[Feature request to curb mid to late game tedium with too many encounters]

Given that it has been months since that idea has been last brought up ... what about the concept of strategically adapting aliens that i posted in that old ideas for Xenonauts 2 thread? If the aliens simply get better and better at whatever they have to do, then the player intrinsically will not be able to do the same thing over and over for too long, because eventually the aliens will just out-stat him to the degree that it becomes impossible. This also adds an easily understandable and relatable soft game timer.

[Alien Rescue Missions]

Imagine this: one of your craft has been shot down, and you have been able to confirm via radio that several of the crew members, including a mid-level officer, a good scientist and some valuable engineers, are now stranded behind enemy lines. You can assume from previous engagements that the force that shot down your craft is assembling a strike team to take these soldiers prisoner or kill them, and obtain as much of your tech from the damaged craft as they can.

Would you not send a strike team in to rescue them, and place a bomb at the crashed transport craft to render it worthless to the enemy?

Why aren't the aliens doing this?

 

I think that would be actually be an interesting (and reasonably easy to produce) addition to the game: if a UFO is shot down, a "Rescue UFO" is spawned not long after, which will fly to the crash site and render it unusable. That "Rescue UFO" would need to be accompanied by a strong fighter cover to avoid cheesing (shoot down one UFO, then intercept the rescuers for additional resources), and it might also be an idea that once a rescue party has been wiped out, the aliens will not send them any more. While this is stretching realism to a notable degree, it would even be an idea to have the alien rescue party show up after a certain number of turns at a crash site (optimally that number of turns is determined by the distance of the Rescue UFO to the crash site), introducing a believable game timer for wanting to clear the crashsite quickly enough.

[Improving Ambiance and Immersion in Xenonauts 2]

If there are night missions, there will be light cones, no? I think it might be an idea to distinguish tiles into "fully lighted", since they are completely under the cone of light created by whatever light source the soldiers are carrying, "not lighted" and "partially lighted". This would allow to keep the visual presentation from being jarring as you can just display a light cone as one would expect it, yet is easily understood by players.

[Don't you know there is a war going on?]

For me personally it would be really nice to see Earth's military forces put up the best fight they can on the screen, and then gradually see them ground down in their hopeless struggle against the alien invaders. I think it's a quite visceral experience to see one allied npc aircraft after another shot down, knowing that the nations cannot replace them at the rate they are losing them. It'd strongly reinforce both the direness of the situation and the importance of the fight I am in.

I also see no reason not to integrate player options into this: the allied nations send up planes to shoot down UFOs, you can send additional planes to join into a squadron. The allied nations will, sooner or later, try and deal with a crash site themselves. You can either try to be there first so you get all the loot for yourself, wait until they are there and have some allied NPCs helping you, which will then also demand some of the spoils, or just decide that you don't have the time to deal with it and the crash site disappears eventually having been cleared by the nation it is in.

 

As far as difficulty goes - i actually made a post quite a while ago, where i looked into possibilities of keeping the difficulty adapting to player skill and keep the game engaging and challenging throughout all phases. As far as i know part of the central idea - that the AI adapts to player behaviour - is going to be part of Xenonauts 2, albeit i have no information on how significant that will be.

[Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta Build V3 Released!]

Haven't had too much time to keep up with things, but quickly wanted to post this: the release of the original StarCraft was postponed time and again, but that game became a cornerstone of establishing Blizzard as a gaming company. Bethesda on the other hand has by now acquired a reputation for consistently publishing unfinished and extremely buggy content, and i know a number of people who have openly stated they do not intend to purchase any more products from this company. I'd say that it is pretty clear on which side to err, and completely support you delaying any part of the release of the game until it's ready.

[Advanced AI - Public Question to the Goldhawk Team]

On 6/24/2018 at 8:41 AM, Decius said:

An algorithm that is good with units that aren't the ones it will be controlling, or good against units that aren't the ones it will be fighting, is unlikely to be good at its actual job.

I'm sorry, but as a programmer i can tell you that you are plain wrong. The basic steps for pretty much any unit in Xenonauts are virtually identical: move to optimal position, engage target if possible, repeat until no further effective moves can be made with the remaining TU. In the vanilla non-CE Xenonauts 1 i would even expect that all single tile ai-controllable units excluding reapers were using literally the same algorithms, with optional sub-routines for special abilities like flight or teleportation.

Please keep in mind that the original topic of discussion was primarily whether the question "Is this an AI that is challenging due to strategic/tactical decisions rather than just stat / number superiourity?" can even be reasonably objectively answered.

 

On 6/24/2018 at 8:41 AM, Decius said:

A reaper aware of an enemy far across an open field will run towards it, because that's what reapers do, even though a better tactic would be to hide in a blind corner until within or behind enemy lines and attack suppressed troops from behind.

Actually, you just wrote a good scenario of how reapers could be shifted from slightly annoying nuisances to the actual terror troops they are supposed to represent. I tell you if reapers acted that smart, even if their stats were sub par, players would break out in cold sweat as soon as they hear that reapers might be in the operation area. And that will get you WAY better player reviews than just a super tanky no brain reaper that runs straight at the player, where it is not a skill challenge of positioning and identifying threat areas but instead a test on if you brought enough equipment to be able to gun down the reaper before it reaches your troops.

 

On 6/24/2018 at 8:41 AM, Decius said:

Six weeks straight of programming might not be the most efficient use of time/money. A few iterations of candidates sent to beta testers with the instruction "Find the cheap strategies that are way too effective", followed by algorithm or combat balance adjustments that make those strategies not excessively effective is probably the way to go.

Again, you might want to leave these things to people who are actual programmers. The fine tuning you speak of is definitely good and necessary, but implementing things like basic AI squad tactics is something that needs to be done before you can even send out your prototype to the testers for them to evaluate whether what you consider squad tactics is even worth anything ... and writing that AI code costs time and money.

[Why so Serious?]

