[V24 thoughts]

16 minutes ago, Chris said:

The point about the bigger UFOs and alien base missions, again, same question really. That to me sounds like a general complaint about the combat mechanics of the genre which applies as much to X1/X2 as the classic X-Com games and the Firaxis XCOM. Without a timer on the mission the incentive is always for people to play extremely slowly using a lot of overwatch as they advance, which is why XCOM2 used so many timed missions. Unfortunately players tend to hate timers; even the very soft timer in the abduction mission has already caused a few complaints and I'm sure people would be even more annoyed if the soft timers were added to every mission. I'm therefore not really sure what we could do to address this, although I'm happy to listen to suggestions on the topic.

I am an avid fire emblem player. I have played both fire emblem games that encourages slowly taking out enemies on enemy phase and games that encourages taking out enemies on player phase. The main differemce between the two is primarily the difference in enemy quality and slightly nerfing player options on enemy phase.

Generally, a great increase in enemy quality will force the player to make great strides into assasinating the enemies on player phase and to be more agressive in general. The best example of this is in Fe fates conquest, where a nerf to some of the most popular enemy phase weapons and an increase in enemy stats and skills caused players to play it completely different than the previously release fe game. 

I am not sure if this will directly apply to Xen 2 or not, but nerfing overwatch fire slightly (by reducing damage or reducing accuracy) and slightly buffing enemy abilities should make players play more agressively on their turn because using overwatch fire to kill an alien on their turn is riskier and player phase combat will be inherenetly more reliable. 

[The strategy of the game. Concept.]

35 minutes ago, Komandos said:

Do you think that if the player gets the opportunity to make a choice on which transport to send soldiers on a mission, it can make the game less interesting and diverse?

Depending on who you ask, it definitely will make the game less interesting and diverse. Upgrading the dropship is only something that happens a couple of times in the game, which adds a lot of impact once you actually get the upgrade. If there were many dropships that you acquired all the time, then such an upgrade will have very little impact.

There is also the issue of developer time, as each dropship takes a lot of effort in order to rig.

[The strategy of the game. Concept.]

oh, you mean that this isn't a critique of game balance, but just a suggestion. I see. 

I don't think that would be a great idea. Getting research projects that actually do nothing of value but to confuse the player doesn't feel like something worth adding. That's one of the various flaws of the xcom: ufo defense, giving you lots of research projects with the majority being completely useless. 

 

[The strategy of the game. Concept.]

are you talking about xen 1, xen 2, or both? I find that all the projects have some use or utility that makes them worthwhile, and it is pretty easy to tell which ones lead to what kind of technology (with the exception of some of the alien weapon researches in xen 1, sometimes it's hard to tell/remember which weapons are needed for plasma weapons and which are needed for mag). 

although in xen2, there are a few research projects that don't lead to very much. That has more to do with stuff not being implemented yet than it actually being a game balance issue. 

[Better bot security on the forums?]

@Chris

I think this is important enough to ping you for. There has been a lot of bot activity in the forums, and I think there should be better bot protection on the forums. I worry for the health of the forums if this isn't addressed quickly. I imagine that if the bots do their shenanigans when the open beta releases or whenever there is a lot of traffic on the forums in general, then it will delay progress by a lot. A better system should be implemented to prevent this as much as possible. 

Thank you in advance! 

[Bots in the Forum]

bump

[Is it posable to stop this nosence on this form!!!]

Bump, this needs to be fixed asap

 

[General V24.6 Feedback]

41 minutes ago, Komandos said:

The player ALWAYS defeats the opponent in a ground tactical battle.

And if the player ALWAYS wins, then why not make the battle itself: fun and interesting, and not tedious?

The player will not always win every tactical mission. Xcom games are fundamentally designed with ironman in mind, and allow the player to continue to play after losing a couple missions. 

Every mission has a risk of loss, so managing resources is crucial to the survival of soldiers on the battlefield. Restrictions, while arbitrary for the most part, allow for the tensity in missions to not let up because things can always go wrong. With too many things available to the player, that tensity will be much less and the game will not have as good of an atmoaphere.

Practically speaking, yes, the player will always win the mission and will likely do it without losing a single soldier, meaning the tense atmosphere is likely lost to begin with, but it is there for those that choose to fight past their mistakes and triumph and grow through hardship. 

[General V24.6 Feedback]

13 minutes ago, Komandos said:

But I am against the fact that the complexity of the game is achieved by artificially limiting the tactical capabilities of the player's soldiers, and not achieved by increasing the tactical capabilities of the enemy.

