Sheepy

The title should say it all. Among the Xenonauts 2 ideas is replacing rockets with grenade launcher. Thanks to the modding community (cough), you can already try out that idea in the original Xenonauts! For new games: Sheepy's Grenade Launcher.0.9.zip For mid-campaign: Sheepy's Grenade Launcher Unlocked.0.9.zip This mod give you a pump action grenade launcher with 3 round magazine, like the China Lake grenade launcher prototyped for Navy SEALs in 1968. It is intended to be good at destroying cover, but can also be used to blast damned aliens. In order to reuse AK47 sprite, it looks a bit like that rifle, but I think it is a better match and more recognisable than recreating a semi-auto launcher. This mod is functionally complete and is being playtested. It comes in two versions: normal, and unlocked. New campaign should use the normal mod. Mid-campaign switch should use the unlocked version which comes with all ammo unlocked, because you cannot go back and re-research the unlocking techs. I intend to tweak and add a pump to the gun art before calling it final. Stats: Weight 5kg, Range 20, Reload 25%, Recoil 60, Reaction 0.5, Suppression 40 in 2.5 radius Snap 40% TU Acc 95 Normal 60% TU Acc 125 Damage is around 2/3 that of rocket and hand grenade. Takes 2+ hits to destroy most covers. May have to raise it and rocket launcher together? Note that because of direct fire, the hit rate is affected by cover, unlike thrown grenade but like the intended X-2 grenade launcher. The files and arts including historical versions can be found on GitHub. You may use them freely provided that a credit is noted. History: 2017-02-21 v0.8 Function prototype that use rockets as ammo. 2017-02-28 v0.9 Added explosive, incendiary, smoke, and stun gas grenades. Breaks vanilla compatibility and becomes X:CE only.

I think it is quite possible to fit a simple faction system into the settings of X-2. In the cold war era, the two superpowers have military bases all over the world, plus lesser international players like NATO and UN. They may fit into the pawns globe. It's not like they didn't indirectly fight each other through proxy wars. But I feel that there is already a story being developed that make better use of the cold war background. Not sure how factions may fit in the big picture.

Thanks for finding the links @Charon. Hope this will re-raise some awareness about the various issues and the lack of fixes.

Thanks @Charon. Look like I searched with the wrong terms. Did read the Things I Want you to know, but I must have forgotten it. Have spent an hour or two reinstalling the game to make sure it's not corrupted files and reproducible. So if this is causing trouble again and again, not only to modders but also to mod users, why is it not fixed in vanilla or X:CE? The mod launcher is already capable of deleting files from the mods folder. (P.S. For the signature, because I am tired of seeing the big X-Division banner over and over again - they take up lots of screen estate on pc - I have disabled all signatures.)

No, because zoom scale is not moddable. But it depends on resolution, so if you play the game in a lower resolution, you will get a zoom in effect, and vice versa.

Problem: Disabling or deleting a mod does not flush relevant internal lua script cache. Steps to reproduce: Install attached mod. It'll say "xce (ZH)". (Don't worry, this zip will not change game language.) Launch game. Note that the main menu buttons are big. Exit game and disable or delete the mod. Launch game. Note that the main menu buttons are still very big. The layout override from the mod is not reverted. Expected: Game reverts to normal after disabling / deleting mod. Workaround: After disabling or deleting the mod, delete " assets\mods\internal " folder, to force the game to rebulid cache. Note: Bug also exists in X:CE 0.34.2, but cache folder change to " %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts\internal ". mod_xce_zh_bug_cache.zip

A nice build, and I think it arrived earlier than expected! I haven't managed to destroy any adjacent cover, and I can reload now, so that's very good. The damage and hit balance feel good to me, too. The overall experience is not much smoother than the last build, though... the simple things first: The crosshair still disappears. And it's much harder to bring it back, now it seems that I must shot or switch soldier to have a chance to restore it. Turning is free, but the cost is still factored in move preview and crosshair. Soldier will shot even if the crosshair says it's impossible after turning. My machine gun made a 0% volley... and landed a shot. Good job, I guess. I prefer slower bullet speed. Hard to see how our bullets flies, and can't see who the alien is shooting at. Free camera? The biome swap is working better than I expected. When two block % text overlaps, they overwrite each other forever. The shotgun update is forcing me to move up the sergeants, which is good. My machine gunner bite a plasma pistol bolt and died early (the only casualty), and I really wish I can have his buddy pick up the gun. I don't see much hit damage, both enemy and us. I think a good number of them is covered by trees. Which brings us to... (Click to enlarge) I'm also surprised to see an expected update date when I win the mission. These dates slip a lot. But you did publish this update on time so... looking forward to next build! I know this does not give you much time to fix them before Friday. Sorry about that.