On 6/25/2018 at 7:48 PM, Ninothree said:

Did you ever play Fable? That game was built around choosing to be good/bad but the choices ended up feeling tiresome. They were never really that deep or thought provoking. That always seems to be the pitfall, that choices seem too obvious, e.g. kill/save the civilian.

There certainly are a lot of games that do this wrong, but there are also some that manage to pull it off. Again, i'd like to point to Prison Architect as an example that also manages to not attempt to bludgeon you over the head with a binary morality. In one of the Fallout games you run into a slaver who is using the resources of his "trade" to research a cure for an epidemic that is causing great suffering in the region - with the option of either helping him or disposing of him and freeing the slaves. I've also heard that there are several ethically complicated quests in the Witcher series ... i have the games sitting at home, just cannot find the time to play them. If you want one that will really weird you out, try Sunless Sea.

As an industry, we actually even know reasonably well how to do a game like that well - but that requires us to avoid the binary "good versus evil" morality, and especially large US game developers are very unlikely to do that.

On 6/25/2018 at 7:48 PM, Ninothree said:

Even if the choices are less transparent, I find myself disappointed by how little those choices impact the game - kill em, don't kill em, what is the difference in the end.

You just made the perfect point on why including this as just a wikipedia style information mod is a sub-par option. I personally was a little miffed that you were basically forced to wipe out humanity at the end of Xenonauts 1 ... i'm not so sure if people would appreciate it if the Xenonauts organisation just goes ahead with these highly ethically questionable options without the player having any say in it. If global events are moddable in the final version of Xenonauts 2 it might be a project worth looking into, since there probably will be simple choices like "Dispatch Agent for Z days to gain XXXX $ or Do Nothing".

[Advanced AI - Public Question to the Goldhawk Team]

Thank you for the information.

[Advanced AI - Public Question to the Goldhawk Team]

14 minutes ago, Chris said:

Do you still want me to give you a figure?

Yes. In pretty much any game review, the critic will comment on whether the graphics are good or not so much, so there's pretty obviously an industry standard of what is considered "good graphics", and same goes for AI. If you want a testable metric: if you give the AI the same units that the player has, and your test players react with "That was tough" or "That was a challenge", then you almost certainly have an AI that is good because of tactical / strategic decisions rather than number superiourity.

[Advanced AI - Public Question to the Goldhawk Team]

I asked in the Xenonauts 2 Kickstarter Stretch Goals thread at about which sums we can expect better AI that will be able to prove a challenge due to strategic / tactical decisions rather than merely stat superiourity and larger numbers - a question that was echoed by one of the next posters, yet there was no answer. You chose to hide all replies to that thread and lock it, so i ask again here.

[Why so Serious?]

7 hours ago, Chris said:

Which is sort of what you're talking about, I think.

In part, yes. What i wrote was, i think, initially primarily created as an attempt for myself to understand why i am taking the stances that i take, and to put them up for discussion, so that they can be torn apart if i am wrong. Internal logical consistency is in my opinion a key quality for pretty much any thing created by man, including video games. At any point in a book or movie or game when i start thinking: "This is nonsense, why didn't they just ..." it throws me off and makes me like it less, whereas whenever i see something well executed or even a practical idea i myself didn't come up with i feel delight and get immersed more. But beyond that i feel that looking at things realistically gives us perspectives we elsewhise wouldn't have had. Wondering pragmatically how robots bound by the laws of Asimov can allow humans to work in dangerous environments like space give us one of his great short stories. Thinking about the technical limitations of near lightspeed travel gives us the exploration of society through time in Haldeman's Forever War. X-Com, Firaxiscom and Xenonauts are all works of science fiction (with a bit more or less science in it), and there are very different ways of approaching that. The original X-Com was somewhere between pulp and horror, Firaxiscom closer to a Hollywood interpretation of nigh-superheroes. What if Xenonauts went the way of great classical science fiction authors like H.G.Wells, making us look on our own society and the preconceptions that we hold? In Xenonauts 2 the player is in charge of what by and large would be categorized as a terror organisation by most super powers in the world right now. It could ask the very uncomfortable question of whether drug trafficking can ever be considered ethically or morally permissible, if the alternative is that your entire group of people - in the Xenonauts case the humans - will be enslaved. If not doing so will lead to some of your subordinates being tortured by your enemies, can it ever be forgiven to agree in helping an organisation that exploits forced prostitution? Through action or inaction, you consign feeling individuals to hell. Can sacrificing a smaller number of individuals for the good of the many be forgiven? As a military commander, isn't that the very definition of your task?
And i do not see asking these questions just as a means to get a quick emotional response out of the player, but would hope that if done well they might inspire thought and discussion similar to how Prison Architect did.

[Why so Serious?]

2 hours ago, Dagar said:

XCOM had so much potential, but in my opinion it wasted most of it for cool special abilities, effects and heroic pseudo-narrative, and with XCOM 2 and its Add-On they absolutely went down that rabbit hole.

I actually feel slightly different about this. To go for a power fantasy rather than a more instrospective, thought provoking alternative was a design decision, not a design error (though Firaxiscom has enough of those as well). It even goes a step further.

Actual organisations involved in assymetric warfare are pretty much always involved in drug rings, human trafficking or extortion to fund their war efforts. That isn't necessarily because they are the most abhorrent human beings you can find, but rather because these fields offer some of the highest revenue margin, and fighting a nation state costs A LOT of money. Remember back when critics found out that in a GTA game if you modified the game files you could spend some nude quality alone time with your girlfriend and a lot of the US press completely freaked out over it? Well, imagine those same journalists found out that in X-Com 2 the most efficient way to appropriate funds was to help a criminal organisation set up a human trafficking ring for forced prostitution, utilizing either heroin or crack to keep the victims from running away.

