Bobby Gontarski

Hi Chris Thanks for the hints on XCOM 2! :-) X-Com in general is just a lot less character driven than Jagged Alliance. In Jagged Alliance, you really care about your guys, even if they are just mercs. In X-Com style games, your soldiers are by default, impersonal and expendable. One is like the other. Fireaxis realized that those who play computer games like to identify with their soldiers. So they started to mix. They started to add a level-system, names, abilities, customizable looks, etc. However, that does not go well together with a combat engine that really just likes to critically would or even kill your heroes. In short: It pisses people off to get their heroes killed. At least, if they feel it was unfair, rigged or they had no chance. Now, what Fireaxis did, is two BIG No-Nos: 1.) They implemented a half-hazard combat engine and AI, that strongly likes to kill or critically wound (taking away will) your soldiers, even if you played good and made no mistakes. 2.) Because that was just really spoiling the fun, they didn't write a better combat engine and AI, like Jagged Alliance (2) did, but instead, they made half-assed cheap fixes. For one, if you miss 3 shots in a row, your aim is secretly put up by 20 points or so. If you lose a soldier or one is critically wounded, the aim of all enemies secretly goes down by 20 points. - Or something like this, don't quote me on this, I'm not back-checking this right now. This shows the attitude that went into developing the combat engine and AI of XCOM 2. It's shit. It's not even properly started yet, let alone finished or acceptable. Because of this approach in Fireaxis games, you have two options as a player: 1.) If you like to identify with your characters, you will not like to get them killed. Hence, you will have to reload often, creating the "Live, Die, Repeat - Edge of Tomorrow" effect. Plying in Ironman is not possible. 2.) If are willing to sacrifice some soldiers, you can play Ironman and a few soldiers will die. But in return, you get the experience you, Chris mentioned, where you can seeming pull through tight spots, thanks to "just coming through in the last moment". Now, these "tight spots" most likely are created by the AI actually cheating, giving you secret bonuses if you take a pounding. It creates a SIMILAR effect as in a good combat engine and AI, like Jagged Alliance 2 had, but not an equally - or even comparably good effect. At least, that's my take from my current knowledge about the MASSIVE CHEATING that is going on behind the scenes in the Firaxis combat engines and AI to make combat even half-fun / acceptable. It's shit and a shit approach and everyone knows it or should. Now, don't get me wrong, the Jagged Alliance team had the same problem: Making a realistic combat engine and AI turns out to be not much fun at all. The computer, at least if programmed properly, is just too efficient and methodical in disposing your guys. So efficient, that it's not fun. Like REAL combat. In real house-to-house combat, the mortality, at equal weapons and equal ability is: 50:50. Both teams loose half their guys. That's why the Americans like to use A-Bombs instead. Loosing half your guys doesn't mix well with computer game players (or voters') desire to experience a kind of a hero story, where their superior guys beat all odds. And all this is compounded by the fact, that most players will not be nowhere near as good when they start out, as the programmer needs to make the AI for the really good players or for the end of the game. The only proper solution therefor is, to "dumb down" the enemies. At least in the beginning and / or for beginner difficulty levels. But this has to happen in a realistic way. Some enemies are smart, some are not. Jagged Alliance did an EXTREMELY good job at this. In fact, the best in the gaming world. At least in regards to turn-based 2D combat. Their secret to success was: PERFECTION. They did not accept cheap solutions, such as cheating behind the scenes, like Fireaxis did (and has to, due to financial pressures to sell). Instead, they programmed the best turn-based combat engine and AI the world of gaming probably ever saw. And for that, one of the main motivations of Ian Currie, one of the lead developers was, not only that the game and thus combat should be fun, but also that the player never blame the game when something went wrong. And having to reload a previous game save during combat was seen, from the start, as something which the game was at fault for, therefore to blame and thus something he did not want: I'm currently reading "Jagged Alliance 2" by Darius Kazemi from Bossfightbooks.com. It says that initially, Currie wanted to make a real-time game with Jagged Alliance 1, because he never played a turn-based game that he really liked before. He hadn't played D&D or the early turn-based computer games, because he felt they were too statistics-driven (like many who are new to turn-based). But then, while making Jagged Alliance 1, he realized, that you CAN NOT control 6 characters simultaneously in real-time in a battle situation. You cannot micro-manage them as a party-driven game like Jagged Alliance requires, with each different character doing totally different kinds of things. There's only two solutions: Make the characters half-automated, where some kind of AI takes over when the player doesn't micro-manage them, or turn-based, where the player is forced to take complete and total control. - And then also can't blame the game for letting his character do something that got him killed. Ian Curry had a very, VERY strong will about not wanting players to blame his game for anything they were unhappy with. Now, if you have some kind of AI filling in the gaps which a player couldn't micro-manage in a real-time combat with 6 soldiers (and 6 - 8 opponents), that AI would either have to be so good, that no soldiers ever got killed. That would make the game boring. Or it might allow a soldier to get killed. But if that was the player's favorite character, which he