I agree that the proposals are interesting and may make for some interesting tactics, but I believe that X-2 (or at least the direction we are heading to) is not capable of supporting a sufficiently differentiated night combat mechanism. Head slot introduces micromanagement. I can think of NVG, Infrared, Sunglass (day bonus), Psi-shield, gas mask, wide vision helm. Even if we ignore that half of them steal variations away from armours, now imagine swapping everyone's head gear before every mission depending on time and enemies. We can expand the vision system, to create more sensors and keep the armours distinguished. Chris proposed motion scanner. Afterlight has normal vision, night vision, infrared, em sense, psi sense. Can also have heartbeat sensor. Each armour of each enemies has different signatures and texture in each system. Not a small task. An unarmored sebillian should not trigger em sense, but should it be hotter or cooler? Ends up the players just mix the sensors; as soon as anyone spots an enemy, squadsight makes sure everyone can shot it. The direct senses does not end up adding much to the game. The indirect senses are more interesting, but if you put them in an under-contested slot (the reason to create many visions), that's mostly just another squadsight sensor. Removing or weakening squadsight makes the aim even more complicated, requires adjusting of weapons, and amplify gear micromanagement, because you'd want the attacker to remove that infrared goggles before shooting that infrared invisible enemy. Should that "flash of light" gives players who have a big monitor (sees a bigger field) or a good dynamic vision some meta game advantage? It does not fit the idea of the "pure" turn based game. Signal pistol and floodlight are new items and new mechanics specialised for night mission (micromanagement). Have something works differently on the map is more complicated than adding a slot and adjusting spot distance. Code for a mission type that players avoid. Which includes AI. Should the alien be smart enough to grenade the floodlight? (after making sure destroying the floodlight will immediately stop the light, another piece of code.) Should the civilian be smart enough to know the brightly lit area is safe and is not the Xenonauts burning the whole field in a fighting retreat? How? Light as a weapon does not mean much as we have quick and unlimited flare. Which the consensus is it's a good design. And before it is being proposed, special aliens that require special equipment to dealt with may become a spike that force players to start a new game, instead of allowing them to catch up. For example if they come in a base defence mission. (Not flare. I mean like an infrared/floodlight visible Alien.) With a turn-based geoscape, should the game popup a box and ask you "Day mission or night mission"? If it is random, it is not only a lack of choice but a choice that is replaced by a forced penalty. If we remove the night missions - like Apocalypse and XCOM 2 did - we will have consistent vision, we can drop the unlimited & featherlight flares, we can drop the whole light subsystem, and we should see less night combat confusion. We can still have "time of day", done my adjusting lighting. As long as the battlefield is reasonably illuminated, it'd allow some variations while dropping rarely used mechanics (that the players need to know). What would make a night mission more interesting? How about a shadow system, that bring light source into most or every mission by shrouding tunnels, windowless rooms, dark alley, and have darkness generating alien (phoenix point style) - instead of adding to the night, bring the night to the day! But this actually does not change much of the game. You need to get closer to he alley or flare the beast, but ultimately that's exactly what it accomplish - make you use night tactic in the day. By itself it does not make night more fun, but may give other changes a border application. Perhaps we can introduce sound system and removing the sight advantage of aliens - i.e. Jagged Alliance? Something does not require special equipment to work, functional day and night, and work better at night for various reasons. This is obviously useful in indoor, independent from the night, and is being hinted at in an alternate form known as the motion scanner. The sound system can even be expanded to a full stealth system where you may gain or lost the sensory advantage, but stealth is unlikely to help with ufo and base assault, and how to implement stealthy weapons is another big question. Not to mention not very xcom. So at the end I think we should just scrap the night missions. Any other ideas?

Big boom when you need it - say instead of 6 grenades to systematically dismantle a building (or a cluster of enemies) over three turns, one rocket will do the job. Because rocket is heavy. Only a few soldier can bring a rocket launcher, but I can have most soldier bring a C4, also at 2kg. Replacing C4 with this LAW sounds fun to me. I'll increase it to 3kg at least, though. Rocket / RPG is designed for big kills, while LAW is mostly for light vehicles and adhoc fortifications - nothing military grade. Real life soldiers like LAW because it is much lighter and mobile (e.g. won't get stuck in doorways), and is powerful enough to deal with guerrilla enemies.

I propose we just give everyone a night vision goggle in X-2 and removes the different mechanism of night missions.

