Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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14 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
Win by holding UFO for 3 turns looks like a great idea, until I find it cuts my loot very strange way. Only corpses are missing. Is it correct ?
If I capture UFO, 3 Sebilians stay in a barn but I get all their weapons they have.
If I found them in a barn, and kill them personally , I get their weapons AND their bodies.
Which means, if I win by holding UFO, we make some kind of deal with aliens, they hand over weapons and walk away ?
What is your thought ?
You're right, yeah. This is a bug - if an alien survives you shouldn't get their weapons either.
We'll log it as a bug but it's quite a low priority one.
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On 1/17/2026 at 2:51 PM, --oliver-- said:
Personal Thoughts @ (X1) X2
Taking reference to Lighterius „very long review“post, I take a chance of my own impressions of X1 and X2
To clearify things right from the start a word about myself.
As 40+ I am more about experience and immersion than of challenge. I like to enjoy and only have a slightly interesst in hardcore difficulty. Like in X1 so here in X2 I took the time to tweak a little bit. Please excuse this cicumstance.
I played the original XCOM-the enemy unknown (Ufo defense)(ger) and XCOM -tftd a lot and later the openXcom versions. So I was very exited when I stumbled across Xenonauts 1, back in 2019. Quite some time after its release but better late than never.
Over half a decade later I keep X1 in great memory. I had ton of fun, playing excessively for some time.
What prevented me from playing XCOM 2012, ist the „doomsday clock“-thing. Seems quite popular these days. But I never liked to be in hurry. Surely, there should be a plot in game, which is leading to a certain goal. But I prefer to do it my way. Depends how strong your game is shaped from this mechanic.
However. X1 is an amazing game and I think i does an overwhelming good job. taking the Spirit of the old XCOM and put in modern times.
About X2. There are some moments I which I got the feeling back from X1 in 2019. It just hooked me again. But there are some different and new eperiences. Some good some mehh.
Starting a new game:
I really like the options to build your custom game experience. Easy to hardcore. Suits eveyone I think.
Operation Points:
As for now, dec25 jan26, I think their invention was a good idea. Ads a little layer to the complexity. Where do I spend my points on? A new option to influence the game. The passive generating I think, is also the right way.
What is questionable for me is the reduce of 100/125 points if I do a crash mission and dont let the land/state do it. I think the amount is quite a lot.
On the other hand, NAM, EUR, LAM, SU, ASI, AFR 6x4 options, after a while you have everything archived.
This whole idea would be better if it had effects in the long run. Respectively more usage of OP till the end of them game.
As for active generating OP, maybe some special missions which are more difficult or different to the classic combat missions. Larger maps or somethig else.
Ressources:
Depends. Scarcity is a challenge. If your interested in a harder difficulty, its okay.
If you are not forced to finish the game at for example Day 325, then you have plenty of time to earn ressources. If one likes to build, research and taste every little piece of it, thats okay.
Both should be possible.
Soldiers:
The rising through the ranks of soldiers is a great idea. But earning could be a little slower or harder. And more variaty in the buffs of the different ranks and medals.
About Soldiers Accuracy, I had one of the woodlouse/bugs direct next to my soldier. Sometimes misses 2 shoots close up. Maybe there is room to inprove gameplay on this point. I think it is to unrealistic.
Same for the Stun-batton. Missing an Enemy, I dont know. The resitance of an enemy to fall unconscious, is okay. Some a tougher some ar weaker.
Soldier Health/Death: A razor with two edges. On one side, it is challanging to have even experienced soldiers dying. On the other hand frustrating. Really difficult. Maybe better to put them out of action instead of dying an elite soldier. Would be a good way to pic up both sides, I think. Keep the randomness of damage, but with only disabling the vetereans for the rest of the mission, etc.
Soldier Jetpack:
Likewise a good idea. First I did not exactly know if I like not beeing able to fly, but now I think its (very) good, only to „jump“ onto roofs and not to fly endless.
Tanks:
I like them. Could be more of it.
Aircraft:
Generally I miss the variatiy of X1. I liked to have more steps and options while I was progressing through the game. The more to play with, is always fun.
More aircrafts, for example, means more even progression, still to the late game. More steps you have to keep the game interessting in the long run.
