Kyo21943

One of the badly executed things about XCOM:EU and Xenonauts 1 is that both games would sometimes feel ...dead. Anything that ever happened in the games was always because of the player actions, only the player would take down UFOs, only the player would defend human cities, only the player would research and develop Alien tech, it felt like babysitting the entire world. The Civilians and Local Forces in Xenonauts 1 helped ground missions feel a bit more alive, but the ended up being repetitive nonetheless. Giving a more important role to Governments and how they can benefit/harm the Xenonauts within the Geoscape and (optional) Missions could really improve the experience. Secondary objectives or Mission Attributes are a great idea too, games like Into the Breach prove this by how an otherwise simple "just kill the enemy" mission can become quite intense by adding random airstrikes each turn, giving you two ancient tanks to help you out but that must also survive the mission, requesting the destruction of a dam to weaken the enemy or making you protect a moving train for 4 turns.... 4 unexpectedly tense turns. With ItB as a solid example, Xenonauts 2 could do something similar like your suggestion of "Support military personnel" or "Cover retreating soldiers for 'X' turns" (Could be mixed in with civilians or even a VIP too) on a Terror Mission (or it's own unique mission type).. "Reach this military database and protect the specialist we sent and the terminal for 5 turns", etc ... it rewards the player for doing more than just kill everything, makes missions more interesting by providing variety and prevents the player from just destroying everything in sight. (The latter is the reason why Civilians/Local Forces were added in Xenonauts 1... Secondary Objectives would not only do the same, but they would do it way better) Your idea of providing artillery is also good. I personally suggest it could be more or less like this: Having a random chance for support from local armed forces on a Terror Site or guaranteed on a pre-designed mission type, letting the player to mark a 20x20 area to be bombarded by a artillery/air forces each two turns, it can be balanced out by making the airstrike/artillery hit at the beginning/ending of your next turn (giving non-suppressed Aliens more than enough time to change positions) and being inaccurate (the 20x20 zone is marked but only a random 5x5 area within the designated zone will be hit). There could also be objectives or conditions with negative consequences, such as having the player clear the mission within 10 turns or less, otherwise Alien reinforcements will be teleported/deployed into a Base Assault... Or random alien bombarding will happen forcing the player to keep moving on Terror Missions, etc. Plus, most of these ideas are relatively inexpensive or simple to execute, such as player/Alien airstrikes (just add some UFO/jet shadow moving, sound effects and a explosion on the top-most tiles), Alien Reinforcements could just have a teleportation effect... even Government Contracts don't necessarily need to be a unique mission type (Capturing Aliens could be done on any kind of mission, as long as the requested Alien type is present).

The thread was about melee-only weapons like the Stun Baton... not the melee of firearms :P Plus, Xenonauts 1 had melee for all weapons (but it was obviously bad and used exclusively as utility... such as breaking windows), so, i doubt they haven't already planned a similar feature for Xenonauts 2. However considering Weapons and Armor will be modular, adding a Bayonet module (and maybe an alien alloy or shock upgrade) to improve a weapon's melee capabilities is actually a really good idea, i'm totally in for that!