erutan

If it isn't you could download the weapons mod that afaik lowers reaction fire chance.

@waladil - I really don't see that making much sense - just build two clips for everyone you make? Why not just increase the cost of the weapon and be done with it. @trashman - imho the entire premise of XCOM is sort of silly - that humans can reverse engineer so quickly, that the fate of humanity is so sparsely funded, that a small squad can stop a terror mission etc. I'm personally really impressed at how Chris pulls everything together in the xenopedia. I think most of us in the thread feel the game is a little odd now in regards to logistics, but in the end decisions should feed gameplay. Economics are going to be totally fucked in order to make gameplay more interesting - jets start at ~$15 million each, missiles start ~$100,000, would it make sense to be worrying about the cost of ammunition for 8 soldiers? I personally just don't "miss" manufacturing ammo, it's not really a decision, you're just spreading the cost of ownership out. I guess you're just trying to troll, but it should be pretty obvious that taking away all the clicks to manufacture ammo over the course of the game has a very different strategic impact than restricting the player to one base.

Well it's already on Desura for most of the people on this forum, and nothing in here is really a spoiler per se. Still, it's interesting to see some of the changes. I wonder if there has been any rebalancing of alien vs xenonaut vision - at the very least this makes tank + HW less of an obvious choice, which is a good thing.

+1 on crashed map variants. I really did enjoy those long crash trails.

We already sort of have the EU12 approach for ballistics, except you have more generous/standard clip sizes & they aren't infinitely invisibly auto equipped for you. I like the more manual loadout of Xenonauts, the roles streamline the process enough without it having be so limiting as EU12 - given that system it makes sense to keep ammo functioning as ballistics do at the very least. Lasers could work ala EU94 style, plasma run only on captured clips only until you research something that makes it act similarly to ballistics. Not sure how tier4 should work as I haven't gotten there yet heh.

Nothing wrong a proper expansion, JA2 had one. Base management also doesn't bother me, though I agree weapon upgrades does seem odd. re: licensing, supposedly bC had the license but no TBS experience, and met up with FC randomly at GDC and it seemed mutually beneficial that a) bC could get money for free by licensing b) FC loves JA2 and would want to work on the game and has engine/experience to help them out. I never bought BiA but I played the demo and was horrified... real time with pause can work great if done well, but the execution was horrid. I'll personally wait for more info to surface on this kickstarter.

It's odd because early game it seems structured the opposite way - light weapons equip jackal and heavy go armorless due to strength restrictions. This makes more intuitive sense, that those in harms way are more balanced towards survival while you have glass cannons in back. I can totally understand not scouting in lumbering power armor, but the jump of Buzzard is really only useful for going on top of buildings. If you're in a wide open desert map running around in Buzzard armor trying to spot aliens so the HW folk in Wolf can take them out it seems kind of... backwards.

Seems like a classic TBS wargame, I like the zoom out functionality, but I'm most interested in seeing whether it hits the tablet stretch goal. I'm not sure it'd be compelling enough to play on my PC, but it'd be awesome to have as a random time killer when afk. Then again it'd probably just be cheaper to buy it ala carte. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingartgames/battle-worlds-kronos-turn-based-strategy-revisited?ref=live

On the flipside, they do a lot of turn based games and Space Hulk seems to have impressed people in the press. Rock Paper Shotgun put up a nice article about the JA Flashback: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/23/jagged-alliance-flashback-now-singing-for-its-supper/ The setting makes sense, and I imagine there will be some interesting twist where AIM separates itself from it's CIA origins/overlords. I hope at least.

That might have been me re: rockets - I like the incendiary for night missions (your launcher still comes loaded with one even after they aren't selectable). If you don't want to overdamage aliens, want to light up an area, aren't exactly sure where an alien is it has some nice situational utility over the Elenium/Plasma rockets which have more damage but cover a smaller area.

Personally I'd like unlimited laser and repurposing alien plasma clips (say something about the density/complicatedness not being able to be replicated - think smaller chip fabs, it's harder to do a 28nm CPU than a 65nm one). Then after you've done your dance of alien clips + unlimited laser for a while you can fab an infinite number of plasma clips on base. One possible thing would be to make laser weapons % of TUs to fire due to them being able to discharge so much energy in a cycle. Time isn't limited by user competence/attention but how much energy over time it can generate. Just a thought. One thing I'm not sure of is whether research will have costs. I rather liked this approach in EU12, and it could be a nice way around ammo feeling too "free". Hey, we can repurpose low grade alenium into warheads, but you'll need 60 elenium to do so - we can have a plasma clip reinvigorator/fabricator, but it'll cost 150 elenium, we'll need to test out alien alloys for this new armor so you'll to spend 100 of them during the research process. It makes research more of a tradeoff instead of something you just always have on by default.