spent so much time to develop and with which he identifies very strongly, he will be very pissed. I quote from the book, Ian Currie: "You order that character to patrol an area [or do anything else, half-automated] while you take care of something else. You come back after two minutes [or two turns] and that character is dead. You feel robbed of something that you had no control over and you reload a previous game save." Ian Currie did NOT WANT THAT! Despite being AGAINST turn-based IN GENERAL, due to his personal background of never having experienced any fun with turn-based games or combat systems, Ian Currie switched the entire game over to a turn-based combat system. JUST BECAUSE OF THAT! Just because he did not want players to reload a previous game save because they felt really, the game was to blame for something. As in: "Stupid shit game! It's messing everything up! Now I have to reload again!" These are the kind of thoughts, Ian Currie did not want his players to experience. And he and his basement-team took great lengths to realize it. The outcome is, eventually, the combat engine and AI of Jagged Alliance 2. It is much better, and much more sophisticated, under the hood, than Fireaxis' current XCOM 2 engine and AI. Yes, you cannot see that, like the pretty graphics, thus, it doesn't sell games, but in the long run and adult computer gamers will notice. That's what's happening to XCOM 2 and what happened to Jagged Alliance 2. XCOM 2 sells, because its nice graphics, but it's crap, seen in the long run. Jagged Alliance did not sell very well, because it didn't have nice graphics, but under the hood, oh boy. And people realize it, even by the time they do (now), it's too late and the company has long since gone bankrupt, etc. THAT's exactly what I am saying: Most development time goes into stuff the average player doesn't really consider. DO NOT CONSIDER THE AVERAGE PLAYER AS TARGET AUDIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least not in regards to anything but offering him a difficulty level with which he can have fun with the game. That is my one best suggestion to any game developer. That's what ALL modern games are doing, exclusively and what makes them crap compared to older games: They consider the average player. They want to sell to 9 year old kids, so they remove blood and guts and gore and sex and adult content. And they put in nice graphics and assume nobody will notice a dull, cheating combat engine and AI. NO! This is YOUR strength as an independent developer: MAKE YOUR GAME FOR THE MOST PICKY, SOPHISTICATED, ADULT, PROFESSIONAL, SERIOUS gamer! Not for the average player! Then, magic will happen! Namely, the picky, sophisticated adult player will like it. And guess what? So will the average player!!!! - Even if it's just after a while and BECAUSE the adult, sophisticated player is talking about it all the time. The only thing that might stop an average player from liking a game, is if it's so hard, that he can never master the learning-curve. Put in a beginner difficulty which does NOT break the great achievements implemented for the professional adult player, and you got a great game on your hands. In other words, do not make combat acceptable, by implementing behind-the scene cheating or requiring (frequent) reloads (- or even allowing such as I strongly advise for) during combat. Do *NOT* underestimate Jagged Alliance (2)! Do not underestimate the effort and sophistication that went into it's combat engine and AI. As you said yourself, most things that really matter are things you do not see. If you really want to make a good turn-based game like Jagged Alliance, I recommend not only the short little booklet about the development of Jagged Alliance 2, "Jagged Alliance 2" by Darius Kazemi from BossFightBooks.com, but also that you deeply study - and perhaps even shamelessly copy concepts of, if not necessarily code itself, the original source code of Jagged Alliance 2, which has been made public: http://kermi.pp.fi/JA_2/Mods_Vanilla/Source/ Kind regards, Bobby

Hey, hi Chris and all! Thanks for the elaborate reply! Yes, yes, certainly, I need to play Xenonauts 1 soon, and I will. Just not sure at this point, whether I should finish XCOM 2 first or not. ;-) I am more than pleased that lots of regulars here will have played Jagged Alliance 2! :-)) That's great to hear!! :-) I think it really set a standard in many ways which I wish some games would copy more of. Of course I can see that lots of stuff from Jagged Alliance cannot be copied to an XCom style game like Xenonauts. For instance, the other awesome thing I liked a lot about Jagged Alliance was the realism of the victims of war: How bodies of killed enemies, were, realistically, and unlike in so many other (crummy) computer games, *not* removed. In fact, they slowly started rotting and decaying, attracting vultures and whatnot and comments from your troop. A little grisly, but it really added to the atmosphere. In an XCom type of game I guess that doesn't make much sense because you hit-and-run and hardly never return to previous battle sites. Oh well. I think you're right about the saving mechanics of Jagged Alliance 2. I suppose I had that a little blurry in my memory because I played the game back then from start to finish about 4 or 5 times, always in Ironman. - And never figured out that you could leave the game during combat... ;-) Oh well. Didn't miss it. ;-) The reason why I don't like Ironman in other games is because I *do* like to save my game, before and after important large-scale decisions, just not during combat. Many games such as XCOM 2 I think only offer an Ironman mode which does not allow saving hardly at all. That's too harsh if you haven't finished the game before. You need to know what to build when, etc. I think that's something else and not allowing saving here does not add to the fun at all. The point is, Jagged Alliance 2 was not hard at all to finish for the first time in Ironman mode, because you could save anytime, just not during combat. That's how I liked