Conductiv

I currently see no real way to get past the snowball problem that comes with strategy/tactical games... Not that you can't make the game harder as to force a series of wins..resulting in any setback causing a deathspiral that inadvertently causes a game over. but generating a system that would still allow for recovery after a setback..without giving people that have no setbacks a free pass to the finish line. while also allowing this system to function in multiple difficulties without having to HP/dmg/attack bloat the adversaries. the main benefit of winning the fight is better strategical benefits (resources, money, relics, tech and soldier XP) that translate themselves into tactical benefits (better soldier stats from XP, better weapons from tech and rare resources, more support structures in the base from the money) losing on the other hand...well it has to mean something, so you don't get those befinits...you often even have to lose some strategical benifits to get back to where you where before you started the botched mission. the setbacks often make it harder to recover while you often don't have any way to effectively catch back up. one way to reduce the impact of the benefits would be to ramp up alien aggressiveness to the player faster if the player deals more (overt) damage to alien activity in a relatively short span of time, but less if the player proves less effective against alien activity, or inflicts damage slower/less obvious. it does not remove the snowball problem, but will generate a optimum activity...where going on to many (smash n' grab) missions quickly would actually ramp the enemy power well above what you would gain in benefits, where a commander that would simply do everything he can do and get the maximum out of every mission, will just recklessly paint himself into a corner. a solution for the "A-team saves the world" problem was already proposed in a fatigue/stress system (effectively though, this would just create more A-teams...but it will slow down the power ramp in every individual soldier)

X1 made good use of shields as reaction fire catchers while fighting in confined quarters, or as mobile cover providers during the exploration phase of the battle...as to not have the point man instantly plastered when a alien went around the corner...the no-shields counter to this problem would have been completing every mission at a snails pace as to have enough TU's left to react against enemies doing the "bolt around the corner and unload" tactic pistols did identical damage per shot to an assault rifle and had a range and reaction fire multiplier identical to a shotgun, this wasn't bad as most enemies died in 2-3 shots and the pistols shots where cheap enough TU-wise to fire 3 in a round. so pistols remained viable throughout the game...well.. the biggest problem X1 had loadout wise was that early game the high accuracy precision rifle allowed for reliable hitting, the pistol could compete with this in confined areas. but the late game was dominated with dudes at 80+ str 100 stam and 80+ acc so they just moved around using a LMG like it was a submachinegun. when you have a team of rambo that can use 10-shot-bursts of high damage rounds like it is nothing...a semi-automatic pistol looks rather weak (just like ANY other weapon for that matter, even the close range shotgun couldn't match the LMG in damage potential), the much heavier armor also allowed for a much larger margin of error..in the early game you would instantly die..in the lategame you can take the hit so shields started to become less important..but still useful

This game is a turn based tactical with the goal to dominate the AI. as your troops complete missions, they become better allowing the player to have a feeling of attachment to them. however, if the game is challenging enough, you will often see players use the same dudes over and over...and then you get the "A-team saves the world" problem. realistically this is solved by the fact that soldiers do not become significantly better past a few deployments, and the same dudes cannot be everywhere at once. now in the game where missions are fed to player in a piece by piece fashion, you would need some sort of incentive for the player to mix up his team...it seems chris will be implementing a stress system that would prevent the player from constantly fielding the same squad. ideally you would want about 20-30 dudes to rotate around, this number is small enough to become invested in them and big enough that they would not simply considered 1 team with backup meat. however, the larger to rotation, the more impact this has on the actual length of the game, as it does take X missions to "level" a squad, meaning 3 teams will need 3*X missions just to "level" for endgame content. in effect a rotation system can also bloat your game to an extend it is no longer fun to play. personally I dislike adding fodder teams like the proposed recon squads, as it takes away from the main game ( turn based tactical) and just staples another minigame on top. it doesn't actually solve the A team saves the world problem, nor does it actually change the feel of commanding a large military organisation. (as in the players hands they will have no more value then a set of fighter jets)

air combat, we'll get a better picture in the next update..but so far it looks okay. inventory system, please keep the belt and have it interact differently then the backpack grid. I'm just worried that whole bit will be swept under the rug and the belt would be basically nailed to the backpack as a number of bonus slots. modular armor good change in theory, just make sure the options for it all have their own appeal..for example..having great chemical protection is never going to be used if all but 1 rare alien will ever use chemical attacks. its great to have a bag of tools...not so great if every problem is best solved with the hammer. floating alien brain monster, well they are aliens so there is definitely room for weird looks..as long as weird doesn't become ridiculous and nonsensical.

love these updates, air combat part is definitely an important aspect, it is a tactical minigame you will be playing an awful lot in the onset of missions, so its important to make it play well..as to not make it a drag when you do it for the tenth time or more, without it taking away too much from the core gameplay. in effect you are making a game in a game that you cannot really avoid like lockpicking mini-games in the elder scrolls franchise, or gwent in the witcher 3 AI also greatly affects how the game plays, for example X1 had a very prominent "alien hiding in the corner of the command room" problem, or aliens with a strange fascination for the UFO door that they kept walking back-and-forth through. or the AI making obvious kamikazi moves like running into the open to toss a grenade, or teleporting in the middle of a squad About the inventory please do not forget to have a distinct difference between belt and backpack slots, in X1 the difference was in my experience practically unnoticeable.

