Ogilvy the Astronomer

This could be a hidden gem of an idea. Let me expand on it how I think it could work well. Once you reach 100% of Operation Endgame, you've built your own spaceship and could blast off to the aliens' homeworld for the final mission. But you can continue the game, completing five special missions (or completing extra research) that each unlocks a different special module you can build for your spaceship. There could be five possible modules, but your spaceship can only accommodate three. So, you've got to choose. Ideas include: * Crew space. Allows you to take an extra two Xenonauts. * Medbay. Confers some healing ability between missions part #1 and #2 (it's a two-parter, right?) * Cargo bay. Increases the total equipment weight your spaceship can carry. Without this you might not be able to equip everyone in the best, heaviest armour for example. * Bombardment cannon. Represents blasting the alien base as you arrive, meaning some of the defenders are injured / dead upon your arrival (like a crashed UFO mission). * Extra fuel tank. Without this, your soldiers are on a one-way suicide mission. With it, the survivors can return. Makes no difference to the actual final mission, but if you choose this module then you get the best ending -- your team have a ticker-tape parade when they return, rather than all dying! You might have to launch with zero modules if the aliens are close to winning by the time you reach 100% of Operation Endgame. But you've got a better chance of winning if you can make some of these modules. There's form already for this kind of thinking: the two Cleaner missions with the data drives. Completing those has an influence on the enemy forces you face in the Cleaner HQ mission, right? This could help spice up the late-game and give the player some impactful choices to make.

Here's an idea, inspired by @Vitruviansquid's medical module suggestion mentioned here. Currently, medkits / advanced medkits are sufficiently small, light, and useful that I give every Xenonaut one. Do you do the same? I wonder if it would be more interesting if medkits were changed to be heavy and big -- perhaps taking up 4x5 of the tactical vest, leaving just one row for some ammo clips and grenades. This would lead to a medic role / loadout, alongside rifleman, assault, etc. There could be a new type of equipment -- bandages -- that are small and light, so more easily carried by all members of a team. Bandages could stop bleeding, but not heal any HPs. Currently I know that if a soldier gets injured, everyone's got a medkit so they could heal themselves, or be healed by a nearby buddy, so it's not really something I think about. My suggested change would lead to more interesting loadout choices and squad tactics for a player. It could also tie into the current, slightly confusing, game mechanic where dead Xenonauts are corpses, but actually have a chance to survive a mission and fully recover after a long time back at HQ. Maybe dead Xenonauts stay dead, unless someone with a medkit gets to them within x turns and uses the medkit to stabalise them, giving them a x% chance of surviving. This could lead to come very cool and heroic stories where a Xenonaut carries their "dead" comrade to the medic to get them stabalised in the nick of time. It would also make the soldier's survival more dependent on a player's actions rather than the roll of a dice (which I think is how it works at the moment?) Advanced medkits could increase the turn limit and / or percentage chance of survival. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult a change for the developers to make. It would make the game more difficult, but that could be balanced with a bit of thought. Perhaps these new-style medkits could heal more damage than the current ones.

These things can always be balanced though, right? Scale the toughness of Cleaner soldiers up or down accordingly, as an example. Or, seen another way:

Genius.

Yes yes yes 100% agree!

Ooh, what are Advanced Lasers? I went straight from Lasers to Gauss.

OK, I hear what you're saying and everything seems reasonable. Perhaps my ideas have veered too far from changes to night missions, and should be taken as something separate. So, how about this, which I think combines our thoughts. First, apply my terror-inducing fog idea just to terror missions (and perhaps alien bases). This would make them scarier, fit thematically, and add some interesting variety. Ditch adding it to abduction missions; the whole rescuing civilians with a time limit mechanic provides enough change. As for other missions that you tackle during the night, make the darkness a bit more oppressive and nerf your vision / accuracy (which might be the case already). After you kill (or capture?) a Mantid, you unlock enhanced night vision goggles (or whatever) that gives you the edge over aliens at night. I can see how it would be a cool point of progression for a player to turn night against the aliens. Best of both worlds? In any case, thanks for being so articulate with your reasoning, I've enjoyed thinking all this through.

Thanks both for explaining how suppression works in the game, I didn't really understand it before but it seems pretty simple now.