More managemend, one has to weigh more carefully whether this or that.
Air modules:
Also a great idea. But like Lighterius mentioned. The large amount of fuel, they already have, makes an additional fueltank obsolet. But, maybe, reducing the fuel means more ufos are escaping, which will increase loosing the game. Precise tweaking necessary.
Air Combat:
I think it has definetly improved over X1. Like it. Felt easier more convenience to get into it. Back in X1 felt more angular, awkward.
Reasearch:
What I felt during the game, was some emptiness. I can not remember exactly how it was in XCOM, UFO, X1 but sometimes I felt; quiestioning myself, is it broken? Is there missing something? A little bit of to fast in progressing through the game towards the exit. In the older games it felt more of a longer walk.
Unique things to build:
Took a moment before I got it. The alternative would be to earn, hunt for ressources which you would of course need – and you have not to place orders manually. Build once an your done. I take this as comfort.
Final Thoughts:
I am a big friend of freedom of the player. I like to weigh up different strategies. Possibilities.
Of course, jumping in a game and having thousands of options at once, is definitive a bad idea. But progressing throught the game, evolving and growing up with options feels natural. If done like this, you dont feel overwhelmed. So I would enjoy to have a ton more of complexity. More research, more upgrades, more, more, more.
I specially would like to have more extensive possibilites during combat. The more the game allows you or gives you the possibility to win by your own smartness. It feels so rewarding, to win a combat more by tactical intelligence than by raw power.
Hope you find it interesting to read and got food for thought or discussion.
I am looking forward about whats to come in the future.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to write it out!
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On 1/19/2026 at 3:50 PM, gG-Unknown said:
Almost a year since I started this topic.
STILL NO CHANGE
Grenade Luncher is a random weapon, designed to be used only in save scum play-style.
Ugh. Thanks, we'll take a look.
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This update contains the next round of stability fixes for Milestone 6. We're now largely focused on our upcoming Milestone 7 update, but we'll continue to investigate and patch any serious issues reported by the community!
As always, these hotfixes can sometimes break tactical mission saves. If you experience unexpected crashes playing an existing tactical save immediately after the update please try restarting the mission by loading the pre-mission strategy save.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not show the Game Over screen if too many regions were above 100 Panic at the point where the player lost the campaign.
- Fixed a crash that could randomly occur during the AI turn during tactical combat due to an error in the AI's tile search algorithm.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you shot down a UFO over international waters (i.e. in the distant parts of the oceans).
- Fixed a crash that could occur on the dropship soldier arrangement screen if the player hovered over a soldier icon in the dropship while dragging a soldier line in the soldier list on the left.
- Fixed a crash that would be (eventually) caused by players going to the dropship soldier arrangement screen from the unassigned soldier tab of the pre-mission soldier equip screen.
- Fixed a variety of crashes on the Soldier Equip screen related to assigning / unassigning the placeholder dropship soldiers on the Rescue Soldiers mission, and ensured they don't get stuck in the "Airborne" state if you cancel the dropship flight while it is en-route to the mission site.
- Fixed an issue with the target soldier generation on the Rescue Soldiers mission.
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4 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
Yeah, so if you press F11 it creates a zip that contains all the recent saves and logs etc which you can attach to the bug post, which would make it a lot easier for us to understand what might be going wrong here,
It seems to be a strange bug because if I kill the alien and move a soldier to their location, the shot is 100% blocked in both directions. So it'd be really interesting to have the logs on the shot because that might explain how this could have happened - looking at the save file it shouldn't be possible.
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14 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
It is nice that you didnt deny that problem AI abusing shield narrow angle exists.
My concern in balancing is fair play :
- when I see people abusing overloading soldiers = not fair play, becouse AI is not allowed restock grenades
- when I see people abusing teleport to make whack-a-mole gem, I ask for solution
- when I see AI gets aim bonus so high that it can shoot thru smoke, I ask for solution. (commander diff has no longer 130% bonus)
- when I see AI abusing narrow shield so it murders players deliberately, I ask for solution
All Those unfair situations prevent player to dive deep into game world. It is all about emotions. Unfair situations do not help, doesnt matter who benefits.
