[Soldier Training Centers]

Right now, it just looks like you throw your soldiers into a training center and then they slowly improve their stats over time. I don't hate this at all, but it is a little boring and uninteresting. 

I think there should be a new screen on the geoscape to manage which soldiers are currently training and what they should focus on while doing so. I think the layout for this should be similar to that of Fire Emblem Three Houses. You can instruct your students in that game to focus on 1 or 2 areas and they would passively get better in those areas as time goes on. Focusing on one stat would also gave 1.5x the amount of that stat you would get compared to focusing on to different stats (ex. if you gained 10 strength and 10 reflexes from training, you would get 15 strength if you only focused on it). Training will also get slower and slower as a soldier's stats get higher and higher. 

Three houses also has a motivation mechanic where students will be able to do more schooling if they are more motivated. Perhaps we can do a similar mechanic with the stress system where soldiers will do worse and worse at their training as their stress goes up. Injured soldiers will also not be able to participate in training (the same goes for soldiers that have gone through a mental breakdown due to stress). 

If human psionics is going to be a thing in this game, this can also be the place where soldiers would be able to train to use psionics on the battlefield. 

Lastly, I think Training should be imbedded into the personnel screen between the transfer selected and training capacity buttons. There seems to be just enough room to put another option. 

Image credit goes to "Dragon-Tube". 

 

 

[Xenonauts-2 December 2021 Update]

2 hours ago, Bobit said:

By "disable it" I meant disable the ability to spend an action to regenerate 30% morale. Because in classic XCOM tradition it functions as a timer, this remvoes that function.

I don't think this action removes the timer aspect of panic attacks and psionics. As Chris said, it does require 60% of your tu in order to use it, which is quite a lot. Units like snipers and heavies will not be able to shoot their weapon at all, riflemen will be forced to take snap shots or normal shots with lower accuracy, and assaults and shields will not be able to close the distance and shot aliens at close range. This is a big tradeoff for what those soldiers could potentially do without it. 

This could also allow for significant changes to psionics in general. This allows psionics to be more varied and have new abilities assigned to psionic units because the player will also have an extra option of dealing with them. This also allows for psionics to be better balanced in general as the player and aliens have a new means of dealing with panic attacks. Perhaps this could lead to player psionics becoming a thing as well in the future as psionics would be better balanced than before. 

If this mechanic works well in v23, then I have high hopes to psionics in the future. They could become much more varied and interesting and human psionics could be a thing to.  

[Xenonauts-2 December 2021 Update]

8 hours ago, Chris said:

We've made a few improvements relative to the first Xenonauts. The first is that Morale always starts at 100 for every soldier, and the Bravery of a soldier (boosted by the squad commander bonus) reduces the amount of Morale damage taken when something bad happens (a soldier with 0 Bravery takes about 3x the morale damage that soldier with 0 Bravery does). There's now a button that allows you to spend TU in order to gain Morale, and the morale system is a bit more sensible in general. Units are generally only vulnerable to panic if Xenonaut soldiers are dying around them (particularly high-ranking ones) or the unit itself has been wounded, or if there are psionic aliens messing with their heads. Balancing is still required but overall it should be a little smoother and easier to understand than it was in Xenonauts 1.

 

I like a lot of the changes that you made to this system. Allowing a soldier to spend tu to gain morale is nice and it another tactical option for the player to take advatage of, but I'm wondering how much the action costs to use and how tu efficient it is. The part that says "a soldier with 0 bravery takes about 3x the moral damage that a soldier with 0 bravery does" really confuses me. The number 0 appears twice there, so I am really confused. Is this a typo? 

[Youtube policy]

Just now, Baddy22 said:

The luck of dislikes is disturbing. Now I cant tell whether something is good or not.

Yeah, I agree. The dislikes were there to show if a video was bad at a glance. I found it very helpful occasionally. I really do not understand the motive that Youtube has for removing dislikes; it just seems like a waste of time to me. Youtube could be working on a bunch of other things like fixing their broken copyright system, which has affected many, many Youtubers on the platform and it destroying all of their hard work. Instead, Youtube is wasting time with this nonsense instead of fixing fundamental problems with their system. 

[An accurate release date?]

