Kamehamehayes
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Posts posted by Kamehamehayes
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20 hours ago, Ruggerman said:
Stress is an interesting element of the game, but it needs to be a combination of a number of factors, i.e.(Bravery, Reflexes, and Hit points), and recovery should also be link to the same. This is so that you will have more unique characters in the game, and give your a better dynamic's experience, within the game.
At the moment you know that a character will be out of the game, after 4 missions, which means you need to hire more troops, so you have to build more barracks, and this takes up space in the base complex, which reduces what else to can build, later in the game, and at this time in the game, you have a finite number of base squares to build in. Then you need more power??
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.
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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.
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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.
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Just now, Gulskjegg said:
I support you guys, and paid for X1 and X2, but currently, the X2 Beta is unplayable. I really enjoy X2, but it is a bug-ridden nightmare that CTDon a regular basis, but Baldur's Gate 3 Beta has nowhere near as many issues. . It has been quite a while, so can we get any kind of roadmap or release date within 3+/- months?
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.
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All of these changes look very interesting and fun to try, good job to you and your team.
If you have the time, I am very curious to know how you are planning to implement features like geoscape situations and human psionics, with the psionics in particular. Are you going to implement human psionics as a brand new weapon type into the game or are you implementing it in some other way?
If you read this post, thank you for your time and know that you can spend as much time as you want and need with your loved ones.
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Adding back packs would probably make the soldiers look much cooler. Though I don't know how difficult that would be to implement. I don't have access to the game yet so I can't say anything about the late-game armors.
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13 hours ago, andy079 said:
For me, its not so much how each individual thing like planes look, but on that note I think the artwork itself is just amatuerish. Boring backgrounds, no effects and the fact that theyre completely static makes it look even worse. That's just a preference thing though.
I'd like bases to feel more like bases, instead of a series of modules snapped together, even if that is what they are. Maybe blend adjacent modules together a little so they it isnt just a jarring grid. When players want as much clarity as they can get (eg when planning their base) they could toggle a grid overlay or something.
A 2.5D approach could look a lot better and actually convey a sense of depth within each module. By that i mean keep the 2Doverhead grid view but 2.5D for the modules.
X1 was outdated but acceptable for the time, I'd have thought base building was a no brainer place for X2 to make significant visual updates to.
I agree that the visuals should be updated, but the way bases are managed could easily change so it would be a shame if the devs make a bunch of new, great art and then have to scrap it since it doesn't fit with the new systems.
It would be nice if you could upgrade any building into their superior (generator into alienium reactor, labs/workshops into quantum labs/nanotech workshops, etc) for a reduced cost and building time so you don't just waste time and money you spent into the original buildings just to demolish them so you can get a better one.
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32 minutes ago, zolobolo said:
That is exacty what I would propse yes: to get into trouble with the obviosu optimal scneario
We woud need to decide on one of the les optimal scnearios (financially, time or combat wise)
A. Build 5 hangars to have 3 interceptors AND 2 tarnsports in main base - Huge combat advantage AND least money to maintain BUT much less space for everything else
B: Build only 3-4 Hangars AND have space for all other essential buildings - Strong early game main base AND still cheap BUT need to sacrifice 1 Interceptor slot or a secodnary transport
C: Build a second base nearby or offload research, production to a far-away base - Huge combat advantage AND plenty of sapce for everything BUT much more money to maintain AND secondary bases are less protected
Its a balancing question
We could also take C and build a bunch of hangars in secondary base right from the start but oh no - we are getting into the same decision cycle again
This is the idea and I would even welcome for furhter mid to late-game buildings to also take up 2x2 space for the same reason (besides radar and Hangar)
In X1 I just expanded into 5 Hangars in the main base right from the start - no consideration needed as they will be very usefull and there was no shortage of space - this made early game not the interesting base building wise and lead to all my base buildings being the same across the games
I don't think adding more 2x2 buildings to the game is a good idea (unless you add some other system that supports more 2x2 buildings). If you look at MrAlex's screenshot you should see that the base is almost full, and that he hasn't placed some of other buildings like labs, storerooms, missile batteries, etc. You probably wouldn't have any room if you added more 2x2 buildings to the game.