Now, I apreciate your trust in GoldHawk team, but AI improvement whiich could come can not reduce AI abuse by a soft way. Here is why :
Developing AI which think similar to human, even on simple game rule-set is nearly impossible. Look at Total War games, they had AI team of at least 20 people, and they worked for 20 years, but their result is tragic. Are they stupid, or uneducated ? No. It is just so hard. Therefore programmers use shortcuts like usage off data which could not know. AI sees all the human soldiers, their equip and curent TU, based on this, an algorithm is able to count a move which is not completely stupid. If you exepct, that GoldHawk develop an AI which will use only the data he actually could see as human, that is not happen. Not in this decade.
Therfore, precise flanking and angle abusing should stay as part of x2 AI because it is just small advantage, problem is the ruleset which creates a situation, where human feels fraud and unfair advantage and see death of soldier all at the same time.
So ?
AI flanking and inhuman precision in finding opportunity stays.
There is only 4 months left, to polish game, so guess (hope) that Goldhawk rather than hopeless effort in developing human-like AI will focus at adding features which make game rich and fun and have to be supported by AI. Specially :
- rise cover bonus when character hug a prop which gives the cover
- make Servitor act as defensive / healer
- make Ripers act as pack hunters looking primary for civs
- implement variable spot range based on target AND weapon soldier holds (this will level up game a lot in many categories, for example Simbiont which are visible from 11 tiles do tiny size offers new situations AND there can be much more Simbionts on map, becouse you dont need to animate them when they are not visible. Variable spot range bring whole new possibilities for Wright camo, and so on... )
- implement Psyonic team view and Psionic puppet control rules so Psionics will send civs in kamikaze style against player. Then player receives SERIOUS DILEMA how to handle them.
- implement Dread aura - (zombies, rippers, terror bomb on terror missions) superb idea which bring a lot gameplay, but AI have to know how to use it
Compare impact when a AI programmer put his effort into doable project above OR chasing a holy grail of human like AI.
Therfore, I wanted to highlight an issue and give an advice to how to handle it quickly. I hope that Chriss sort things out towards maximum impact, and cut corners where it is possible. Narrow shields are abused by AI, and there is no easy solution. So, it better to remove narrow shield and focus elsewhere.
Oh, get notice, the only AI programmer is the same guy who is also Technical director so he have to help others and solve their small issues when they stuck, and also he wants to sleep. As you can see his time can not be wasted willy nilly.
The best place for these posts is the balance threads, as others have said.
But I think the critical issue here is that you're assuming the AI factors shield angles into its attack calculation, whereas I'm almost positive that it does not. Just like it doesn't avoid shooting at soldiers with heavy armour because it can cause more damage to soldiers with light armour.
It can and does calculate where it needs to move to in order to shoot around the terrain cover objects you're hiding behind, but that's a different matter and one I don't think is actually an issue. The bigger problem in your quoted review is the fact the AI doesn't currently differentiate between Xenonauts it has seen and those it should have no knowledge of.
If you want to discuss this further, please post about it in the balance thread.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
- One additional bugfix for 6.30.0 before the weekend - fixed a crash that could occur if you shot down a UFO over international waters (i.e. in the distant parts of the oceans).
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On 1/14/2026 at 6:59 PM, B0ne said:
I paid on the Epic platform. Did I make a mistake buying your product?
Thanx...
Sadly the lack of Epic release is down to Epic more than us, so you may have made a mistake buying it there rather than elsewhere. Unlike Steam or GOG, they don't provide developers with beta branches and for some reason they delete developer uploads after a week if they're not set live. We left 6.29.0 on the testing branch for two weeks over Christmas and so when we returned to the office after the holiday Epic had deleted it, which is why it hasn't come out on Epic.
You should get the recent 6.30.0 update on Epic that also includes all these fixes when that is released onto the public branches (hopefully next week).
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not show the Game Over screen if too many regions were above 100 Panic at the point where the player lost the campaign.
- Fixed a crash that could randomly occur during the AI turn during tactical combat due to an error in the AI's tile search algorithm.
- Fixed a crash that could occur on the dropship soldier arrangement screen if the player hovered over a soldier icon in the dropship while dragging a soldier line in the soldier list on the left.