personally I prefer it if they keep psionics an alien only maneuver, and add in the requirement that the aliens would only be able to execute psionic attacks from a source that can visibly see the player characters. personally I don't mind high tech soldiers that can shoot a musquito's balls off at 100 yards...however I would be less invested if my squad turns into X-men with magic fireballs and mindreaders running around I also generally oppose over-saturation with guaranteed hit effects, if the player gets any skill, weapon or tool that is guaranteed to hit and damage the enemy...they are likely to spam the living daylights out of it. this is obvious in X-com, where the destroy cover>nail it with your gun approach is near guaranteed to land in later zones. on top of the high popularity of skills like soulfire, stasis, null lance, combat protocol etc etc. basically most skills that boost guaranteed hit maneuvers, nades, heavy weapons or are guaranteed hits themselves If the AI just gets a lot of units that don't care about cover or accuracy (by having guaranteed hit abilities or super armor) you basically get the situation that you have to burst them down or they will start killing people, rendering cover and gunplay moot. this is a problem in the higher levels of X-com2 where a lot of endgame enemies don't really care about cover and have abilities that are guaranteed to damage soldiers when they are used.

if they get this done right, that would be sweeet, it does require equipment that is better in specialized situations. X1 had a lot of generic equipment, and the only difference between tool 1 and tool 2 of the same tech line was often damage versus clunkyness. (and in many cases damage won, so lots of xenonauts 1 endgame seemed to turn into LMG madness..as the engame high strength+high TUs combo countered the LMG's high TU cost to fire and penalty when used at low str)

MAG has a few up and downsides, now assuming a MAG weapon fires a bullet sized slug at extreme speed using a miniature version of currently in development naval railguns, while maintaining compactness and the capability to rapidly reload. in effect it is a standard ballistic gun, but the propulsion of the projectile is no longer supplied chemically by powder..but electrically by the "gun" itself. benifit, because of alien tech you would have the energy to propel the projectile at extreme speed...no need for the whole casing, just the bullet. the slug goes much faster, so atmosphere and gravity have less impact. disadvantage, need added recoil compensation...because all the energy put into the fired slug is also pushed backwards. and as more speed is added the friction factor increases proportionally..as such for the slug more and more energy is wasted...for the shooter, this energy is still used to propel said gun into the shooters arm. and unlike lasers, and depending on the source..plasma...you still actually need physical ammo.

well shot chance to hit is basically comprised out of 2 factors, the weapons user and the weapon itself. weapon wise, lasers have no travel time over distance (lasers would be much faster then bullets, plasma bolts* or railgun slugs) , so provided the laser is actually powerful enough* you would require no lead nor would you have to account for drop or most other environmental factors(2). this would make then notably easier to aim beyond point blank range. *suspension of disbelief needed, as laser/plasma tech have rather difficult hurdles to take when it comes to effectively weaponizing them. notably that they dissipate quickly over distance and it often takes time for the heat to stack up sufficiently to cause damage. this on top of the ludicrous amounts of energy required for these weapons 2. lasers don't actually have a solid piercing projectile, meaning that smoke or fog would rapidly dissipate the beam, in effect a smoke grenade would completely neuter laser based weapons. certain hot and cold based optical effects might also distort the weapon. when it comes to the user, well unless the gun itself has an aim assist computer the gunman is not going to be any more accurate..and while the game is turn based enemy combatants are not actually standing still. it is certainly still possible to miss. this leads me to 3 conclusions -laser weapon accuracy should still depend on the gunner, but may have a bonus to-hit for targets at medium range and beyond -laser weapon range is effectively hard, beyond the listed range they simply won't have enough juice-per-shot to effect a target. unlike a ballistic weapons damage that starts tapering off. -laser weapon could interact much harsher with concealment effects like smoke and shrubbery

ah well...maybe we get some alenium powered gizmo that facilitates (safe) movement a bit more. varied mission types a fine idea but please do avoid general turn timers, that particular part of Xcom 2 (the feeling of being rushed to dash your squad halfway across the map to an objective, lest I lose squad-members and/or fail) was definitely not something I was enjoying. it was too much stick too little carrot