MrAlex and Alienkiller have been proposing outposts for awhile now which would help alleviate the issue if it worked kind of like a mini-base. It would be very restricted in what you can build (you couldn't build extra labs, workshops, or improved radar) and it would be pretty small (4x4 compared to the 6x6 of the main bases); however, you could use it to build extra hangars and storage spaces so it could make 2x2 hangars work (otherwise there wouldn't be enough space in the base to build other things if you have 4 or more 2x2 hangars).
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On 3/21/2021 at 9:56 AM, Alienkiller said:
Thanks Chris will make an new Test with this version. Give us 1 or 1,5 Weeks. I can only test in the Evening and on Weekends (if nothing other comes in like the RPG I play or XCOM EW where German an AAR is in writing).
Then we can give the DevTeam an exaclty statement what is working and what not. Then Beta 19 can better get fittet and prepared with the new Elements the Dev Team is currently implementing.
We know that the Armor-Repair in the Air is an Fill-Inner, so I concentrate on the other Parts which aren´t Fill-Inners anymore (like the Vests, Armors, Base-Defense Missions, Xenopedia etc.).
In your opinion, do you think that v19 would be ready for the open beta or should the open beta release wait until v20? I really want your honest opinion.
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1 hour ago, MrAlex said:
The basis of the idea is that nothing is infinite.
Basic human technology can be free (weapons, ammunition, etc.). This can be explained by the fact that our organization is sponsored by military organizations from all over the world, but not endless. Each item a player has to buy, and it takes up space in warehouses, and can be bought and sold. This is micromanagement.And everything that is studied from alien technologies must be made by the player himself, in the quantities he needs.
Building the first base, the player receives a minimum set of everything he needs, as it was in the original X-com. Everything else he has to buy. Such as ammunition for soldiers and fighters. As I said, human technology can be free (at low levels of difficulty to make it easier for beginners to get used to game management). But nothing should be infinite, and the player must watch everything himself. Again, for beginners, it can come up with tips, for example: a message about the low stock of ammunition in warehouses.
This technology is actually an improvement on human weapons. I think it should be a transitional stage for studying player management. This means that the player will have to make their own weapons using this technology. But ammunition for it will be standard, and they can be bought (instead of made). It will work for soldiers vehicles and fighters. And in the future the player will need to make weapons and ammunition for it separately. Manufacturing time and cost can be balanced so that it will not be difficult.
There is nothing strange in this. This idea takes a lot of developer time, and does not bring any significant benefits.
Fact 4 is quite correct. The basis of micromanagement is that every found item a player can use. Not directly (the soldier will not be able to pick up and use the alien's weapon). But for research and sale. This is almost done, except that the player can not study the weapon and ammunition for it separately. I believe in order to study technology a player needs to research weapons and ammunition separately to understand the principles of how it works.
The idea of researching UFOs in individual hangars may be interesting, but I think it will be too difficult for developers to implement it and it may take a long time.
I'm more focused on ideas that aren't difficult to implement relatively quickly without spending a lot of time on it.
My idea of rebalancing outposts does not fundamentally change anything, it just makes them easier to use, and should not take much time for developers.
As I said above, your idea is interesting, but difficult enough to implement.However, I am convinced that all alien technologies must be manufactured separately. But it would be logical to make a simple upgrade from a standart basic weapon to an accelerated one (Manufacture of weapons only with the possibility of using standard ammunition for it. As an intermediate stage in the upgrade from human to UFO technology)
I don't think it is necessary for everything to be in limited quantities; I just think that everything that come in unlimited quantities should be designed by the engineers first before they are available. The technologies at the beginning of the game I think should still be in unlimited quantities; they are pretty common in all militaries across the world (which are directly funding/suppling the xenonauts) so I see no reason to have to buy them. Ammo for weapons should be in unlimited quantities since it is just a nice quality of life addition, I do agree that anything that requires alien materials to build should not be in unlimited quantities (excluding certain things like explosives, since low-grade alienium is extremely common in almost all ufos) and have to be built by the player.
Speaking of upgrading weapons. On the battlefield, is there a reason to have ballistic/accelerated weapons over laser weapons? Do certain aliens have more thermal protection than kinetic protection making it worth it to use a ballistic/accelerated weapons over lasers in some scenarios?