Night missions have the potential to be exciting, scary, and add more variety to the game. Many people's -- including my own -- predominant memories of the original XCOM games is from night missions, such as creeping through corn fields at night... Those games didn't incentivise you to do night missions, but they were often highlights of the game. What I'm trying to do is engineer a way to give those experiences to players. At the moment it just doesn't happen as players avoid night missions, and night missions don't really feel much different. Could you not say that the abduction missions are more difficult than normal missions, so why do them? I'm trying to remember if there's any additional reward. Reduced panic? Extra alenium and alloys? You can apply that to the "night" missions I've described. Upon mission completion you capture the fog generators, which converts into alenium and alloys for you. Is that incentive enough? If you still want the choice of tackling a mission by day or night, then I like @Mr.Xia's suggestions, including nighttime affecting Sebellian's regeneration, Wraith's cloaking fields, etc -- so long as nighttime doesn't just remove the things that make the aliens interesting! I can get behind certain equipment giving buffs to make you want to do night missions, but then would that flip things, and you'd never want to do day missions? I just think that my idea is a bit more interesting and provides plenty of creative possibilities. We might be coming at this from different directions because I'm not fundamentally against "forcing" a mission or mission type on a player, if it helps advance the plot or creates cool and fun situations. Is the Cleaner HQ a "forced" mission? I think so. Base defence missions are "forced"? Alien bases? I guess you can skip those, but you're heavily penalised for doing so. My suggestions for Terror / Abduction / Alien Base missions are really to ensure players have those memorable, scary experiences; as well as solving other things I think are issues, such as increasing the variety on offer, making the game more atmospheric, making more of the bravery system, making Mantids more interesting, adding more situations that require different approaches...

Just speaking personally of course, but I wouldn't like to see night missions made easier by having circumstances that benefit the player. Part of the fear-factor comes from knowing that you're really up against it! I have a simple answer to the question of why would people choose to do night missions, which is to make all Terror, Abduction, and Alien Base missions be night missions. And inside UFOs too. They should be the scariest missions anyway, right? The issue here, as I see it, is that those missions -- well, Terror or Abduction at least -- could only be on the geoscape for a maximum of 12 hours, which is of course too limiting. I've been thinking about this today, and have what is (in my mind at least!) a neat solution. For Terror and Abduction missions, the aliens cover the area in a fog-like miasma of nano-particles (or whatever ). This is basically a way of creating night conditions even if the mission is encountered during the day. It fits the Abduction mission really well because the aliens want to keep their antics away from prying eyes, and Terror because it makes things, well, terrifying! This idea opens up more possibilities. Maybe the fog is weaponised to instil fear in humans (a bit like a milder version of the Scarecrow's toxins from Batman). This fits thematically, especially for Terror missions. So, any Xenonauts in this dark fog suffer a penalty to their bravery and are more likely to panic. Maybe the fog is neutralised by photons of light, so soliders can rally themselves by sticking to well-lit areas. Perhaps the effect is cumulative, and the longer a solider is in the dark, the lower their bravery gets. End their turn in some light to restore bravery. The current morale system is pretty barebones, so this could spice it up. Other night factors can include an accuracy penalty to shooting aliens in the dark, which could lead to a strategy of wanting the illuminate them with flares before attacking. There could be more equipment tailored to these "night" missions too, such as night vision goggles, anti-miasma torches, adrenaline shots to counter the bravery-sapping effect (synthesised from Reapers maybe?) Making it an alien-generated effect rather than just natural nighttime opens up a lot of possibilities, as you can basically give it any properties you like. Wouldn't it be cool if UFOs and alien bases followed this ruleset too? It could be like a defence mechanism activated by the aliens. It'd make them a lot scarier, for you the commander and for your troops as well. Maybe there's potential in tying Mantids into this, as they're currently a bit dull as enemies. Perhaps they generally excel in these conditions, as it mirrors their natural environment, so get buffs to their stats. For a special ability they could belch out concentrated miasma, making soldiers panic and creating a smoke effect. Capture a live specimen to unlock Panic Grenades, which have a big impact on an enemy's bravery. And it would be a great reason to have the kind of awesome lighting effects that a modern game engine allows! Lots of ideas, hopefully some good ones are in there somewhere

100%, this is it exactly! I've really enjoyed my X2 time so far, but this comment is like a lightbulb moment: X2 is lacking the atmosphere of X-Com and TFTD. Those games were scary in a way that X2 currently isn't. Ironically, it might be in part due to the simpler graphics of the old games, as your imagination would do a lot of the heavy lifting and fill in the blanks. I think that better night missions are part of the solution, but even regular missions need more atmosphere and a sense of dread.

Make Terror and abduction missions night only?

Definitely agree that night missions should be scarier! People's most exciting memories of original XCOM are often the night missions -- who else remembers creeping through a dark corn field toward an ominous barn... So, some ideas: * More oppressive fog of war (see Skitso's examples); * Night vision goggles as equipment; * Torches as equipment; * Xenonauts suffer a Bravery penalty when they're in the dark so they're more likely to panic; * Aliens in the dark are harder to hit. Light them up with a torch before lighting them up with a machinegun! * Terror and Abduction missions only happen at night (which fits thematically); * Alien base missions count as nighttime.

