Max_Caine

Oktober, that option will only exist if people who don't want male soliders forced on them have exactly the same power to do so.

Yeah, the Xenonaut backers get a bit shirty if you use their tax-paying civvies as meatshields.

A good base defence strategy in X-Com was to mine the access lift with proximity grenades. The aliens had to come at you, so they did and they went boom! (there's a few Let's plays on youtube which show that strategy in action).

joebill, some weapons will deliberately not have reaction fire, as Chris is aiming for a toolbox of weapons, instead of a "one size fits all" approach which inevitably leads to a "best fit" weapons loadout, kitting out each squaddie in exactly the same way. RotGtIE wrote an analysis on the various ballistic weapons which covers this point in more detail.

Dorphin, looks like what you need

I watched the vid. Very nice. You have posted this in pretty much the right place! Now, in the vid you were wondering at one point if people were yelling at the screen. While I was watching the air combat sequences, I was (almost) shouting "use less missiles!". Which is good! You got a reaction off it!

Chris is in a difficult position. As the producer of Xenonauts it's his job to prevent too much feature creep. He has to see the game feature complete from the original design document before he can really start adding new things. Those new things he is most likely to add are those things that X-Com had, or UI updates that improve usability. But for something cosmetic like night-lights, those things are way down the list in comparison to getting an effective suppression mechanic or bleeding mechanic working.

If the alpha is anything to go by, terror missons are only likely to get harder. >_<. We need every hand we can get!

iMuzzaa, your suggestion has been implemented. There will be new dropships after the Chinook. How do I know? You already possess the answer.

Dorphin. It was a great source of joy for me to see a guy who had been shot survive the withering barrage of plasma. It was not with any happiness that my guy would then die of a fatal wound at the start of the next turn, when I could have got one of my other guys to the wounded feller. That's not an "oh well", that's a "what the *&%!". My suggestion is to mitigate frustration. If the player can't get a medic to wounded guy X before he bleeds out, then "oh well". But if wounded guy X bleeds out before I get any chance to do something, then that, to me, is a "what the *&%!". It is the very definition of taking control away from a player. In my previous posts, when I talk about a guy in Jackal armour taking 55hp of damage, it is because I have already taken armour into account. (Plasma rifes do 65pts damage, jackal stops 25pts, plasma rifle has penetration of 15pts. Ergo, 55hp). Furthermore, Chris wrote that the bleeding check is taken per 10 points of damage caused (personally, I like Gazz's system better). At the moment, jackal armour stops corporals from dying, leaving them with between 1-10hp, depending on their inital hp. If bleeding out is applied at the start of the player turn, then if the player is below the hp threshold as a consequence of getting shot, the squaddie will die. End of. And that is what I find disagreeable - that a squaddie survives a plasma shot, to die in my following turn without me being able to affect the outcome of that. What I would like to see is bleeding out to be important, with a reasonable damage over time so I doesn't treat it as a minor nuisance. At the same time, I would like to be able to have at least the opportunity to treat the wounded squaddie before he keels over.

I went back and did a little more work on the chances of more than one bleeding/critical wound happening under Chris’ system. As each bleeding check is not dependant on the last, it’s possible to work out the cumulative probability of bleeding events happening. Using an online binomial distribution calculator (http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx) , I plugged in the figures already discussed by me and Commasson (shot damage of 55hp), which means there would be five bleeding checks. Using that, I got the following figures:- The chance of exactly one bleeding check passing is 40% (0.4096) The chance of exactly two bleeding checks passing is 20% (0.2048) The chance of exactly three bleeding checks passing is 0.05% (0.0512) The chance of exactly four bleeding checks passing is 0.06% (0.0064) The chance of exactly five bleeding checks passing is 0.0032% (0.00032) So, with an average alien shot, the chance of one bleeding check passing is relatively high, and there is a 1 in 5 probability of passing two bleeding checks.