- Fixed a crash that would be (eventually) caused by players going to the dropship soldier arrangement screen from the unassigned soldier tab of the pre-mission soldier equip screen.
- Fixed a variety of crashes on the Soldier Equip screen related to assigning / unassigning the placeholder dropship soldiers on the Rescue Soldiers mission, and ensured they don't get stuck in the "Airborne" state if you cancel the dropship flight while it is en-route to the mission site.
- Fixed an issue with the target soldier generation on the Rescue Soldiers mission.
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On 12/22/2025 at 2:56 AM, guillemots said:
Please tell me how to demolish a base? If there isn't a way to demolish a base add the ability to do so.
There isn't a way at present. Permitting demolishing the access lift is on our to-do list but unfortunately we've been busy with higher priority issues.
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Thanks for the comments everyone. I've given it all a read and noted down several things to evaluate in the balance pass for Milestone 7.
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On 1/9/2026 at 2:41 PM, Senteliks said:
Hey Chris, thanks for taking time to reply. I am just glad that after all hurdles X2 went through we are going to have released version. I understand, that in active development things come and go. And that for some of original ideas and concepts it wasn't easy to discount.
Personally, I find Reaper Hives and akin content interesting additions post release. There is a lot to explore here, if you chose path of expansions and given that you mentioned it yourself, we can assume this time around there will be ones, right?
Similarly to that localised injuries, I understand it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea but if it's implemented as toggle able function I am sure a lot folks in that niche would welcome it (me included ). Of course it's not on and off switch I get that, but it would be awesome if you decide to revisit in a future and integrate it into a full product.
Glad to hear you haven't given up on more complex inventory and modular system.
Did you guys by any chance consider introducing exhaustion, similar to how Long War did it for Xcom and later XCOM2 devs themselves ?
There's already a functional Stress system in the game, but it's currently disabled (and I think if we turned it on again we'd probably find it needs a few updates to work properly again). It added more complexity and I wasn't sure if it benefitted gameplay enough to justify the overhead. It's certainly something I'd be willing to explore properly in an expansion - however, it's also not at the top of the list of things I want to improve.
Barring any unforseen circumstances we'll be doing some free updates and DLC for Xenonauts 2 post-release, yeah. Hopefully some of the stuff you're interested in will eventually make an appearance
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Yes, it probably makes sense to add some kind of weight limit on soldiers on the soldier equip screen.
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19 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
MissHit grenade impact ceiling, regularly.
It is nice that after years of complains you managed set ballistic curve more flat, so grenades are useable in rooms, like alien base, BUT
due to merciless miss chance algorithm, grenade could choose different route than planed, then ends up in the ceiling. Explosion of the grenade is unexpected and far from regular miss expectation. Alien base or base defence, etc are super annoying to play. Even you (the developers) could believe, that algorithm work as expected, fix it anyway.
From player point of view, it is annoying bug and not fun !
FIX : Make sure that grenade miss chance route do not consider ceiling as surface of impact.
Thanks
You'll need to provide a save with some specific examples of missed shots being problems here. We're not going to ignore the ceiling from grenade hit paths, but with good examples of what is going wrong then we can hopefully improve the algorithm a bit more.
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Hello everyone - hope you all had a good Christmas and new year!
I just wanted to quickly ask anyone that has been enjoying Xenonauts 2 and hasn't written a Steam / GOG review of the game to consider doing so, as Xenonauts 2 will be leaving Early Access with the full release of our next major update (Milestone 7) and the review score can be an important factor in how many people are interested in playing the game at launch.
Leaving a positive review really does help us out, so if you've enjoyed your time with the game and think the project deserves a positive review then we'd really appreciate you taking five minutes to do so!
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On 1/4/2026 at 7:51 PM, Senteliks said:
That's because there aren't many games recently that scratch tactical alien invasion defense sim and I liked x1.
Now I have accepted that the game is essentially what x1 was going to be ideally -basically remaster, as many pointed out. And i know that systems like weather and atlas base were removed due to feedback or technical challenges.
But what happened with locational injuries, reaper hives? Or modular weapons- I know we sort of got it, with modules, but it's more of workaround.
This is not to criticise, just curious. Any chance this may be added later in form of content updates ?
