EurekaSeven

I completely understand the obstacles of doing so and your decisions not to pursuit such feature, but still thanks a lot for explaining how exactly such feature can be so hard and complex to achieve in a technical perspective and also thanks for your effort put into X2, we all appreciate this.

He said that " it would take a lot of dev resources to do it properly and they weren't available", so I don't think these would be ever taken into consideration unless they had plenty of free time to work for them at the nearly end of development. So it's unfortunate, but understandable, let them work on the current sound design and maybe some of those ambience features can be modded afterwards.

I like your idea, and it kind of remindes me about the Encyclopedia and Writing on the Wall feature in the Valkyria Chornicles series, that did put huge immersive effort into the game, especially while you're into an alternative or fictional world. About the soldier file, I would suggest to make random descriptions on such soldier's backstoires, kind of like how XCOM did, just couple of randomly generated phrases but can also be edited by the players themselves if they want to. Then it can be put into archive section if the barrack cannot contain it. Aside from mission reports, I would also say that a purchaseable (or not) newspaper section can be interesting, like combining the original Breaking news feature in X1 with the Writings on the Wall in Valkyria Chornicle, or the news report you'll get for previous missions in the old Rainbow Six Trilogy. It represent how the public were told about several cinematic incidents happened in game, and would be related to the decision that the commander makes.

It would be a really good potential to further dig into the Cold War(or New Cold War) settings of Xenonauts, made me think about the insider-smuggler lore in the community mod. I guess one of the point you've mentioned that would be really helpful is to add espionage elements in game (and similar to what Phantom Doctrine refer to this). Complexity aside, I really like the idea that there would also be an intelligence war between the Aliens, the Xenonauts and even the regular intelligence agencies. It might be even more exciting if the main obstacles of your intelligence operations are not only the alien "generals", but even infiltrators into your base, not only an alien clone in your squad or research team, but even an undercover from the human intelligence agencies who has been spying on xenonauts from the very beginning, and you need to utilize differnt means to reveal those two. It would be more complicated for development, but really a good idea for concept.

I've said that I'm not a fan of this combat robot stuff, but if the devs want to make some more variations to make this more than a robot soldier with better armour and bigger guns, i would suggest more options like so. If they totally unfocus on that it's fine, i don't focus on those robots anyway then, or maybe the modders can be inspired on this. And for other new stuffs you mentioned, if Chris don't talk about them in this update, i don't see a single point for us to discuss such features here, we don't even sure that the devs are working on these new features rather than more important things like refitting the systems or debugging, it's useless to talk about features that Chris mentioned previously that it would be hard to implement, if the devs didn't wrote about them this month. Just when the Aug Update comes out and we would see if we can discuss such features you mentioned.

From what I've read the current main issue of 4-leg chasis into military service is the maintainence instead of noise that people often refer, that legs are fragile, complex in structure and more expensive comparing to traditional wheels or tracks. Which currently is a problem that can never be overcome with modern technology. If the lore says 4-leg can have benefits, then it would be good to have one but with higher maintainence cost. Good update although i'm not a fan of combat robots. But i do hope they would have more variant of armaments (or modded onto), like mortars mentioned above, flamethrowers, swarm missiles, or even loitering munitions. I would hope to see what it can do in game. Just, having more indirect fire or supportive options. Big guy swinging a grenade launcher running around is surely not enough to be the only artillery choice.

The ICBM thing is not related to single UFO aircraft, but refering to ICBMs targeting towards the UOO-1. Maybe more lore about UOO-1 would explain this. In my opinion, it is a setting just to introduce the idea that you can't just simply nuke the alien fleet and ICBM is useless against alien targets. Also, I'm thinking that no matter what defence system the aliens are using, it should came from a larger craft like destroyer or dreadnoughts from the alien fleet or simply the UOO-1 itself, but not scouts and fighters.

Sorry Alienckiller, it might be my own problem for reading posts or i haven't played any X-com games, but I still can't get exactly WHAT problem lies within the Circle-system, I read that the problems exist throughtout the series but just don't get what EXACTLY is the problem and limitation that kept the devs away. Nor do I understand that how Air Combat minigames related to such geoscape system, to me these 2 systems are completely separated and unrelated things and i don't think Air Combat system would be affected no matter the geoscape is.