What prevents aliens from throwing grenades into the smoke screen? Or start firing a cloud of smoke from a machine gun? What prevents aliens from using a cloud of smoke?

And if, in order to complicate the game, it is permissible to limit soldiers to the number of smoke grenades, without paying attention to the physical strength of the soldier and the carrying capacity, then why can't the weapon be limited to the number of shots, without paying attention to the actual size of the clip?

I also think that adding variance to the enemy is important to increasing tactical complexity; however, I think restricting the player is also extremely important. 

Strategy games give the player a very limited set of resources, and it is up to the player to make sacrifices and compromises to make best use of their limited resources. These resources range from time, money, materials, soldiers, and, yes, inventory space. 

Due to this system, you can't just have a sniper that has a shotgun for close quarters with a grenade launcher on the side. You have to choose between what you need and what you can leave behind. You have quite a few shotgun users, do you need the shotgun? Or maybe you really need a grenade launcher, can you build your kit in a way that keeps the grenade launcher and reloads while keeping a sniper rifle or shotgun? If you increase the inventory space, then you have no need to make those descisions. You can just have all of that in your bag, and each individual soldier can be built to deal with any situation, and most of them will end up similar. 

[General V24.6 Feedback]

Oops, sry for the double post.

[General V24.6 Feedback]

57 minutes ago, Komandos said:

Anything that makes the game interesting for the player is a reasonable idea. We play for the sake of interest and a lot of unusual (diverse) opportunities (situations) that the game can create.

Sure, but just because something is interest doesn’t mean that it is a good thing for the game. Like some of the ballistic properties in the original xcom. Sure, it is cool that in burst fire if one hit a wall it would be destroyed and the other two shots would go through, but it does sacrifice balance in the process. Rifles are generally the strongest weapons in that game, and the heavy plasma is downright broken, and such a mechanic only goes further into into buffing them. If such a mechanic were implemented into Xen 1, then it would be even more powerful because 1 shot can destroy a wall the the 9 other shots can go past it if used with a machine gun. 
 

The inventory space is meant to be a restriction of what a soldier can take; you don’t want to give the player too much space in the inventory because it allows a soldier with enough strength to take however much they want. You don’t want to give the player an opportunity to fill a backpack full with smoke grenades and trivialize every mission because they alien cannot hit you. Does it give more interesting strategic and tactical options? Yes, but it can ruin balance and make restrictions less meaningful and may buff certain strategies that are undesirable. 

[The dual wielding]

10 hours ago, Komandos said:

At the end of the game, soldiers have no problem with personal strength.

At the end of the game, the problem is that the soldiers are not able to use all their strength effectively, as there are not enough pockets for equipment that they could take with them.

Some types of tactics are impossible to apply, since soldiers must wear more of the necessary equipment to use them.

A strong soldier has no advantage over a weak soldier, since the number of items they can take with them is limited not by strength, but by pockets (slots).

This is very noticeable in the final of the game, when the strength of the soldiers reaches the limit values.

I mean, all of that is with endgame levels of strength. It does not represent the loadouts of soldiers the rest of the game. In terms of the rest of the game, soldiers are restricted by their strength stat first and foremost from what I played. 

Even in endgame, my soldiers did not make use of all of the inventory space in Xen1. They either had pedator armor, which either could not use the majority of things I would want to put in there or they would be weighed down by a signularity cannon, or had an extremely high starting strength stat, which is rare across my roster. Even then, I would mostly just be filling their backpacks with tons of grenades, and I would not even use the vast majority of those grenades anyways. 

[The dual wielding]

7 minutes ago, alienman said:

Yeah, not sure why the holster got removed. I liked that in Xenonauts 1. Made sense to carry a pistol in your belt.

It was removed because Chris didn't think it was needed after the secondary slot was added, so you would be holding the pistol in your hand instead of extra slots on your belt. And being able to hold a secondary weapon for free and have another one on your belt sounds a little bit overkill imo. 

I don't think that adding extra battle harnesses is very necessary. It's doubtful that a soldier will make much use of it because of strength problems, and it feels like it it overcomplicating the soldier screen too much. I'd probably fill those extra slots with more grenades anyways, so I definitely would not be using it to bring more pistols, stun buttons, combat knifes, or whatever. 

[The dual wielding]

12 minutes ago, alienman said:

Just curious about the reason for this addition, because to me, it seems a bit odd, both in gameplay and how it looks visually. First of all, it looks janky when it comes to reaction fire. Then, from a gameplay perspective, it feels kinda "cheap". Now there is no real penalty to equip your men with anything heavy. You still got access to short-range weapons, and it minimizes the risk of moving/saving TU. Also, how does the "logistics" (can't come up with a better term) behind it work? Are the units holding the extra pistol, or is it a fast-draw kind of thing?