Yeah, the most recent beta build is almost playable enough to get to the last ufo. From what I am seeing, we are probably going to get an open beta by March. Yes, it is literally a year after the original date for the open beta release, but it looks like we are getting there. I am personally pretty excited for this game after seeing some neat things with the new builds. Hopefully I'll get to play this time, fingers crossed. 

[Bankruptcy in 90 days]

If funds are going to be in a low amount at the start of the game and is a big hurtle for the player to overcome, I don't think that it should cause a game over if the player fails to break even two months in a row. Maybe if your funds go under 0, then the world's panic will increase by a set amount for every time funding goes under 0. This panic increase should also increase with each time in a row that the funds go under zero (ex. the first time it happens it's 10 panic, next is 20 panic, 30 panic, etc). This would still punish the player for not keeping up with maintenance costs while still allowing for some interesting decision making and benefits. First of all, the player does not lose immediately if this were to happen so inexperienced players will not get screwed over if they made poor money decisions, and, more interestingly, this allows the player to risk going under their budget and suffering panic in exchange for using that money for more important purposes if the player desires (building weapons, interceptors, base structures, etc). Perhaps the panic rise would also increase depending on the difficulty chosen, separating the difficulties from each other a little more. 

[The strategy of the game. Concept.]

1 hour ago, Komandos said:

I'm not saying New Xcom Games are bad. But these games do not interest me.

If I go to a bar and ask for a glass of beer, and they answer me: “We improved the old beer recipe. Now beer is not only non-alcoholic, but also similar in composition to milk. "

It's hard for me to disagree: beer is now really non-alcoholic, and you can drink it instead of milk. Which is "great". But I personally don't like these improvements.

I'm looking for a game in which X-COM CAN look like a real military organization (like the Warhammer legions).

Where the Xcom soldiers - not only: Base; Ship "Avenger"; Combat task (mission), as well as adequate manning of units (Detachment> Platoon> Company> Regiment). The new Xcoms are completely different from the military design (no matter how hard the player tries to give them a different look).

 

It's hard for me to understand why game developers are not afraid (have no concern) if I set in the settings:

 "Weak level of difficulty";

edited (in the file) the entire line of weapons the way I like;

bombed the crash site of a UFO without the participation of a tactical group in ground combat;

The number of aliens on UFOs has been increased several times;

but - everyone is very worried if I want to go into the settings and set the option to take into battle not 10-12-16 soldiers, but 16-20-24. (Just as now I expose not 6-20 aliens on UFOs, but 12-60). What is the eresy here?

 

Is 20 (24) soldiers instead of 16 so morally unacceptable that it is impossible to leave the player this option (the possibility of expanding the squad) for future (his personal) mods?

I’m definitely not against any of these ideas. I personally like the idea of having the option to edit a campaign however much a player wants. The player should have the power to edit the enemy quality as high as they want and change how many soldiers and alien there are in a battle. It would be a great way of increasing the game replay-ability. This could be a very similar screen to Firaxis Xcom’s “second wave” options. 

Generally, 10-16 soldiers is considered pretty complex for a tactical game. It can already take minutes to plan out optimal moves and it is a good middle ground to balance complexity and still not become tedious and unenjoyable. Increasing the soldier count to 20-24 is pretty ludicrous in the context of most players’ experiences, even if there is technically enough room in the drop ship to support that many soldiers. I’m completely fine with allowing the option for the player to edit the max amount of soldiers to enter a drop ship, but I am very much against balancing and developing this game around that many soldiers. 16 soldiers is generally my limit in terms of tactical enjoyment; any more soldiers will just start to make the game more and more of a slog imo when it was fun and enjoyable before.

 

[Xenonauts 2: Base Mechanics]

5 hours ago, Komandos said:

 Why do aircraft have radar, but in large cities with airports there is no radar?

Bc only specific kinds of radar (invented by the Xenonauts) can detect the movement of flying saucers, the radar found in traditional airports and the like would be ineffective against the alien threat. 

[Soldier Inventory System Suggestion]

I would also like to this kind of system implemented into Xen 2. It would help to differentiate the armors (and maybe the under suits as well) and add another layer of customization onto the inventory system.

I would also like for tanks to have some storage space as well. I’ve seen that there is not much reason for a tank to not have its heavy armor on for every mission. Perhaps heavy armor would take up some (or all) of the inventory space, so a light tank could carry more equipment for you soldiers into battle than its heavier variant. 