it and I must agree with the creators of XCOM 2, that that is how I too feel tactical games should really be played. The thing just is: If they already know it and say it, why don't they IMPLEMENT it? I mean properly. Not the crippled way they did, but from the outset. So EVERYONE can play the game that way, even beginners? The problem with XCOM 2 is that it just seems to me that it's too hard if you can't save during combat - I save all the time during combat, as said, like in the movie "Live, Die, Repeat - Edge of Tomorrow", but hate the experience all the same. If I wouldn't save, I'd get my favorite soldiers killed way too often. But anyway, even with my false assumptions about Jagged Alliance 2's save game mechanics, my argument against allowing game saves during combat that allow the player to jump back in time (such as in XCOM 2) still remain. I think it's a bad idea. Including for beginners. If the devs of XCOM 2 thought so too, they should not just have said so, but made the game that way. Then, they would have been forced to implement a combat system (and AI) which allowed for beginner players to get through combat as well, without loosing half their squad or having to reload every turn 5 times. Mind you, I don't mind restarting an entire battle - I've done so many times in Jagged Alliance 2 when one of my mercs got wasted. - And, once again, here: You only don't MIND starting and entire battle AGAIN, from scracth, if the combat engine is really good and well-programmed, and even combat with known enemies and a known map is still great fun to play through, even if you have to start from scratch once or twice. JA2: Yes, XCOM 2: No. Another reason to make the combat engine better, err., so good, that nobody needs to or wants to save during combat and hence, doesn't need to be implemented. Ok, sorry if I go on about this, but now about Xenonauts 2: If I recall correctly, you stated somewhere that Xenonauts 1 was a lot like the original XCOM, and that in Xenonauts 2 you might be willing to leave that a little and develop more of your own ideas, to make the game stand out more as its own. I just though that was a cool idea (without even having played Xenonauts 1, but the original XCOM, and liked it) and thought maybe stuff from other great games such as Jagged Alliance 2 could be borrowed. At least some of the coolest things. - Believing that life might be too short for you to also make a Jagged Alliance 2 style game after Xenonauts 2! In this regard, you wrote about how the whole complex weapon system of Jagged Alliance 2 with it's often less-than perfect weapons (but much better soldiers than in XCOM 2) and different ammo, etc. could not apply to a game like the original XCOM. Maybe not, but how's this idea: Imagine a new XCOM style game, where everything is reversed: You don't have a chance against the aliens superior technology. Try as you might, in the few months that you have to fight off the alien invasion, you can in no way catch up hundreds of years of superior and advanced alien weapons technology. What to do? Instead of trying to research alien technology, go renegade and GUERILLA. [Hehe, like in Jagged Aliance 2... *hehehe*.] So instead of researching and developing your own weapons - and unlimited supplies of them - you are renegades and pick up what you can get from killed aliens and downed UFOs. - Along with *all* conventional earth weapons of that time that you already have access to. I'm sure even aliens can be made to feel the difference between a 5.56mm rifle with AP rounds or a 7.62mm rifle with hollowpoints. - Provided the combat engine is sophisticated enough. Now, all of a sudden, finding weapons and ammo in the field from downed aliens is an awesome thing. Just like in JA2. I don't think it's impossible to make a fun alien invasion game that's based on this more guerilla and poor man and poor supplies use-the-enemies-weapons-against-them type of game. You could say there was a world war III right before the alien invasion, destroying all research facilities on earth. ;-) Of course, that would make large parts of the whole research tree and researching new weapons kinda obsolete. But think about the huge fun you will have in finding new weapons (or laser blasters for ships and airplanes) in the field like in JA2! :-) Tremendous fun! And, if you still want research, you could allow some tinkerers to combine conventional earth-weapons with alien tech, like plasma grenades and mine throwers for instance... ;-) Just an idea. Or are you all set already about how Xenonauts 2 should come out to be? I'm just saying these things now, because by the time I will have played Xenonauts 1 and OpenXCOM, I fear you will have been progressing further down the line with Xenonauts 2, and these suggestions that I am making here, are pre-development kinda suggestions I think. You need to think about these kinda things before starting development, no? Regards, Bobby (not my real name... ;-)

Hello Drakon and Shoes Thanks for taking an interest in my long post! - Those who read it! ;-) Here's another one! ;-) @Drakon: I know the difference between a combat engine and AI. I was talking about both. In XCOM 2 I like a lot that it's turn-based tactical combat. But that's about it. I don't like the combat engine, because it's sloppy, crude and all gloss and whistles, but no love and predictability - coupled with the ability to amaze with creative and unexpected procedurally generated outcomes - under the hood. You can literally tell that this engine is a sloppy job from the first new XCOM Enemy Unknown, and never got an update. You can tell this engine did not have 3 complete re-writes before it was put in the original game, but only about 0.5 play tests. Too little time, too much cost, too much pressure to release not in 3 months, but 2 days ago. And even with that little playtesting it must have gotten, the bugs found were not eradicated. What's more about thoroughly play-testing a combat engine, is not just finding bugs though! It goes much deeper than that! You must, must