It doesn't even matter whether Firaxis wants to delve into deeper topics of warfare, they can't. They cannot afford to. For Goldhawk Studios on the other hand a public press outcry about their game would probably be a net win: they'd basically get a lot of free advertisment time, and a lot of people would pick up the game for themselves to figure out how much of the press gossip is actually true.

And i admittedly do blame Hollywood in part for some of the things like the US loss in the second Gulf war. The public demanded that the forces secure victory without significant losses, without civilian casualties, and it really shouldn't cost too much. Heinlein would have said: the public demanded the welcome impossible and got the very unwelcome possible instead. But a lot of these people didn't think and reflect, they were just so used to that a small group of rogueish heroes can overcome any odds if they just believe in themselves, since they saw that in movies all the time, that when casualty lists started pouring in and news of killed civillians came out, there was a public outcry and even worse strategic decisions were made.

I'm not a game elitist. There needs to be place for a game like Candy Crush or Hearthstone or League of Legends or Firaxiscom. But there also needs to be space for an X-Com successor that takes you to uncomfortable places and makes you think ... and the original X-Com was not a game that you played and felt safe and comfortable with.

 

2 hours ago, Dagar said:

The whole premise of an alien invasion on earth is just so far from realistic that you can never build a realistic narrative on that.

There are a number of hard SF stories that start with a very unrealistic premise. The Salvation War comes to mind: YHWH has forsaken humanity, the armies of hell come to invade Earth and find out we changed the rules of warfare a bit in the last 150 years. Quite a good read in my opinion. But having dabbled in robotics, i'd say that most of Isaac Asimov's work could be considered to be in the same category: his entire concept of "Positronic Brains" has no basis in actual science at all.

 

2 hours ago, Dagar said:

From what I have read about how Xeno 2 is meant to be, I have doubts that Goldhawk are able or willing to really pull this through. And I don't really blame them; I know they are a small team and can't put weeks into features that are just there to fit the narrative.

Willing is one thing, but a lot of this wouldn't even cost that much. There already needs to be a function like displayPopupMessage to alert players to research being complete and the like, so expanding that slightly wouldn't take too much work. Hiring three more writers for three months also shouldn't make too much of a dent into production costs. Basically, all of that would probably cost about as much as implementing jetpacks.

 

3 hours ago, Dagar said:

Hardly any modern game ever takes that branching narrative approach and is successful with it. The Witcher 2 comes to my mind, but I can't think of any game like this in the tactics or strategy corner.

I am not entirely sure if we are talking of the same thing, but an example that would come to mind for me would be The Last Federation. I haven't had much time to play games recently, but i'm pretty sure several of the newer 4x type games would also go in the same direction. Having events happen in game and having those events influence other events in the future (without necessarily explicit story branches) would seem fairly common to me.

 

3 hours ago, Dagar said:

we will now split our small force prophylactically into even smaller teams, give them military grade weaponry and send them out into countries all around the world, while our operation is meant to stay covert, and a global crisis which we aim to prevent is smouldering, threatening to become explosive at any time. And we expect these countries with our soldiers in them not to react to unidentified, heavily armed combatants in their borders, and the lurking aliens to never find them even with their advanced technology.

Yeah, that actually is more along what i would like to see considered. Just get a military advisor and ask him: "In this scenario, what would actually happen and how would the different organisations react?" Sure, there are some cases where you need to deviate from a realistic response of the world to make the game more enjoyable, but by and large i'd think that would yield a much more relatable and realistic world to play in.

[Why so Serious?]

I've been been an advocate for a more realistic and grittier version of Xenonauts 2 than what some others on this forum believe to be optimal, and realizing this, i started to ask myself ... why exactly? Is more realistic and more gritty intrinsically better? No. More realistic generally is, as it helps with issues like relatability or immersion, but there are some great games out there that care little to not at all about being realistic - Tetris comes to mind as an obvious example.

A game like Xenonauts 2 is not a reflex based game, like a twitch shooter or some console game waving around lightsabers at shiny bits. It is not a game of social organisation like a MOBA or getting a guild to work in a MMORPG. It can be a game about exploring a story and consequences of choices, like the classical Telltale games. It definitely is a game for people who like reading text and numbers and solving strategic/tactic puzzles.

Ultimately, this is a game about a war. Xenonauts 1 was a war between two nation like societies, with taxes and armies and fairly clearly defined battlefields, and Xenonauts 2 is intended to more closely mimic the modern assymetric wars that are beginning to be the norm with a small group trying to do what they can while having to avoid open battle, utilizing abductions and assassinations and the like. So where can this game go? I basically see two options: either leaning towards a realistic, potentially harrowing, or instead towards a super-hero-esque power fantasy. People here know which direction i prefer, but don't get me wrong: i do not think that a power fantasy is bad at all. There are solid reasons why films like Rambo 2 are more popular amongst children coming from war zones than a film like the first John Rambo, which shows the protagonist disempowered, traumatized, and forced back into a warrior personality he had hoped to leave behind.

Still, i asked myself: why would i prefer the more harrowing version? I think i can safely say i have more experience with horror and violence than the average of those who frequent this forum ... so why go back to that place after i finally left it behind? Analyzing that, i realized that a large reason for that is that a game pandering to power fantasies is so far removed from the reality i perceive that it feels bland, disconnected and unrelatable. The reality i know is not one where all soldiers in a company will survive, excluding the token black guy who will die as inspiration to the rest of the troops. It is not one where if you just try hard enough and believe in yourself enough you can overcome any odds. Instead, my reality is one where sometimes your best just isn't enough, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions and live for the rest of your life with the choices you made, and the consequences of your actions.
I know some people think that we should rather tell stories that propagate these lies rather than face reality and be disheartened, but i do wonder if doing so does not actually cause way more harm than good. Because reality does catch up eventually, and it seems obvious that one of the evolutionary purposes of games includes preparing us for real challenges.