[Melee Weapon Progression]

On 11/11/2021 at 2:09 AM, Alienkiller said:

The Meele Weapon I use to catch living Enemys for Interrogation (after the Basic R & D this will be very important) and against Mechanical Enemys (Robots / Drones etc.) for an faster deactivation.

You get the following in the Beginning:

1. Stun Baton (the best thing against Mechanical and for surprisse Close Attacks from Shield-Soldier and Shotgun-Soldier to stun living Aliens and other living Enemys / deactivation from Mechanical Enemys)

2. Stun Gun (the long Range Variant from the Stun Baton which is very good against Mechanical Enemys; good for Infantry-Soldiers with some Stun Grenades too to catch living Aliens and other living Enemys)

3. Stun Grenades (for LMG-Soldiers, Sniper-Rifle-Soldiers and Rifle-Man-Soldiers to give Assistance to catch Living Aliens and other living Enemys )

4. Stun Ammo (for Grenadier-Soldiers; same like Stun Grenades)

You have to know when to use one of them correctly. That´s all and then your Soldiers work effectivly. In all of my Games so far with Beta 22.0 to Beta 22.4 I have catched about 20 Psyons, 12 to 15 Sebillians, about 5 to 6 Mentrachs, more then 50 Cleaners alive for Interrogation and deactivated about 20 Mechanical Enemys (big Robots and Drones) with Stun-Guns and Stun-Batons.

Short said: The beginning Stun Weapons are effective for the beginning and with more R & D they get much better against the Enemys and sadly for uninvolved Civilian / Xenonaut helping NPC-Soldiers. All Games of that and similar Gernes (like Diablo-Series, Starcraft-Series, UFO-ET-Series, old UFO-Aftermath-Series, old and new X-COM-Series) start with outgunned Soldiers or Humankind.

You said that you receive these weapons in the beginning, right? Does that mean that you can perhaps upgrade your existing stun weapons into   stronger ones? If so, tat’s pretty cool. Messing around with all of the stun weapons was my favorite things to do in Xen 1; it’s nice that I can mess around with more of them in the sequel. I did see a knife in the earlier beta builds. Are those still around or are the knives removed form the game? 

[Melee Weapon Progression]

One of my favorite things to do in Xenonauts 1 was to go to an alien and take them out with a stun baton. It just felt exhilarating to get up close and personal with the aliens and knock them out. It saddened me a little bit when I realized that the stun baton was the only melee weapon that you can take advantage of in Xen 1. 

I see that the weapon progression in general is getting a bit upgrade with the addition of both a ballistic weapon tree and a thermal weapon tree, which allows for interesting side grades that I like a lot, and the ability to update existing tech to keep them relevant. These ideas have got me thinking, are melee weapons planned to get a similar treatment to give more options to the player? 

I am wondering if there will be a progression of melee weapons over the course of the game. I have seen both knives and stun batons present in the same beta build before, so I am also wondering if there will be two different tech trees for each kind of melee weapon. It might be cool also to have the ability to put a melee weapon on a MARS too as a secondary weapon. 

So yeah, I hope that the melee weapons will receive some kind of progression similar to that of your other weapons.  

[My Personal Opinion with current 22.3 V Experience]

Yeah, I think the biggest weakness of 2x2 hangars is that a dropship takes up the whole hangar. Whenever I play Xen 1, I often set up my base with two dropships, two foxtrots, and two condors (retiring the condors when I have the funds and materials to upgrade to marauders). This would be problematic to setup in Xen 2 because it would require a lot of space to have two dropships running at the same time. 

I think the best solutions to this are either to have 1x2 hangars and 2x2 hangars like CaptainSPrice suggests or to allow 2x2 hangars to hold up to two dropships. 

[Alien lethality possibly too high?]

1 hour ago, Komandos said:

If a shot hits directly in the face, a soldier, even in good armor, can die from a pistol bullet.

In such games, it makes sense to think not about the safety of individual soldiers, but about the safety of the entire tactical unit. The sniper can sit far behind the stormtroopers. He probably won't need an armored suit at all. And it will be the most advanced soldier in the game.

A stormtrooper soldier is often attacked by aliens. And you won't be able to avoid it. And you will lose stormtrooper soldiers all the time. 