playtest turnbased combat engines thoroughly. And you must enjoy doing so (meaning the developers!). That's the whole point: While you play test a combat engine, you get new ideas how to improve it and what would be fun to add and improve. That's an important part of development. Starcraft (realtime) is another game where the developers had tremendous fun playing the game themselves and played it and played it and played it and played it. And had tremendous fun. It just shows. They filed the hell out of it. Kept adding good ideas which sprang up during playtesting. Supposedly the code his horrible spaghetti code, but boy is that game honed and filed to perfection! That's what playtesting does. And that's what my argument about not allowing saving during combat is about! Exactly that! To FORCE developers thereby, to experience combat the only and true way it really, really, really needs to and must be experienced: As a one-stop - or rather nonstop express ride to hell and back! Anytime you get a game with a combat engine that was not debugged properly, you also get a combat engine that was not filed and honed to perfection and to really, truly be fun. Combat is an inclusive experience. It should *NOT* be broken down into separate parts. Not even if it takes several hours. Doing that, takes everything important out of the little witty bit of realism, which a combat on a computer monitor might have. Especially turn-based combat. I understand if you want to save a real-time game or a FPS game during combat, but please, not a turn-based game. If you absolutely must have a save option, - which really ruins a battle or even an entire trip or foray into the wilderness, because you forget all that went on and by the time you return and load the game again and drop into the middle of an ongoing life-or-death-situation, you will have forgotten everything, lost the mood which led up to that point. If you've ever played tabletop roleplaying games, it's the same there! Hell, it's even the same with books! Even films! You simply *DO NOT* walk away from a life-or-death situation in a pen & paper RPG! This is not just out of respect for the other players, as you might believe, it's also about YOUR OWN respect for the game, and most of all, for the gravity and seriousness of the situation, which your VIRTUAL characters are facing, RIGHT NOW, in their virtual world... Nor do you end the chapter of a book in the middle of a horrible life-or-death situation. It's like advertisements right before you see if the main character dies or lives. No movie maker, NO movie maker at all who takes his movie seriously would voluntarily allow and admit this. Not if he has respect for his own work. But game developers voluntarily put into their games because players who demand it, don't know how much cohesion and believabiliy it destroys. You don't pause a movie when it's at it's climax. These are ALL situations, which a book author, a movie creator or a game author must use to his fullest advantage to create tension. And to *not* loose it by poorly placed pauses or breaks. Note: I'm not against saving per se. Only against saving at moments when that can and does have a negative impact on tension created in the player. At moments when there is zero tension and zero risk, it's find to save a game and reload it as often as anyone likes. But not when the game and the current situation in it demand the player's undivided attention. In Bards Tale III (I think it was 3, not 4 as I mistakenly wrote in my first post) on the C64, it was even better: You could not only NOT save during combat, but you could not save *ANYWHERE* in the wilderness AT ALL! :-))) You could only save the game when your party was safely parked in a guild / tavern in a city. It was awesome! Tremendous tension when in wilderness!! Believe me! You don't know if you haven't played!! That's the whole lure of rouge-like games. Or it has a lot to do with this. What did that do, not being able to save anywhere but in a major safe city? Yes, you had to THINK ahead before staring to play. Playing the game was really just that: Like a trip into the unknown wilderness in real life. How cool was that!!! :-) You don't start such a trip if you know you won't have the time. Or you plan ahead and make sure you can return on time. It was awesome. You went out, battled to your last hit point - always lured by treasure and experience points, and the wonders of the world to discover, and then, on your way back to the safety of the city and savepoint, you literally sweated blood if you even saw a goblin or any other threat from a distance. If they caught up with your weakened party now, that would be it! The whole trip would have to be experienced again. - But that wasn't so bad, because a lot was created procedurally. At least all the encounters. No other game could duplicate that. Jagged Alliance 2 does a good job in Ironman mode though. No saving during combat. If you absolutely must have the option to save during combat, you could add a ONE-SAVE-ONLY option. For instance, like "Swords of the Stars - The Pit" implements. That way you can save the game, walk away, and continue when you come back, but can't savescum. Not in the least. This does force the developers to GUARANTEE that combat is fair and entertaining. And that's what's so extremely important. But let's talk about AI as well: In XCOM 2, the bad combat engine goes hand-in-hand with a CRUDE AI. I my view, a proper AI needs to deal with as far as possible *EXACTLY* the same data, which a player in the shoes of the computer would have. In other words, no cheating on dice rolls, no peeking in the cloud of war (from the computer character's perspectives), in player's stats, etc. No peaking what weapons with what range player weapons have etc. If an AI can only even stand a chance against a player by the programmers taking peeks at the player's stats, positions, etc. for the computer to work with, that makes for poor game play and poor battles that seem mechanical. An AI should be as human-like as possible, without