I've just completed a second playthrough -- milestone 1.28/b, beginning through to Day #180. Here are my notes. Now I'm putting the game down until it's fully released! In the tooltip about crouching, it may be worth specifying that crouching doesn’t increase accuracy. Just because it normally does in these kinds of games. One of my soldiers has gone “Beserk” but I don’t know what this means. Should soldiers have some afflictions UI with appropriate tooltips? The bleeding icons appear by their names, which is useful. Maybe there should be icons for things like beserk too? I’m playing on my ultrawide monitor and everything works perfectly. I’ve rebound Camera Zoom In / Out to my mouse wheel but the actual zooming in and out effect is really slow. Civilian corpses don’t show up on the ground when your soldiers are standing over them. If items collected from the battlefield are only useful for selling (e.g. alien bodies), would it make more sense for them to be sold automatically on mission completion? On the Loadout screen, immediately prior to launching a dropship, could there be an easy and obvious way to get to the screen where you can manually position your troops within the dropship? Throwing grenades next to cover makes me very nervous, given the high chance the grenade could just hit the cover and explode at my feet. Could grenades ignore any cover you’re stood next to? Maybe the same for regular weapons actually. Like how adjacent crouched soldiers are ignored. Could there be some sound effect or a very obvious visual cue when a shield is hit? Maybe the damage absorbed could be displayed, in the same way as with lost HP. I’m trying to fire a grenade launcher but it’s not working. I think it’s because it’s out of range, but other weapons still fire beyond effective range. Methinks a tooltip or popup message or somesuch is needed. A fired a grenade launcher, missed, and destroyed a desk with cleaner data. I thought that was pretty neat. One of my soldiers has a very thin yellow bar under their red health bar, but I don’t know what this means. Difficulty and pacing of the first Cleaner mission feels spot-on. Is C4 that useful? I never use it, reasoning that the terrain grenade thing is more useful because it can be thrown. Sectons and Psyons look very similar to me. Is it not possible to close UFO doors on the same turn you open them? It seems not, but that’s a bit confusing. Although perhaps better from a gameplay perspective! I’m still utterly baffled by how stun damage works. I just attacked a downed UFO and managed to make a Sebillian and Mentarch stunned and eventually unconscious mostly with smoke grenades and a few bullets from ballistics. If I can capture them this way then why bother with stun weapons? The Sebillian and Mentarch were the only two aliens remaining. They were both unconscious, but the mission didn’t end automatically. I had to End Turn a few more times until I’d held the UFO for three full turns, even though there was nothing for me to do. In the end mission stats screen “Xenonaut Victory”, it says 9/10 aliens killed, but I killed every alien except for the two I captured, so something here doesn’t add up. On that same screen, I can see where my soldiers have been awarded medals. The MARS still has icons for where medals would be awarded, so it looks like it’s possible for the robot to get medals but it just wasn’t awarded any this mission. But I think in reality they don’t get any medals? In the stores room, alien corpses are selling for $10k, but live ones for only $20k. Feels like live ones should be worth more. Could lead to a strategy of actively trying to capture aliens to raise funds. I’m doing a mission at night. Flares have appeared in my inventory. It seems they have a weight – does that mean some of my Xenonauts that were near their weight limit are now over it, and have a TU penalty? Just wondering, what if soldiers that are carrying much less than their weight limit gain a bonus to their TUs, and maybe reflexes? That could lead to more strategies, such as very lightly equipped assault troops. My MARS has a Rangefinder. It has an ammo readout of 0/0. This is confusing – surely it gives a passive buff to accuracy, rather than being used up? The MARS cannon feels OP. I’m one-shotting Psyons with 20 armour. When you hit an enemy (or get hit yourself) and the armour / HP reduction briefly appears, could it have a minus in front of it? To clearly differentiate damage just done to health remaining. I walked right past an abduction pod because it was blocked by a tree. (I should have rotated the camera!) Could they be made more obvious, maybe with a bigger glowing effect or something? Unless you want the player to have to look carefully to find them. I’ve played a lot of missions with ballistic weapons and have never had to reload. Should clip capacities be reduced? I’m using lasers for the first time. The graphics and firing animations are great. And the lower clip capacities means you actually need to bring more ammo and plan your reloads. Throwing grenades if a soldier is in a doorway is so frustrating. The grenades just hit the door frame and then blow up, injuring the soldier. My second attempt at the Cleaner dockyard mission – attempt #1 was such a disaster, it ended my previous playthrough! This time I was better prepared. It was still tough, but I managed it. Ended up being chased back to the helicopter by Cleaner reinforcements, which was fun. The mission was way too hard the first time I attempted it though. I suggest either revealing these two Cleaner missions later, when a player will have better equipment; or they appear as they currently do, but with a warning that they’re hard and so you should get good kit for your soldiers first (I think Warden armour and Lasers, but I guess that shouldn’t be spelled out for a player); and / or you have an indication of where the VIP is on the map. If you send your team in the wrong direction then it can really stuff you up, given that you’re on a timer. I’m not too sure when I should be setting a second base up. Maybe your Ops person should give a hint when it’s around the right time? On lower difficulties at any rate. Regarding second bases, can you have one just for hangers i.e. air defence, or do they need a store room and living quarters, generators, and all that jazz? Night missions feel a bit underwhelming. Not so different to daytime. I wonder how they can be jazzed up a bit more. Maybe have night-vision goggles as optional equipment? And Xenonauts have reduced bravery? Second Cleaner VIP mission is identical to the first. I’ve completed Alien Origins base research plus Cleaner HQ location. If I’m reading the hint about the Cleaners correctly, that would be an awesome plot development. People in this game are