To have an advanced stormtrooper soldier at the end of the game - you will need:

- Or great luck.

- Or impenetrable armor suits.

- Or weak aliens.

- Or a "training center" that constantly improves recruits.

Sure, the safety of the tactical unit I'm question is more important than the safety if the soldiers, and a soldier shot in the head can die at anytime. However, it is easy for key soldiers to die because you don't know the armor hp of your soldier at the time. If armor hp should remain in the game, then the current hp value of the armor should be shown to improve quality of life and player decision making. 

[Alien lethality possibly too high?]

55 minutes ago, Chris said:

I have actually toned down the lethality slightly in the past few builds (i.e. since the original post was made); alien weapons do slightly less damage now but more importantly the damage modifier for a shot runs from 50% - 150% now, whereas before it ran from 50% to 200%. That means there's less chance of the aliens scoring a massive critical hit with their weapon that will kill most soldiers in the early / mid game irrespective of their armour and HP.

It's a difficult balancing act though. I also don't want the player to know that a soldier will always be safe to take at least one hit if they're wearing good armour, because then some of the tension disappears. So it's just finding the right balance between exposing your troops to fire always being a risk on one hand while not making HP and armour pretty much irrelevant on the other.

After testing armor hp for a little while, what do you think is the superior model, armor damage reduction or armor hp?

I honestly see a lot of merit in both models. The armor damage reduction model has been tested in many games and I generally like it a lot because it is intuitive and easy to understand. However, the damage reduction model can make weaker weapons have extremely little effect on Xenonauts or highly armored aliens (like how ballistic pistols have almost no effect on androns or how high-level armor can make the initial alien weapons ineffective against your soldiers in Xen 1). The armor hp model still allows for early game weapons to be threatening against armored soldiers and aliens, which can help someone behind on tech catch up easier, while having a similar effect to damage reduction in most cases. However, the player is blind to their current armor hp, so it is easy for a soldier to die in a long mission even if they have full hp because their armor hp was destroyed and the system is less intuitive in general than the previous system.  

I think the best solution to the problem would be to add an armor hp bar to the tactical ui; it would allow the player to know when their armor has a chance of breaking and it solves the previous issue of a soldier dying because the player did not know what the armor hp of their soldier was. 

[Creating portraits of soldiers]

Xenonauts 2 is going to be extremely modable just like the first one was. It should be pretty easy to replace soldier portraits to your liking jus like many mods in Xenonauts 1 did. 

[Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta V22 Released! (Experimental Branch)]

43 minutes ago, Chris said:

So unless I forgot to update it, I don't think advanced labs / workshops still have higher maintenance costs - I've actually stripped out the high-tech labs / workshops for simplicity's sake, and now base structures upgrades are a global engineering project.

$50 per hour covers the wages and the upkeep for the building, and the upkeep for the power generation, and then some. Their monthly wages are $25k so their wages are $34.7 per hour. I think the generation could be dropped to $40 per hour before you started making a loss but I just thought $50 per hour was a nice round number.

You've also got to remember that a scientist costs $50k to hire, so at $10 per hour profit it takes about 200 days to pay off their hire cost!

I'm not a beta tester, so I don't know all of the end and outs, but yeah thanks for explaining this. 

So if I understand this right, scientists and engineers effectively make 15 dollars per hour? I think that 50 per hour is fine now that I understand the wage costs. 

So upgrading the labs and workshops are now tied to workshop projects? Yeah, I think that is probably for the the best as it is a lot simpler to understand and balance. 

Yeah, thanks for answer all of my questions.

[Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta V22 Released! (Experimental Branch)]

Gaining money from the scientists and engineers that are currently not doing anything is a great idea. I found it pretty crippling when I spent a lot of money on scientists and then they ran out of research projects to research (or be like me and forget to assign anyone to research stuff for a better part of a month in an Ironman run, oops). 

Out of curiosity, how much are scientists and engineer wages? 50 dollars an hour per person is a lot of money, and if you leave 10 engineers to nothing for a whole month, then they can make around 360000 dollars, which is a whole lot of cash for 10 workers that didn't research or make anything. So, I think the wages should be enough to reduce this to a more reasonable number. 

