Kamehamehayes

You see, I'm not killing their soldiers; I'm just using the stun baton to give them a little nap, they must have been tired after all. Ok in all seriousness, I do get your point; there would probably need to be a mechanic dedicated to punishing you for your actions, thus maybe creating more trouble than it is worth. Though I would love for this to be explained through in-game lore.

You could just take out the aliens first, knockout the local forces, then raid the alien ship. The local forces are not particularly useful for raiding crashed ships from what I've known from playing xenonauts and seeing some of the beta, so this strategy would not hurt you near the end of a crash mission. I guess this topic applies to aliens shooting down local forces as well, so should you retain weapons from looting the courses of the soldiers or should the weapon self-destruct like how the alien weapons work currently? If you are given a mission to deal with traitors, then I think their weapons should be blown up when killed so the player does not get a full squads worth of equipment from a single mission.

So how would that end up happening? Should the weapons be given back for free or should you be able to get some compensation for picking them up like weapon components or money, similar to how alien weapons were handled in xen 1?

I have played many hours of xenonauts and I have never realized that you can knock out local soldiers and steal their lazer weaponry until pretty recently. You can make some extra money by smacking these soldiers and selling their weapons, which is a pretty corrupt move all things considered. So my real question is can you steal weapons in xen 2 and do you agree with how it has been implemented? Should this mechanic still be allowed in xen 2 or should it be removed entirely? It would be a pretty cool mechanic for you to be able to steal weapons from knocked out soldiers, but you would be directly punished for doing it. It would be pretty great game design if you stole weapons from local forces and then your payment from that particular region gets cut in half for a month. Maybe you can have a secret ending where the xenonauts drive off the aliens and rule the world through violence and corruption, even putting down the efforts of both NATO and the Soviet block. You would obtain this ending by whacking enough local forces and civilians.

Yeah, I agree. The big reports could be cleaned up and improved a little bit. The devs can definitely can tag topic to show if they are confirmed or not. It would be more efficient and effective to shift the forums in this direction because the open beta will eventually come and with it many new players, so the forums would probably be pretty overwhelming. It would be nice to better sort it to allow the forums to be easier to navigate.

I definitely agree with alienkiller and mralex here, the aliens should act as a team to feel like a more sophisticated threat. If the aliens know generally where the xenonauts are, then they should start trying to head over there as a group, making pathways like in example 2 wherever they go. I've watched several of silencer's videos (they are beta 17 btw) and most of the aliens are acting on their own accord instead of acting together as a team. Each alien seems to attempt to attack the target that they think is best for them, but they would find more success if they all attacked a single target. My senario would be a couple aliens are in a standoff with 2 or 3 xenonauts, and every combatant is under cover and has full hp. One alien sits in the corner while the other alien should be placed on the opposite side of the map. The first xenonaut should be completely open to the first alien but should be under high cover so the other alien has a really low chance of hitting him. Another xenonaut should sit right in the middle of the map but is behind cover to both aliens. The aliens would pass the test with flying colors if both aliens attacked the xenonaut in the middle. They would pass the test if they both attacked the first xenonauts even though one of the aliens had an extremely low chance of hitting him. They would completely fail if they attacked separate targets or did not attack at all. The visual was hastily made so it is not the most pretty visual, but ti should help to get my point across.

Well i apologise if I'm wrong, as I have no experience on xenonauts 2 midgame to late game (I watched a few of silencer's xen 2 videos, so I have some idea of the earlygame), but I seem to remember Chris talking about certain aliens having resistances to either energy or ballistic based weaponry. If this is the case, shouldn't you be directly punished for specifically focusing on energy or ballistic weapons because certain aliens would be resistant to one or the other?

It is not as bad as the firaxis xcom where soldiers cannot hit the broad side of a barn, but somehow accurately throw grenades from 20 ft away. I guess xcom likes to hire professional baseball and/or softball players? Now that I think about it, xenonauts soldiers can use a stun baton pretty well... so I guess secret military organizations with the goal of defending the planet from alien invasion like to hire baseball players... it would be really funny if Chris added a research text depicting this very phenomenon.

