Bobit

@Chris In popular mods for UFO defense there are 4 ways dropships are unique 1) Dropships have different ranges, speed, and terrain they can travel on. This means that some nearby missions you will have 12 soldiers in an APC, and in some rapid response missions 2 in a car. 2) It adds some geoscape strategy deciding which dropships you should research/manufacture and where. 3) In underwater missions you must wear a dive suit, in covert missions you cannot wear heavy armor, etc. This requires a lot of content, but it's fun. 4) Just like Apoc the 40k mod has dropships which also function as interceptors, and interceptors which also function as HWPs (I think). This is even more awkward, but pretty cool. But yeah you're probably right that it's not worth making the art for. Which is making me pretty worried. I don't care for art at all, I hope it doesn't result in less vanilla or modded content.

So modders can never reskin a high-budget game. This is very disappointing to me because I couldn't care less for graphics, but OpenX's AI (and all open-source AI tbh) is notoriously poor. It seems that open source games / mods are doomed to either have poor AI (and no PvP playerbase) or not be a total overhaul. I wish more games had ASCII modes like in Cogmind, but it will never happen.

IIRC Chris was claiming they're planning on making modding potential better than OpenXCOM. The AI in Xenonauts 1 is worlds apart too, so there's a lot of potential here. But both X-Division and Long War 1/2 have 90% palette swaps for new enemies, unlike XcomFiles/FMP/Piratez which have almost completely new graphics for 90% of enemies. So it seems like the main problem with modding these higher-budget games is that it's difficult to make graphics for them. So how would you go about making it easier? Just use more palette swaps, or what?

@Decius It depends on the triggers. OpenXCOM lets you auto-pause when a UFO lands (not just appears), so I usually run it on 1-day speed (which is so fast you can't realistically pause manually). The difference between turn-based and real-time is mostly immersion and clarity imo. There's a little bit more you can do on the geoscape with airpower in realtime, like interceptors and sandwiching an enemy, as well as sending a plane out purely for radar. But they're not a big deal.

X2 not turn-based? O_o

The "trained officers" approach definitely works, so long as you only have like 5 officers and officers make a big difference as in Long War. But that's not quite how it works in classic XCOM style.

Imo not every soldier should have the same caps (many original XCOM mods do this). Or there should be diminishing returns (original XCOM does this for "secondary" stats). Super-soldiers with no specialities aren't as fun. But yeah basic solutions help too. Like making the base higher and lowering the gain (possibly implementing gains < 0 or making strength less inflated so you can show the gains as integers), or making it more random, or adding heavy armor, or the exo armor from X-Division that I'm told caps out your strength, or really heavy weapons that can take up your whole inventory as in the original XCOM.

Realism means nothing. XCOM:UFO gives you 2 Captains for every 10 soldiers (or something), and they're always selected from your highest-stat troops. Mechanically, this means your men's morale doesn't improve so much when you rank up, but rather when you get more men. This is not my preferred method because rank doesn't directly correlate to power level. I like to see at a glance that my troops are strong because I have 5 colonels. In UFO rank is relative, in the new system it's absolute.

This is always nice. But could be especially difficult when you consider that bullets are simulated. Most games don't do it because it's more trouble than it's worth, and for this game it's extra trouble.

Did I sacrifice my steam key by buying from Xsolla? That seems fair, but will that mean I can't use workshop for easy mod management?

The main difference between turn-based and pauseable real time is that in realtime people often fail to pause soon enough.

The strengths of Xenonauts were definitely not air combat or multiple bases. Air combat generally followed a single algorithm for each UFO type, and one that has to be micromanaged carefully or you'll mess up the timing and lose a fighter (unless of course the fight is too easy). Multiple living quarters bases were not really a thing. The strengths (compared to OpenXCOM mods) were very hard and intense terror/base missions, and the suppression + cover systems. As well as polish, I guess.