Also, I think it would be cool for scientists or engineers that are in high tech labs and workshops to also get a boost to the money that they make as well as a boost to their research/production efficiency. This would also somewhat help with the higher matinenece costs of high tech labs and workshops. 

 

[Xenonauts 2 Tutorial]

10 hours ago, Dagar said:

Watched the video. From that, I think exposing new players to the different parts of the game in a staggered fashion could work well, possibly alongside some short challenges for ground and air combat that can teach you that through trial and error. For the former you could have the Geoscape and air games be run by the game itself (or "advisors") at the start, and you take over these tasks, like producing new equipment, choosing the loadout for your troops, hiring new staff, playing the air game and planning and building new bases over time. For seasoned players, that should be a choice, of course.

 In the concrete case of Xenonauts 2, I feel it is also important to look at the target audience and at the resources Goldhawk have available. I feel that with what the game looks like right now it targets Xenonauts 1 players (duh!), old X-COM fans and possibly FiraXCOM players looking for something new. With that in mind, I don't think the game has to be too hand-holdy for new players. Also, e.g. the challenges mentioned above have a high chance of being out of scope for Goldhawk as a developer due to time, staff and budget restrictions.

Yeah, Goldhawk's budget is a big part of how the tutorial should be structured. I'm not sure if they have the budget to implement advisors to help carry out the geoscape for players during the first couple of months. I agree that the tutorial should not be too hand holdy because the target audience likely has experience with these kinds of games, but I've seen a lot of people on the steam forums that haven't really played this kind of game before and got confused with the ui and the controls. 

It would also be nice if Goldhawk could separate the tutorial between those who have experienced xcom-type games before and returning players who want to get strait to the newer stuff. Perhaps newer players can have access to advisors that help to manage the geoscape in the early months while returning players can get into the action of the geoscape immediately. 

I understand that the restrictions on Goldhawk would not allow them to implement things that I just described, though it would still be important to have a good tutorial. 

I'm struggling to see how a good tutorial would be structured in this predicament. Pop ups with a lot of words and clicking tutorials don't function all that well imo, so I'm wondering if the tutorial can teach the player how to play with hands-on experience like some of the examples in the video does. Perhaps a tutorial that tells the player the bare-bones basics of how to play the game would be effective as the player would have to get some hands-on experience with their various weapons and tactics. This would prob be an effective way to ease in veterans into Xen 2, but I'm not sure how it would effect newer players. 

I'll prob have to look for a tutorial for a tactical game that achieves this to see whether this kind of tutorial is effective for newcomers. 

[Xenonauts 2 Tutorial]

I've recently been watching a lot of Game Maker's toolkit these days and I saw a lot of videos talking about the effectiveness of game tutorials (specifically for more complex games). After pondering this subject for a little while, I wanted to create a topic to discuss ideas for an effective tutorial for Xen 2.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GV814cWiAw

Xen 1 and the more recent steam demo for Xen 2 in February have been criticized for a lack of a tutorial, and for good reason. Many strategy and tactical games are complex enough for players to easily get confused with the ui and mechanics of the game. This has been shown in the February demo when I saw a lot of topics about people not being able to figure out how to spend more time units for more accuracy or couldn't figure out how to shoot aliens at higher elevations. And with the addition of the geoscape and air combat as well, it is easy to imagine a new player getting turned off because they don't understand how to play the game. 

So my question is, what is the best way to convey all of this information to the player in a game like Xenonauts or its sequel? I have sat through many tutorials for several strategy and tactical games that just tell you to click this and click that and they don't actually tell me how to play the game that well and they bore me with all of the massive text boxes and arbitrary clicking. The firaxis Xcoms also turned me off a little bit when they did these same tactics and it felt really tedious to have that much handholding and that much reading and clicking. The difference of enjoyment when you choose to turn off the tutorial in those games are staggering. 

I heard that you guys over at Goldhawk plan to make a tutorial that plans to introduce the player to various mechanics of tactical combat and introduce them to the main threat of the Cleaners at the start of the game. I would like to know how you would go about making that tutorial instructive at teaching new and veteran players about the mechanics of the game and the threat the that cleaners pose to the survival of humanity while still keeping the battle engaging and fun for new and veteran players alike. Another important thing that the tutorial absolutely needs is to convey the design philosophy of Xenonauts as a whole. Xenonauts is a true simulation that allows the player to play however they like without any sort of handholding or being shown what to do by the game. The tutorial needs to show that sort of philosophy as well to introduce new players to the design and feel of the game while still conveying all of the important information needed to fully experience the game. 