undue possibilities or cheats which the player doesn't have also. Of course, that makes AI more complex. Same with difficulty levels: Instead of having an AI cheat and auto-adjust difficulty levels or aggressiveness based on player's strength, levels or party members, which XCOM 2 implements religiously, like its gender-equality political over-correctness, players much rather should have a choice to pick their battles. There's no trace of this in XCOM 2 either. In Bard's Tale III that was perfectly implemented: You left the guild with your party where you last saved the game, left the city, and explored new parts of the world, then went back, drooled over the treasures you found, hopefully without loosing anyone, and finally saved again. This way experiencing the whole game was not so much like a book that you could stop anytime, but like a series of real forays into another world, which just happened to exist in your computer monitor. If the area you picked for your foray was too tough, had monsters in it which you could in no way handle yet because you just didn't have the necessary level yet, NPCs warned about this (big baaad monsters there, believe me!) and if you didn't listen, you died and had to start again from the last time you had saved. Teaches you respect, not just for the game, but for the actual world it simulates. And that respect is mandatory for... BELIEVABILITY. Then of course, you chose another, more timid part of the world to explore first. All this saving scheme not only made you take the game very VERY seriously (mom, wife, kids: DO NOT DISTURB ME FOR 3 HOURS! I must face a life-or-death-battle in...), but MOST OF ALL, the world and its NPCs. After all, they are the ones who can warn you about this. The game tells you to take it seriously. And not allowing saving at any point is the only true leverage the game has in this world here, where we live. Get the point? Isn't that exactly what a game is all about? That the player takes the created virtual reality seriously? As a replacement for our dull and safe reality in the real world here? Saving at any point, or especially, at high-tension points really wreaks havoc on this. Psychologically, for us, the users, for our minds. That's just the way the human mind works. The suspense, cohesion and the sense of this not just being a stupid little fiction game that you can walk away from at any time you so happen to please, in other words, believability, is what is destroyed, wantonly and with not enough justification, by allowing saving at any point. You think you only win liberty to help your kids and run away in emergencies, but you loose so much which you do not realize. Wantonly in my view. Another big point is difficulty. Saving at any point is grossly abused by developers, to implement a more modest difficulty. XCOM 2 is a prime candidate for this. By allowing the player to save before every shot and move, really takes the tension out of knowing, that now you must have your shit together and everything must work now. Instead of adjusting the combat engine and AI to be so realistic and predictable, that you can survive, if only you really got your act together, they can simply offer the ability to save and reload. Then, anytime the game does something stupid, everyone can say, oh, no big problem, just reload and do something different, so that UNREALISTIC thing which happened there doesn't happen. - How often has this happened to you in XCOM 2? I'm not finished yet, but I estimate about 1000 times so far. Or more. If saving during combat were NOT POSSIBLE, the developers would have been forced literally FORCED to correct this. In their and their game's own best interest. Adding the ability to save during combat destroys this fail-safe mechanism. Turn-based combats should be creative. Things should be able to happen during combat, which not even the programmers though would happen or be possible. Cool things which amaze everybody. Or make you laugh. Or swear, etc. Things which make you say: Wow! That was awesome. Even if it was an amazing computer move to take you out. Battles should be remembered for the amazing and creative twists and turns they take, in context. It's like my old D&D sessions: You just don't allow players to run off in the middle of the climax of a battle to go to the bathroom. If they do, their character dies because he stood there, motionless, like a dumbf*** while the monster bore down on him! Should have though of that before opening that last dark door on the lowest level on that unknown world which every NPC warned them about! Don't listen to the NPCs, don't listen to the game, then learn to pay respect. Die and reload from BEFORE the combat (or even the entire episode / foray / etc.). - As said, a ONE SAVE option like in "Swords of the Stars - The Pit" seems acceptable to me. I would never use it during serious combat, except in extreme emergencies (which are rare enough to not need the option), but I can see it as an acceptable compromise. ;-) @ Shoes Yes, that's right, everyone wants fair, predictable and realistic gameplay. So, how do we get it? Simple: We get the developers of the game to make it that way. And how do we achieve this? By forcing the developers to *NOT BE ABLE* to cheat and savescum when their supposedly wonderful combat engine or AI makes awful blunders and mistakes, which ruin fairness, predictability, realism and believability, which can only be elegantly swept under the carpet by re-loading a previous game save. The point is this: If a game is developed, from the start, with any kind of ability to save games during combat (at least if this is not a one-save only scheme like in "Swords of the Stars - The Pit"), it WILL - by Murphy's Law and any other game development experience, create a DIFFERENT combat engine and AI, than, if it is developed, right from the start, with NO possibility to save during combat (except perhaps a mentioned one-save scheme which does *NOT* allow going back in time in any way). And guess which combat engine and AI will be better? In