Hicks... do you remember from X-Com what one of the best early-game strategies was, before you got lasers? Explosive force, and lots of it! If that meant saturation bombing of areas with a combination of grenades and rockets from the HWP, then so be it! If grenades are too deadly, then they will become the weapon of choice, with projectile weapons used only when absolutely necessary. RotGtIE's analysis of weapons shows what happens when a weapon is too deadly. I don't say that grenades couldn't stand for some tweaking, but this is one of those many situations where gameplay > realism.

Comassion, I would say it would depend upon average amount of damage that a critical wound does. Provided that the average critical wound does 2hp damage per turn, then yes, with the figures I present then the average corp who survives a plasma blast stands a chance (the median seems to point to 58-59hp, but that's another point entirely). If the average critical wound does more damage than that and it is resolved at the start of the players' turn rather than the end, then I argue it is more likely that a player who watched his solider who got shot in the alien's turn will watch him die in his own turn, and is likely to find that experience frustrating at not being able to do anything about it. It was brought up in both suppression threads that taking away control from a player was a bad thing. Therefore, I argue that to reduce the frustration a player feels, critical damage/bleeding should be resolved at the end of a players' turn, not at the start.

Gazz, war is indeed hell but it would be especially hellish early-game, when the scenario I paint is more likely to happen each time a xenonaut gets shot. Having checked the armour values for jackal armour, the damage value for alien plasma rifles and checked that against the damage taken formula, the plasma rifle does on average 55hp of damage per shot. The average HP for a solider (at corp. level) ranges between 56-64, so it would seem on those odd occasions when a xenonaut survives a plasma rifle shot they're going to die anyway, so why bother with medikits?

The only issue I see with the system that you propose Gazz, is that (going by the current alpha) early game, every time a xenonaut gets shot they will almost always start bleeding because alien weapons do so much damage. What might be frustrating is if a xenonaut gets hit in the alien phase, goes from 60hp to 4hp from a plasma rifle shot, then bleeds out when bleeding is resolved at the start of the player phase without the player being able to do anything about it!

I agree with Comassion. The most effective strategy I have found so far is to build a base somewhere in or near Europe, then straight away build a base in North America. As research items are sent stright to the lab, and you don't yet need alien alloys or alienium, sell everything you get from downed UFOs and you can make back $300,000 - $500,000 per UFO. I always try and get a third base by the second month, and put that one in Australia. That way, I can then respond to any terror mission that arises.

I agree with Gauddlike regarding the term "critical injury" as regards to "bleeding". I have just spent an hour reading up about 3rd and 4th degree burns and prepared quite a technical answer to Hick's question (short version: there is severe fluid loss as a consequence of the kind of burns a Xenonauts would suffer from a plasma bolt), then I read Gauddlike's post. He's dead on. Gauddlike, your idea for healing over a few turns - does that mean that the medipack is used on turn one, then can't be used again turns 2-5? Then when that heal "phase" is over, you can use the medipack again on the wounded solider? Or do you mean the medipack is in continual use over the healing "phase" but does the gradual HP healing as you describe?

So, using the proposed system, if a solider with 68 health in Jackal armour is hit by a plasma rifle and looses 50 health (after armour deduction), that's 5 bleeding checks, each at 20%, with the possibility of all five checks passing. Am I right? If I am, this kind of scenario is likely to happen a lot in the early game, as without wolf armour soliders tend to either die or get hurt really, really badly when shot.

I'm glad you're ahead of the game, Chris. It shows those clever people are going to have to be very inventive to find exploits!