re: where does it come from * some kind of spent alenium processing building in base * repurposing spent alien clips * wherever all the missiles, grenades, and rockets come from?? I mean srsly, we can process grains of alenium effeciently enough for unlimited missiles but need to spend it on laser pistol clips? lol? I personally like having to scrounge for plasma clips and not just being able to produce them willy nilly at first, giving laser more of a place (aside from rookies due to accuracy). Yes every choice has a cost, but is ammo really meaningful? Buying a jet is important - deciding on each mission whether to use normal or upgraded missiles just sounds like a pain in the ass, having to pull people off the more strategic projects to deal with little ammo bits here and there. It'd also allow for higher requirements for weapons/armor/etc so making one is more of a decision but then you don't get bogged down in the details after. Obviously there is some frission lost when money is low and you're scraping by and you have to make hard decisions on what to buy, but I personally have been surprised at how pleasant it is to not worry about ammo. As someone said, it is produced quickly and doesn't take up too many resources - so why then not just pay that cost up front with the weapon or just decrease total resources so you don't need the sink? It just ends up feeling somewhat fiddly, and just having to produce it for every new tier doesn't really feel as exciting as the elusive plasma clips of EU94. Stores are hollow, but I'm generally manufacturing all the time (though this may be because tier3 stuff requires massive workshop space, ~a month per jet).

I've honestly been enjoying the replicating ammunition bug... at first just because it seemed to slightly balance out the disappearing equipment one, but I've come to realize (with the rockets and missiles) that manufacturing ammunition just isn't that enjoyable and I don't really miss it at all. Weapons, armor, tanks, jets, bases, building - they have more strategic intent to them. One of the very "XCOM" moments is when the majority of squad has laser rifles, and you're scrounging around for heavy plasma clips, looting corpses in battle, only kitting out a favorite officer or two with HP. Then that moment when your whole squad (more or less) is using them and you feel like you've "made it". It's a classic feeling, but is it really worth replicating? Given that laser and rifle both require ammo, given that you can't use enemy clips... manufacturing ammunition is just going to be a time / resource sink that isn't particularly meaningful. I almost think Chris put the bug in so this would come up in the community heh. Possible ways to deal with tier 2+ ammo: * Just handwave it away, included in cost of weapons (more elenium required per weapon). * You could have some sort of recharger building in base - so you still have to pay for the building / decide how much ammo to carry into combat, but you have an effective infinite supply when equipping. * Go back to lasers being infinite ammo, make plasma a tad bit stronger than they currently are but require ammo. As a bonus your starting Plasma weapons could ONLY use alien clips at first, then down the road unlock research to either manufacture your own as is or infinite generate them (some machine that refills spent clips or something). You'd have that almost at a tier but not quite there, and it wouldn't be a "waste" if you researched plasma before laser this way.

Once corvettes appear there's a fairly steady income stream, and landing ships jack it up. Its tough trying to balance being able to expand early + having risk in air combat (jets are a big investment). Throwing more cash at the player could make it too easy to upgrade weapons and armor, though that can be restricted by materials needed (if you run out of alloys and/or elenium, you can spend your reserve cash expanding).

Caesan Officers (in a landing ship) were invisible at all times. I had to stun them as they would gain corporality when killed and CTD the game during their death animation.

I appreciate that giving the aliens extra visual range makes the player be more aggressive (when does anyone use reaction fire unless they're boarding a UFO?), but that's also part of the issue. On a wide open map you can an enemy squad sighting you from an unknown location(s), with no real choice but to have someone run up one tile at a tile killing themselves with reaction fire. There is also a somewhat perverse incentive to scout with your lighter armored folks while the heavier armored ones sit back safely - having a few less tiles blundering into reaction fire can be safer than being more armored and taking more hits. re: the actual topic, I noticed scouting with my hunter on a night terror mission that I had to be more careful about where I drove off to after spotting an enemy... I liked that feeling a lot more than day missions (aside from the reapers I honestly sort of prefer night to day, which feels somewhat perverse given the xcom tradition).

Sounds more like JA2. I don't recall XCOM having repairable weapons. Not a bad idea, but not sure how it'd really fit into the game. Maybe you could have some prototype weapons that are more unstable? I'd assume most weapons are serviced after each mission at base etc so it's not quite mercenaries in the jungle type thing.

Terror mission generation should be toned down a bit - maybe late game have them be gauranteed unless you can shoot down the craft (as you are more likely to have the coverage to do so), but early-mid they should be more of a "oh no, wtf" vs "yeah, it's been a few days, here's another".