other words, not allowing saving during combat, is as much a measure to improve fun for the end user, AS IT IS a measure, to guarantee proper game development! In other words, it is a part of what I would call "best practice" development for turn-based tactical computer games. You don't need to do it, but it does help. :-) As you said correctly: "Not being able to save is only going to exacerbate any problems the devs were unable to fix". THAT is exactly the purpose! By exacerbating those exact problems, the devs are *forced* to fix them or die!! :-) It is as much, or even more so, a tool to influence the development process, in a positive way (and the devs themselves after all must agree to it and see its merit out of their own will), than it is an extremely strong tool and means to increase tension and thus fun in the end user. It does both, elegantly and at very little cost. Thanks to the hard-coded and premeditated lack of any possibility to be able to reload previous moments or turn back time in any way during combat. It's just realistic: In combat you really need to have your sh** together! That's realistic. And that adds realism like not much else. That's why you can't just go back and just nullify any mistakes you - or an unfair, faulty, unrealistic or unpredictable game engine or AI made (like in the movie "Live Die Repeat", doesn't that movie just remind you of XCOM 2 like hell?). Get your sh** it together if you want to play a game which simulates realistic life-or-death situations with turn-based combat! :-) - After all, you already have superhuman powers by your character's fictional abilities, which should be enough!!!, and almost endless time!!! - and thus intelligence - to chose the next action for every character. So you do *NOT* ALSO need the ability to shift time arbitrarily back to any point in the past, just because you, or the devs made a mistake. At least not during combat! If combat is too hard, the devs should have added levels with lover level monsters that are easier to beat. Saving more than one game save and the ability to reload it when you made a mistake is the game development and game experience crippling ability to turn back time arbitrarily in life-or-death moments. It is the insanely powerful ability to shift time arbitrarily. And thus to have endless lives. It's not needed in a world where you already have superpowers, magic, any kinds of super weapons and the ability to think 30 minutes about life-or-death battle situations which, in the simulated world, would need to be decided upon in split-seconds. We, and the fictional simulated worlds have enough fictional (and hard to believe) powers already. And that besides the corrupting influence, which being able to turn back the time during combat has for the development of the combat engine and AI. Regards, Bobby

Dear all, I’m very excited to have discovered Xenonauts and to see that a second part is planned. I must admit, that I have not had the chance to play Xenonauts 1 yet, but I purchased it from GOG and am looking forward to discovering and playing it! :-) About the upcoming part 2, I am old ‘connoisseur’ and lover of properly ‘ripened’ Tactical Turn Based games. Over the years I have played some of the best and I have thought a lot about what makes these games so darn gripping and addictive - especially compared to real-time games, which is not self-evident and I think really worth contemplating and thinking about. Right off the bat, my two all-time favorite turn-based games are probably Jagged Alliance 2 and, before that, The Bard’s Tale IV (on C64). (Of course, XCOM original and Shadows over Riva (Das Schwarze Auge 3) were awesome too!) Never mind the Bard’s Tale, that’s probably too old for today’s gamers (but do check it out if you want to see the appeal and great identification happening with first person view combined with a multi-character party and turn based tactical combat). I would very, very strongly suggest to everyone EVER developing a turn based tactical game to have played Jagged Alliance 2 at least once in their life. Really, if you haven’t done it yet, you really, really should do so now! Why? Because in that game, a lot, lot, a lotlot of things were done right. Especially and most of all, under the hood! And unfortunately, these are things which many modern turn-based games, such as the new XCOM 2 have forgotten, simply because their developers seem to be too young to ever have played it and learned from it! I think there are a lot of things learnable from other great turn-based games such as JA2 which the new Xenonauts 2 could profit of tremendously. In that regard, I would like to suggest to “Dare to be Different” from the original XCOM and the first Xenonauts (although as said, I haven’t even played that yet), and to shamelessly copy some of the very best things from other great games. And by that I don’t mean just superficial things, but most of all, core game and (game) combat engine design decisions. If you have ever played Jagged Alliance 2 (and don’t bother with part 1), and then play the new XCOM 2, you will be GREATLY disappointed by the sloppy, half-baked and just generally lacking in every division but graphics combat engine of XCOM 2. Sure, it looks nice, but there’s nothing under the hood compared to Jagged Alliance 2. And make no mistake: The combat engine is the heart of every turn-based combat or tactical game! So it’s the most important thing. Mark these words. Let’s take a look at some of the differences: At first view, you might only see on the surface, that in Jagged Alliance there were not only tons more, different weapons, where in XCOM 2 there seem to be only 4 different weapons. Namely the ones of the Ranger, the Specialist, the Grenadier and the Sharp Shooter. In JA2, there were I think, without exaggerating, at least 50 or probably more likely about 100 different weapons, modeled after real-world weapons. AK-47’s to weird hybrid British prototypes and secret US military sniper rifles, everything. Really, the Terminator (in part 1) would not