what I am wondering about is most of all the changes that speed up the gameplay on the tactical layer, X1 was a good game but the tactical layer was very slow to play...it always sorta ended up being a slow creep to the ship followed by a slow creep through the dahm thing trying to weed out every corner hugging alien in there. not things that make me literally play the game faster, no things that makes it less like a "overwatch creep" for lack of a better term. personally I really do like the firaxis Xcom's, naturally with their higher budget they can afford much better graphical fidelity to improve immersion during cutscenes, better animations etc etc. (X1 actually did a solid job with its immersion through audio..keep that up..) battles are more volatile because they use squads rather then single aliens and its recent iteration stealth system really speeds up the pace (but it is also borderline broken with how easy it can be used to exploit the AI) now it does have downsides, most of all the Xcom squads are dinky and have little battlefield support (its only 6 guys and they have no vehicles) and the troops turn into gods as they rank up (breaking the turn system with bonus shots and actions) to top it off the loadout and class system was restrictive (X1's weight based system was much better) and especially during the mid and late game aliens practically never use their main weapons. they just melee/psi-power/rocket/nade/spit etc effectively rendering their whole cover system moot...half of them don't even use cover they just stand in the open with mythical defense bonuses and a metric ton of HP. (in X1 aliens shoot...and later on...they still shoot and they didn't get excessively tanky) late game players in Xcom just take cover out of habit more then actual necessity.

from the information shared by the developer so far, what you fear seems to be the direction they want to go into. -the secret organisation direction is chosen because it makes it lore wise more logical that you have innately limited resources, rather then being a globally funded anti-alien organisation that somehow has to come by with a pittance of money, low skilled recruits and a handful of planes. a discrepancy that apparently bothered the developer. -since a secret organisation doesn't fight all out wars he also wants to change the alien strategy from war/geneharvesting to an infiltrator style combat where the aliens control humans and manipulate governments on a path of selfdestruction. while the dev didn't state that terror missions will be gone, it is highly unlikely given the setting that aliens will perform a high profile action that is hard to covered up. -the developer has apparently stated that he dislikes multi-tile units like vehicles as they cause all sorts of issues when moving around, and that he would much rather not have them in the game because of it. -the dev has stated that he wants to lean more towards a gameplay mix of the current firaxis Xcom and a mercenary management game called jagged alliance 2, taking elements from both franchises. in particular the covert ops from war of the chosen, a guerrilla missions pick-1-of-3 style (so you can't do every mission) from Xcom2, and a limited roster of specific personnel with various costs depending on their skills from jagged alliance. about Xcom having vehicles, the original one in the 90's did...the firaxis reboot does not

it is something that happens in games where the weapon has a range greater then the users LOS, for gameplay reasons LOS is restricted..but in order to give some long range weapons the correct feel, they have a range longer then a soldiers sight IRL people can see quite a bit further then the ranges shown in this game...actually, barring a obstruction or lack of light, we can see all the way to the horizon..beyond a certain distance our vision blurs and things become practically unidentifiable, but they don't just vanish. (in order to assist with long range optical indentification, various optics like scopes and binoculars can be used, turning a dot on a hill into a lighthouse) now when firing at something far away that isn't identifiable (but has an unobstructed straight line of sight to it) it is definitely still possible to aim your weapon. so I can't say I agree with your reason you should only be able to snap/burst at it

first option is more intuitive, it also allows the player to set up his own teams and doesn't get straight jacketed into "must hire these guys to get a workable team" scenario. the multi-class problem is what I'm most worried about...as the most common solution would be to make specialist classes barely more effective then a jack-of-all-trades resulting in the optimum being a team macguyver. needless to say..I want specialists to be worth it. this can be partially solved by not strictly dividing jobs into combat/science/engineering jobs..a dedicated combat medic might be leaning more to science (as he will be adept in autopsies and studies with regards to compounds/techniques used for disabling) meaning that doing science would also boost the medic stat (it is notable that the medic stat does not increase a troopers killing potential...and hence does not thread on the more combat training based day-jobs) this can be done with various side tasks (hacking/sabotage) bullet trajectories etc are distinctly soldier tasks, however finding the nice pieces of loot etc are the engineers suits (material properties, construction methods, suitable stuff to reverse engineer), while hacking panels might be more science-y (cryptology, sifting data for useful numbers or coordinates) improved loot and intel gains might be a suitable benefit of fielding these people...however, they should have a few more utility added benefits (as having just economical benefits to fielding the units makes little sense) . this is mostly difficult with regards to the engineering job, as building stuff mid-combat seems unlikely, so far the only plausible option I can come up with is sabotage an action that might disable some aspects of a ship/base without actually damaging that component (blowing it up would probably be faster..but loud and obvious). point is that if a commander wants to field these people he should have another job for them in mind then shooting/blowing up aliens/collaborators (this is extremely important, if a scientist becomes better then a soldier at killing, soldiers become moot so the benefits of these disciplines should not involve weapons handling or improvements) . medics, hackers, spies, saboteurs etc...and on the base these relevant skills should be trained in the science, communication or engineering discipline.

love the idea, but you need to have some suspension of disbelief with regards to penetrating laser beams etc. now gameplay wise you could play around with it, having "special shots" by carrying mags of special munitions or draining more battery charge (when using plasma/laser tech) for shots with different damage, range and penetration statistsics. this can be used partially, the environment affecting behavior might be more demanding.