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4 hours ago, Alienkiller said:
Is anyone else using the "Disarm Defense" to thwart Mind Control?
MrAlex:
Honestly, I think that everything in the game should be researched and made by the player, and nothing should be done by itself.
Research of corpses, UFO constructions.
Manufacture of weapons / ammunition, canons / plates of vehicles and fighters and other equipment that we have for some reason endless. If engineers make only prototypes, where do other weapons come from?
Time and cost can be balanced to make it easier for players to get used to. Kamehamehayes:
yeah I agree that the engineers should develop a suitable design before you unlock things in unlimited quantities (stun weapons included).
It's nice that they engineers have a lot to do in Xenonauts 2. In the first Xenonauts they kinda just sat on their butt half the campaign since there wasn't that much for them to do after periodically upgrading your gear and the head scientist already creates all of the designs for them, which is supposed to be part of the engineers' job. The amount of work they have to do is a nice problem to have.
Also you seem to have posted the same message twice minus the first sentence. Were you trying to edit your post and made a new one instead?
That is the beginning for the new Discussion here. What do the other Guys think, after the Facts get presented, what have done to the first Tests as well as an big Refit from Xenonauts 1.
Fact 1: Standard-Weapons and Materials (like the Rifles, Pistols, Grenades, Stun Weapons, Steel-Plating etc. which already exists on Earth and is in Raw Mass availible as well as used from the Founders Military, Police etc. too have to be free like in Xenonauts 1). That´s a Present from the Devs for us. Means don´t look a gift horse in the Mouth.
You can make them buyable like in the original X-Com and UFO ET as well as some other Fan-Projects, but that would be to much. The original X-Com had then lesser Production things for that, because the most Parts you get from the Aliens then already Useable or Scraped / Shaped for direct use. In UFO ET and all other Fan-Projects you can´t produce everything you need in Time. There the Devs made a big Present instead, they make all Weapons for Humans useable without an overwork.
Fact 2: From beginning on you have to Produce your Transports, Figher-Crafts and MARS-Vehicles from 0 on. The 2 Aircrafts (X-25 and X-2 Skyhawk) are already researched from your Scientists and produced from your Technicans. That´s the first difference to Xenonauts 1 and all prevous Games of that Gerne, where you could buy them (mostly they get deliverd in 24 to 48 Hours) or get like in Xenonauts build up very fast in your Hangar from the Aircraft-Company.
Fact 3a: The first upgradeable Standard-Weapons (Accelerated Weapons with LMG, Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper-Rifle, Pistols) incl. the first Protector Vests are comming early enough with R & D in Xenonauts 2. That will be in the first Months the one and only Options for your Soldiers for the Early Access and Final Game if all goes well.
Fact 3b: The upgradeable Standard-Armor (Combat Armor) was changed from an existing Armor-Upgrade (Combat-Armor) to buildable-Variants (Warden Combat Armor). There an Upgrade for the already produced existing Combat-Armors have to come back. Otherwise you loose to much time.
Fact 3c: The upgradeable Fighter-Canon have to be like it is. It´s getting used from your Founder states too and is only an light Upgrade to the existing Rotation-Fighter-Cannons. For the new R & D Canons like Laser, MAG and Plasma I have an Idea for making them interessting.
Fact 3c: The upgradeable Fighter- and MARS-Armor (Alloy-Armor) have to be like it is too. It´s getting used from your Founder states too and is only an light Upgrade to the existing Steel-Plating-Armor. There could be more with the new Plating-Options to make the use more interesting.
All 4 Parts of that Fact have to be Founders-Availible too after 30 Days like it´s done with the other important R & D Objects. Therefore the doable Upgrades from Steel to Alloy-Plating and from Standard to Accelerated-Weapons have to be shortet too in your Organisation first. As well as the Materials for the new Protection Vest. Here is the Plan for it and all other later Projects.
Idea for that: My Idea to make this more Interessting is that your R & D-Part make an Prototype which have to be testet in the Fight. After that the Development-Crew (Technicans) and Research-Crew (Scientists) overwork the Plans and you can in short time make the Upgrades for your Existing Weapons. Such an Option I get missing in all other Games of that Gerne, only the new XCOM 2 implemented that Option. The upgraded Standard-Weapons will get the new Standard-Weaponary and Armor for the Human Military, Police and other Protectors then.