Still, there are probably way more 11-14 year old kids out there that love power fantasies than there are people like me ... so why not rather have the game pander to the power fantasy? My answer would be that a game like that is already out there with Firaxis X-Com. When i played Firaxiscom i felt mostly bored, detatched from the conflict. Humans are the most amazing beings in the universe, easily capable of defeating psionic-wielding superminds, out-tech ancient races that had aeons to advance science to it's peak and stomp on warrior races genetically engineered for their purpose, and ultimately, OF COURSE the humans are the very key that the aliens have looked for so long.
On the flip side, the intro screen from Xenonauts 1 immediately drew me in. A number of older military commanders look at you with facial expressions ranging from doubt to slight disdain, as if to tell you: "We've given you a lot of money and hardware, and a lot of good men. We all advised against it, but our governments ordered us to. Do not disappoint us!" And the game continues to tell us that we are nothing special at all, just another world to be conquered and added to a giant empire spanning multiple galaxies. If anything is to make us special, it is our choices and actions as a player that are to set us apart.
The two moments that got the biggest emotional response out of me were quite minor sidenotes in the game. With stun guns and gas grenades i captured multiple Sebillians alive in an early mission to advance my research. The post mission run down made me pause for a short time.
 1   Scout Data Core .................. Sent to research division
 6   Alenium .............................. Sent to storage
12   Alien Alloys ........................ Sent to storage
 4   Sebillian Corpses ................. Destroyed
 1   Sebillian Non-Combatant ...... Sent to research division
 3   Sebillian Non-Combatants ..... Executed
I sat in silence after reading that last line. I understood why we did it, but we were murdering civilians. This gets even worse when you learn that these beings were actually forced into slavery and combat service, and we probably just wrecked our chances at a potential diplomatic solution. Are we really the good guys?
The second happened when i looked at the research files, and found that the researches for the alien species are actually titled "vivisections".

If i remember correctly it was the great author Isaac Asimov who wrote that science fiction is not about the technical advancements - the lightswords, lasercannons, jetpacks or teleporters - but what how we interact with the introduction of these new technologies reveals about us humans. While i do not think that it should be every game's purpose to do this, i do maintain that it is good to have games that give us pause, make us think, challenge our moral assumptions and our perception of the world. Reflex or coordination based games are unsuitable for this, games centered around social interaction would be an interesting option yet i've never seen it done in any, but games focused around story are definitely most suited for this. I personally maintain that a strategy game like Xenonauts might in many aspects be even better at this than pick your poison games like the Tell-Tale games or those from Quantic Dreams, because i believe that implications created through game mechanics resonate far stronger than these very obvious choices.
A good example in my eyes would be to compare Prison Architect to the recent game Detroit. In Detroit you have the choice to either push some buttons to disobey your orders or not to, in Prison Architect due to the game mechanics you just end up making more money by constructing tight housing for prisoners than by focusing on optimizing their recidivism rate, mimicing a real life fact.
Imagine that you had the option to work for criminal syndicates to up your budget in Xenonauts 2. Would you do it? How much would they need to offer? At what type of missions would you draw the line? How bad would the war against the aliens need to go for you to reconsider? If one of your agents was about to defect with information to the aliens because they are disgusted with your cooperation with organized crime, would you let the crime lords kidnap his family to stop him, or would you accept that some of your agents in the field will be killed because of the information this man will leak?

The X-Com developed by Firaxis is a game from a huge company, developed on a hefty budget with shareholders expecting optimized returns, so naturally it will pander to the biggest crowd and try to go for as instant gratification as possible, no matter how shallow it may be. So why should Xenonauts or Xenonauts 2 be any different? Because it can. Creating a product for a more niche audience is a good business decision for a smaller competitor, and Goldhawk can afford to ask the questions that Firaxis wouldn't dare to touch. If Goldhawk won't create an adult, uncomfortable, complicated, ethically challenging and thought inspiring X-Com successor, then my question is: who will?

[Typical Xenonaut Mission]

20 hours ago, Ninothree said:

I think I have to disagree here. I don't think it is the job of a game designer to educate players. Sure, it is great when myths are dispelled but I'm engaging with the game for recreation. Often, for silly and unrealistic escapism. There is room for simulation games, ones that strive to portray the world accurately, but I wouldn't say that is a rule for every designer to adhere to.

You juxtapose a game being realistic and educating with engaging with it for recreation like those were opposing goals. By and large more realistic implementations are also more fun ones ... or game companies wouldn't pay so much to obtain realistic physic engines.

While it's from a different genre, a friend of mine recently sent me a video on the importance of physics in superhero movie fights of all things (Link here)... A lot of people would be inclined to say that here the audience is already expected to accept individuals that spit on most laws of physics to begin with, so why bother? But if you look at a well implemented superhero fight comparing it to the "Batman versus Superman" scene at the end of this movie, i'd wager you'll have to agree that actually a realistic implementation of physical reaction does help in making the movie a better one. Same goes for games.

[Thinking about Bravery and Morale System]

On 6/8/2018 at 8:50 PM, Decius said:

I don't have direct experience with getting shot at with lead, but there's a lot of ability to cause someone who has fair cover to refuse to stick their head out because they expect it to be hit, and there's some value to spending ammunition at an area to make the enemy not comfortable being in the open, even if it's not accurate enough to be directly dangerous.

I talked with several military personnel about this, and every single one of them agreed that at ranges above 20 meters chances to get some hits with a weapon on full auto that is not mounted decrease to nearly zero. Some of them had even done practical experiments where they had soldiers shoot at targets with single shot, burst and full auto and compared the hit rate. There was exactly one guy who stated that he sees value in full auto: not to hit anything, but to cause a distraction while another team tries to get in position elsewhere.

If i heard the sound of a sniper rifle, i'd be very keen on wanting to stick to cover. If i heard full auto fire from an m16 or kalashnikov type rifle, i'd probably feel pretty safe in sticking my head out and returning fire. I actually happen to know of several cases where exactly that happened, and the individuum shooting single, targeted shots did not get injured while being engaged by several people using their weapons on full auto. I'm very ready to believe that weapons on full auto can be used to intimidate poorly or untrained personnel, but starting your strategic planning on the assumption "Our enemy sucks" seems ill advised to me.