very keen to jump through windows! Should grenade launchers fire in an arc? It seems at the moment they act like rocket launchers. A note on the alien abilities. Some are great – looking at you Wraith cloaking field, which significantly changes my approach to this enemy. (Explosives first to disable the field). But other abilities are underwhelming. For example, the Secton ability sounds good but I’ve never seen it used. Just completed my first terror mission. It was ok but the map felt a bit empty, considering the context. Surely it should be rammed full of aliens, panicking civilians, and local forces mounting a desperate defence? It’s a terror mission after all. When equipping a laser cannon to a MARS, the artwork shows it with a regular cannon. In Engineering’s available projects, Alloy Plating is listed under Equipment and Vehicles. Is that intentional? Could there be a clearer explanation about the difference between advanced medkit and automed module? Is there a point in bringing medkits if all your soldiers have automed modules? In use, I think Automed modules are a bit OP. Soldiers potentially surviving being KIA is confusing. Maybe you get this chance if you can get to their body with a first aid kit within a number of turns? To stabilise them. Or carry them back to the chopper within three turns, that would be great. I’ve had my first appearance of Reapers, and it was a bit meh. I just shot them from a distance with sniper rifles. These are iconic enemies and should be terrifying. I wonder if their first appearance could be a scripted mission that plays to their strengths – maybe something like a friendly local forces base is under attack, or an allied lab, or a leader’s bunker, or a special alien base, whatever – but a maze-like labyrinth map full of Reapers. Make their first appearance really impactful. One of my planes was destroyed. It’s good that it auto-replaces after a while. I like how you can pay to rush-repair a plane. Maybe there could be an option to pay to rush a manufacturing project? Do soldiers improve based on the stats they use the most? A water tank got shot and water started pouring out. Nice detail! I like how armour works in this game. Cleaner HQ mission was really good. “Scripted” missions like this are the best and really spice things up, I wish there were more. The Cleaner autopsy report only completed after I finished the Cleaner HQ mission. The text suggests I capture a live Cleaner, but that arc is complete now isn’t it? On the manufacturing screen, if you want to build multiple Angel interceptors then then > quantity arrow doesn’t work. The quantity is always stuck on one. A shipping container was just completely destroyed, but the ladder that was attached to it remained intact. Could teleporters on UFOs be more obvious? Some particle effect shooting upwards or something. On the main base screens, you’re told how many soldiers are at the base. The numbers given seem a bit off. Are they counting sentry guns as soldiers? The Engineering screen only lets you assign build tasks if you have a Base with a Workshop. However, the Research screen works for every Base. This inconsistency confused me a bit. Landed UFO. Mission briefing says I need to kill all hostiles, but after taking the UFO a pop-up appeared saying I need to hold it for two turns. Dragonfly – “Twelve combatants and up to two vehicles” – should that be including up to two vehicles? Alien base. Given that MARS robots can’t open doors, is there the possibility of a MARS getting stuck here? Alien base – briefing says you need a Xenonaut in the command room to see the remaining aliens, but I think you actually need someone stood by the big holographic globe. Alien base mission was great. Tough but not unreasonable. Grenade launcher feels a bit obsolete. Doesn’t scale up with tech advances as well as other weapons? A UFO attacked one of my bases. My laser battery did nothing, which was very disappointing. At the very least it should do some damage to an incoming UFO. Maybe there could be a mini-game with you controlling the defense battery? Sentry guns are very useful (potentially OP). Look ridiculous on their little castor wheels though! For base defense missions, given that most aliens attack from the hangers, does that lead to an optimal base layout where you can just funnel all the aliens into a killzone? Gauss Rifle and Shotgun artwork looks very similar. Alien bases don’t look very alien. Nor do alien ships, actually. Too many sheet metal walls, kinda boring. Gauss weapons’ firing visuals look weak, especially compared to how powerful lasers look and sound. I decommissioned an aircraft, but the pop-up asked if I wanted to sell it. Do I get money for decommissioning old aircraft? Shoutout to the artist behind the aircraft pictures in the Xenopedia. So so good. To make a Gauss Blaster for my aircraft, I need 50 Alloys and an Accelerated Cannon. I’m not sure what this is – I skipped researching Magnetic weapons, which I think I need for an Accelerated Cannon? I only know this from a previous playthrough. Maybe a tooltip hint would be useful for newer players. Gauss rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle magazines look the same. Gauss clip capacities are back to ballistic levels, meaning reloads are rarely needed. It was better with lasers, when you had to plan ammo levels and reload at tactical times. In all my time playing I never had a melee situation. The morale system seems quite barebones. I’ve only had a soldier panic a couple of times, and the next turn they were back to full bravery. I never needed to use the system where you spend TUs to rally yourself. The idea behind having officers impact bonuses is neat but I reckon could be fleshed out. Stunning aliens was so frustrating during my first playthrough that I just skipped it entirely for my second. I stunned a couple accidentally with smoke grenades and regular weapons fire. The “scripted” missions like the Cleaner bases, where you have extra objectives, are really good, and have been the highlights for me. I wish we had more of them. Including the talking heads bits at the beginning, with your scientist and ops manager. That happened a couple of times at the beginning and then basically never again. I think there’s potential for more to be made of ranks and medals. Forum thread here. I really like the ideas here about using captured aliens to make powerful modules. I had typed up some feedback about maps, but then realised that @Skitso has already done that, and far better than I could do. So, shout-out to this thread, which I agree with completely. That’s it, sorry it was such a long list! I’ve clocked up 24 hours across two playthroughs, with the second one reaching the 180 day limit. This game is ace, congrats to the devs!