An other positive Effect is that if the Panic Level rises to high it give an automatic Panic-Lockdown at level 70 or so to level 30 in the effected Country at once.
Fact 4: In addition you have to make everything usable you find from the Aliens (everything from the UFO´s, Alien-Bases, Alien-Handheld-Things etc.) you find to use them later. I like that Option, because it gives a feeling like old X-COM, UFO Extraterestials and much more in the not so long upcomming UFO Extraterestials 2 as well as other Fan-Projects.
Idea for that: Therfore your Outposts could be used to Storage bigger things (like UFOs for R & D), which means you automatically get the first Outpost with your Starting Base. All Outposts you can upgrade too for more Space and whatever up to 3 or 4 Times. The smaller things get in the Storage in your Base / Bases like now.
Fact 5: Some lost Property from the Aliens (like the Accelerated Weapons and Raid-/ Terror-Mission Anti-Mater-Beams) get fragmentet automatically in Magnets and other Parts. That´s a Point I don´t like too.
Idea for that: The Devs have already an Input since the 2021-Beginning or in the last 5 Months from 2020 to that and are thinking about it. It´s an Idea from me which comes from playing UFO: AI longer time ago. Chris played this Fanproject too and have interesst to bring that in. And it solve many Problems the Devs have with the Mission-Completet-Effects, esp. in UFO-Crashsites, enemy Base-Destructions and whatever before they implement the Special Missions.
That´s why MrAlex and I bring in the Idea with upgradable Outposts. There the UFOs get researched and seperated in Parts. In UFO: AI you R & D it in seperate Hangars and in UFO ET the UFO Research is a very long Process.
In the first Outpost / Outposts (so the Idea) can the Scientists and / or Technicans make an R & D for the UFOs (incl. the not Missionable ones after an Airfight) and other bigger things which are transpotable. You don´t need to switch the R & D Personal between Base / Bases and Outposts.
Fact 6: Not everything have to be produceable like some of you whish. Therefore an easy Upgrade-System like in XCOM2 would be perfect. The new Accelerated-Standard-Weapons can then be upgraded in the MAG-Weapons to save Money, Materials, Personal and esp. Time. The same Effect like the Laser-Weapons from Mk I to Mk II-Version.
Fact 7: The Devs have integrated a cool System which you can use R & D-Personal in the Bases. It´s not show up yet fully, but that Idea to use Personal in other Parts of the Base / Bases to make things faster and more effecive (like Generators, Hangars, Radar, Outposts) are a cool thing. Thats an effective System for XCOM2 and I can bet Phoenix Point as well as UFO2ET are using that Idea more effective.
Fact 8: In XCOM 2 Fact 7 works perfect. But thats not all. Scientists and Engeneers-Personal are going on Missions there sometimes. Not very often, but very effective. Examples is helping in Training, Upgrade or Repair somthing and whatever they can do in Missions.
Idea for that: Make that System effective in Xenonauts 2 to make the Geoscape, Base-Management and Missions more interessting.
Like I said it´s long and contains everything I find good and effective as well as bad and uneffective from all Games of that Gerne.
The standard weapons, steel plating, and other stuff that you get in the beginning of the game should be available in unlimited quantities without the use of a research project or for the engineers to design them since their technology and final designs were already there before the invasion began.
Stuff you research afterwards (like stun weapons, upgrades explosives, etc) should be unlocked in unlimited quantities after the engineers make a suitable design for them as the scientists, while very intelligent, only come up with prototypes that aren't as effective as they could be, so it would be up to the engineers to come up with the most effective final designs. This system would happen faster for stun weapons, which are made up of materials and technology already found on earth, than it would for alienium explosives and alien-alloy plating, which are technologies that were not already on earth before the invasion began.
I don't think this system would be necessary for things that come in limited quantities since that should just be part of the manufacturing process so it would be unnecessary.
It would also be nice if this was directly put into the lore of the game, which would make the engineers seem much more important than they did before.