[Typical Xenonaut Mission]

1 minute ago, Ninothree said:

Yeah, it is something you have to judge on a case-by-case basis. Ask: does pushing the realism here add anything to the game? Anything less is lazy design. Anything more is kind of a waste of the fact that games are fantasy.

Doesn't increasing the realism of the game intrinsically add to the game by educating players, and not doing so ends up causing incorrect beliefs to spread and stick amongst people? I'd go a step further and ask whether deviating from reality adds anything positive to the game, and if not, advise to make things as realistically as possible without a significant increase in cost.

[Typical Xenonaut Mission]

On 6/9/2018 at 3:18 PM, Ninothree said:

Fundamentally, you have to accept some amount of disbelief in order to generate the gameplay that is traditional in this genre.

While I agree with that, i do think that if it can be avoided, it is not a good idea to just push everything on "Oh well, it's that way because of plot.". If a realistic, reasonable explanation can be found within a non-excessive amount of time, then i do think it can be expected of the writers to do so.

 

On 6/11/2018 at 5:39 AM, RustyNayle said:

I like the idea in X-COM: Apocalypse of agents taking conventional vehicles like cars to a site, it gave a real "men in black" feel.  Hey, if you're running on a budget, why not send a team with concealable weapons on public transport - taxi, train, bus, or tram?

I actually like that idea A LOT. For most places around the globe, reaching them by plane and then car is reasonable within a day, even though it is very understandable why the operatives will be dead tired after a few missions. Even declaring that operatives just need two days for a mission wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea: it will necessiate the player to employ several different teams, which is something that Chris wrote he wants anyways. Of course a number of military installations are deliberately placed in remote locations, so that anyone attempting to approach by car can be more easily detected ... and if things got hot and a military chopper starts looking for you, getting away by normal car becomes impossible if you can't shake pursuit in a nearby city. Another thing is that "concealable weapons" makes it VERY difficult to get to the mission zone in apropriate body armour. You might get through customs with it fine, but it'll make it fairly easy for the aliens to determine the area your base is located in. From what i understood the time span of the game would have to be extended drastically for the idea to work, so that the player could smuggle equipment and personal to and from an operation zone.

[A little side-suggestion on balance and realism.]

On 6/8/2018 at 9:37 PM, Decius said:

Reflected energy wouldn't add any heat to the reflectors, and it takes very little energy to ionize air.

Correct, and if you show me particles that have a 100% reflection rate in real life practical conditions, i'll see if you can't get a nobel prize. Given how much energy is transmitted with a weaponized laser that can noticeably damage an andron which has an outer shell made of metal, even a 0.1% absorption rate would be enough to vaporize the snow-flake like material mean used in such a "smoke bomb". So let's say the first laser pulse is completely absorbed - problem is, the second pulse, coming only milliseconds after the first, will have a clear path to the target.

[A little side-suggestion on balance and realism.]

On 6/9/2018 at 3:44 PM, Rodmar18 said:

500 mW laser could largely fit hand weapons, save for the energy cells.

500 mW (meaning 500 milliwatt) lasers are laser pointers, roughly strong enough to light a cigarette. Yes, those are easily handheld (found one weighing 56g), and useful for attempting to blind enemy personel, but do not expect to cause much physical damage (skin burns, yes, but no comparison to what a 9mm round will do to a body). If you are looking for an explicitely non-lethal way to take out enemy personel, those might be of interest (several military research agencies are looking into those right now, but the person blinded is probably still crippled for life, which is why options like sound cannons are actually considered more interesting by many - lasers are considered because they can damage mechanical optical sensors as well). Here's a website where you can buy some real life 5 watt laserpointers: https://www.c4lasers.com/

Actual laser cutters designed to "punch through steel" operate in the thousands of watts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cutting#Process

The problems you run into with those is not only the weight of the laser itself (not even considering the power cell here), but also that at this rate of energy consumption you generally need cooling equipment as well.

Physically speaking, i can only reiterate: transforming chemical energy to kinetic energy to disruption of molecular cohesion has less energy loss than transforming electrical energy to light to disruption of molecular cohesion.

[Typical Xenonaut Mission]

I've been trying to wrap my head around how a typical mission in Xenonauts 2 would actually go. The following would not apply to base defense missions.

There is a couple of assumptions i am making:
1.) The Xenonauts are a clandestine armed paramilitary organisation that is not working directly with the government.
2.) In the missions that i am considering there are government-affiliated armed personel (might be legal armed private security forces rather than army, for instance) on the map who are hostile towards the Xenonauts and will use their weapons against the Xenonauts if given the opportunity.
3.) Given that Xenonauts 2 is supposed to be set in 2015, long after anti-terror units have been established in most countries, whatever country they are operating in probably has one.
4.) The Xenonauts have access to a magical transport plane, which does not need a runway to start or land, can reach any point on the globe and fly back on a single without refueling, and cannot be detected by radar, thermal sights or normal visual confirmation.

A mission should have several phases, some of which might be so short that they are possibly not even noticeable.