From the beta video i watched recently, the Orbital Bombarment lore stated that the Earth launched 100 ICBMs towards UOO-1 but all got incinerated immediately. This lore might change afterwards but i guess the devs currently won't think about utilizing ICBMs into xenonauts arsenals and just stating that ICBMs are useless. Though i do hope that nuclear weapons would play a greater role lore-wise, relating them further with the Cold War settings.

From the beta video i watched recently, only “Berlin, Germany” appears on the map. There's no East or West Berlin, nor “Bonn, West Germany/Leizpig, East Germany”, this may rather be a oversight or the Berlin Wall still collapses in this settings. Also, we should notice that apart from a single “Soviet Russia” region, their were no Cold War faction on Geoscape in the first place, European countries are Europe, Asian-Pacific countries are Asian-Pacific, Middle Eastern countries are Middle East. Personally I did hope the Continous Cold War settings could be demonstrated in game, but Geoscape-wise it would make the regions extremely complicated if based on Cold War factions, considering Europe taken apart as NATO, Pact and Yugoslavia, Middle East as Isarel, Gulf cooperations, Iran and Iraq, Asian-Pacific as China, ROC, Japan&ROK, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thai, Indonesia, Australia..... the map would be an awful mess.

I guess we should also taken the consideration of advertising the game. For now it only have a realtively small community and not well known, maybe they should take part in several game events this year to earn more audiences. Chris mentioned about having a publisher, so i hope this would be their job.

I've asked about a similar idea for separate sound FX of missile launches for different factions so modders can intergrate different chatters (Fox 2 for human missiles or Missle Warning for UFO missiles .etc) for different occations, adding the chatter sound into the original launch sounds. Unfortunately the current sound system still cannot support such idea. It's just an authentic issue and I won't be disappointed if we can't play with such things in X2, but it would be cool if we're able to do so. There can also be some authentic sounds for notifications, I was planning to find the war room backgound sounds from Wargame series and also the high-pitch telephone sound that was used in multiplayer while you're sending destinations to other players, unfortunately they are nowhere to be found. A XCOM style soldier chatters in their own languages is understandably impossible to do, but it would be nice if there are background radio transmissions for ground missions as well, maybe even intergrate some alien-style static chatters like what they did in Enemy Within.

If the dropships have some defensive weapons that could allow it to brought time to escape from UFO engagements (instead of getting shot down immediately), then it might be a good idea, otherwise no, I don't see real life nor fictioanl counterpart of this idea unless you want a corvette level starship to fit the role. Even the transport converted anti-air gunships in Yukikaze are purely gunships and lack transportation capabilities.

I'm fine with it as long as we could get the components in differnt ways (such as crafting you mentioned) rather than crash site only, it would be horrible if you need to do tons of ground missions to get one random drop, not to mention that the generation of ground missions is random and depends on other factors (like air combat), and more horrible if one random drop can only craft one equipment so the player need to find more.

Yes, same reason why i love the X1 Caesans design as well as the air combat system, it did gave me the feeling of connecting the xenonauts events to a real world scenario as linking them with historical incidents of human military detect or encounter the UAPs, playing a scenario that may really happen if the conspiracies are not that wrong.

Yeah I'm not in the Experimental branch so i have to wait for EA for now Although I'm refering to large manned (or in higher tier unmanned) vehicle in my post, from the previous comments in several posts I had the impression that the "Vehicle" you're refering to (is it called THOR or something?) is more of a small or medium size combat robot (as well as the alien drones in X1) instead of the big armoured dudes in X1, correct me if i'm wrong though. i'M not asking about "must have" in X2 (to be honest i never thought this would get attention by you and rest of the devs), I'm just saying that I really like the armoured vehicle in X1 and it could be good if Alien have same kind of equipment, but i wont be disappointed if they dont either.

Damn, did not expect Chris to reply on this topic, many thanks! Never thought about that stun weapons can combine EMP effects while writing this post, it is surely a nice choice for me, I'm really looking forward to the final build!

I'm really glad to see that we would receive more active updates in the future and new features would be next week. It's a hard time for devs to work especially while Chris need to take care of his family, but happy to see that everything is on the track now and I'm glad the devs are engaging new UFO design with X1 authentics, really looking forward to how the new designs would be! Gamewise i'm hoping that with the re-intro of night missions, the players would have improved default equipment suitable for night missions, I‘m not asking for some shiny new GPNVG-18s for default soldiers but i'll be hyped if we can have some ordinary NVGs in the inventory in the first place without researching for advanced exosuits, just making it more immersive into the new setting that the xenonauts are the 2020s-tier elite forces.