Someone say my name? With the current-alpha figures, I looked at the issue of return-on-investment, an important issue that TMP brought up. If the player never makes back the money they put into setting up manufacturing, then there is no point in setting up manufacturing for the express purpose of producing trade goods. However, I had to make certain assumptions which require addressing. Therefore the example is limited in nature. But TMP’s point is a good one. Is it really worth putting the money into manufacturing? I propose to expand the limited nature of my previous treatment and incorporate all figures. So, if we want manufacturing-for-profit to be an option, we have to consider the strategy behind it. Let’s say I want manufacturing to be an alternate revenue stream to looting ships or backer funding. Can I use the initial workshops that I have to generate this revenue stream? The answer, in general, will be no. Why not? Well, there is a much greater emphasis in Xenonauts on making the things you need. MiGs are required to take on Corvettes (they are your first interceptor that can use heavy missiles) – they have to be built. Players cannot loot plasma clips and plasma weaponry form the enemy to use himself, even when researched the player is required to make his own plasma guns and ammo. Lasers require clips which have to be made. Alienium missiles need to be manufactured. And so on, and so forth. Workshops will be quite busy producing the every-day goods that Xenonauts need. Secondly, I should consider the size of the revenue stream that I want. As big as possible! Leonatus correctly identifies that without alternate revenue streams, the funding from the backers places a hard limit on what a player can do in a month. Therefore, I want an alternate revenue stream that will enable me to bust the cap off that hard limit. I want a manufacturing facility then – something that dedicates almost all the space to producing goods. This will give me a strong revenue stream that I can count on throughout the month. What does it cost to set up a manufacturing facility? 1 workshop, at $200,000 1 living quarters, at $150,000 50 engineers, at $750,000 Per fully-staffed workshop, that’s $1,100,000 Initial base cost is $2,000,000. That gets me the command centre plus room to build. If I want 8 workshops, that’s $8,800,000 for all facilities and initial hiring cost. For a total of $10,800,000 Now, in my previous example, I showed (using laser pistols as the manufacturing example) that you needed a gross profit $9600 as break-even, and introduced a net profit of $400 (as at that point, the markup on a laser pistol was 50% of its manufacturing price!). Each fully-staffed workshop at a net profit of $400 producing laser pistols flat out had a net income of $35,000. So, multiply that by 8 and we have a net income of $280,000 a month. It will take me 39 months, or over 3 game years to get back my investment in manufacturing. In comparison, looting a scout nets me the following: 1 power source at $50,000 200 alien alloys at $200,000 50 alienium at $250,000 Assorted alien weapons at a minimum of $90,000 Per scout, $590,000. Or if the power source is destroyed, I get $290,000 in sales. In general, I can afford to sell off the goods accrued from one scout a month. With the examples presented, one scout out-sells 8 workshops. All that money I spent would be better off invested it in other projects that see earlier returns. The barriers to entry in the current alpha are too formidable.

I got this one. Allow me to quote Gorlom. You're not playing a different version. The town map is in the game, but usually only run during terror missions. There haven't been any updates to the current alpha yet, so you won't see female soliders. Furthermore, you will only see those updates to the alpha (for yourself) if you pre-order or have pledged on the Xenonauts Kickstarter. Promotion is a consequence of experience. The only way that squaddies get promoted is by doing missions. Lots of missions.

As annoying as you find it, with the introduction of suppression, burst fire is here to stay. However, a little UI streamlining so all modes are accessable from the right mouse button does sound like a good idea.

I clicked on this thread looking at the title and thinking "does this guy want to have the option to deliberately shoot civilians?". Having read the contents of your opening post, I can see that isn't true. But it's quite misleading!

In answer to some of your questions: 1) The known "tiers" of weapons are: ballistic, laser, plasma. There is a further as-yet unknown tier of weapon. 2) Off the top of my head - a better AI, more things to research, UI upgrades, a suppression system, more tilesets, a balanced weapon system, more alien ships, more aliens, fewer bugs.... 3) That's a very subjective thing to ask. I would say "yes". Xenonauts takes the original X-Com and improves on many of its aspects, and changes some others completely.

There's a lovely wiki for X-Com dubbed Ufopaedia.org. It's really good, is very in-depth and is my go-to source for all things X-Com. It has a page titled Tricks, Tips and Hints. Now after reading this page, it would probably have been better titled "what the developers didn't see coming", as the list of exploits on offer is quite impressive - everything from a very good way to boosting reaction stats quickly and effectively, to how to best mitigate problems with the bravery stat. I urge Chris to take a look at this page, as if Xenonauts gets anything like the following that X-Com does, some very clever people are going to spend quite a lot of time working out how best to work the systems he's developed to their best advantage. Not that's there's anything wrong with that, mind. It's just that knowing the kind of things people will do helps to understand how to match game mechanics to game vision.