Then there is the issue with the geoscape where the player would go from one tutorial to another in quick succession, which can easily become really jarring. The geoscape has an arguably more complicated ui than the tactical battles do, so I'm also wondering how you guys can convey this information in an engaging way while easing the player into another tutorial (or tutorials depending on how you structure it). Air combat a little afterwards might also be another hassle for you guys to overcome as well. 

Yeah, this is a pretty huge task for this kind of game. And with the high expectation of this game due to the success of Xen 1, this is easily something that can make or break this game. So, I'm really interested in seeing your ideas for this tutorial. 

[Xenonauts-2 September 2021 Update!]

It's always nice to see your guys' progress month to month; its some interesting stuff to read through. 

The improving art throughout development is always nice to see and gets better every version; I think that the people on steam would appreciate it if the screenshots there would be updated to their improved forms after you guys finish your work on those biomes. 

I'm interested in seeing how the new air combat changes that are coming to v22 and beyond are going to affect the gameplay experience; it reminds me of that thread a few months ago that was talking about the air combat in v18. Perhaps this might open up discussion about the air combat again. Though there is one thing I would like clarified, what is the new equipment that you have in mind to give to the interceptors to widen their selection of equipment? 

It's a nice addition that scientist and engineers that aren't doing anything would generate small profit; I play through X1 and often times my engineers are sitting on the bench when they don't have any projects to do at the moment, so its great that this has a solution that makes sense in the game's lore. 

I'm excited for the stress system and how it presents challenges to the player in managing their soldiers in and out of battle; it adds a lot of strategic decision making to the game. 

[[21] Laboratory Screen]

I believe in previous versions of Xen 2, you could not hire scientists or engineers; you would have to get new personnel by completing certain missions or building offices on the geoscape (similar to xcom 2). They may have switched back to this idea in v21. 

Do you see any offices that you can build on the geoscape? If you do, then this isn't a bug, but a feature. If you don't see anything different on the geoscape when compared to v19 and v20, then it is probably an error. 

 

[Xenonauts-2 August 2021 Update!]

The additions that are going to be added to v22 really excite me. I'm excited for all of those varied missions that the "cleaners" create in the first couple months into the game. People have wanted these kinds of missions in Xenonauts for a long time and I'm glad that they are getting implemented. Will similar missions like this appear throughout the campaign even when the cleaners have already been destroyed? I think that many people would be happy about the mission variety if this is the case. It is pretty fair to say that Xenonauts 2 won't have the repetitive mission problem that Xen 1 had. 

Its nice to see that difficulty modes are being added into the game; however, I have a couple of questions about it. Will higher difficulties make the game harder by increasing alien stats on the battlefield or will it make the game harder by making the alien ai more advanced? I'm also curious about the difficulty customization; what kinds of things should we expect from that customization? 

Overall, great work this month Pog. 

[Xenonauts 2: Soldiers & Vehicles]

I agree, the stress mechanic definitely fixes one of my main issues with xcom as a whole. Xcom is about a global organization with the support of all the world's nations defending the world from a seemingly unstoppable threat from above, but that contradicts most of the gameplay because you are sending in the same 8-12 guys every mission. With the stress mechanic, it feels a lot more like an army like something a global defense organization would have, not just 10 guys sitting in the barracks. It also reduces grinding, which should make the game better overall. 

However, I don't like how fatigue was imemented into tharacia 776. Fire emblem does not have any way if supporting units that are on the bench, which is meaningful when you are not gaining any stats or building weapon ranks while you are doing so, and it is completely built around funneling exp into a small squad of units instead of an army.. This is why I think a stress/fatigue mechanic only works if you have a soldier training mechanic there to facilitate it. 

[Xenonauts-2 July 2021 Update!]

These are a lot of quality of life changes; every time I think you and your team impressed me, you one up it in the next update. 