I agree, these damage boosts should be shown to the player to help build a strategy around. It would be a nice, quality-of-life change that would benefit the game. Speaking of which, what is the exact amount of damage increase that these damage boosts give you?

Yeah there is a lot of people that don't care for it, but I enjoy it when I check out my soldiers.

He is talking about where and when the soldier previously had fought before the start of the game; for example, if your unit had fought in Vietnam then it would say "Previous experience- Vietnam". This does not effect the gameplay at all; it just adds more depth and character to your soldiers.

Dude he is just suggesting a small slice of life feature from the first game. Why does adding that make xenonauts 2 a clone of xen 1? Personally, I would like to have this feature as well because it is a nice detail about my soldiers.

That is really odd. There are no problems before the reload, but problems happen after the reload? I wonder what is causing that.

No I have not played it (due to not owning a copy of the closed beta), but I am pretty certain that it is a temporary change as the devs slowly add more and more research required to attack the cleaner base. Based on quotes given by the devs, my evidence suggests that this change will be temporary and that an alternative is not needed as of now. I do not if it is wrong honestly. It would be nice to start the game with a bang because it really is a powerful first impression. The aliens are threatening and they mount an attack on the base, causing the player to always be on edge as their base could be attacked at any time and the player does not know what other things the aliens have in store. After these beginning sequences, I agree that the missions should be scaled back to allow the player to get used to base and soldier management.

Chris said that it would be unlocked through a short research chain, not directly from studying the cleaner's corpse. So it is probably a combination of cleaner autopsy, cleaner interrogation, and maybe cleaner officer interrogation or maybe some piece of communications technology. The post the you quoted said that you start the game with Cleaner autopsy available. See how the first post says it is a research chain and the second says that you stat the game with it researchable? I do not blame you for confusing it though; it is a pretty long update with lots of new stuff.

We will prob be getting new about the open beta in the monthly update, which should come out in 2 or 3 days. Bugs are best reported in the bug reporting section because it just gets lost in other topics and it is much easier to sort and acquire bug topics there. Everything you need to include and where to get them are found at the top of the bug reporting section in the pinned topics. Happy alien hunting.

Wow, that is a lot of new changes. I think that the appearance of these new "cleaners" is a welcome addition to the enemy variety. It also nice to get some more variation to the missions as well considering that the majority of missions are crash sites. Increasing the skyranger compacity and making alien weapons more lethal are an interesting decisions. It looks like a lot more soldiers are going to die, especially in the early game, which is good because it shows how far the aliens are ahead of humanity. I'm not sure how much this would unbalance the game, but we'll see. I definitely agree with disabling a lot of the features so you can focus on the lots of new stuff that could be very unbalanced and broken. I've noticed over the last few updates that you guys seem to be taking some inspiration from the Firaxis Xcom. Is this a coincidence or a conscious decision?

I agree, I would prefer the devs to put time and energy into other aspects of the game instead of making new designs for weapons that can be replaced in an hour of playing. However, I guarantee someone would make a mod for this. I remember a pretty popular mod from the original xenonauts where they allow you to use Soviet style weapons, so there is a really high chance a similar mod will come out soon after this game launches (or maybe even before during the open beta or early access).

Congrats to the dev team for continuing to develop so much of the game even when life throws a massive curbball at you. It's good to know that the development of the game will return to normality (or as normal as it could be). Chris, can you elebarate more on the new UI concepts that you and the team have been working with? I am really interested in your ideas for improving the UI.