Yeah, quite a few things changed during development. To cover a few of the things you mentioned:
- Locational injuries were kinda in the game for a bit, where being hit in different areas inflicted different amounts of damage. But in the end we felt the old 50%-150% damage randomisation was cleaner and worked better. The idea of having injuries seemed like a nice one but it was quite snowbally in practice; if a soldier gets badly hurt then it's not necessarily fun to have them also be unable to shoot / move properly too. I'm not ruling out exploring this idea more though, especially now you're managing fewer soldiers on the later missions and can pay more attention to each guy.
- Modular weapons were replaced by armour modules because we found there wasn't really enough design space to allow modification of the weapons. The existing weapon archetypes already cover a lot of bases, so for instance it'd be kinda pointless trying to increase the range and power of a rifle when you could just take a sniper rifle, etc. Plus it'd need a whole extra layer of UI which risked overcomplicating things. So we went with modules, which fitted in the existing inventory system better (although maybe in an expansion pack we'd replace modules with a more complex armour & inventory system).
- Reaper hives - yeah, maybe we'll add these in the future. People just don't seem that excited about them though, they always did quite badly when people were voting on potential Kickstarter stretch goals etc. Personally I think they could be a cool late-game mission to add a bit more variety.
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This update contains the next round of stability fixes for Milestone 6. Please continue to report any issues that you encounter and we'll do our best to fix them!
These hotfixes can sometimes break tactical mission saves, so if you experience unexpected crashes playing an existing tactical save immediately after the update please try restarting the mission by loading the pre-mission strategy save.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that could occur if the save game process failed.
- Fixed a crash related to constructing base buildings that could occur in some rare circumstances.
- Fixed a crash that could occur on strategy when changing the dropship soldier arrangement on the aircraft screen.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if a blank "construction complete" notification appears.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if a Mind Control capable unit (usually an Eternal) went berserk.
- The game will no longer crash if you attempt to create a new campaign with the same name as an existing one when the game doesn't have the required file permission to delete the old files.
- Fixed doing a F9 quickload during the air combat messing up the UI.
- Added extra logging around a couple of crashes that occur on the soldier equip screen, and set the error not to crash in non-experimental builds.
- Display a pop-up toast if an autosave fails for any reason.
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On 1/2/2026 at 5:49 PM, vnhfremen said:
I overall enjoyed it. I played whatever is default difficulty (soldier?). I never played xenonauts 1, but I played the original xcoms + the fireaxis ones. Here are some random thoughts:
-I was losing a lot of soldier early on when using accelerated/laser weapons. It felt fair and logical overall. I did not feel the need to save scum at all.
-A few times I ended up using my side arm when I meant to use the main weapon. Some kind of feedback directly on the mouse cursor would be great.
-When the enemies switch to plasma weapons, they also seem to be much more "elite" aliens. I "had" to save scum to keep things fun for me. I believe I would have rapidly failed every missions otherwise. Their precision + damage output was too much for what I was able to handle at that point. It resolved itself as I progressed in the tech tree, but I was way behind.
-The amount of tactical missions I had to do during the campaign felt just right. It took me 40 hours to complete the game.
-I enjoyed all aliens except the reapers. I felt they looked/moved goofy and did not feel scary. In addition, I did not really understand how their attack worked. I think I would have enjoyed it more if they were more lethal once they reached my soldiers but add perhaps some research specifically aimed at surviving them.
-I very much enjoyed the story missions, especially the final assault and the satellite destruction ones. Rushing to destroy gateways and clearing pocket of resistance was fun.
-I was so broke during the early game that I skipped some interesting base facilities like training center/medical center until the end of the game. I was prioritizing new bases and air interceptor (too?) heavily.
-I mostly only used smoke grenades, the flash grenades didn't seem to work against Sebillian. The flash grenades also didn't cover a wide area enough, so I end up taking overwatch fire from other aliens anyways. Grenades didn't feel like they were doing enough damage to justify their use. I may be wrong.
-Rifles in general felt underwhelming. Lacked damage potential after early game. I used shotguns / heavy / sniper / shield / mars-ares mostly.
-There's a lack of verticality in general, also getting on higher ground is a great way to get killed anyway. I would have liked some kind of greater defensive bonus to make it worth it. Only the stalker armor seemed to make rooftops viable.