Chris had mentioned several times about the infiltration missions that you need to play in favour of a less-lethal way, and I'm curious that if so, would the less-lethal arsenal from X1 would be expanded. In the original game we only have batons, flashbangs and incapacitating agent (stun grenade), it works pretty well if you want to capture some aliens, but I wonder would they be enough for doing infiltration mission (especially when the human soldiers start to equip gas masks), and would the devs considering adding new weapons (e.g. Tranquilizer darts, riot guns, CS gas and tasers). It would be difficult to balance such weaponry as well, such as if you have taser that can knock out human soldiers instantly or a tranquilizer sniper rilfe that have a relatively long range, they would be too powerful in game as these weapons can work for early stage aliens as well.

To be honest I prefer the X1 Caesan than new one, the X2 one is more cartoonish and i still think a slim little grey man is authentically better than some pet-like goblins considering the background settings. X1 alien races did a really good job and i cant see why changing them. I did like to see more human enemies like enemy within, the idea of fighting human terrorists can let you take a break from fighting endless waves of Reapers and Androns, and i really like to see the lore of such organisation if they have any. Also I'm having an idea of doing alien vehicle, so instead of always fighting foots soldiers and grunts, you can also destroy alien APCs and alien Tanks, It would be interesting if the aliens bring their own tanks to the party, although this might be impossible because even human vehicles are cut from the current build.

Stay safe Chris, and congrats!

Yeah one thing triggered me is the aliens or hybrid sounds are too humane, especially comparing to similar characters like Skimishers in XCOM2. I'm guessing the only reason for this would be some pure laziness of adding effects to voice-overs considering this as a small spin-off. Or if they really wanted to intergrate the humane voice into the setting, they're going too far. The interaction with local forces and governments (this time specifically local PD and city council) are, kind of, improved than the previous games. You now get the feeling that you are regularly contacted by and cooperate with the friendly factions with many descriptions of random missions and spec-ops, and the random news dialogs did help to expand the setting of politics and life of this world, instead of fighting alone in XCOM2, only the story told you that there are friendly factions or Earth countries but you did not get the feeling of such (havent purchased Wotc though).

I'm having a idea of separating the "missile launch" sound file in Air combat for 2 differnent specific occations depending on whether the missile is targeting interceptors or UFOs, so that i can insert some new sound effects into the new missile sounds (like calling out FOX 3 if Interceptor firing torpedos, FOX 2 while firing standard missiles, or Missile Alert if the UFO fires one), is there any idea to create or separate sound files to a given new occations for playing it? Also, would X2 having the same system of sounds and musics as gc.xml, so that the music replacement mods in X2 won't need much change from X1 mods?

Yeah it is already geoscape-specific. In X1 though they lack some tilesets like jungles/swamps and tundra that have to be reinforced by mods, and i can't remember if they add mountain tilesets like Apes or Himalayas. I don't know if the devs would include such biomes in X2, it would be harder for modders to edit new maps and biomes in Unity. I'm a jungle war fan myself as influenced by Borneo and Vietnam wars so I hope they would add such biomes.

I love some of the XCOM aliens too, they makes you feel like you are really fighting a plausible Alien alliance rather than some thing came from a 1970s era conspiracy magazines, you know, the ones would have the cover of women kidnapping by cthulhu monsters. I my opinion the most interesting designs are Andromedons and Gatekeepers, which having both organic state and mechanical states that not only adds gameplay challenges (as there are different damage systems towards 2 types), but add more depth for settings. Especially the Andromedons, that the fragile alien pilots put themselves into acidic coolants because they have difficulties adapting environments on other planets, and their battlesuits reactivates after the death of the pilot and spreading coolants everywhere autonomously. It is a very interesting setting and add more possibilities about how different races are combined into the invader forces, kind of like how Wraith and Harridans in X1 have totally different hiearrchy and "culture" that distinguish them from the standard aliens. I'm having the idea that the introduction of codexs is a way to replace the orginal "interrogation" research in XCOM:EW, that you no longer need to capture aliens alive but just stick a blade into their brain and fight a sexy AI avatars running and cloning around. But yes, the codex designs are very interesting and plausible, and it is fun fighting them, and their appreance make sence as well, they really made the "interrogation" feature into a more interesting approach by introducing these codexs.