Though I have a couple of questions. First, how are you guys going to handle harder/easier difficulties? Are you going to buff/debuff enemy stats depending on the difficulty or are you going to make the ai smarter and more cunning on higher difficulty modes? Secondly, do you think that the ai is ready to beat cheese tactics used by several of the closed beta testers that can trivialize maps (like how CaptainSPrice uses a lot of soldiers to gang up on one alien with reaction fire, killing it before it can shoot) or does it need a little more work to beat these tactics? Thirdly, how much will these alien special abilities affect gameplay? Will the abilities be used sparsely and will be a rare issue for the player to encounter or will the abilities appear pretty prominently and be a major part of the tactical gameplay? 

Again, very much looking forward to more announcements in the future. Also I'm looking forwards to more discussions about these topics; I feel that they have died down a little as of late.

[Mission Variety and UFO Progression]

1 minute ago, Birdman said:

Recently, I read that Terror Missions in Xenonauts don't start appearing until the third month. I thought to myself; "Bruh."

Even on the highest difficulty of Xenonauts on Ironman, I never actually got to experience a terror mission, because my air-game was already well-developed enough three months in to shoot everything down before they landed. I wasn't even able to get Alien Base Missions until I started letting Landing Ships go about their business unmolested.

  

 In the original XCOM and TFTD, there would be Terror missions and Large UFOs from the get-go that you couldn't shoot down, so you were forced to attend Terror Missions right from the start or take massive hits to funding. Even later into the game, when your airforce was more built up, you still had to fight Shipping Route and Terror missions in areas that you either couldn't cover or couldn't stop in time.

 The Airgame and ground combat progression in Xenonauts makes sense. It's reasonable, it makes sense in the lore, you start out with small challenges and work your way up in a straight linear progression, with ships getting larger and aliens getting more dangerous as you unlock more tools and firepower to fight them with. There's nothing you can't really handle so long as you're competent at the game. Terror Ships and Bombers wander about the geoscape for a short while in order to obscure their target instead of heading straight for the city.

 

The threat progression in XCOM, in comparison, is completely bonkers. You get Large UFOs all over the place, terror missions that you can barely handle, grunts getting gunned down left and right, massive attrition rates, your enemy has superior firepower, and if your grunts miss all of your shots, there's no suppression mechanic to keep them from gunning down your soldiers left and right. It's terrifying and exhilarating, all at the same time.

In the base Xenonauts game, I never really got the feeling that there were challenges that I simply couldn't overcome so long as I played competently.

 

The point is, I think that the simple and linear threat escalation in the base game causes a lot of problems. The all-or-nothing stakes for losing a Terror Mission force Terror Missions to only emerge when you can reliably shoot them down before they land, meaning you will almost never actually play through a Terror Mission.

 This greatly hinders the variety of missions and quality of gameplay, much more than having Terror Missions be "High-Stakes" adds to the atmosphere of the game.

 

From a strategic perspective, the government nuking their own cities doesn't even make sense. There's something to be said about not allowing the Aliens to get a foothold on the ground, or denying them access to humans to experiment on, but that's not even what the Aliens are trying to accomplish. They have a small and steadily growing fleet of atmosphere-capable craft, one they're using strategically to gradually cripple infrastructure and reduce morale instead of committing to a massive land invasion. 

The only thing dropping a nuke on a city does is accomplish the Aliens' own strategic goal, destroying valuable infrastructure and decreasing morale globally on a massive scale.

 

 It would make more sense and be much more engaging if Terror Missions didn't have the all-or-nothing stakes of nuclear annihilation, and if Terror Ships would appear earlier on so we could get some actual variety instead of the endless slog of downed UFOs.

Well, you do get to experience alien raids at the beginning of the game and throughout, which are like mini-terror missions that are a little harder than your normal crash sites and landing sites, that can help mission variety in the early game. You can encounter aliens and technologies in alien raids that you would not encounter until you fight stronger ufos weeks later (like wraiths and plasma weapons appearing in a raid before you encounter an observer ufo). The devs are also adding several story missions through out the game, like an earlygame base attack against the mysterious "cleaner" organization, so I think that the mission variety in Xenonauts 2 would be much better to Xenonauts 1. The devs are planning to have half of the terror and alien base missions not caused by ufos so that you still experience that mission variety even if you have an highly developed airgame, which may lead to different kinds of missions depending on if they were caused by ufos or something else. I still think that goldhawk will implement terror missions as missions of high-stakes, so I doubt that will change in the sequel except for maybe changing the city getting nuked.