Ok, here are some medal ideas: Award For Valor | Rescued three or more civilians during an Abduction mission +3 TU Crimson Heart | Reduced to 10HP or lower, but survived the mission +3 Health Sharpshooter Medal | Eliminated a hostile unit from a distance of more than xxx +3 Accuracy Gallantry Citation | Not sure about this one, it’s tricky. Maybe eliminated two enemies in a single mission by using grenades? Or maybe carried a Xenonaut corpse body back to the chopper (if that increases their chances of survival, which I think would be a cool game mechanic) +3 Strength Crux Solaris | Eliminated a hostile unit by using overwatch +3 Reflexes Award For Bravery | Completed a mission where Xenonauts suffered 50% casualties +3 Bravery Distinguished Service Medal | Completed 10 missions +1 to all statistics Golden Star | Completed a Terror and Alien Base mission +1 to all statistics As for the rank system, even if you don't want to go down the route of extra abilities, maybe there's a way of making the progression more interesting. What if soldiers' statistics increase upon promotion to a new rank but they currently gain promotion points at say 50% of the current rate, and the other 50% you get to assign how you see fit? You're the commander, after all. So you could pursue a strategy of having a few high-ranked soldiers and lots of lower-ranks, or have a more rounded team. Just an idea to have the player a bit more involved. Just an aside as we're talking about ranks, but I think that currently soldiers gain ranks too quickly. I'm about 50% toward Operation Endgame and I've got a team with loads of Colonels and Majors. Perhaps rank progression should be about 20 - 30% slower than it currently is?