Your idea of outposts seem really interesting, and the idea of slow upgrading base parts seems really cool to me too. I don't have that many ideas on how to improve these ideas since I haven't actually played the game yet (I've only seen the first couple of hours since I don't want to be super spoiled for the coming open beta).
Since this question seems to bee in line with this thread, how is the manufacturing economy in this game? Can you manufacture stuff purely to sell for profit or can you not to it in this game either.
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2 hours ago, MrAlex said:
Speaking of stun weapons. It is wrong that it is immediately available after the study and it does not need to be made in workshops.
Honestly, I think that everything in the game should be researched and made by the player, and nothing should be done by itself.
Research of corpses, UFO constructions.
Manufacture of weapons / ammunition, canons / plates of vehicles and fighters and other equipment that we have for some reason endless. If engineers make only prototypes, where do other weapons come from?
Time and cost can be balanced to make it easier for players to get used to.yeah I agree that the engineers should develop a suitable design before you unlock things in unlimited quantities (stun weapons included).
It's nice that they engineers have a lot to do in Xenonauts 2. In the first Xenonauts they kinda just sat on their butt half the campaign since there wasn't that much for them to do after periodically upgrading your gear and the head scientist already creates all of the designs for them, which is supposed to be part of the engineers' job. The amount of work they have to do is a nice problem to have.
Also you seem to have posted the same message twice minus the first sentence. Were you trying to edit your post and made a new one instead?
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I like games like dragonball fighterz, minecraft, splatoon, and tetris 99. I play all sorts of genres.
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2 hours ago, MrAlex said:
They have not yet met resistance among the fighters of mankind, they do not know that the Angel can defeat them in battle.
I would assume the aliens would not underestimate the xenonauts and assume that the angels can take out the relatively ill equipped scouts, so instead the scouts would retreat trying to keep the valuable information on earth's major regions (like their development, population distribution, general panic level, etc) that they acquired throughout the scouting missions.
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Just now, MrAlex said:
Units can only be passive when they are neutral. This is an invasion, so they must either attack or try to escape. My opinion is that the scouts should attack, as the aliens have not yet met a decent resistance among the fighters of mankind.
The current scout does not resist at all during the interception. Here is a balanced version of Scout.
I would make them try and run for the most part, their purpose is to scout and they really don't want to lose all of that valuable information to one of the xenonauts's angels. The destroyer should be the first really aggressive ship that the xenonauts encounter.
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12 minutes ago, MrAlex said:
Why did you make Scout passive? He must be aggressive, as this is the first ship to arrive to attack the player. And taking into account the description of the Fighter Angel, UFOs have not yet met with significant resistance from humanity. Therefore, they must attack with confidence.
I mean their purpose in the invasion is to scout, as it is in their name, so they aren't supposed to be super aggressive. The scouts want to feel out humanity's current situation before sending in the much stronger capitol ships and fighters. The destroyer is supposed to be the aggressive early game ship since it has more powerful cannons and is much tankier, it is clearly there to crush low-developed civilizations.
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55 minutes ago, maxm222 said:
Just read Skitso's long list of reactions and very much appreciate the work that went into it, and the many good/interesting suggestions and positive feedback. He's one of the few people I've seen who has indicated an interest in a further zoom-in (my 2/28 post). I can't believe that so few people wouldn't want a closer view, given how the graphics hold up. Maybe I should do a poll (grumble..grumble..).
To be honest, I just forgot that was a thing that they implement since I was caught up with improving the air combat and suggesting other things. A zoom-in would be a very nice feature to have.
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6 hours ago, odizzido said:
I don't feel it should be nerfed or anything based off of one example. It was just surprising for me to hit that wall so hard. What I didn't like is that the penalty for failure was +50 panic which is huge.
Actually I think being put into situations where you are outmatched and the best option is retreat sounds interesting and fun.....but we need to also be able to manage failure instead of losing the region if you fail.
Of course I think that terror missions are supposed to be some of the hardest and most dangerous missions you come across, feeling outmatched should definitely be part of it, but if players are dying in the first few turns because of mind control then it should definitely be nerfed to some extent (either through directly nerfing it or maybe telegraphing to the player the general direction of the alien that is trying to orchestrate it).
