestep system that clear lof beyond the grid you are in. I did ask for sidestep as a movement, however, which is another issue and I've heard of no plan to implement it either.
  13. I don't expect pathfinding to be a problem, at least for 3x3. The modelling and animation and the base UI, however, may prove to be more problematic.
  14. That sound like it'll have the same problems with multi-tile units, unless you want your to clip pass each other when they are adjacent, or clip pass walls and cliffs. Making them multi-tile squares and have an odd grid size (instead of even) may be easier.
  15. Not wanting to derail a feature discussion thread so I'm opening a new thread here. A few differences. A new game is constrained by a vision and theme to maintain a consistent identity. All non-optional features it provide will be forced upon all players and must be explained, balanced, meet players expectations, not too tedious not too hard no death trap etc. The dev also needs to balance limited resources. Mods are less constrained by these factors. Mods actually have more design freedoms. Instead, mods are more constrained by technical issues. Some features are easier done in a new game by the dev team for this reason. Equipment addon and locational damage for example. Some features, like adding fragments and refining research tree and item/event triggers, are likely to involve more planning and balancing than coding, and in my eyes are better fit for mods. Then there is the issue of UI modding which I tried to raise but seems to be ignored. If you are a modder, I have a recent example. I just modded a game's resource loading engine to cuts its work by perhaps a factor of 10. Players are crazy. A quick hack on two low-hanging cpu bottlenecks, arguably easier done by a mod since a mod can be less stable. In other words, I can move faster than the dev. Everyone happy. But there is a whole tree above it. I didn't systematically rewrote its dependency management, and I can't feasibly make it load files asynchronously. The later, another factor of 10, would mean rewriting the initialisation code of every single data structure and the whole loading pipeline, and should absolutely be done in the development stage rather than by modding. Something a developer could have done before it is too expensive, instead of features that can be done in a later patch or by a mod. If you are not a modder, don't worry. It is hard to tell. Sometimes even to coders.
  16. I don't know. Stripping legs off the alien queen and popping its head do have some entertainment value more than the mechanical debuff numbers or as a mean to capture. Phoenix Point and BattleTech are both satisifying this way.
  17. I do play UFO clones including X1 like chess. That is how I enjoy tactic games. From my point of view, if I want the suspension of stealth, I play a game that better supports it. X1 does not have enough features to make stealth interesting; even UFO and XCOM2 do them better in different ways. And X2 does not seem to make any breakthrough in that regards, and there are a lot to be gained from discarding turning cost. I propose that X2 make them a custom difficulty setting like Invisible Inc. You want chess you turn off vision cone and turn on LoF preview. You want old school you enable cone (with manual turning TU reserve) and disable LoF. Both camps happy.
  18. I'd want to point out that the one of the reasons we are discussing so much about location injury is that it's one of the top voted goals on Kickstarter. I suspect that different players may be voting for different things in mind. Some may want a survival experience, but some may just want to have more varied debuffs. The later is I think the goal proposal.
  19. Happy Honeymoon! Wait until you get a baby! Enjoy it while it lasts.
  20. Psi Healing: Like medkit, but can be done ranged. Upgraded skill may become AoE effect instead of doing higher heals. Psychic Surgery: A slow, costy ability that restores "unhealable" hp. Empathy: See enemy hp and/or role, if originally hidden. Scrying: A sensor probe not limited by walls. Clairvoyant: See further and/or wider. Precognition: See enemy plan. The plan may change with player action. Cue Invisible Inc. Retrocognition: Like motion tracker. Daze: Reduce or Eliminate target overwatch. Mind Trick: Make a unit immune to enemy overwatch. Psi cloak / distorion: Reduce accuracy of non-mechanic enemies agaist a target or area. Mind Shade: Same as above but used on enemy. Pyrokinetic: Remotely start fire, put out fire, or ignite grenade. Apportation / Psychokinesis Hand: Open/Close/Pickup/Move/Drop remotely. An ability to move a missed grenade would be nice, if they explode at end of turn like X1. Psychokinesis Shield: Project an energy field that reduce damage (think mass effect) Psychokinesis Push/Pull: Moving alies sounds like fun. Note: If these sounds like magic, there is a good reason. They are easier to balance than panic and mind control.
  21. I know I linked to that in another post but I'm not so sure, actually. It's not a topic that I've seen discussed much. And I am pretty certain I didn't see it in the kickstarter video's loadout screen.
  22. I hate permanent damage... but "fix it with alien tech" is a game changer. I see lots of microamangemnt potential with this proposal, like lighter arm armour for soldiers who have already lost their arm(s) or are already using cybernatic replacements, but I pretty like the idea as a whole. Your soldiers will have more ups and downs over the course of the game, instead of simple hp flux. Keeps the scientists or engineers busy and perhaps introduce new rehab base facility. Or even a new skill tree to reflect their training on their melded body. It is also a way to make facing matters more than vision cone, which make it easier to remove that too. There is potential to make a better Meld with the moral dilemma of keeping an army of zombie soldier or firing them all in early game. And game reviewers love moral dilemmas these days.
  23. I use a 3K monitor and I've bugged Chris about text not scaling in earlier X2 demo, which are promptly fixed. So I have high hopes of X2 supporting 4K, or fix the support rapidly. Wide screen is another matter, though. I remember a forum member sent them one so that they can test and develop on it.
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