Currently the medals system is a bit barebones -- every medal received adds one to each statistic. I think it would be neat if this was expanded a bit, maybe giving small but different bonuses for each medal. Similarly, the rank system has slightly more going on (the highest ranking Xenonaut imparts bravery bonuses) but feels underdeveloped. Wouldn't it be better if your troops gained more interesting abilities as they progressed? I've had an initial crack at some suggestions as to what these bonuses could look like, but inspiration is hard to come by. Maybe a bright mind reading this can improve on my ideas? Note I haven't thought too much about balance. That could come later. MEDALS Award For Bravery | Completed a UFO Crashsite mission +3 Bravery Award For Courage | Completed a Terror Site mission Nearby aliens have reduced Bravery. Award For Valor | Completed an Alien Base mission Couching / uncrouching costs 0 TUs. Crimson Heart | Suffered 30 HP damage during a mission +10% effectiveness when using medikits Crux Solaris | Eliminated 4 hostile units during the same mission Wearing armour incurs no accuracy penalty. Distinguished Service Medal | Completed 10 missions +1 to all stats Gallantry Citation | Completed a mission where 50% soldiers were casualties Increased chance of surviving a mission and making it back to HQ even when reduced to 0HP. Golden Star | Eliminated 5 hostile units One “free” grenade throw per turn (i.e. 0 TUs). If that's OP, maybe changing direction costs 0 TUs. RANKS Private - Corporal Nearby Xenonauts have boosted reflexes Sergeant Nearby Xenonauts gain +2 accuracy Sergeant Major Can control nearby civilian NPCs Lieutenant Nearby Xenonauts gain some suppression resistance Captain Can control nearby armed NPCs Major Nearby Xenonauts gain +5 TU Colonel Nearby Xenonauts gain +20 Bravery These buffs should only be applied once, i.e. two Colonels would give nearby Xenonuts +20 Bravery, not +40. And I guess each rank would keep all the bonuses they gained as they climbed the ladder! In general I think that the medals should impart a small but interesting bonus to the recipient; and the ranks should give buffs to nearby teammates. For more powerful buffs, I think the ideas in this thread are very good:

