Coffee Potato

Dang straight.

On that note, I'd like to have either a menu, or pop-up, or something that lets you see armor condition and resistances. Would be nice to see the XD thing of a separate armor mitigation stat on weapons. Loved having Axes as an armor piercing melee attack, get those awesome moments of running out of shots, and seeing your international party suddenly all become Danish for a minute. Always wanted a shield push. More medals. I want to be able to do a run where a unit can't be promoted to top rank until they capture one of every unit or something. Or have someone recognized for shotgunning 3 reapers in one round. There's just so much more that can be done with that. Air game has what I always wanted now.

Honestly just the change to a constantly moving background already feels awesome for me personally. I just hope they go the XDic route and put a bigger variety of UFO loadouts to play against. Vanilla carriers were just "Send 1-3 Foxtrots and forget" XDiv is usually "send 3 fighters with guns/antimissiles, see what they're carrying, then either send 6 more, or send in the torpedoes". Or just more stuff to Dodge bullet hell style. Just feels nice when they feel like they're trying to stay in the air.

It's one of those things a lot of people liked about Tactics Ogre, where you could split your units into teams for mock battles. Partly for slow grinding, partly for testing out builds. I keep a separate save just to test hypothetical ideas, since I like to play on Ironman rules for the most part. Reloading feels like cheating, but that's a personal things. It's just fun and immersive to play around and try new stuff. Plus it gives this feeling that your units do more than just live on the Shrike. I'm seeing it as just a random base layout or open field that doesn't exist. Base walls replaced with plywood, UFO replaced with a storage crate it something. That being said, as mentioned, a few other games handled something similar well. -OpenXCOM basically did the battle spawner thing, which is fun, but might break the illusion for some. I'd assume it's fairly straightforward to implement. -Tactics Ogre let you fight your own units, I feel like maybe NewCOM went down this road, but u-turned into making it a multiplayer mode instead. (The latest TO game let you turn your teams into fightable AI challenges, which was neat) -Ob64 had probably the best mix of balance and immersion I've seen, though. You pick a team, then they get a scaled fight, with an entry fee based on rank. So it's safe, but you're spending instead of gaining, and all downed units get nothing, counting as injured instead. Can't be cheesed, has plenty of downsides, but a good way to test things and get rewards if you do well. It also made the battles harder with every consecutive fight. There were rewards for winning several in a row with the same team. Maybe a medal or something in this case?

The obvious answer is that artillery already exists in Xeno 1. The only way to balance it for actual on-map use would be for it to require your own planes to do it (picturing two explosions as a foxtrot respawns at base with no ammo or fuel), or to require reputation as a currency. Even then, the vehicles and launchers from 1 already served that role. On Insane, I would regularly just keep a Hunter off in the distance, pasting things from miles away. Also kept a launcher on everyone's back as an Oh Crap button, since they are one of the few things you could pull out of your pack and fire.

So far, here's what I've seen: 1- There are more reaper variants. Harridians bring these scarab looking crab things. Psyons use Mind War instead of Unnerve and Mind Control, basically the same idea, but less random. They also have different versions as scouts. Sebillians have super bulky variants. 2- If it's anything like X1, I'd assume they'd get something similar. They haven't said much about the Mars yet, but modular armor is coming soon. Hopefully the Mars gets that system too. 3- Probably likely, I'd expect more X-Div type stuff for needing to repurpose parts for fancier planes. 4- They were covering this in the last dev log. Basically this is a work in progress, but coming.

I'd assume it'll sort out once configurable difficulty becomes a thing. I know I was confused on the original for ages until getting used to the mechanics on easy. I haven't seen anything inherently harder about this one yet, though. Just bear in mind it's still just getting it's features working, nothing's going to be balanced yet, that's one of the last things to get done usually.

I'm sure they will get it fixed, Xeno 1 has that bug when running too many mods, where it just shows death, followed by someone that already got away.

With the inclusion of the Training Centers, could we get a training mode? Like a mock battle between people dressed up as lizards or whatever to simulate what to expect in any given mission type to prep before heading out? Please? I can't be the only one that loads some rando missions on a different file before going in for a base raid.

Not to self plug, but this one's been pretty alright https://youtu.be/oVLQgbu0FNs

It doesn't tend to eat it for long, though. In the early game, if you get far ahead enough, you can tank the early enemy shots. Ballistic is easy to resist, but lasers tend to get through. By the end of phase 2, you should still be ok for ballistic, but energy can still get through. By 3, you can take grazing shots, but there's a lot more danger flying your way, and you usually wind up suppressed. By phase 4, many of the weapons can just pierce right through. Lasers have a really good chance of that, most ballistic will shred your overall armor, and things like blood cannons can just be considered to ignore armor, seeing as even if they survive the first hit, the tile damage tick can hit for 50+. The armor is just there to save your units from the chaos that is shredding apart the entire map. In phase 4 you can walk into a hallway, and suddenly have the entire room bleeding out just from scratch damage.

