freeaxle

Have you checked out the background stories on the website? This is going to come down to a matter of taste, but I personally think that they were really well done, and set up a nice background for the whole story. The 70's theme is much better than X-COM (which I love to death) as X-COM's universe was... well it was a little kitsch. Plus there is going to be a novella written by (loses all sci-fi credentials)... some famous author. Don't worry, it seems like there will be plenty of creative writing.

I think these are really great ideas, but as others have pointed out they could get tedious very quickly. I'd say that most would be really good as secondary missions in normal missions. IE. Aliens terrorise city; Primary objective: eliminate aliens; Bonus object: Protect famous/important/previously unknown/whatever landmark from being destroyed. If you complete the bonus objective then you get a funding or relations boost, if not then no big-deal. It would add a bit of variety to normal missions. Also, it would add a bit of story to missions. Like if you're defending a city against a terror attack and protecting a VIP... well presumably the two are connected.

It did promote some very tactical thinking. It taught me how to use smoke grenades and move slowly. On the other hand it was incredibly annoying, so whilst I share the nostalgia, I'm going to have to vote against the proposed resurrection of this particular feature. X-Com: It abused the gamer but never disrespected them.

I think this is an area of the game that has potential to heighten the player's involvement with the game, or descend into hair pulling micro-management. As Gorlom has already stated, captains won't give orders to privates, they will all take orders from you. You are not going to have a realistic system, so why focus on realistic ranks? Secondly, what is it you want to achieve with the rank system? For me, it was always about creating soldiers who a.) you remembered above the rookies and b.) tried to keep alive at all costs. The drawback was that you'd occasionally get a drop-kick getting promoted to a coveted rank for no reason. So, a combination of the x-com system, in which ranks have meaning (they are a limited resource, and impact on morale [loosing a colonel or commander could be battle-losing]) and being able to promote them seems to be the best system for me. It gives you a way of rewarding (and ultimately promoting role-playing) favoured soldiers, increasing both their memorability and value to you as a player. I'm not a fan of the other system that has been proposed; namely specialising (damn my American-English spell checker, it is spelt with an S![And it is god-damn spelt not 'spelled'!]) soldiers down one of two paths. It adds a level of complication that isn't necessary; soldiers already specialise based on their stats. It just means you have to decide how to create a 'perfectly' balanced team. Hell, it is one of the big question marks over Firaxis' X-Com remake. In conclusion, limited ranks, player promotion = role-playing + gameplay win. Sorry if I've repeated stuff already said/stated the obvious. In that case you may want to unread this post in a desperate attempt to get your wasted time back. I wish you the best of luck. freeaxle

Hmm, it's a shame you can't do cone shaped light. It would have been awesome to have had torches in the game! I'm still at a loss as to why the only light source given to personnel is a thrown (and rather heavy) electro-flare. Budget cuts must be going deep.

I've always been a fan of Noctis, though that's focused on exploration rather than spaceship management. Mind you, it is a bi... pain in the posterior, to get it working these days.

Grr, I already have two XCOM games coming to take away my life, why did you have to resurrect a third! Good effort though.

+1. Also with pretty artworks. Never under-estimate the power of filling out back story. All good ideas.

Isn't reaction fire based on the sight range of the soldier in question though? That would be the main point of reducing sight range. The accuracy penalty would deal with the being able to shoot anything teammates can see.