I like your ideas. Regarding modules in particular, I think there's potential in combining your ideas with what @GreyICE has suggested here:

Yes yes yes, I think this is brilliant. I was thinking of more gadgets and things, perhaps tying them into the rank or medal system, but having to capture aliens to make modules is genius. Bravo. Here are some more suggestions to add to your list. Numbers given are just examples, I've not given much though to balance! Mantid – Spycam grenade A throwable object (like a grenade) that reveals the fog of war around it when it lands. Wraith – Cloaking Field A cloaking field that makes you harder to hit, or perhaps makes you immune to overwatch fire. Turns off after you fire your weapon. Wraith – Cloaking Field disruptor A low TU but high area-of-effect weapon that disables a Wraith’s cloaking field. Servitor – Mechanic fieldkit Like a first aid kit but used to restore armour, or the health of your MARS robots. Servitor – Scanner Gives a general indication of where other units are on the map. (Like in the original XCOM). Servitor – Electronet Fires an electrified net at an enemy. If they fail a strength check then the net has them trapped, reducing their TU to 0 and holding them in place. (Xenonauts can then rush in with stun batons!) The strength check is re-rolled each turn. So if you caught a strong enemy, be careful as they might break out! Sebillian - Autoinjector The current autoinjector module, because I think it’s currently OP but would be more balanced if you needed to capture a live Sebillian to manufacture a single one. Sebillian – Stemcell Injector Apply to a Xenonaut “corpse” within two turns to bring them back to life with 10HP. Or alternatively, apply to a Xenonaut “corpse” within three turns to increase the chance that the Xenonaut actually survives the mission. Cyberdrone – Acoustic Sensor Indicates the direction of aliens / friendlies within a certain range if you can’t directly see them. Could work better on non-stealthy aliens, e.g. Sebillians. Cyberdrone – Barrage Calls in an off-map smoke or HE barrage. (Basically like dropping a smoke or HE grenade directly down from the sky). Particularly effective against terrain. Max one use per turn. Reaper – Adrenaline shot Free to use, immediately grants the user +10TU. Max one use per turn, max three uses per mission. Psyon – Psi amplifier Transfers a set number of TUs (10?) from the holder to a nearby Xenonaut.

I like these ideas!

Maybe in conjunction with this, the research text for mag weapons can big them up a bit more? To help with giving the impression that they're a worthwhile upgrade.

I think the issue for new players like me is that the mag weapons feel disappointing once you've unlocked them. So whatever change is made should result in the player feeling positive and excited about researching them. I remember unlocking Warden armour, thinking "this is great!" and being eager to manufacture some and try it out. I didn't have the same reaction from mag weapons. My perception was that the stats didn't seem that much better, and it would take a lot of engineering time / cash / alien alloys to make mag guns. Maybe the reality is different, and lasers aren't any better, but that doesn't change the reaction of a new player. Ultimately every research unlock should be a positive experience for a player, right? How exactly that's achieved is more complex, I grant you! All I can say is that my suggestion of a manufacturing project to retrofit all ballistics to mag would have achieved that positive reaction from me, but it's not the only solution.

No problem, happy to help. I've thought of two more points I should have included: Is there a way to easily see how long it is until your next cash injection? I get that it's at the end of each month, but currently with the "Day #" system you need to do some mental maths and work out when the next multiple of 30 will occur. A calendar might be easier? Researching mag weapons was underwhelming. Their stats don't seem like such a big upgrade over ballistics, especially considering the engineering time, cash, and alien alloys you need to put into building the mag variants. After I researched them I felt like I'd been conned a bit, or at least had made a poor decision. This is in contrast to the Warden armour, which felt like a good choice, decent value, and a worthwhile upgrade. The artwork for the mag weapons is ace though. My suggestion is that once you research mag weapons, you get an engineering project to retrofit all your ballistic weapons to mag. Then, for a modest outlay in cash, engineering time, and alien alloys, every ballistic weapon automatically becomes the mag variant. I think that would make it a more even decision between going mag or holding off for lasers.