I mean, they can make it so it is relatively easy to switch soldiers between or out of teams/squads. I'm just saying that this system would just cut out all the micromanagement needed to fill the dropship. This system would also be fully optional to use so you dont have to manage squads is you dont want to. I dont follow and how micromanaging single soldiers is much more work than micromanaging an entire team. Your points 1 and 2 dont make sense to me. I mostly agree with your additions to stress,

Woah there buddy, that's going a little off the rails dont you think? Yes I agree that there needs to be limitations in order to allow more interesting decision making in the geoscape. In xen 1, doing every UFO was the most optimal choice since you get more funds, materials, and soldier exp making any other decision mostly worthless. Systems like stress help to create strategical diversity because grinding every UFO isn't the most optimal option anymore. All I'm saying is these systems can be improved upon to make the game more interesting. For example, several have stated that the current implementation of stress makes them rush missions, which doesn't encourage them to slowly outflank and out smart the aliens. Instead, it makes them make poor decisions because they are quickly rushing into every fight. A way to improve upon this is that soldier stress doesn't slowly grow as you complete the map. Instead, it grows as your team see themselves and their comrades die, get fatally wounded, suffer through a psionic attack, get suppressed, etc. This system promotes an efficient style of play, which means that this discourages turtleling especially against psionic enemies and it discourages running into fights mindlessly. Another nitpick I have with stress is that I dont want to take a bunch if time to replace a bunch of soldiers on the drop ship; instead, I would really like a squad system that allows me to replace everybody in two clicks. I have some nitpicks for the current base building system as well. I would really like to be able to directly upgrade buildings to their superior for a lesser cost and time because it saves me from destroying buildings just to build another one. From the footage I've seen, the early game encourages you to build a couple generators to allow you expand you base with future unlockable buildings (the expanded radar for example), but that investment would be a waste once I start building aluminum reactors. If this system were used, then you can feel free to make these early investments and wont regret it when you get a superior building. Point is, most of these new mechanics are great, but there are ways that they can be improved to make the player experience better.

I think one of the main goals of xen 2 is to force the player to make tough strategic decisions on the geoscape. In xen 1, you pretty easily build things like all of your interceptors(I like building 2 condors and 2 foxtrot for every base) and base structures in the first month and grind out every UFO to get above the experience and resource curves. In xen 2, systems like stress, power, and more base structures gotten after research prevent the player from doing all of the things above and forces the player to make tougher decisions on the geoscape. In xen 1, grinding out every UFO you can was the most optimal option. However with the edition of stress, that is necessarily the best option anymore and allows the player more options that can be considered just as optimal to each other. You could let your soldiers rest which allows you to save money, power, and base space at the cost of losing valuable exp and alien materials. You could also put in the effort to accommodate space for extra soldiers so you can go on more missions at the cost of power, money, and base space. Do I agree that this system could improved upon? Of course. I agree that the recovery of stress should be linked to a soldier's stats, that would help to differentiate the soldiers a little better. This system also encourages hiring more soldiers, so a squad creation system should be in place so it would be convenient to be able to easily easily switch squads on the fly to take out a lot of micromanagement.

Dude we understand that a full balance patch will come months in the future, that doesn't mean you bold, underline, and supersize your post. I dont see an issue with giving balancing suggestions to the devs well before it is going to be implemented, that is why these forums are here.

I'm not surprised that the reapers are one of the most unbalanced aliens. If they dont have enough hitpoints they die to reaction shots too quickly to be threatening and if they have too much then they are too difficult to kill and they get close enough to you guys to infect them. It is a very delicate balance that makes it really difficult to balance. I'm not exactly sure how to balance reapers, maybe buffing stuns grenades so they deal more damage to reapers and scare them off more could help to deal with reapers being too strong. Sebellians should definitely have less vision, should be more inaccurate, or both in order to balance them better. I cant say anything about the other alien races since I haven't played the game yet.

Well due to covid-19, this past year has been chaotic and things could change drastically in a short time. Unfortunately, Chris has a relative that has contracted a terminal illness so he is taking time to hang out with his family. He doesn't know when the open beta will come out and new versions and hotfixes will come out slower as well. I would guess that the open beta will come out sometime between late April through early June, but as I said it is a very chaotic year and recent events in Chris's personnel life will cause him to work about half as much as he normally would so the dates could change drastically very quickly.