-Didn't try the air combat. I probably should. It would be great if the auto resolve showed the combat. It could incentive me to take control as well. Right now I don't know if I could do better than the auto-resolve.
-I felt I needed more options to avoid getting killed turning a corner in a ufo. smoke grenades are nice but some kind of motion detection would be interesting too I think.
-The operation points were fine, I didn't think it added too much to the experience. But I only understood the use of the special requests as I was completing the game. Maybe I wouldn't have been so broke if I had understood earlier?
-I was there was more late game-changing tech. Doesn't have to be psionics or guided rocket launchers like other games but I would have liked something more.
-There was a sense of deja vu with the available tactical maps.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this out, it’s really helpful. Glad to hear you enjoyed it overall!
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that could occur if the save game process failed.
- Display a pop-up toast if an autosave fails for any reason.
Goldhawk is closing for Christmas today, so I'm going to be leaving 6.29 on the Experimental branch over the festive period and we'll release it onto the standard branches when we're back at the office in January (I don't want to potentially introduce new crashes onto the public branch if we're not around to fix them).
Merry Christmas everyone!
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23 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
I made a topic on this issue, ages ago. Perhaps this time it will hit.
I have recommanded this :
- soldier fell on floor - all items are dropped (same as now, so team mates could reach his inventory)
- soldier is revived on spot - all backpack items and non-active item/weapon are automatically picked up for free to the same positions as they were. Only the item in the active hand stays on floor and have to be picked up manually by player.
- in case soldier is picked up moved to different tile then revived - non items are picked up automatically
It needs a bit coding, but player will apreciate that.
Yeah, that could work. It's probably not something we can implement in half an hour though. We'll see if we have time to get to it before release.
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12 minutes ago, DrHavoc said:
I experimented a little with what happens when your troops fall unconscious and I Was surprised to find out that all your items drop including backpack items, not just the stuff you are holding on your hands. That means falling unconscious and waking up with a medikit you need virtually a whole turn to pick up your guns, grenades and clips. That does not make much sense. I think only the equipment held by the soldier, not the backup items should drop.
The problem with not dropping everything is that the items would essentially be lost if we didn't. They drop onto the ground so other soldiers are able to pick them up if they want (same logic as if the unit was killed) - e.g. players would be very annoyed if the soldier with the medikit in their backpack was stunned, and nobody could pick up the medikit to revive them.
It might be that the TU cost of picking up items is too high though.
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On 12/14/2025 at 4:26 PM, KeinCZ said:
Hi,
game crashes when building new construction at the base
https://webshare.cz/#/file/RM67Ffv67H/bug-report-2025-12-14-17h23-st-6-27-0-unhandled-exception-0-zip
https://webshare.cz/#/file/QV3PXzmbOD/bug-report-2025-12-14-17h23-st-6-27-0-unhandled-exception-1-zip
https://webshare.cz/#/file/Y8Nctjt3XZ/crash-info-html
https://webshare.cz/#/file/qAyTOiZUU9/crash-info-jsonHi - thanks. This should be fixed in the latest update!
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On 12/13/2025 at 4:45 PM, Sandro said:
Tutorial Commander start with 3.570.000 and start non-tutorial cost 3.000.000
?
bug_report_2025-12-13-23h42_st_6.27.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip bug_report_2025-12-13-23h42_st_6.27.0_unhandled_exception_2.zip bug_report_2025-12-13-23h42_st_6.27.0_unhandled_exception_0.zip
Thanks. I just tested the tutorial on Commander and I started with $3m both with and without completing the tutorial. Maybe the change was based on the where you placed the base? It costs different amounts to place the base in different regions.
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On 12/12/2025 at 1:16 AM, dipmonk said:
Just played X2 for the first time (bought the Kickstarter way back when). In general, I loved it, which is no surprise since X1 is one of my all time favs. I like the new mission types, graphics, music, QOL fixes, being able to redo air combat manually, and the main menu screen looks great on my ultrawide. Fingers crossed for mods adding map packs & custom portraits.
BALANCE
I played an honestman Veteran run since I hadn't touched X1/Xcom since 2019.