I’ve downloaded the Early Access and have made some notes, in case they’re helpful. This is for Milestone 1.22, covering the first 38 days, default difficulty. It’s from the very beginning of the game up until a Cleaner dockyard base. Sorry if these points read like a stream of consciousness, but I was basically playing through the game and tabbing out to add a bullet point every now and then! FYI, I played X1, and a very early slice of X2. I do lurk on this forum, but on the whole I’m coming to the game with a clean slate. The intro sequence and initial menu screens are really well done. The “click middle button to lock a nested tooltip” confused me. I’m not sure it’s necessary, just waiting three seconds for the circle to disappear to me is intuitive and works perfectly. Having the middle click instruction so early in the tutorial made me worry that the game would be quite fiddly. The game became unresponsive the first time I was playing though the tutorial and got to the part when you launch interceptors. Clicking on the “LAUNCH AIRCRAFT” and “CLOSE” buttons did nothing. The escape key did nothing either. In the end I had to Crtl+Alt+Delete and exit. I then reloaded, started again, and it worked fine. It felt a bit odd to have shot down a UFO, prepared a team to go to the crash site, and then immediately have to switch to defending the base. “Cleaners” are mentioned with no explanation of who / what they are. It’s just kinda assumed you know. It feels like there’s missing backstory. The tactical combat UI feels very slick, I like it a lot. Overall the combat tutorial is well done and does a good job of explaining lots of different aspects of the game. I like how the percentage chance to hit calculation is broken down. Makes it easy to understand. And the ability to plan a move and then see what the percentage will be from a different position before committing is really good. The character animations are well done, big thumbs up. The Cleaners look like humans with gas masks, but when I killed one I got a “killed an alien” achievement. Are they humans or aliens? Maybe it’s supposed to be a mystery at this point. Use of the flashbang and smoke grenades is really neat. And shooting the boxes to give another soldier a clear shot. This is all great. The ending of the tutorial is a bit sudden. You’re retreating to defend from the next room and then it just ends. Next thing you’re starting out in the backup base. How about the tutorial sees endless waves of enemies and you just keep fighting for as long as you can, knowing your soldiers are doomed? Story-wise that makes sense, because these troops are mounting a desperate last-ditch attempt to delay the enemy. Gameplay-wise it means the player gets more practice in, allowing them to try different things in a low-pressure situation, i.e. they know that it’s a tutorial and it’ll end when all the soldiers die. The Engineering screen is a bit confusing. I wanted to build more Defender Armour, so input a load of those. $10,000 each, but there’s no readout telling me what the total cost would be. Then I clicked “Start Production” and it just added another set of Defender Armour to the to-build list. Not sure what’s going on there. In the Loadout screen, could double-clicking on a weapon/item from the stores automatically move it into the soldier’s inventory? Update: just realised that right-clicking does this. Double-left clicking is what I tried to do first though, so perhaps is more intuitive. It doesn’t seem possible to put a grenade into a soldier’s secondary slot, which seems odd. Update: once I got to the combat screen I understood that grenades don’t have to be put into a soldier’s hand before throwing. I like this X2 approach! I really like how you can see the breakdown behind a soldier’s attributes, such as accuracy. This makes it easy to see what’s having an effect, e.g. the armour plating. I’ve got the pop-up saying that my Skyhawk has arrived at the crash site, but the accompanying picture is of a fighter plane rather than a helicopter, which threw me a bit. I thought maybe I’d dispatched the wrong aircraft. The mission briefings are very clear. The overwatch toggle buttons are great. The tooltips are brilliant. I’m using them a lot. Clearly a lot of work has gone into them and it's paid off. Do medikits have a limited number of uses? It seems not, but that’s not stated anywhere that I can see. A guy just ran out at me with a gun. I know from playing X1 that he’s an armed civilian, but a new player could think that he’s an enemy, maybe a Cleaner. It seems odd that you can’t click on an enemy to find out anything about them, e.g. species name. One of my soldiers has been shot and has a bleeding wound. The blood icon has the number 1 next to it, but the tooltip says that he’ll lose 5hp each turn. Update: I think the 1 is the number of bleeding woulds he has, but I'm not 100% sure. The combat report screen is really good, showing how each solider is progressing. Three purple heart medals, good job team! My first alien autopsy. The art and text are first rate. And the psionic triangulation ability sounds interesting too. Now I’ve got available projects to research. Why does Xenobiology have “Plot” in brackets after it? Will researching it speed up the game and bring on tougher enemies? It’s also the only one to have a specified effect (+ $240,000 monthly funding). Maybe all the research projects could have their effects stated as clearly? I’m equipping a MARS, and it’s really cool. Changing the primary weapon and seeing that reflected in the artwork is awesome. Could the secondary weapons change the artwork too? Selecting armour for the MARS is a bit confusing. There’s a drop-down menu at the top-left that only has “Steel plating” as an option, and the armour rating is given as 15. But then below the “tactical vest” (which sounds weird considering it’s a robot) there’s a checkbox for “heavy steel plating”. Selecting this changes the artwork (great!) and seems to bump the armour rating to 25, although the top-left box still says “steel plating”. The choice of equipment for the MARS, such as a smoke launcher, helps make it an interesting choice to bring along on a mission. I just tried giving a solder a second steel plate. The tooltip said no valid placement, even though there’s plenty of space. Maybe it should say something like “maximum one per soldier”? Playing a Cleaner mission. It’s ace! I like how it’s different from the normal “kill all aliens”. Having a MARS smash through walls is awesome. Should I be taking dead Cleaner bodies back to the chopper so the scientist can autopsy them? I’m still none the wiser as to who these guys actually are, other than baddies. Are they aliens? The text at the end of the mission gives me a number for “aliens killed” so I guess they are? Like the Thin Men from XCOM. It would be nice to know the direction the Cleaner reinforcements are coming from. In case it’s useful info, playing on the default difficulty I had two KIA soldiers, and captured 13 data sticks. I stayed until I was told that Cleaner reinforcements had arrived, then ordered everyone to leg it to the chopper. I didn’t actually see any of the reinforcements. Now I’ve got a progress bar for finding the Cleaner HQ. This is slightly confusing as I thought I was stopping an alien invasion. Maybe there needs to be a line of text making it clear what’s going on – stop the Cleaners first then move onto the aliens? Is this Cleaner section basically an extended tutorial? Or are the Cleaners the aliens in disguise? I just checked the Funding Report. It says “alien victory is 2 region lost”. This is clunky phrasing. I’ve just competed some research. The text and artwork are really good. Text says “new engineering projects are available to build”. ‘Engineering projects’ is in bold so I expected it to have a tooltip, but it doesn’t. There’s a button to assign new research; maybe there should be one to go to the engineering screen too, if I’ve new things to make? When going to the engineering screen, sometimes the engineer will say something like “Da, comrade?” but sometimes the box just says “…”. I like that I have the option of stun batons or stun guns. It’s an interesting choice to have to make. I just shot down a UFO and have the pop-up where I can launch a mission or collect a bounty. It’s a bit annoying that the globe view is frozen behind this window, as I can’t actually drag my mouse around to see where the crash site is. Dragging and dropping engineering projects to reorder them feels very slick and natural. On the geoscape, could one of the time speed controls be to pause time? I’m up against Sebillians, trying to stun one. It took four Xenonauts three turns firing stun guns at the alien to actually stun it. (Most of their shots missed). Could there be a stun bar so you know how much progress you’re making? The crashed UFO model is cool. I’m standing over the corpse of an alien and trying to pick up its gun to use it. Doesn’t seem like I’m able to. Should there be a tooltip or something, if I need to research the weapon before using it? The medkit tooltip says that some damage is permanent, but I think this is a bit misleading as they can heal back to full strength when back at base, right? I suppressed enemies, but then they’re attacking me in their go. Does suppression only stop overwatch fire? I think this might have been covered in the tutorial but I've forgotten! A civilian just ran into a UFO I was preparing to breach, and almost ruined my plan! Could NPCs avoid UFOs? I managed to stun a flying brain thing, but again it was quite frustrating. Stun guns feel too weak – or perhaps their accuracy should be much higher. Combined with some visual feedback about how much stun damage an enemy needs to take before they’re actually unconscious. Right now I’m dreading having to stun more enemies. I just hired some new soldiers, but am not sure if they appear immediately or if there’s a delay. The music is perfect throughout the whole game. It adds a lot to the atmosphere. I have research options to interrogate captured aliens. It says I’ll get improved training rate and a damage bonus. Could this be phrased in the same way as the “Effect” messages you get with the “Plot” research? In other words, could every research project have the effect clearly stated? “Effect: improved Xenonaut training rate, and 15% damage bonus against Sebillians.” “Effect: unlocks laser rifle for production and essential to progress the plot”. (I made that second one up as an example!) This would really help understand which research projects you should prioritise for your chosen playstyle. Already the amount of research projects is starting to feel a bit daunting. It would also be good if you could queue up research projects, like you can engineering tasks. And maybe not lose all your research progress if you switch from one to another. What does the Chief Scientist do, burn all his notes just because you change your mind? The loading screen seems to always have the same tip, about right-clicking on a weapon in the inventory screen to unload it. Just had an abduction mission. I’m really enjoying the variety so far. My soldiers kept being “mesmerised”, but there was no explanation of what that actually means. Update: this ability is explained in the autopsy report. