Max_Caine

Well, I'd say a lot of the systems are complete, but it needs more content. Aliens in particular need more alien-y abilities to help them stand out from each other. There's more systems coming into v13 so it's really a case of wait and see if those systems pan out.

I'm going to preface what I say with "at the moment", because the game isn't out of beta yet, let alone EA, so things can change. However, to answer to your question, @Comrade, the answer is yes. I can take that one step further - if all you wanted the weapon tiers to be is linear ++damage, thats entirely possible to do as well. Gauss is there, but I believe Chris gave plasma the highest raw damage as a conterbalance to their quirk - the power cell draining each turn.

I'd warn everyone now not to expect the same abilities and playstyle of aliens in X2 as they are in X1. As an example, while Sebillians do play very similarly, Androns are considerably different. One of the big differences is that they explode like a micro-nuke when you kill one, so being near them is a Very Bad Idea. Hopefully we'll see more exploration of alien abilities in later builds.

So the way "Mind War" in X2 currently works is, if a soldier is affected it by it you have a full turn before it kicks in to do something. If you kill the alien who used Mind War on said soldier then it stops before it even starts. Otherwise, you can do things like drop the gun the soldier is carrying, or send the soldier off somewhere they can't be a problem. Or you can build mindshields which go into the secondary slot. There are options. It only really gets annoying if you have qute a few aliens using Mind War at once.

There isn't an end game yet - well, not really. The beta has been more focussing on adding features, getting things working and determining the direction the game will take. So not real endgame yet. Oh, and there is mind control. Not quite as deadly as in X1, but as annoying if there's enough of it.

The game is one step ahead of you. Each weapon family has a mark 2 version on the tech tree. At the moment, the mark 2 upgrade simply upgrades damage, but you could do any number of things with it. However, if you look at the April update, there's a very interesting line from it: DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!!!!!! Now, if that goes ahead then you have to ask just how necessary an overall mk 2 upgrade would be. If I can slap parts on a gun, then I can overcome the inherant flaws of that weapon family.

In this thread there was lots of discussion about cool looking aliens. Apat from the usual Xenonauts suspects, what would you like to see in X2? EDIT: That;s a point - continuity. It's clear that whil X2 is not a direct sequel to X1, there is continuity of character in terms of the alien races you'll fight. Do#you think that's a good thing, or does continutiy stifle creativity? Does the Sebillian and the Andron help to make Xenonauts what it is?

I guess you don't have the game, or you wouldn't ask that question. Plasma weapons ammo currently degenerates. As in, the power cell will slowly run out of shots whether or not you use the gun, meaning you need to carry more ammo with you. It's the reverse of the laser family. It makes things more interesting, seeing as the plasma family has currently the highest damage output of any of the weapon families. I would strongly advise people reading my posts in this thread to take everything I say with a share in a salt mine. It would be just a day's work (I know, I've done it) to completely revise the tech tree - the way the data is set out, it can be annoying to follow back all the threads but it's possible to make sweeping changes to the tech tree and weapon families within a relatively short period of time. It makes sense in terms of the game to have a linear progression - the way XCOM-a-like games are set up prefer a linear research progression model as opposed to a radial model used in 4X/grand strategy games such as stellaris, but that doesn't mean you couldn't have all the weapon families right from the start and the tech you pick up from UFOs refine crude applications of technology into something a bit more usable. EDIT: And now that sounds really interesting to me - I wonder if it could be carried off?

Folks, Comrade has a point about the direction this thread has taken. If you want to discuss new and exciting alien types for X2, it would be super cool if it had its own thread then everyone knows where to go to discuss cool new aliens.

No. Because it sets a dangerous precedent. "Hey, lock this thread, it was about weapon asymettry and they've spent two pages arguing about what's better, an AK47 and an M16". "No". "Why not, you did it last time." This isn't r/gaming, I don't want to set precedents that can be abused to shut down discussion, or target people through malicious actions. I am tempted to hive off discussion on that particular thread and start new threads, but I won't lock a thread unless I have to. EDIT: And you can message me directly with such requests. Click on my name.

I can't find the posts now, but I think the original scheme was that you'd have two weapon trees, energy-based weapons and kinetic-impact based weapons (hence the thermal and kinetic damage types currently in the game). You'd have the option to progress down one or both of the weapon trees, hence the early introduction of enemy MAG and then plasma weaponry. However, I suspect that has changed and the progression of weapon types is closer to X1. Based upon my experience of fiddling about with the data files, and having played the damn game since v1 I believe it is more likely now each weapon family will have it's own quirks and flaws and research is linear so you have to research weapon families in a particular order who will be, quirks and flaws notwithstanding, objctively better in the areas that count.

Eh? Look at the 2D artwork for the aliens. Then look at the 3D models. Look at Cherub and Zephyr. The 2D art does not match up with the 3D models, especially Cherub, who still looks too human but looks more ADVENT in the 3D model than the 2D art. Look at Axiom. Compare Axiom's 3D model to the 3D Muton model for XCOM 2. You're telling me in 5 game-time years Mutons went from high ridged crests to a tube of flesh and from pinpoint eyes hidden under heavy brows to eyes that are almost popping out? This isn't continued genetic adapation, this is the art dept. determined to put their own stamp on XCOM and mutilating the aliens in the process. It's like the lead art designer was all "I can't be arsed to draw aliens, I'll draw alien looking humans instead."

Well, unless Chris changes his mind (and he has before, so he could do it again), there is the framework present to make certain kinds of weapon asymmetry present. I expect that there are going to be aliens who are more resistant to a damage type (as opposed to a weapon family). For example, I would imagine that Androns, Gun Drones and any other kind of bot will be less resistant to thermal damage than kinetic, because that helps push players towards the laser, plasma and EMP families and away from the basic ballistic family. But hey, it is easy to mod that all away and just make each weapon family ++damage. When the game's close to release, I'll probably go over the files and do that for you.