Phase 1: Decision Phase: Initially, the Xenonauts figure out that there even IS a mission. Some notification pops up for the player. The player chooses to either do anything about it, or decides to ignore it from the get go.
Phase 2: Intelligence Gathering Phase: here is where the Xenonauts attempt to obtain as much information on their mission as possible. This phase might be forced to be very short, for instance if an UFO crashed and if the Xenonauts want to do anything, they need to do it almost immediately before the national troops get there. If this is something like an assassination mission, this intelligence gathering phase might encompass several days, during which potentially some operatives assigned to gathering intelligence might not be available for other tasks. Some intelligence gathering skills might influence how quickly the operative gathers the information, and the more time he gets the more data he can provide. This might include: biome for the mission, map size and type (cluttered, open, ...), number of enemy troops on the map, type of alien controlling the troops, some information on the equipment of local troops, response time of local forces (and maybe a way to delay them), and possibly even a full map reveal if enough time is spent on gathering intelligence. It is conceivable that the operative might be injured or even killed during his attempts to gather intelligence ... or potentially be captured prompting a rescue mission (though thinking about it even though i like the idea that would probably be suicide). (Personally i wouldn't like an operative to be killed during an event i have little control over as a player ... some people might like random deaths at higher difficulty settings, though.)
Phase 3: Silent Approach: Since the Xenonauts are typically the attackers, they would want to get in the best position possible undetected before opening fire. In a number of scenarios - assassinations for instance - optimally the first loud shots fired should also be the ones right before retreat is called, but realistically that often will not be possible (real life suppressors do not work at all like Hollywood ones). There might be cases where the Xenonauts are detected on approach, and this phase is basically skipped.
Phase 4: Going Loud: The Xenonauts have been detected, shots may have been fired, the hostile troops are now aware that an enemy is present, their behaviour probably changes from patrols to grouping up and taking defensive positions or moving out to engage the Xenonauts. Maybe a radio jam is in place to delay reinforcements, but normally radio jamming is detected pretty quickly - especially today in the era of mobile phones it will only take seconds, because the mobile phone company will get alerts about thousands of packages suddenly being dropped in the vicinity of a signal tower - so this might slow down reaction slightly, but not by much. If the radios are not jammed, the first thing to happen will be the enemies of the Xenonauts calling for government backup. It would probably be adviseable to give some type of alert to the player that enemy reinforcements are now on the way, and if he plans to finish the mission he might prefer to do it quickly. The first to arrive should be special forces probably of a counter-terrorist unit. These are probably on par skill wise with the Xenonauts, and given that the governments have alien cooperators, likely are technologically at the same level as well or even better. I'd suggest a team size of 4-10, roughly equivalent to the number of Xenonauts on the map, arriving a certain number of turns after the alarm has sounded, immediately aggressively spreading out hunting for the Xenonauts. These are tough enemies, and fighting them has little benefit in the long run if it could instead be avoided, but their numbers are small so there is the option of engaging and eliminating them to continue on with the mission without further interruption.
Still several turns later the actual reinforcements arrive - likely normal military or police forces, less trained and with worse equipment than the Xenonauts, but in numbers that are downright impossible to fight; 50+ would seem like a reasonable start, if the AI can handle those without hanging up (if not, spawn 20 and just spawn a new one for every one that dies?). These are normal soldiers, so their progression through the map will probably be A LOT slower than that of the Xenonauts or the special forces immediate response team. They'll very gradually and carefully move from cover to cover, and might have access to light offscreen artillery, basically slowly pushing the Xenonauts out if they haven't left on their own already. Gameplay wise they function as a soft timer that ends the mission, similar to how some games spawn an invincible enemy that will hunt you off the map after a certain time. Eventually having either completed their mission or facing resistance that they cannot overcome, the Xenonauts retreat to their pickup zone and end the mission (or all of them are dead...).

Now, one thing that is giving me a bit of a headache are helicopters and the Xenonauts plane. Normal anti terror units are usually supported by helicopters, which, if nothing else, give aerial information, but usually also carry a sniper at least. If the player is attacking a military installation in the (in this scenario still existing) USSR, i would not be surprised if the Speznaz arrive by Mi-24 (NATO designation Hind), and decide that since the thing is already in the area, why not use it's rocket pods and electric gatling cannon? Some reason would need to be found why this is not happening ... maybe the magical Xenonauts support plane is shooting them all down?
But then there's the magical Xenonauts plane itself. Since it can land and start without needing a runway, it can obviously go very slow, probably even is a VTOL. Now, let's assume that we cannot put a minigun turret on the thing for sci-fi tech reasons as it would somehow wreck the stealth properties ... but why should rocket pods not be doable? My initial assumption was that the Xenonauts had only one of the magical planes ... if i can have multiple, can i have one transport Xenonauts and another with the transport cavity packed full with guided missiles? If there is only one, what is the explanation for the gradual increase in squad size throughout the game? If i can modify the plane, why can i not add weaponry instead of transport capacity?
If there is only one Xenonauts plane, there'd be the option to embrace the rocket pods: one could simply give the player the special ability to throw a flare once or twice per mission, and in the next enemy turn the invincible transport plane zooms over the map and unleashes hell on a three square radius around the place the flare landed. Of course since a large number of missions will be assassination missions, one would have to consider whether this is wanted as an option to just blow away the main alien endboss. One option to prevent this would be to give the alien boss a type of energy shield that will make him invulnerable for one turn (but maybe also make it so that he cannot do anything himself that turn), that he can only use once per mission, though. If the rocket pods have not been used yet he will automatically keep it in reserve to counter those if they come - if the rocket pods had already been used, he would have heard that, and he knows about that there might be rocket pods if the player has ever used them before. If the player already used the rocket pods elsewhere on the map, this basically means that the alien endboss will be immune to damage the first turn he is engaged.

Given that the aliens know the Xenonauts exist, and that they don't have a base every couple of square kilometers, they can easily infer that they need to have arrived by plane, so it would be reasonable to assume that the alien-influenced military scrambles fighter jets to look for the Xenonauts plane. Even if the plane is invisible and undetectable, the Xenonauts are not, so if the fighter jets got information about where the Xenonauts are disappearing into thin air they could just carpet bomb the area to get the transport plane. Why is this not happening?

The "light offscreen artillery" mentioned previously for the second wave of mundane reinforcements i would implement the same as the Xenonauts' rocket pods: have a soldier throw a flare, shout into his radio and then have projectiles descend from off screen blowing up a number of random squares around where the flare landed. Whether the troops have access to offscreen artillery at all might be dependent on how the players threat rating currently is, and every trooper killed (including special forces) might raise his threat rating by a very small amount.