If the slot inventory got through and we keep the rocket launcher, may be another good quick slot weapon that is smaller and lighter than the primary:

Okey, I decided to use process monitor to check the file IO, and found the cache at %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts. Deleting the folder immediately flush the cache which restores screen layouts to normal.

My steps to reproduce: 0) System: Win 10 Pro 64 bit. 1) Delete game folder, save game folder, and registry HKCU\SOFTWARE\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts. 2) Unzip V1.65 (2016 Jan 17) downloaded from humble store. 3) Launch game, main menu looks ok. 4) Install x:ce from the mod manager, then rename the original exe and copy the one from xce mod folder. 5) Launch x:ce, main menu looks weird with big button fonts (other text including new game panel and in-game screens are unaffected). 6) Exit game, run original exe, main menu is in normal font size. Run x:ce, main menu is in big font. 7) Even after installing the default xce mods, the situation does not change. What I checked: 1) No compatibility modes. Font size scaling 100%. 2) Windows font cache service does not matter. 3) Windowed mode and game resolution does not matter. 4) Mods folder has three directories: an "internal" folder created by the game in vanilla launch (step 3), megamix map pack, and xce. 5) Fonts files unchanged. Deleting string.xml and lua scripts from xce / internal does not fix the issue. 6) Reboot windows. Disclaimer: I have been developing a mod that modify the font size, overriding files such as mainmenu.lua. However I didn't expect the change to persists after a total delete. The problem now also manifest in the game not loading any other modded screens, such as personnelview.lua, until the file is changed, e.g. removing a blank line. So, what I want to ask is, does xce use some form of screen cache? Because the problem does not exist with vanilla version, which has not activated the mod.

Lol. This is a discussion I wanted to start with my summerisation thread. I used to feel this a few days ago. The firaxisation reached a new height with the inventory slot proposal. But as I review the proposed changes, I realise that this is too early to say which changes will make it or not make it into X-2. We don't even have a strategic layer yet. Or, rather, one has been prototyped and scraped, because it doesn't work out as well as expected, and can't fallback gracefully to X-1 model. So I'll trust that, as long as budget allows, X-2 will discard plans that are not fun and revert to tried systems. The X:CE model is also a textbook demo of how a trusted community can help improve the game after delivery. On the other hand, I agree that many choices are being removed from the proposals, sometime for tacking a obvious problem (translocator, shot preview, soldier stress etc.), but sometimes "more interesting choice" is cited as a design reason. Example: merging lab and workshop force player to choice whether to upgrade now or race to next big tech, the inventory system forcing each soldier to have one main weapon on the ground. Some of them I can agree with, like squadrons and soldiers attritions forcing players to not fight every mission they can, or to maintain a bigger force than they'd like. I wish they can be cast in a better light, like instead of "ufo will always shot down some fighters, even against the best players", we can have top condition for squadrons bonus and merely sending them out will drop them to good or average conditions - same mechanic, but instead of penalising player with cost, this reward the players for their choices. Some of the "hard choice" simply remove strategic depth in my eyes. Merging lab and workshop, for example, does not force player to make a new choice - X-1 player is already making a choice of build or upgrade by investing more in one or the other, and it's a deep choice because it is slow. The player can't just shift gear from research to production by relocating staff. Learning whether they need sci or eng more, and when, is part of mastering the game. Same for slicing the base into three parts; keeping a generic slot/grid will only make the space contest more dramatic. If the players want to spend half the base on air control stations (hangers), instead of wanting other facilities, this is a balance problem that should not be solved by an artificial limit. The inventory slot system is an extension of this "streamline by hollowing" mindset to tactical combat, I think, not to mention the time it takes to design and balance the quick weapons that is a lesser copy of primary weapons, and the limit on play style it may impose (would you not bring psi-shield to fight praetors?). I can already imagine that when these lesser weapons are in the game, we will see the same problem as weapon upgrade in X-1 and say perhaps we can differentiate them and give player more reason to choice them, or make the primary weapons more expensive to fire to, hay, make the choice "more fun"! Upgrade is an upgrade. Players need to be rewarded, instead of facing penalties around every corner - a feeling that we are all too familiar with in X-1 alien bases. I am not against streamlining. I am all for auto crouching, quick inventory use (not management), chopping multi-tile units, or removing multiple bases. Sometimes taking away choices will create more depth - decoupling air and ground is one that I see as a win even when player lost the choice of stopping the war in the air. So, despite the trend that worries me, I still see lots of good and lots of promise in the proposed changes. I have hope that as these proposals get prototyped, we will be able to iterate and discuss them better and help mould a true successor of Xenonauts, instead of a spiritual successor of XCOM 2.