I lost ~1 soldier/mission in the first month, felt a little easy... and then for the next 7 months the game was exceedingly easy, ground & air, and I regretted not choosing the top difficulty.
Then about day 240, there was a massive difficulty spike. The aliens were one-shotting my guys w/ their new weapons (and perhaps better aim cuz they were elites?).
Then I got Vanguard armor and the game became stupid easy again.
- So I'd say X2 would benefit from beefing up the aliens in the early & mid-game. Make the aliens tougher so there's a real jump after fighting cleaners. And maybe smooth out the armor curve, and differentiate Xenonaut weapon tiers more (e.g. so accelerated becomes borderline useless and you NEED lasers).
- I'd also love if the orbital & endgame missions could be ramped up; in the orbital data raid I finished the objective with 3 turns to spare and camped my soldiers around the teleporter pads and farmed reflexes/kills until I ran out of ammo. I understand some players might rush into these missions to prevent Buenos Aires from being flattened by space bugs... can there be a balancing mechanic where the longer you delay those missions, the harder they become? Or the better your gear (e.g. running mostly guardian & stalker vs. a full squad of vanguard) the harder it is? At the very least, the amount of aliens that teleport in should grow ever greater & faster to ratchet up the tension and make it feel like a desperate underdog bid.
ENEMIES
- The AI's real dumb. Storming UFOs was dicey in X1/X-Division cuz aliens would be behind cover or hiding in corners on overwatch. And sometimes as I was getting my team in position an alien would charge out and lob a grenade. In X2 they seem to position haphazardly in the open. I only experienced two alien grenades the whole campaign.
- There's visual enemy variety... but in combat they mostly feel like different flavor sprites of the same thing cuz they're so easy to kill. In X-Division and/or X1:CE (it's been 6+ years so it blurs together), when armored Sebillians or Androns were introduced, they represented big difficulty spikes cuz the Xenonauts' current guns were borderline useless against them. Also they were a lot tougher so the Sebillian regeneration was actually meaningful, and the Androns felt like terminators cuz they were near-impervious to one weapon type. Also maybe they had more TU so their ability to walk through walls and disrupt your cover/overwatch plans happened more?
- Mantid symbiote gun is cool - but they don't shoot nearly enough of them. Give us a zerg rush!
- Mentarch floating ability has no effect on gameplay because maps aren't vertical enough and very rarely have non-traversable surfaces (water, flames). And they're generally in UFOs anyway so they can't fly over things.
- Sectons don't seem to stick together enough/come in big enough packs to make use of their triangulation. I don't think that ability is strong enough/observable enough anyway.
- Wraith cloaking is... okay, but too easy to overwhelm with bullets. Maybe better if it lasted for the entire rest of the turn so you gotta do whatever it takes to one-shot them, and if that fails, use grenades or overwatch.
- Servitor could be great... but aliens are usually so spread out that it doesn't do its job as a support healer or suppressor
- Cyberdrone is very cool except it's front armor isn't strong enough, it's too easy to kill with bullets to the face.
- Psyon mind control ability is way too nerfed. It means they're already close by and usu in weapon sights. Everytime they mind controlled a soldier (happened maybe 4x the whole campaign), I could one-shot them in the same turn. Also means mind shield module is pointless.
- Reapers are not scary. Maybe it was a fluke, but I didn't see reapers until like month 8, when I saw both reapers & reaper alphas for the first time on a terror mission. By then my soldiers & their guns could handle them with ease.
MAPS
- Not enough verticality in the maps. Why no multi-story buildings?
- Also, I miss vents. They added some additional tactical options in X1's alien bases.
- Alien base design was interesting the first time - a potential nightmare with its 1000 doors. But there weren't enough aliens, and they were too dumb, to realize the nightmare. The second base assault, I found it annoying because it took foreeeever to clear, hunting down aliens that were aimlessly wandering through dozens of little rooms. Btw it would be cool if on both base & UFO assaults, once you breach the UFO/base HQ, all the remaining aliens beeline to help defend.
- UFO interior layout is okay... but I missed the layouts in X1, which felt less like random assortments of rooms. The Corvette you'd enter this little central square room with 3 doors and it was 3 Card Monte from Hell figuring out which ones had an overwatched alien waiting on the other side and how to position for that. The Carrier had this massive ground floor bay/hanger that made a lot of sense for its ship design. The landing ship had this big open interior - you'd enter on the ground floor and aliens would rain down shots from behind railings on the second floor balcony/landing. Devious!