The idea of a mission where you are completely outmatched where you have to quickly complete an objective and retreat before the aliens completely surround and overpower you sounds amazing to me @odizzido. It would be a fun and interesting mission with much different tactics and strategies than the rest of the missions. The objectives of these missions could be to escort an important person, assasinate/capture an enemy commander, secure invaluable goods from the aliens, etc. We could start an entire thread to talk about what a mission like this would look like.
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So it was the mind control that was killing you guys? Do you think it should be nerfed or should they implement an armor that directly counters it or something like that?
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1 hour ago, odizzido said:
I found the two 3-raid missions I did to be easy enough. It was that first terror mission that I was effectively dead by the start of turn three. I still had two people alive by turn 5, but the two who were mind controlled on turn 2 were gone still. I never saw them again.
Again, I don't mind....I want games I play to be challenging. It's just the difficulty curve seemed massive. Maybe it was bad luck though? I don't know, I stopped playing because flares either were hitting knee high walls when thrown or crashing the game.
I can't play yet, but if the difficulty curve is as drastic as people are saying it should definitely be adjusted.
What was the main thing killing you? Were you outnumbered? Had worse equipment? Both? Or something else?
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32 minutes ago, Chris said:
@MrAlex @silencer @Kamehamehayes @Alienkiller
This thread has got a bit long and difficult to read, but I'll just post quickly to explain what I'm thinking in a bit more detail. Might have to start a new thread after the next hotfix I think.
Battlefield Variation:
Firstly, the current air combat implementation isn't final at all and I'm still brainstorming ways we can make it more interesting. Silencer, what I mean by that is that a combat featuring a specific interceptor and a specific UFO will always play out exactly the same way every time. The ground combat isn't like that at all; even if you end up on the same map (unlikely) then there's lots more randomisation that takes place within a mission that means it'd play out differently like spawn points and shots hitting / missing, etc.Some of the ideas you've come up with MrAlex are similar to some of the ideas I have, but I'm actually looking at testing some more fundamental changes like adding clouds to the battlefield so units can use them as concealment to approach each other. But we'll see if any of that works - if not then yeah, I'll just have to add weapon variation and perhaps some level of damage variation to weapons so things aren't always exactly the same.
Interceptor Numbers / Multi-Shot UFOs:
You're not meant to be using more than one aircraft per battle at the moment, so them multi-firing isn't something that should worry you. I don't think there's anything fundamentally weird about the idea though, if we stick with multi-firing then we'll add a sweeping beam animation.The current system of being able to send between 1-3 fighters into every battle doesn't work well, because then I have to balance the game assuming 3 fighters in every battle or the game is too easy - and that means the player has to have at least three planes in each base, and six planes if they want two squadrons. That's way too many. We're therefore considering a system where hangars become 2x2 buildings and what is currently a single aircraft becomes a squadron of three aircraft (and you build and control aircraft in these squadrons of three). This has the other advantage that you would always have three interceptors in a battle and that opens up more interesting tactics regarding positioning. However it has other problems where you need to build 3x as many aircraft weapons and equipment items, and I'm not sure how the Aircraft screen UI can work if you're equipping three aircraft at a time.
We're therefore also considering a system where standard interceptions only allow 1 aircraft and will only ever be against 1 UFO. We'll then also introduce frequent aerial terror sites where you are fighting three UFOs with your one Xenonaut interceptor and two controllable aircraft from the local forces, and hopefully there'll actually be little local forces ground units being attacked by the UFOs too. In this setup the fighters and capital ships with large blind spots tend to appear in the terror sites and the more passive UFOs like Scouts and Observers fly around the Geoscape normally. This means you'll still get a mix of 1v1 and 3v3 combat but having one interceptor at a base is a viable decision.
Anyway, we need to do some more testing internally before we make a decision on that. I'm not sure how well those ideas will work in practice but that's the reason why some of the changes have happened.
360-degree Fire Arcs:
I do understand the arguments people are making here and I agree with some of it, but I'm not fully convinced for a few reasons:- The combat plays out differently (in terms of damage taken) depending on the equipment of the aircraft. Some of the strategy therefore occurs on the strategy layer, where you need to make sure your aircraft have appropriate loadouts. This is something that you lose with the blind spot behind the aircraft, because the damage dealt by the aircraft matters a lot less - when the interceptor is in the UFO's blind spot, they're going to stay there. It doesn't matter if they stay there firing their weapon for 5 seconds or 30 seconds they'll take the same amount of damage (0 damage).