From what I understand, the extra slot is just there to make managing the inventory easier. I think Chris found it a little bit tedious that you have to go into the inventory to switch to a pistol, medkit, or whatever. Having an extra slot makes it easier to switch without checking the inventory. 

There should be an overwatch symbol to the bottom right of each weapon on the ui. You can either leave it alone or have it crossed out to determine which weapon will be used for overwatch. Although, I think the currently active weapon will have priority over the inactive one. 

I don't think its particulaily cheap as it feels like pistols were rebalanced to allow for snipers and heavy weapons to have better shortrange while also nerfing the damage of pistols by a little bit (it feels like pistols are weaker than they were in Xen 1 imo). 

[Xenonauts-2 October 2022 Update]

Thanks. Sry about that. Nice catch. 

I have a few questions about the sell price curve. Will there be a minimum value that each individual item will sell at or will the value of those items eventually approach 0 if you would keep selling them? Also, will the value of those items eventually rise to their original value over several months of not selling?

[Xenonauts-2 October 2022 Update]

Exciting that the game is finally going into open beta. 

I would like to get into the v25 open beta. I look forward to playing Xen 2.

[Effects of hiring extra scientists and engineers]

4 hours ago, Komandos said:

Ordinary scientists and an ordinary laboratory can be left in the game. In addition to them, add contracts with the scientific laboratories of the planet. Do it the same way we hire soldiers. Where, instead of individual characteristics of soldiers, there are individual characteristics of a specific scientific laboratory outside the military base. Similarly, it is possible to sign contracts with military enterprises around the world.

Interesting idea. Something like this will add to the whole Cold War atmosphere because NATO and the Soviet block would be working on different projects and work like different factions. The Xenonauts could obtain new research and tech from them by siding with them, at the cost of suffering loss of relations with the opposing faction (much like in pheonix point). 

However, I don’t know how long this will take to set up, so we might have to shelve it for a different idea if there is not enough developer time. 

[V24 thoughts]

6 minutes ago, alienman said:

After deciding to play some more (I couldn't help myself), I have to say I don't like the gimmicky missions at all. Saving the tubed civilians, and especially not the collect the usb stick one. Feels way too gamey, and I don't feel the stressed gameplay fits the game. My opinion of course, but highly disliked it. Shelving the game for now.

Yeah, it seems like the more "gimmicky missions" are getting pretty popular as of late. They address one of Xen 1's biggest issue, lack of mission variety and no pressure to complete missions faster/more efficiently. I suspect my opinion is not going to be particularly popular, but I really like it when the game encourages the player to play fast and more efficiently and use every resource to achieve as much in any given turn as possible. I think the main goal of a strategy game is to allow the player to use all of its mechanics and resources available to the player to allow for said faster and more efficient play. This doesn't necessarily mean that a mission must have infinitely respawning reinforcements or a turn timer in order to achieve this, but a tactics game should try to encourage this kind of play every once in awhile imo. 

Why doesn't the stressed feeling fit the game? Did you expect the game to be of little stress like Xen 1? Do the game mechanics clash and tried to force a playstyle that the mechanics did not facilitate (much like what happened to Xcom 2 imo)? Did the constant stress tire you out and you wanted to put the game down after awhile and break immersion? 

I feel like these questions are important to address as the answers to these questions could cause backlash to these kinds of missions in the future. Like how a lot of people just won't like the change and prefer a more standard slow Xen 1 campaign, or how having too many gimmicky missions in a row can tire out a player and force them to put the game down temporarily, or if the mission objectives clash with the game mechanics and cause another Xcom 2 disaster. 

I think this needs to be discussed as I know a significant number of people are worried about these missions for one reason or another and that needs to be addressed at some point imo. 

[Sheild Mechanics]

Yeah, shields are too weak imo. I played the recent demo, and one of my shield users was left on single digit hp after being shot by a plasma rifle. I have a feeling that shields will become more and more obsolete as the aliens weapons increase in damage, armor destruction, and armor penetration. Come late-game, I’m worried that shields will not be able to increase the survival threshold at all and the aliens will kill a soldier in the same amount of hits regardless if a soldier is wearing a shield or not. 

Of course, this is mostly speculation. Hopefully someone with experience in the late-game will be able to shed light on the viability of shields in that period. 

Tangentially related to the topic of shields, but does anyone else feel the pistols also seem to be significantly weaker than they were in Xen 1? From my playthroughs of the Feb 2021 and Sept 2022 demos, pistols just feel really weak imo. 