MISC
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If I could have my druthers, I would stretch the new mission types and appearance of new aliens into the midgame. Currently after the first two months, there are no more new aliens until late game reapers & eternals, and only the classic mission types (UFO/terror/alien base) till the orbital. Could you let cleaner missions, or cleaner-style missions (sabotage/ambush/escort VIP/etc) continue? And delay the appearance of some aliens (e.g. Psyon/Wraith/Cyberdrone)?
- Maybe the aliens retaliate after the orbital missions by sending all their remaining Cleaners at you in a kamikaze base assault? Because another issue is that I experienced one base assault early-ish, and then never again, cuz it was too easy to shoot everything down.
- One CTD - randomly, when equipping a Warden armor on a female soldier on the intermediate dropship
- A visual glitch - when a mentarch died from bleeding on its turn, its body stayed levitating
- When the sloped walls in alien bases are destroyed, it looks like I should be able to stand in their spaces but I can't. I'd think either make them indestructible or let us stand in those spaces and use cover properly.
- Typo in the last sentence of UOO-1 Bridge Assault text - "that WE have no choice"
- Maybe add info to the air combat tool tip for weapons - about needing to have a UFO selected by a plane for its missiles to fire. Took me months in-game to figure that one out (didn't matter though cuz missiles are too weak to be a factor, at least on Veteran).
- Lol at one of the soldier names being Putt Anna, I guess that must be a personalized one.
Okay, that's kind of a lot! But don't get me wrong - I had a BLAST playing the game, it's really well done, I will recommend it to others and I will definitely be playing a Commander Ironman campaign next year.
Thanks. It's always useful when players post up something this detailed, and I'm also glad to hear you enjoyed the campaign overall. I've read your feedback, and I've added a few notes below:
- Your difficulty curve feedback tracks with what I've heard from some other players too. The big spike in difficulty on day 240 comes because we're introducing alien Fusion weapons at the same time as a new rank of aliens that are tougher and more accurate than previous ranks (we'll be addressing this in Milestone 7). But it might also be that your natural level is Commander difficulty; I personally think the Cleaner missions in Phase 1 are about the right difficulty so if you're finding them too easy then it might be worth moving up.
- Can you explain further why you found the missions too easy in month 2 onwards? Was the problem that the aliens never had a chance to shoot at you at all because you could always kill them immediately? Or was it that you did take hits, but your upgraded armour was strong enough that it was easily mitigated? Could you describe your overall strategy in terms of what you prioritised on the strategic layer?
- Out of interest, did you run all the story missions as soon as they appeared (e.g. the orbital missions)? I think it's quite unusual to finish the UOO Sabotage mission that quickly. But I've not played it since the last balance pass.
- Thanks for the feedback on the alien abilities.
- Oh yeah, the alien base vents were cool. I'll create a note to see if we can add a few vents to the base maps if we have time. Depends how much time the level designer has free.
- You can still clear the command room in the alien base to get vision over the whole base. But yeah, having the AI make an effort to reclaim the command room would be interesting. I'll note that down as something to look into for Milestone 7.
- Yeah, the mission variety is a bit constrained by the structure of the game unfortunately - given that the aliens are massively outnumbered by the humans and fighting on hostile territory once the overt war starts in Phase 2, most of the mission types don't make logical sense any more. I do have some ideas for how to add more mission variety to the mid-game but that's probably DLC content at this point, because it's so time-consuming to add new missions. We've spent quite a lot of Early Access on that sort of thing already - the ATLAS Base, Cleaner Ambush, Extract VIP, Rescue Soldiers, UOO Sabotage, and UOO Bridge Assault missions were all new additions at various points during Early Access.
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Milestone 6.30.1 Released! (Experimental)
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted
As I've said, best to discuss this in the balance thread. Feel free to @ me so I see the continuation of the conversation.
I'll ask the coders to look into it, but to me what the AI is doing there is breaking line of sight from all the Xenonauts that are looking at it before attacking, because that means it won't take loads of reaction fire after it attacks.