have been able to ask for any kind weapon which the game didn’t carry! And that’s not all. Not be fare. After all, what’s a name if there’s nothing beneath it to back it up? The weapons were so elaborate like characters! They had a whole set of characteristics which really made them behave VASTLY different in the field / Game!! The had characteristics like: - Weapon range - Weapon accuracy (close range and max range) - Percentage to jam (those cheap Asian guns just suck!) - Chance (%) and time (Action Points) to unjam a jammed weapon - Reload time (in Action Points) - Type of Ammunition needed - Damage (single shot and burst shot) - Clip Size - Firing Time (Action Points to fire, single and burst fire) - Automatic Mode (Single and Burst Shot) - Addons (silencers, etc.) - etc. This really made weapons the second protagonist in the game. And the angry exclamations of characters missing a shot, like Bobby Gontarski, such as “There is limit to what I can do with these goddamn cheap supplies!!” *really* had a real-life or real-simulated background! And finding something that really was of good quality really felt like Christmas. Currently I am playing XCOM 2 with the Jagged Alliance 2 voice packs and it really shows, or *tells*, what XCOM 2 is missing! Where weapons in Jagged Alliance 2 were like women, some a little unpredictable perhaps, but if you treated them good, they rewarded you with good service through an entire life, err game-time, in XCOM they are just bland and boring pieces of cardboard. Without any character or personality, or background or life of their own. But that’s just the surface... If you dig deeper, you will find much more things which make XCOM 2 not really work. Things where Jagged Alliance 2 shines. Really shines, as in The Shining ;-). One of the worst things about XCOM 2 is, that it does not feel realistic. Jagged Alliance 2 is the PURE opposite of this! Where XCOM 2 feels like it is totally and shamelessly CHEATING on you, always processing hidden numbers, which the computer players should not have access to, Jagged Alliance 2 *never ever* feels that way. The pure opposite! Like have you ever had your guys set up an ambush with ‘Overwatch’ and then have the computer move a guy precisely to that square where your invisible visibility supposedly stops, only to throw a hand grenade at you without triggering your overwatch? The AI is CHEATING!! And that’s by far not the only time XCOM 2 does this. You can just feel it doing it all the time and in all kinds of circumstances. The sad thing is, kids of today who never played classics such as Jagged Alliance 2 which did not do this kind of cheating or peaking behind secret game data don’t know any better. They believe, that’s just the way turn-based games were... Jagged Alliance 2 *always* feels totally realistic and predictable and it never ever feels like the computer or AI is accessing game data that the real enemy would not have (it if were an equal other player). That’s what makes combat, and thus, because combat is the heart of every turn-based game, the entire game so believable and therefore so damn fun, realistic and great! This feeling of the game cheating on you really has a bad impact on XCOM 2. I’m talking just for starts, for instance about the to hit percentage numbers. Sometimes you have a to-hit percentage of like 90%, but every time you take the shot you miss. Ten times in a row! Of course this has a lot to do with the random seed, or the dice roll that is stored within in the Save Game. When you miss a shot and load a Save Game, you will miss it again, because the to-hit rolls have been pre-rolled and stored inside the Save Game. How stupid and messed up is that??? So those fancy hit percentages lose any and all of their believability and credibility, when you miss an 90% hit 10 times (or infinite times) in a row. And besides this, a lot of calculations are also just flat out false. Sometimes you can shoot enemies right through solid walls, were the hit chance should be 0% and sometimes you’re standing right next to a big alien, and the hit chance is like 36% for no apparent reason. This kind of stuff totally wreaks havoc on the initial trust you have in a combat engine, in the believability and realism of a game. Is very bad. Now, let’s look at why Fireaxis went to such a pain of storing pre-rolled to hit chances inside the Save Games: The problem was, Fireaxis did not want people to be able to simply re-load a Save Game when they missed an important shot. Why not? Good question. Probably because even Fireaxis understood at least partially, that you cannot have a good and exciting game, if that same game is not at the same time also capable of frustrating a player (Fireaxis just didn’t understand, that this frustration must be perceived to be “fair” or realistic). If players can just walk through a game without any effort and simply re-load every time they miss a shot, why bother for upgrading your weapons? Or your characters? Etc. The problem is, Fireaxis, like many other modern games, goes about this the entirely wrong way. I said previously that Jagged Alliance 2 and The Bard’s Tale IV are my all-time favorite turn-based games (along with XCOM original). Now both of those games did something very, very important to create realism: They both disallowed saving games during combat entirely (or JA2 at least was built with this as the way it was supposed to be played and later added a weanie-non-ironman-mode for beginners). And frankly, I am convinced, that this is mandatory to create a really good turn-based combat engine. And since the combat-engine of a turn-based tactical game is it’s heart, this I believe is also MANDATORY for a good turn-based tactical game. At this point, many people will probably ask why this should be so important? ESCPECIALLY those who have never played games that disallow saving during a turn-based combat. These kinds of people always argue, that you can have BOTH, if only you build-in the possibility of saving games during combat, because then, supposedly, those