Let's try to summarise proposed major changes to Xenonauts 2. Left: Major casts - Military Commander (Player), Chief Scientist, Director of Operation, and Soldier. Right: aliens @ Nov 2016. In Mar 2017 we get a preview of an animated Reaper. Done (i.e. being tried out) Move Shot Preview allows player to check line of fire and hit rate after planned move's, to get around what you see is not what you get. Replaced Rocket with Grenade Launcher which allows but only direct (horizontal) fire. Less damage, less TU, more shots, more ammo types. Definitely Happening (i.e. being implemented for trial) Short cutscenes between the three Xenonaut heads (above) will tell a better story of the secret organisation fighting a shadow war. Merging Research & Engineering makes R&D less idle, expands research tree, make build or research choice direct. No confusion on which to go first. Turn-Based Geoscape consolidate timed events and easy to code. UFOs come in one wave, player maps fighters to ufo, and end turn. No chasing. Strip Down Geoscape to solve imbalance base coverage and air rush, dumping multiple bases and base location. Keep facility slots, hangers, radar arrays etc. Fighters now have infinite range. Radar radius replaced by global detection level. Squadrons Replace Individual Aircraft. When a squadron lost fighters it also lost firepower. Fighters are replenished free after a long wait. If shooting ufo always take its toll but not too much, strategic air combat choices would be less binary, and will be harder to down every ufo. Reduce Dominance of Air War by adding missions that does not depend on ufo, and/or increase ufo land chance. Ground combat is the meat not air. Map Randomisation will prioritise randomisable maps like wilderness or dock. Retexture map to fit different biome gives more randomness. Removal of multi-tile armoured vehicles yields less balance problems and simpler combat rules. May have small single tile robots, may be not. Destructible UFOs will be tested, both fully destructible boxy ufo, and semi-destructible ufo that looks nice but harder to map (think walls, line of sight etc). Tweak Weapon Armour Penetration by shifting to a multiplier to help differentiate weapons, and/or some damage ignore all armour to avoid confusion. Very High Priority Build Up Geoscape by putting pawns in regions to fight for. May shift to a secret Shadow War, player has some control over when to show hands. Allows subtle and selective missions, e.g. vip protection or praetor assassination. More strategic actions to keep regions on good terms. Soldier Stress acquired after fights and apply penalties. Even a perfect battle will take its toll, forcing player to skip some gc or rotate soldiers. May make bravery more useful and give the operation division more things to do. Alien Racial Abilities is being revised, to be more distinctive, more tactically meaningful abilities. Work in Progress. Psyons: moves in pack and drones project psi-shield on officer. Sebillians: average hp but can revive from prone (damage sponge). Wraiths: Reactive teleport. Reaper Alphas: passive psionic debuff. Androns: X-1 plus limited mobility / thin back armour / death explosion. High Priority Base Structure may moves to slot based for of lack of buildings (and fun) in X-1. Instead of build new base (get new slots), player may upgrade buildings. Soldier Perk may replace stat upgrade. Each soldier has individual perk tree and earn perks by actions, like medals. Slower but more significant growth. Advanced Weapons may have a cost. Fielding (firing) them cost you fuel, which is generated by base infrastructure(s). Make upgrade a harder choice. The Translocator may replace dropship. It will have a recharge time and team-based weight limit, plus conditions like soldier or turn limit. Story wise, alien corpse and equipments will disappear after a few minutes, and the translocator can stop this which makes Xenonauts special. Crouching & Cover may be simplified to ease learning curve. e.g. Automatic crouching, bonus protection from adjacent cover. Or sth. more complicated. Modding & Translation may get a mod editor, language editor, and map editor. Automate parts of creating modular mod / organise translations. Medium Priority Automatic Story Research should make sandbox supporters happier, prevents player delay of harder enemies, and allow no-research walkthrough. Human Psionics, if researched, may carry a risk that things may go wrong every time it is used. Darker theme, more risk-reward. Potentially a DLC. Mixed Alien Missions should be more realistic and tactically more fun. But not as mixed as xcom, perhaps. Not sure. Unknown Priority New Soldier Inventory System will be slot based: primary, quick, and belt. Primary are the most powerful weapons, Belt are grenades and ammos. Quick are weaker weapons, like SMG, baton, or light grenade launcher, or tools like medikit and psi-shield. Free pistol for everyone. New Research System will split projects into fields, like physics and biochem. Research will raise overall expertise in that field, opening up new projects. Potentially scientists may improve skill from experience, has perks, and can work faster at risk of blowing themselves up. I don't promise to keep this topic up to date... I can't tell when each proposal is updated. Let me know if you find something major missing.

