Grimaldi

No problem with your response. I did a quick search of the forums and didn't seem to find anything, but as you said, tough to check everything in a reasonable amount of time. Objectively, the Xcom 3 raids were not really important to the overall game's mission, but I think they stand out because they were so different from every other mission in any other Xcom game. I don't really remember them being that risky for my personnel, even...it was just fun to watch everything burn and gun down under-equipped cultists. I think the "magic" that makes that mission type so memorable and fun can be brought over to a game like Xenonauts, and actually have a more meaningful purpose to the game. Part of it involves rewarding destruction, and I think part of it (that would be a slight change) is the idea that you won't "win" the scenario...there will be tension built for the player trying to balance more destruction vs ever increasing aliens. It may be as crude as Xcom 2, with a radio message from HQ warning that enemy reinforcements are inbound with a timer, and the timer reset keeps getting shorter, and reinforcement size larger. Eventually, you fall back to where you started (or a new location) and evacuate. As for mission type/reason...why are the alien bases on earth anyway? I never understood their purpose, so that makes it hard to come up with a reason for a surgical strike. Maybe there are human prisoners in the facility, and rescuing them gives a bonus to the region they were taken from. Maybe larger aerial threats, like terror missions and alien battle ships, start from the base instead of just randomly dropping in from space. They stock up on reapers bred at the base using prisoners before the terror attack. Whatever. Then, if your interceptors are weak, maybe you can attack the facility, hit the alien hanger, and damage the ship and/or it's fueling/arming facilities, delaying its launch. As mentioned above, actually capturing an entire alien base would be hard, and a base should have unique equipment (compared to regular ships). Maybe instead of blowing everything up, there are just items throughout the facility. You fight through the corridors, trying NOT to blow much up, have your Xenonauts pick random alien artifacts off of table and walls, and flee, opening new research opportunities. Just random thinking on how to spice up the ground combat a bit. Overall, the mechanics are great, but the missions objectives end up pretty repetitive (kill everything). Part of the fun of tactical combat games is overcoming the occasional limitation or restriction, and something along these lines adds that.

One of my favorite missions from the X-com franchise was an oddball from Xcom 3. The Cult of Sirius was a group of humans that supported the alien invaders, and while you could never destroy their faction, you could hurt it by raiding their facilities, destroying their equipment and ruining their finances. It's never really been recreated before or since in the franchise (or similar games), but instead it's always "kill all the enemies and destroy/capture the base. The new DEFCON/VIP elimination mission is a step in the right direction, but ultimately it's the same basic victory condition. The Xenonaut teams are essentially small, elite commando units. In every other war, those aren't expected to capture or destroy an enemy base. Instead, they surprise the enemy, eliminate a critical target or two, hit as many collateral targets as they can, and then (hopefully) escape before an overwhelming response can concentrate. It gives the player a bit more investment in trying to balance causing more destruction (with whatever in-game benefits it gives) with risking Xenonaut casualties as the enemies keep growing in strength. Plus, it gives things like the incendiary weapons a more meaningful role, as causing a greater amount of damage over time is rarely effective in normal missions. Just a thought for variety in ground mission types. Every ground mission doesn't have to be win/lose to be meaningful and fun, and just causing as much destruction as possible is always amusing.