1) It tends to look dumb and just function as a super-crouch aliens can't use properly. 2) ? 3) That would be an interesting in a old-style XCOM-like. The new XCOM has this sort of feature. In Xenonauts I feel that the maneuverability bonus from height is already a significant advantage. But it could still be interesting, and of course an incentive for flying. Hmmm... 4) Yep. Can't you already? Or maybe you have a bad arc? 5) UFO doors were more flexible in Xenonauts 1. But I like this lean mechanic in general. Seems like it would require slightly less restrictive FOV?

X2pedia will have more articles after they finalize what's in the game. It's close to the back of the to-do list.

Couple of months to Steam early access, probably 8 or so until official release? But mod support should happen during early access. FYI it's already publicly released on Xsolla, they just don't want to get negative reviews on Steam because it's clearly not in a very enjoyable state yet. If you're bored, play mods. X-division, Long War, Xcom-Files, all very good.

True, although: 1) With a moderately high reflex soldier you can very often perform an action after opening the door before the enemy shoots you. 2) Sometimes you need multiple flashbangs anyways 3) That's just not a very realistic option in general. Usually your opponent would be able to react slightly to you throwing a flashbang, especially if you have to aim it as is the case in this game. 4) It's kinda OP, basically zero risk.

Definitely play X-division and bomb the hell out of UFOs.

The cap for aircraft allowed in a single combat is what really makes escorts a risky strategy. Dropships shouldn't count towards that cap imo. Unless I guess that cap is infinite. Then dropships shouldn't count towards hangar fighter cap, maybe? Or, just leave it be because escorts are already occasionally viable which is good enough.

Xenonauts (and specifically X-division) already has more detailed breaching mechanics than any game in the genre by far imo, including Door Kickers. You can suppress through walls, blow them up, flashbang, etc. as well as take cover, go for a capture, balance speed vs reaction. Only thing is the enemy automatically senses you through walls in a certain radius, which is a very core mechanic for this game (and existed in original XCOM in a lesser form). Breaching charges with a smaller radius could be nice I guess. I don't know what sync shots and stuff would do. Melee already exists in X-divison, and it's pretty fun, but the design space is limited without original XCOM / xPiratez energy mechanic. Hence why they only have 2 melee types (per phase? IDK, didn't get very far). It's not too different from shotguns, but different enough.

Aiming at enemies = tight cone, aiming at ground = large cone makes sense, fair point.

@Chris I like that solution, but I see two downsides. Save file bloat You have to load twice when loading the geoscape save and then landing. Takes a few more seconds. Also, I would like to say that X2 lags for me while X1 does not at all except for fire. I'm not sure whether that's expected at this stage in development.

I don't like this. A smaller cone of fire can be a significant downside in this game if you want to suppress. That's why the original has all hits guaranteed to hit and the other shots in a variable cone based on distance (which can still hit the target). Also I don't really know how the engine is now "more 3D" than the last game.

It caps at 2 fighters. You often can't beat 3 alien fighters with that, or don't have them available. Also the predictable wave spawns means the chance you'll be killed by fighters you can't see is really low, and if you can see them you probably should just send a 3-fighter fleet. Though yeah escorting still happens occasionally.

In Xenonauts 1 you could carry way more than your soldiers can move with into battle then drop it instantly so you have a stockpile of meds/ammo/grenades just in case. I don't know if this was intended or not, but either way I would like one of these changes to be implemented for the new game, at least to make it more consistent: Include a dropship inventory as in the original XCOM Include a crate with unlimited supply of some items. Maybe 5 consumables of each non-unlimited type from base, unlimited consumables of each 1-tile unlimited item (ammo, frags), 3 ballistic pistols, 2 medkits, and 1 riot shield (if it's planned for X2 lol). Make the encumbered TUs in the dropship last for the whole mission, even if they drop something.

Usually in Xenonauts 1 when the game glitches up (or I get a VERY unfair death) I reload the start-of-mission autosave. But sometimes, especially after reloading multiple times, I don't want to play exactly the same mission, so I reload the autosave from a day before so that when I land on the same ufo it will be a different mission. The problem is then I have to take some 2-10 mins doing the same things I did that day. So I propose that when reloading the start-of-mission autosave, it instead loads a new mission based on the same landing conditions as the first one.