 

By the way, i am referring to the Xenonauts transport as the "magical plane" because i do not consider a discussion on how it technically achieves these things necessarily fruitful. Basically it is a plot-McGuffin that is necessary for the story to work at all, so in my opinion it makes more sense to initially figure out what exactly it can do, and then go back and find an explanation for how it is doing it afterwards ... in case of doubt, magical alien sci-fi tech mumbo jumbo.

[A little side-suggestion on balance and realism.]

21 hours ago, Dagar said:

What would be cool though if you (or the aliens) had a specialized kind of "glitter grenade" with small reflective parts slowly sinking to the ground that really would reflect the beam (or parts of it) somewhere else, rendering it rather ineffective. You could also upgrade your smoke grenades to do both, maybe.

Wouldn't work in reality on a weaponized pulse laser, since the heat would sublimate the reflecting particles within the first couple of pulses (it already turns air into plasma). I also think the idea would be useful gameplay wise, and gameplay fun is ultimately more important than realism in game, if a choice has to be made; but i feel that the constant agreement to deviate from reality in games and movies has prompted more and more people to become completely convinced of ideas that are just factually wrong. Wouldn't it be interesting to get things right instead and in the process challenge some of the incorrect assumptions that seem to calcify in people's heads more and more?

 

21 hours ago, Dagar said:

But if you want to start reasoning with real world physics, it should be done right.

That's essentially what prompted my post. If as an engineer i read a thread starting with "realistically this should all be different" and continuing on to "All I'm getting out of this thread as that a lot of people really don't understand how real lasers work." and the posters get their physics wrong ALL over, then eventually i get twitchy and write a 1000+ word post.

[I wish there were an Stand Alone turn based air combat game like Xenonauts air phase]

6 hours ago, Chris said:

Pretty sure that's Steambirds you're referring to there?

Correct. It's been a long time since i had time to play, so i couldn't remember the name off the bat. Found that one reasonably entertaining for short period of time - being a free flash game unsurprisingly there is not a lot of content. But i thought the execution was reasonably well done.

[A little side-suggestion on balance and realism.]

I've refrained from commenting on my views regarding weapons and ammunition in Xenonauts so far, but you want realism? Fine, here we go.

On 3/22/2018 at 2:52 AM, Rodmar18 said:

If a 500 mW laser deal "serious damage" at 500 feet (150 m), then why do all the special forces in the world wait for equipping themselves with combat lasers?

Primarily because the transmission from energy cell to laser to heat in the target object is WAY less efficient than from chemical propellant to kinetic energy in the projectile to physical deformation of the target object. To put it more clearly: if you want a laser which does roughly the same damage as a rifle, it will have the size and weight of a cannon, and then your commanding officer will ask why you didn't bring a cannon instead. If you want a real life example, look up the "Iron Beam" Israeli missile defence laser. Even only operating in the dozens of kilowatt range rarther than the hundreds of kilowatt range, it's the size of two trucks with the majority of that being fuel cells and cooling systems. This system is capable of shooting a drone or missile out of the air within "4-5 seconds" according to the manufacturer. Now imagine for the same size and weight you can get about two BM-21 Grad vehicles ... just think for a second about the difference of having your troops engaged by the Iron Beam for 4-5 seconds versus two BM-21 for the same time. Yes, their purpose is a very different one, but this example illustrates just how vast the difference in actual power output between chemical propelled projectiles versus lasers at our current level of technology is. The magical alien power cells would alleviate that some, but the more efficient option regarding pure physical damage would still be a rail weapon rather than a laser.

On 2/15/2018 at 7:17 PM, Ninothree said:

if we're considering realism, I'm fairly sure that a laser's cutting power is related to the duration for which it is focused as much particles which would dissipate the energy en route.

Actually, using weaponized lasers you run into a problem called "blooming". Once your laser delivers more than a megajoule of energy, the air it's going through turns to plasma, dissipating the beam and making it spread wildly. One of the most common countermeasures is to not fire a continuous beam but rather have it fire in short bursts, usually called a "pulse laser" ... which, surprise, leads back to the much maligned laser machinegun of xenonauts 1. Kind of funny how sci fi movies have made people critizise real technology as unrealistic.

On 2/8/2018 at 2:37 PM, buster said:

It just makes sense realistically(no bullet drop or travel time) and it could be a cool balance feature.

Ok, let's talk realism here then. A 5.56x45mm NATO rifle round within the first 100 meters travels at over 850 meters per second, meaning that at an engagement range of 50 meters or less (and we can't even see that far in xenonauts) it covers the distance within less than 0.06 seconds. The bullet drop within 50 meters is below 3 cm according to my ballistic charts. So, bottom line as far as accuracy goes bullet drop and travel time are neglegible in Xenonaut engagement ranges. Just to put ranges in perspective: an olympic level sprinter wearing nothing but a shirt and shoes and running 10m/s takes 5 seconds to move 50 meters. For a trained shooter that is EASILY enough time to take several aimed shots at the runner, meaning that 50 meters must be more than the range you can optimally cover moving two turns after having maxed out your TUs.

An argument can be made regarding recoil or even more interesting flinching, but bullet drop and travel time are neglegible at these distances.

 

On 3/5/2018 at 6:35 PM, Chris said:

In this example, given the player starts with projectile weapons already, I'm pretty sure 90% of players will stick with ballistic weapons.... because they're just as good as laser and plasma weapons, just different.

Someone else quoted scientific research proving that over 90% of Xenonaut players are minmaxers ... couldn't find the exact quote nor replicate the research, but it seems plausible to me. Basically the playerbase can be split into two groups: those who don't overanalyze and are just in it for the fun, and they will research the weapons simply because they are later in the tech tree and therefore they must be better, and those who are of the minmaxy type, who only need to see a rather small advantage to start considering the research.