- Even with 360 degree firing then using Evasive Roll appropriately could potentially reduce damage taken, etc. I therefore don't think that 360 degree fire arcs mean that you always may as well autoresolve. If clouds turn out to work OK then this will be especially true.
- I still don't really see what's skillful about flying your plane behind a UFO and getting into its blind spot - because the interceptors already do that automatically. I think there needs to be more decision making for the player to make, ideally.
We could take the best of 360 fire arcs and having a blind spot. We could make the ufo always have a blind spot but the guns can rotate around and attack the interceptor after a few seconds. This would mean that the play can't just stay in the ufo's blind spot the entire battle; instead, they have to constantly move around to take advantage of the shifting blind spot of the ufo. This would be pretty easy for the player to exploit when fighting something like a scout, but it would progressively get harder by making the blind spot more narrow and making the guns rotate faster as the ufos get more and more advanced. You could theoretically take no damage with only having weaker cannons, but the fight would take longer and longer as the game progresses, which vastly reduces the margin for error.
I do like the idea of only having one aircraft in most battles except in certain scenarios, it helps balance air combat and it makes stopping alien bombing missions much more interesting.
Clouds seem like a good idea, I'm not sure how good they are in practice but we'll see.
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4 hours ago, Alienkiller said:
@ Silencer: If you have something to tell good, effecitve or what is it called about the Airfight then say it, but not such something ineffective like that:
Just now, silencer said:If you have nothing interesting to say, don't say anything.
Guys what is with the toxicity. We all want Xenonauts 2 to be the best game we can possibly be. But shutting down people's ideas without a counterargument or anything like that just doesn't do anything to improve the game or the community around it; this behavior just turns people away from discussing the game. This is a place where we try to have a civilized discussion about the game while not shunning people because of their opinions.
I understand that there are things that are implemented into the game that we don't agree with, heck I don't agree with 360 degree aiming, but that doesn't give anyone the right to shun people and be toxic because they are frustrated.
Thank you for reading this and hopefully we can turn our attitudes around before the open beta release.
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Sorry I am jumping into this topic really late.
I really don't agree with the 360 degree attack radius. With no weakness to exploit there would be no reason to do air combat at all compared to auto resolving, which takes only one click.
Instead I have a couple of suggestions (some borrowed from earlier in this board).
Different races should handle each ship differently. For example (this is for the scout ufo), the sebillians are less intelligent and more primitive than the rest of the alien force, so they prefer a brute force approach and implement this by having longer range cannons at the front of the ufo but in the process leaving a tactical weakness on the back. The psyons, being the more intelligent aliens, would understand the tactical weaknesses of a brute force approach so they would instead have their cannons take up a wider area around the ufo making such a tactical weakness much harder to exploit, however; their cannons now are weaker and have less range than their sebellian counterparts so a skilled player could bait the ufo into using evasive maneuvers and then use the rest of their missiles before closing in on the kill.
This idea would get slowly more complex the game progresses (androns would try to attack the weakest interceptor in the group, wraiths would rather attack the most threatening interceptor in the group, earlier aliens will slowly learn from their mistakes by increasing the range or spreading the cannons around the ufo, etc).
This is just my two cents, if you disagree that's fine but the 360 degree aiming needs to go in order to have tactical diversity.
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7 hours ago, silencer said:
I didn't say it's a bad thing. However I remember when XCOM came out, many people where pissed about doing only 1 of 3 missions. So is it really successful mechanic? Long War removed this to only 1 mission. Long War Rebalance set that you can do all 3.
Xcom type games are games where you defend the human race from alien invasion; you have to pick and choose your battles since you can't defend against every threat at once. This improves the game gameplay wise since each mission gives you different rewards making decision making more interesting (you could even do more than one raid if you play your cards right) and it improves it storywise since it shows how out numbered you are against the threat from above. This seems like a successful mechanic to me; I am sad that some other people don't see it that way.
Gameplay Feedback - Stress & Soldier Panic System
in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
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.