[V24 thoughts]

I guess I'll put my two cents in about suppression. Keep in mind, I've only played the recent demo, and not any closed beta build of any kind. I went over some of my thoughts in the demo thoughts topic, but I'll expand on it a little bit here. 

In X1, I never really saw suppression as something the player can use to benefit their fight against the aliens. It was never reliable enough to trigger whenever I wanted to, with the exception of flashbangs, and it was easier to just kill the alien outright. Thus, suppression by gun fire was never a strategic consideration for me because I have to assume that it won't happen because of how unreliable it is.

I also think that suppression was a "win more" mechanic, but not for the player. I often got ambushed by the aliens and they seem to always suppress me when I am on the backfoot. I have very little means of coming back from an ambush because my soldier do not have the tus to do much. Also, it is not uncommon for my soldiers to be suppressed 2 turns in a row if they don't die first. 

The mechanic does not benefit the player very much imo because it is too unreliable for me to use consistently and too likely to occur when it is the alien turn. 

I also saw a little bit of this happen in the recent demo, but to a smaller extent. The aliens suppressed me much more often than I did to them. 

I think suppression should be rebalanced to allow the player a little more control over the mechanic in some way. Even if it makes the game easier somewhat, I think it would be good to allow the player to better make use of such an important mechanic. 

[New MARS platform mechanics]

2 hours ago, Chris said:

Hmmm. There's nothing inherently modular about the MARS so far as I can see - the "M" doesn't (canonically) stand for modular, if that's what you were thinking.

And I'd argue the rifle / rocket launcher MARS is way more capable of dealing with any situation than one equipped with a cannon and a rangefinder. That was sort of the point of the loadout I picked for it.

I think the kickstarter campaign advertised it as the "modular mars" and the mars was much more modular in previous builds, so i assumed that the acronym had something to do with that. 

It is true that rocket launcher and rifle is best for most situations, but i think there are a couple of sutitions where id prefer the cannon and rangefinder. If the map is very open, then id prefer the cannon and rangefinder due to there being very little walls or cover to blow up. Or if I have multiple mars on the same mission, i would want them to serve different niches. 

One of the issue i had with tanks in xen1 was that they did not have that much utility due to their very small selection of weapons. Im a little worried that reducing the modularity of the mars would also create this problem. 

[New MARS platform mechanics]

I have not played the closed beta, but I think I can give some input from the demo. 

The modularity of the mars is really important to its identity. As it says in the name, the mars is a modular unit that can adapt to any situation and playstyle. This might become a bigger issue once you upgrade the dropship and are able to add another mars to the squad (or with sentries where you can have several in order to defend a base). Having multiple mars at the same time probably encourages more mars variety and experimentation. If all the mars have the exact same build, then it would be pretty lame and will porrobably discourage mars experimentation in the future.

When it comes to adding extra engineering projects, I think that it is just an extra descision on the players' part. If they sont find the cannon or rocket launcher very effective, then they dont have to upgrade them. Or if they want to upgrade everything to bolster several mars in the same mission, then they can use resources to upgrade that in exchange for losing out on other upgrade projects.

[Demo Sept 22, 2022 Thoughts]

13 minutes ago, Chris said:

Why do you say the shields don't protect from the front? They offer 180-degree protection with 100% stopping chance, or at least they should. However the key thing is that they provide extra ARMOUR rather than extra HP, so you can still take damage from a shot while holding a shield. It simply reduces the damage you take.

Oh ok. I didn't realize that shields only offer armor and no extra hp. That makes sense. I saw my solider get hit through the shield and was left at single digit hp from a plasma bullet form full health, so I assumed it just went through the shield and that block chance wasn't 100%. I think I saw some forum post from months (maybe years) ago where someone said the block chance was not 100%. I am probably mistaken in retrospect. 

[Demo Sept 22, 2022 Thoughts]

On 10/3/2022 at 3:06 AM, Komandos said:

If you increase the radius of vision of the soldiers, it will become easier to find the lost aliens.

 

In this case, I dont think that would help in this mission. There are a lot if building to hide in and I had to check almost all of them to find the final couple of aliens. 

I could see increasing the vision radius helping in missions like desert with lots of open space, but not very much in others. 

The game definetely needs a system to help tell the player where the aliens are hiding if they are stuck.  

[[Tactical mission demo v1.02 Sept 2022- Ground Mission] You can throw grenades through dropship wall.]

You can throw grenades through the dropship wall. You and the aliens cannot shoot through the wall, but you can log a grenade through it somehow. Bug was able to persist through saves and with and without an alien present. (Save is from the second screenshot)

user_save_3-49.json