On 3/5/2018 at 6:35 PM, Chris said:

If what you're suggesting is that projectile weapons are the MAG guns, so the player is given access to the research for Lasers / Plasmas / MAG weapons early in the game and they're essentially equal to each other - well, that's a better solution, but it still means that people will just pick their preferred type of advanced weapon and it's not worth them investing the research into getting any of the other types. Because they're all equally good, so why would a player spend three times the research points and resources getting all three when it's perfect viable to use just one of them?

Since the weapons have different strongpoints - accuracy, damage, range - if the player has information on which qualities are most beneficial to him in the mission he is engaging in he will also choose a different weapon. For that purpose, intel on whether the next missions area will be an urban sprawl with tight corners and only short line of sight or a few buildings and watchtowers in the arctic with virtually no cover to be found would need to be available to the player before he chooses what loadout he wants to bring. Being able to have additional information on what enemy you are facing - given you can then infer the amount of damage needed to take down one of them and the range at which they prefer to engage your troops - would also be useful.

 

If you actually want somewhat more realistic weapons, introducing a flat armor value for targets which reduces damage and an armor penetration value for weapons would make most sense. The normal 5.56x45mm ammunition issued to NATO foot soldiers is in fact not designed to kill. It is intended to wound the target, since a wounded soldier screaming in pain won't be a threat for a bit, while at the same time requiring a second soldier to give him medical attention and reducing the morale of his unit as he suffers near them. Compare that to the specially developed FN 5.7x28mm ammunition for the FN P90 submachine gun. This weapon was designed for use by special forces in close quarter combat - it's projectile velocity is far below the 5.56 round, and it is made to deform after penetrating the target, so that the maximum amount of kinetic energy is transmitted to the target and overpenetration is avoided. MAG-weaponry would in my opinion actually be counterproductive for use against "soft" human targets. The projectile will rip straight through, actually doing less damage than a slower projectile which starts to tumble and deform (and possibly even split) inside the target. If body armor is available which actually stops normal rifle ammunition from penetrating, mag weaponry suddenly becomes much more attractive. There's a fair chance it still wouldn't do more damage than a convential round if it penetrated, but the issue is that the not penetrating normal rifle round does effectively no damage at all.

 

Ultimately, introducing non-comparables to the different weapons would probably be the best way to go. Making lasers "blinding" which game wise would probably be best implemented by a negative accuracy modifier for the next turn only (for instance assuming that personel is equipped with automatically darkening lenses, which then however leave them in the dark for a few seconds), and giving all plasma weaponry aoe damage, making them the highest damage weapon in the game, which is however hard/hazardous to use because of it's very short range, might well be the most effective approach.

 

[Thinking about Bravery and Morale System]

Yeah, but light machineguns in xenonauts 1 were the best suppression weapon in the game ... in my eyes actually their main purpose, since damage wise high tech rifles did well enough at just killing aliens, with less reload times and TU costs. As far as "flying earth and rocks" go ... ask a hunter to fire his weapon into the ground nearby, and observe just how much earth actually goes flying. Unless they are using an elephant rifle it'll be pretty much none. They generally will refuse to fire at rocks, because the rock will just remain inert with the projectile bouncing off it and ricocheting off in a random direction.

[Thinking about Bravery and Morale System]

Firstoff, i think those are actually interesting ideas that would probably benefit the gameplay.

 

9 hours ago, Decius said:

Suppression isn't the result of being scared of bullets. Suppression is the result of seeking cover (or minimizing your profile) against the incoming fire that you are actually taking.

We don't see the effects properly because the abstractions pretend that everyone is standing still and waiting their turn while being attacked.

 

4 hours ago, Rodmar18 said:

Though not being a military, I disagree. When you are suppressed by a nearby burst, it's not because you seek for cover (it's too late anyways), it's because your senses are perturbed, and perhaps you loose your balance as well. It's exactly what a flashbang grenade is made for.

 

Your disagreement stems from a common misunderstanding regarding "suppression" and what i call the 5.56 suppression-myth. Anyone who's ever fired a normal rifle knows that there's an explosion right in front of your face, and if you are not wearing ear protectors you will get hearing damage from doing it too often (and anyone who hasn't can probably figure that out rather quickly). In comparison, a normal rifle projectile - 5.56 or 7.62 doesn't make too much of a difference here - makes a "thwud" sound if it impacts something soft, or a "shhpeng" if it ricochets of metal. Those sounds are so quiet that untrained personal oftentimes are initially rather unsure whether they are even being fired on. Any idea of "physical suppression" the sort of which would be caused by a flashbang or an artillery barrage is therefore utterly laughable - if anyone would get suppressed, it would be the shooter, not the target. The smallest calibre where i'd be willing to consider the possibility of physical suppression would be 12.7 / .50 cal (which is typically mounted and not carried by infantry) ... if parts of the wall you wanted to take cover behind start to vaporize, then yes, i consider an effect of physical suppression likely. Nonetheless especially the US military continues to propagate the 5.56 suppression myth, leading to rather ridiculous numbers of bullets fired per kill. This rather confused me, until i read the excellent book "On Killing" by Dave Grossman. Ultimately, "5.56 suppression" is a rather lethal turn based game, where either side gets to "suppress" the other by wildly firing roughly in the direction of the other with no real intent of killing anyone, and then hide in cover reloading: "Sorry, I can't do anything, Sarge, I'm being suppressed!". Actual kills then happen either by artillery, airstrike, crew served weaponry or the 2% of military personel that actually shoot to kill - and those don't use rifles on autofire, ever.

There definitely is such a thing as physical suppression from massive explosions like artillery barrages or 30mm autocannons loaded with HE rounds, which then gets a bit confused with "5.56 suppression" which is actually people taking cover because they don't want to get shot (and usually also don't want to shoot anyone).

There is the valid question whether one really wants to set that straight in a video-game about killing aliens, where the hesitation to fire a killing shot would doubtlessly be far lower than in a conventional war of humans against humans.