Having a proper flare would be cool, but I'm not sure how well the engine would handle it.

re: unwanted ground missions, I'd like to be able to overdamage a UFO to the point of destroying it (excessive missiles a tier above it, etc). It'd be an easy fix. The game economy isn't balanced yet, so I'd rather not have strategic decisions for the game decided as workarounds to the current system - the current system should be adjusted to meet strategic decisions. e.g. zomg I can't reach terror missions in time vs. hey should terror missions pop up later in the game. Towards the end of EU94 I had around 5 bases, with 2-3 of them having soldiers, and I feel like Xenonauts would be fine with one or two as is, which I think most of us would agree needs to change. EU12 did a lot of things well on the tactical/soldier level, but the geoscape is not something I want to see overly "streamlined" in this project. Thotkins overview @ post 145 gives a nice balanced view imho. I'm personally of the feeling that starting the game feeling like you can't do 100% of what you want to do makes it more empowering when you can (and keep in mind this organization has been mothballed for a while). I'm fairly resigned to a "globalish" dropship range at this point - I think this can still be strategic with a few tweaks to gameplay: * increase the cost of UFO aggression missions so there is more of an incentive to at least get an interceptor base up on the opposite side of the world * increase air superiority missions ~3-4th month so flying huge distances without fighter escort is more of a risk * have landed UFOs provide much more resources but make them fly off faster, so without a second dropship base you would lose a lot of them * a general look at economy. I'm not sure how much cheaper we could make buildings (they're already equivalent to kitting out a soldier in tier2) to make it easier to expand, but having more of a cushion in the early game would be a good thing. Right now air combat for the first month or two is a foregone conclusion in Xenonauts favor, which feels kind of strange. It is however sort of necessary given that losing an aircraft or two is totally crippling. Making early air combat slightly more interesting (but still tutorialish) + having more of a funding cushion means you could choose to try and expand a little earlier, or keep the cash around to cover risk.

Ah, fair enough. The missing part was "have to deploy to get their accuracy debuff removed". Later posts refer to firing from the hip etc. Sentence has been edited. --- At this point I'd revise it to feel a bit more like JA2's ready cost, as brought up by Trashman - good point that animations are already in place. Readying a weapon could happen by shift-right clicking a tile (and/or adding a button near crouch). Readying a weapon gives you a small bonus to reaction fire and means your next shot will no longer eat the ready TU penalty (e.g. setting up some suppression/fire support for the next turn, guarding a door/corner in CQB). If you plan to move again, no need to ready. Small arms have small ready costs (and have individual shot TUs decreased slightly to compensate). For fake numbers, readying a shotgun would take 6 TUS, firing shots -2TU, readying a rifle 9TUs, firing shots -3TU, readying a pistol 4TUs, shots -1TUs, etc. Rocket launcher has ~double the reload time, ready time isn't really significant as it is a single fire weapon before reloading (which unreadies the weapon realistically unless you can have someone else reload for you). Overdamage to weapons + making civilian deaths more meaningful would help overbalance dependence on the rocket launcher. Precision + LMG can only be properly "readied" while crouching, and suffer a (larger than current unless the accuracy system is revamped) accuracy penalty otherwise. Readying these weapons takes significantly more time (implied setting up of a bipod, using a scope, settling in around your weapon, etc). So maybe ~30 TUs to ready, then a slight reduction of TUs for the LMG to fire, precision would be roughly what it is now. I'd like to see an increased rotate cost. If you want to fire standing you can, it's faster (perhaps a 10 TU ready time, no penalty to unready), but you have a massive accuracy penalty. For the Precision + LMG I'd like to see an "unready" cost near to what the ready is for those crouched. This would make it feel like you are committing to that piece of cover / field of fire and give a much more "moving between entrenched positions" than the lighter more mobile weapons. Obviously the current "wait until the next turn for accuracy debuff to go away" would go away.

I really like this idea. Rockets are great for night missions due to the extra illumination. It should also promote a balanced squad makeup (moving is more important), which is one of the issues brought up in the combat balance thread. It's a little too easy to just scout with a vehicle and have your HW crew fire from afar as is, and I often have to move my vehicle out of the line of fire.

It was never said you couldn't fire standing up, just that you couldn't deploy/ready your weapon, as they are meant to be fired prone/crouched. You can certainly fire from the hip, but you'll be facing an accuracy penalty.

I'm with Gaud on reducing LOS but not entirely replacing it. I'd take a cue from EU12 and how someone that was "hunkering down" had a much smaller LOS but still knew what was going on in their immediate vicinity.

tier 1: 2 rocket 2 sniper 4 rifle (with shotguns in the pack once strong enough) tier 2/3: hunter 2 sniper 1 rocket 1 lmg 2 rifle (with carbines if possible)