There's a whole other thread on suppression! The difficulty I see with various methods of modelling suppression fire is that X-COM is a game entirely based around fear. You walked your soldier into the unknown, and maybe, just maybe he lived to tell the tale. Similarly, attacking an entrenched alien position (like a ufo). A lot of suppression mechanics, those that sap AP, those that 'lock-down' soldiers etc. take away that fear by taking away the uncertainty. This was a problem I had in JA2 1.13. You suppressed an enemy, and then did what you wanted because there was nothing they could do to stop you. @jamocw, whilst the typical response to fire was to hunker down, and thus the typical method for taking an entrenched position was suppression fire (I apologise if I've mis-interpreted your post), you do get responses like that of Rodger Young (read massive starship troopers fan [book and film]) who actually advanced on the machine gun position shooting at his squad (leading to his death). In fairness, the bravery check in your system would allow this sort of thing to happen. Ha ha, now that I've written this in fact, I quite like your system, so read the first paragraph as support of that over the AP sapping system. It'd make bravery a value I actually pay attention to If that was combined with significant loss of sight then you could allow them to keep their reaction fire (preventing suppression fire from becoming the sure way to get someone with the baton). Perhaps in the interests of simplification you could change the system so that a suppressed soldier flat-out can't move. There is still the element of uncertainty in that you're not guaranteed to suppress a soldier. There is also still that element of choice in that your soldier can perform other actions normally like shooting and reaction (albeit with greatly reduced LOS and accuracy) which also means suppressed soldiers are still dangerous.

Hmm, I explained myself poorly, so here goes for (attempted) clarification: It would work that you would choose to suppress an area as an action (you could even have an area surrounding the target for automatic fire count as suppressed). Next turn, if an alien attempts to move in or out of the area a soldier is suppressing the soldier gets automatic, guaranteed, free shots at the enemy. These are not reaction shots, they are suppression reaction shots and are guaranteed. This represents the alien moving into a 'hail of bullets' as it were, the 'buffed' accuracy of a few shots is designed to represent that there are bullets everywhere. Alternatively, you could have a spray of low accuracy bullets, but either way the effect is the same. This avoids the problems with an AP sapping system and provides some risk of suppressing (ie. you might not prevent an alien taking a shot at your suppressor, so being in cover is important) making it a tactical decision rather than an ability you use all the time. You would have to use a different system for explosives, though I would argue that there is a significant difference between being suppressed by small arms fire and stunned by a nearby explosive or flashbang. That is perhaps better represented by an AP sapping system.

I don't think you can dismiss Firaxis out of hand simply because of their relatively consistent quality with strategy games. Plus, they produced SMAC, which is one of the best strategy games ever made. Period. XCOM: EU looks like it will be fun, intense and well worth playing. In fact, I was a little disappointed, I hoped to find a whole heap of stuff flaming EU so that I didn't feel compelled to buy it when it came out But (and there is always a but with these sort of posts ) I'm not sure it will recreate the XCOM experience I'm looking for (currently satisfied by my pre-purchase of Xenonauts). Firstly, I'm pretty sure I heard something, but before I post it I'll emphasise that I'm not sure about this. It'd be great if someone could verify. I've gone through so much XCOM: EU promotional material that I don't know where I heard this. It seems like XCOM: EU may not pause the Strategic game (geoscape) whilst you are fighting tactical battles. As in, you can miss ufo detections etc. while you are in battles which 'give a strategic element to personally controlling battles'. Personally, this would be pretty close to gamebreaking for me (I mean honestly, you're supreme commander, can't you delegate?). If someone could confirm, or even better, deny, that I would be grateful. Mainly though, I'm worried about a potential 'modifiers' game. Whilst I love SMAC, I wouldn't trust the makers to do justice to XCOM because the two games work on such different principles. Civ is all about modifiers. Terrain gives x, and improvement gives an extra 50%, this wonder makes this 100% more efficient etc. and I can see them doing that to XCOM. Hunker down gives a '100% bonus to defence'. What does that even mean? It runs the risk of limiting gameplay to a set of specific actions. You get a bonus for flanking attack, so what do you do every time? You flank attack. I prefer a system with fewer hard-coded bonuses, that leaves the 'bonus' for various actions up to the base engine. It encourages a more flexible game (vital for long-term playability in a tactical game) tactically. All that said, this is based on the promotional material released so far, and may have no bearing on the actual game itself. Also, I think it will be a very fun game in its own right (with the proviso of the question posed above). For an in-depth game that will get me to waste a weekend non-stop play though, I think Xenonauts is the frontrunner.