people who don’t want to load or save games during combat could simply abstain from doing so. – Or, a little more limited, you could add different difficulty levels which would allow such or disallow it. The whole problem, however, as can be seen with XCOM 2, is *NOT* the players, but the developers!!!! If a game such as XCOM 2 is DEVELOPED, right from the start, with the possibility to save and load games during combat, - even if it’s just for beginner players – then the whole combat, and thus the whole game will be built around that! And this, in such a manner that it becomes fun / playable ONLY WITH that feature! On the other hand, if a game, such as JA2 is built right from the start WITHOUT the option of saving or loading a game during combat, then the whole combat system and thus the heart of the game, the most important part of the game and thus the whole game will be developed and built around that. In such a manner, that the game becomes fun / playable WITOUT that feature! And the big thing about this is, that the second option, a game that is PROPERLY built without allowing saving during combat is A HELL OF A LOT MORE fun to play, because the combat engine, the heart will be made so much more fair, predictable and realistic, if the developers had to play test it and play it like that all the time, as opposed to being able to load and save during combat all the time. In this sense, really, the developers ARE the most important players of a turn-based tactical game. That’s why you, as an independent developer have EVERY possibility to make your games exceed, where big commercial games such as XCOM 2 by Fireaxis must fail: Because you can actually take the time to play test your game, and just like in Jagged Alliance, re-build the combat engine from scratch 3 times (!!!) if you see that the game would profit of it! (I think this is mentioned in the book “Jagged Alliance 2 Boss Fight Books #5” by Darius Kazemi.) Look at it this way: Compare turn-based combat to chess: What is chess, if you look only at individual moves? Isn’t that as crippling as looking only at an individual frame of a movie? Say you drop in a chess game in the middle, with half the figures already gone. It becomes a stop-motion type of deal. That’s what happens when you allow saving during combat. Turn based combat, just like chess, or a movie, can only start moving, can only star writing its own glorious story, can only come to life, even more, can only become poetry, when the individual moves of all turns in a combat become one inseparable and entire entity that goes down into history and memory as a whole piece that is not, and must not be hacked into pieces! Only then turn-based combat can become more than the sum of its individual components, only then can turn-based combat become poetry, and create a life of its own. If you keep saving and loading during combat, as you must if a game has been developed with this feature in place, combat becomes a stupid succession of individual freeze-frame puzzles or pictures, that lack the correspondence and interdependency of previous and later events / frames. Only if turn-based combat is NON-INTERRUPTED, can it really shine. I felt this very strongly in JA2 and in Bard’s Tale IV. The suspense which you experience during combat, while it may be great even in games such as XCOM 2, literally becomes almost unbearable when you know, that you cannot save or re-load, until the conflict is fully resolved (and your guys dead or alive). And, this is only possible, if a combat system was designed and developed from the start, to be like this. Which is so clearly not the case with the combat engine in XCOM 2, which feels so extremely unfair and cheating. Just play about 5 – 10 good fights in Jagged Alliance 2 (after rolling up your main character) and you should start to notice the difference! Yes, not being able to save or load during combat may require re-playing a few combats from scratch one or two times. And yes, that will make the game take a little longer to complete. Just a little. But it will add TREMENDOUSLY to the overall game quality. Why? Because it will FORCE the developers, even against their wills, to make the combat FAIR, PREDICTABLE and REALISTIC! Which XCOM 2 fails at miserably and what is missing so direly in XCOM 2 (everyone agrees, less randomness, and thus more predictable realism in XCOM 2 combat is the most important thing to want to get more of). And if the combat is forced to be developed more fair, predictable and realistic, then, the *ENTIRE* combat engine will be better, much more honed out and filed to greatness! And if the combat engine is the heart of turn-based games as I said it is, then that makes the entire game so much butter. So you see, you must disallow saving during combat, not as much for the players, but most of all for the developers and the development process. And when the game has been developed to greatness without the option to save during combat, really, nobody can add any fun by putting it back in. So, long post short advice: Do not allow saving the game during combat. Don’t add the option, don’t plan on adding it, don’t even think about it. Make a game, that is fair, realistic and works great, if you like with different difficulty levels, but WITHOUT any option whatsoever to save or load a game during combat! Believe me, the game will profit of it. Tremendously! More than anybody, not even the developers can possibly *ever* forsee or imagine! I believe that’s what happened with JA2 and Bard’s Tale IV. Remember, Jagged Alliance 2 re-designed their combat engine from scratch 3 times! They took their combat engine, and thus combat very seriously. And you can’t take a movie seriously, if you are only looking at it frame by frame. You *must* look at it in motion and most of all, develop it, from scratch, to be looked at and experienced only in motion by everyone. Otherwise you should perhaps produce and sell photographs, not movies. That’s why JA2 is so good and XCOM 2 is so poor (below the glossy graphics). Bobby Gontarski