Saw that UI with the perks listed and just see the Tactics Ogre PSP skills. Just imagining a berserker running down everything with a Strengthen 4 and a grenade launcher.

You could always throw in the Silent Storm system on top of a more basic system. All the benefits of a locational system without the technical fudgery. (There's an option in SA that turns on critical debuffs, which give all manner of different injuries, from busted limbs, to bleeding, blindness, unconsciousness, etc. You could have a unit in a mech suit suddenly get knocked out by a sniper shot getting through their armor. Felt really cool)

Simplest answer I've seen would be the New Vegas system. Every armor has a value. The weapon either goes through or doesn't. If it doesn't, the damage is piddly. If it does, it's full. Armor deteriorates with every shot. Super amazingly perfect? No. Better than XDivision? No. Conveys the feeling or armor without layers of systems that all need calibrating? Yes. They got around the energy weapons difference by just having them get a crit modifier on their ammo depending on type, which basically have them random armor piercing. Felt pretty good.

In this case I believe it's justifiedbenough in that using artillery might set off an incident. I was saying earlier that this could be worked into the mechanics in a cool way by being able to use something like this at the steep cost of regional support. IE you might save the team, but lose the territory.

Personally I'll just say as far as PP goes, it wasn't as much a delay thing as much as it's a soup of interesting sounding ideas that manage to be super dull when they're not struggling to work properly. It's been a problem for forever, but they apparently felt it was right, I guess? I really expected more from the PP folks, maybe by next year it'll be something good? For the OP, try X-Division. It's a really, really good Xenonauts mod.

Well dang, I could have saved myself a lot of effort and two flamethrower guys if I knew that

I think people generally just want a system that's easy to understand. Reduction is easiest. If doing the whole Shred system, I agree that it'd be nice to have a Banner Saga-esque armor display. That being said, because of the wide range of damages, the above tends to be a bit random, which I personally love from a risk/reward perspective. You know your shotgun just broke their ballistic threshold, but then realize their energy defense is perfectly in tact when your shock charge goes off in their face as nothing more than an inconvenience. So a couple of guys are sitting there, trying to keep this guy locked down while someone tries to find a working plasma rifle lying around. I personally just find the game much more engrossing when you are almost forced to spend multiple turns actually fighting your enemies. They've conquered planets before, they should have countermeasures. In the mod, for example, all Ceseans bring portable laser Shields, all lizards pack extra armor to supplement their healing, and the robots use their thick shells to justify bigger weapons. I will say that the base game does pull some new tricks after phase 2, so don't take that as par for the course. In the mod's case, the enemies in phase 2 could be overwhelmed by rockets, so phase 3 introduces multi layered defenses, as well as a much bigger suppression effort. I had one recently with 4 tanks and a friggin immortal robot dinosaur guarding some 60 Androns, and that armor system just made it all work.

I'm not sure why this is a thing. XDiv figured out a good mix of the existing game mechanics, and it feels great. Essentially it's: Everyone has Andron esque hard armor against Ballistic and Energy. If a shot doesn't pierce, it does 1/3 of it's damage to the armor value. If it doesn't, the damage is reduced by what's left. Fire and Chemical armor doesn't change. Gives this awesome feeling where units are getting battered down in these huge battles, but you generally don't get cheap deaths. Instead of "dude guy was sniped from across the map, took a glancing hit to his anti tank armor and died instantly,", to that unit getting suppressed and having their armor weakened, giving you a chance to figure something out. Opens up more options for charging and being offensive in the early game, lets you match units with the right defenses vs a unit. It looks like some of this will be coming to X2 soon.

True, though there seems to be a bug with using it next to large props. It's almost like it slides away and fires down or up. It's a constant problem when standing in doorways or near hedges. Still, the idea is good, it's just not fixed yet.

Smaller facility and building raids are kind of already being done. The outpost bases and raids are basically that.

Partial victories would be nice as well. I've always wondered why we couldn't send another team for that one last Sebillian bleeding in the generator room.

I'm curious over the technical difficulty of including a mechanic that Silent Storm has. When you expected return fire, you could combine several units into a team, and all fire as one action. Is this entirely impossible without a multiple selection mechanic, or would it somehow be possible?

The dev notes mention a patch soon that corrects the air game being overly difficult around there.

Merry Christmas, and an invasion filled new year ya awesome folks!