I'd prefer an approach with less abstraction. What do you use suppression fire for? To convince an enemy to keep their head down. You do this by peppering their cover with bullets, essentially saying, 'stick your head up and it'll get blown off,' not by sapping his energy or morale. So as a suggestion: make suppression fire an action you take on your turn. Next turn any enemies in the area you've chosen are 'suppressed'. Rather than loosing APs or morale or accuracy (all things which restrict your choices, which is not good in a tactical game) give the suppressor some high accuracy 'reaction' shots automatically if the enemy attempts to leave cover. This I think introduces a good cost/benefit. Firstly, suppressing is not always the best option with a MG. If you're out in the open and you choose to suppress from there, you run the risk that the suppressed enemy will risk the reaction fire and shoot you. The suppressed soldier on the other hand can chose to stay behind cover with no risk but at the cost of not being able to do anything, run away at the risk of getting shot in the back or attempt to take out the suppressor at the risk of getting shot in the front.

Whilst I am a big fan of the original X-Com, its story and the UFOpedia, the story was very B-grade. That's not a criticism, b-grade has its place. But I'd argue that Xenonauts has created a great asses with the Cold War storyline alternative, and that story has the potential to be better, more fleshed out and ultimately more sophisticated than the original X-COM. Hence, I'd love to see it featured in the actual game if possible.

I think the unlimited inventory for basic items is a good idea. Firstly, its not like weapons are in short supply, so why wouldn't governments just keep you supplied with what you need? Secondly, there was a lot of annoying micromanagement in the original x-com. I went nuts with smoke grenades every mission, they were so cheap that it didn't bother me, but didn't keep a large stock in the inventory (otherwise my only choice of weapons for base defence would have been smoke grenades ). This meant I had to go in and buy smoke grenades after every mission, which was very tedious. The same could apply for ammo as well.

I think a rescue mission is a great idea. Make it a sort of survive/deathmatch thing: you're goal is to survive x number of turns or kill all the aliens sent at you. I think there are some good reasons to include this, despite the reasons floated against it: First, it would add a cool new type of mission, turning an otherwise rage-inducing event into a 'well I know this will wipe out half my veterens, but its such a cool mission that I don't care' sort of thing. Secondly, the time limit can be justified by local forces closing in. In fact, instead of a time limit ending the game, you could have it that infinite waves of local troops start arriving to help until you've won or lost. Thirdly, I think the aliens would be interested in recovering everything from a xenonauts crash-site for much the same reasons xenonauts go to recover things from an alien crash site. These soldiers are presumably peak specimens of the human race, good for research. They may want to recover the technology humans are using, even if they just want to see what they're up against. They will want to damage the only organisation that really resists their attack by killing the survivors and perhaps also inflict a bit of morale damage back at base. A sort of 'this is what you get when you mess with us' type of affair. Mainly though, I think it turns a really frustrating game loss into a cool mission about mitigating your losses.

It would be nice if there was more story in the game than in the original X-Com, and you have the advantage of being able to link real-world events into the story. So yes, I think that the suggestions you've made Thothkins are really quite good. The only potential problem would be in delivering this information through the game. Personally, I'd love to have a news-feed (or perhaps email like JA2) which gives information on the world at large, though this would be a diversion of resources that perhaps cannot be diverted. Just a fleshing out of the story in the UFOpedia would be good. Funnily enough, I'd recommend X-men (what is it with the x's?) First Class as a top-notch Cold War alternative-history.

Just a little more 'unnecessary' praise: Just found this and I love the Cold War background stories you have on the website. I'd love to see more stuff like that in the actual game: it would help to flesh out the game-world. It really seems like Xenonauts has focused on using things that others would consider set-backs to its advantage. Loving the isometric view and the art for example (beats the hell out of a lot of 3d stuff out there now). And again the cold-war setting. I loved the original X-Com, and its story, but it was a little kitsch. The story for Xenonauts already seems much more sophisticated. /end gush