The original Syndicate has air support where bombers will drop bombs, after a certain delay, to the designated area that kill absolutely everyone in the zone. The main limiting factor? It's really expensive. Guaranteed to break your bank. So it's not a pure tactical choice. In Xenonauts terms, you mission will not break even if you call a precise strike, so you better have some worthy objective to call the air support. Fire support from the dropship is easy to explain. Why can't it lift off and prove fire support anywhere and anytime on the field, though, will be harder to explain. (And in case of translocator, it'll be why we can't bring a tripod mounted heavy machine gun or a light mortar.)

In a new game I have problem with reloading shotgun, shooting through small hills (both sides), and enemy getting reaction fire before I fire a machine gun. Edit: Specifically, I press left button to fire, then the alien shot, then I am back to the machine gunner who haven't done anything at full TU. He didn't need to turn. Perhaps he stood up from crouch and this is triggering reaction fire? Fence and wall layouts don't make sense to me, but otherwise the random map is forcing me to take up different camping positions in each game as designed. I also noticed a small clipping problem when I get into the game:

Have played a few more games. The randomisation looks good so far, but I haven't had much chance to explore it because I always got zerg rushed by the alien. Edit: The interface does not seem to be scaling with screen size, and I miss the armour and ammo indicators. Found a new bug: An officer is visible in the edge of vision, but it does not register on the alien list, and cannot be aimed at. Edit: The officer is real and moves toward the camp in alien turn, triggering reaction fires and added to the alien list normally.

Compare with other strategic changes, this should be pretty minor. Thanks XCOM 2 for inspiration. Problems: 1. The candidates do not improve with time. New recruits take forever, if ever, to catch up to veterans. 2. Do the candidates all die at end of month? Why do they all disappear so fast? 3. The recruit list is full of candidates we don't want, that we cannot remove, but we get free candidates whenever we hire. Proposal for problem 1: 1. Make new candidates' stats improves with time. A training system may be needed to keep idle soldiers competitive, but they did stay in a safe base as the world went on fire. 2. Make veterans available at higher cost, as the game progress. Proposal for problem 2 & 3: 1. Let the player get a new candidate by rejecting someone, perhaps at a moderate interview cost but with some free monthly quota. 2. To keep the pressure up, may be each candidate has a 10% chance to disappear at end of month.

Tried Firefox 51, Edge 14, IE 11. None of them have paste as plain text, so that's three out of five major browsers that does not have it. As far as I know Safari does not have it too, although there is a system level shortcut. The reply editor (not the browser) have a remove format bar, on all browsers, but it only popups when I paste multi-line html, not when I paste singe or a few formatted words, and it is provided by the reply editor not by the browser.

I haven't had the random logout problem, but I concur the remove format function. Actually I won't mind editing plain text code...

For reference, Acalanthis's idea is expanded and discussed in the other thread.

After playing this, I can say I prefer auto crouching, which streamlines the tactical combat because I won't have to mind crouching TU. Cutting off the trees is a big improvement. Can see where bullets land now. Unit outline not displayed for fence and plants. Wish it can outline all soldiers, not only active one. Cover calculation is a bit weird. A plant may not block a shot that pass straight through it but block those at a angle. But sometimes soldiers still destroy the cover right in front of them, which still block shots. Which happens to be a rock that looks heavier and sturdier than the soldier. Destroyed by one shotgun blast. Line of fire does not seem to take vertical height into account. Rocks in pit blocks LoF above the pit. The pit may cause some grid to be hard to select. Can we have afterblank style free camera? With zoom. Aim cursor may disappear after switching soldier, leaving only LoF. Repeatingly moves the cursor away from and onto any alien will eventually cause it to reappear. Block percentage text may overwrite each other in a high speed. Plant provides better cover than rocks. Not sure how I should feel about it. The outer side cover indicator of the road's fence is covered by the fence. Shot preview is nice. Very useful. Won without letting the aliens fire a single shot. Since I don't get aim bonus unless I get *very* close, I don't have any incentive to advance at all. I am mostly happy with the movement and bullet speed. Guess two option sliders are in order! Only have the chance to play one map. Will come back to feedback on randomisation when and if I find time to play more.

This is perhaps part of Geoscape: Building it Up?

Hmm. Not sure how I can state it more clearly, but I'm copying Afterlight's team feature, which is very important in that game because you need very different weapons to deal with different aliens, or even different map. The player have total control over who is in the team and how to equip them. If a soldier cannot join the mission, the team will be one man less on deploy. The game will not grab a replacement on your behave. But as long as the deploy screen shows number of soldiers in the team, the players only have themselves to blame if they didn't notice it.