I've finished Chimera Squad now, and now I've done it, I've gotta say, what the hell did they do to the aliens? Visually, Cherub reminds me more of Middenface McNulty than Pratal Mox. Zephyr is much closer to what an ex-ADVENT trooper looks like (the nose is still too human, look at Betos), but how on earth did she get her (very faint) accent if she was first a proper ADVENT trooper then embraced by the Skirmshers? Torque sounds and feels more like a snarky human college girl than another ex-solider, a hardened tracker of the Resistance to boot, and Axiom? Wow. Just.... Wow. Did the art dept. stage a revolt against the XCOM 2 Muton design? What was wrong with it? Axiom's face looks pasted on the end of a tube of flesh. All the "Mutons" do. I admire Verge the most. He feels the most fleshed out of all the aliens, like one of the (five) writers took a shine to Verge and spent some extra time with him.

It's easier to act like a police force in X1 and X2 than it is in the police themed Chmera Squad. But that's a discussion for another thread, methinks.

I've been playing Chimera Squad since it came out. I have this to say about it. Junk food. That's what it feels like. Chimera Squad is all about a fast gameplay loop. The bits you do outside of the ground combat are very streamlined, very simple. There's very little thought about what you have to do, the most important deicision you make is which troopers are going on the next mission and who's going to be stuck either gathering resources or getting a skill or stat upgrade. The battles themselves play very quickly. All the bad guys are laid out in advance, so there's no cautious inching forward you get stuck in straight away. Almost no fight takes more than 15 minutes tops, especially with you start piling on the skills and crap out crazy combos. So you rapidly do a mission, get back, make a few choices on the strategy section, then jump straight back into the fighting. It's a lot like chowing down on a burger, then having another burger turn up just as you finish cleaning up from the last one. And, like junk food, after a few burgers, it's no longer satisfying. The whole "investigation" angle is a sham. You have gated story missions. You wait for the timer to run down, gathering resources and levelling up troopers before you do the next story mission, then repeat. Because the gameplay loop is so fast you don't really notice it at first but repetition really starts to take ahold after you've "investigated" and taken down the first of the three criminal organisations you're facing. I'm still having fun, because the fights are fun, btu I'm bit bummed that the strategy section is just so shallow. Oh well. Garcon! Another burger, if you please! With sauce!

Combat fatigue as described in the OP is a nice idea, but pretty pointless in Xenonauts. I currently have a roster of 40 soliders in my most recent run (Jan-Feb). If some got tired I would just cycle them out as I already do when they get hurt. While you can't get to batallion strength, it is fairly easy to form, say, a demi-companies' worth of troops in a relatively short period of time (3 game months) which acts as a massive check on any long-term impediments that individual soldiers suffer.

I found the post Chris made about the number of biomes there are: there you go

There was, and there still is the possibility. There are a variety of damage types - kinetic, shock, thermal, chemical, gas and psionic and currently you can have resistance types for all damage types a-la X1. Therefore, it's entirely possible for an enemy type to be more resistant to one damage type than another. It's also possible to build this into weapon progression. Take, for example, Androns (because I know you love those tall bois). You could give Androns a resistance to kinetic weapons but not thermal weapons so you spur players on down the natural progression of lasers and plasma. it all depends, but I definitely see the possiblity for top tier energy-based and top-tier kinetic-based proving useful. I suspect that the original idea was that you carry a mix of equivalent-tier weapons into a fight, balancing the pros against the cons of each weapon tier.

As with X1, there are a variety of biomes to fight in, and the biome you end up on will depend upon the geoscape.

It's less risky to hang a game from a known IP tree than it is to create a new one from scratch, so even if the dev team that wanted to make this wanted to go their own way, they may have used XCOM to get the funding necessary.

I'll refer you to this forums: Release announcements And this forum: Development Updates Both of which are available from the main page. Now I'l lock this thread.

There's room for both weapon asymmetry and for clear paths of progression. I have spent months messing around with the data and there are all sorts of things you can do. Incidently, if you're fed up with a slow recharge, try this mod for lasers: I XCOM 1994'd them so while they have small cell sizes, they auto regen all their ammo at the start of every turn. When you no longer have to carry ammo, it makes for a subtle but interesting change in the way you play the game. infiniterecharge.zip EDIT: forogot to mention, don't forget to back up your files before trying anything!

Yes, I'm referring to software errors. In my latest run, one of my fighter craft won't replace and I'm pretty sure it's why I can't do ground sites (it's Beta - waddaya gonna do?). Eh, so it looks as much like weight of numbers are causing problems. I guess that having a hard cap of 2 aliens which can use the squadsight (I'm pretty sure that the current version of Mind War is squadsight) version of Mind War would help, and possibly transferring the Mindshield as an armour module would be good - of course, I guess if the mindshild is an armour module then you wouldn't be able to have things like the tac visor or the rebreather. How about this as a suggestion - have two versions of the Mindshield? One version which is an armour module only affects the wearer of the armour. And you have another version which is its big brother, goes in the secondary slot and has an AOE, so you can designate some soldiers as umbrellas. Perhaps a 6x6 or 7x7 radius?

I've never been able to get past March, the weight of bugs seems to always drag me down, but I've got to say I've never had a real issue when Mind War was used in Raids and Terror sites. Seeing as I have a full turn before a mind-warr'd soldier is affected, I drop that soldier's gun and have him crouch in position. As there's never - to me at least - any more that two soldiers affected at any time by Mind War I can't see the problem other people are having?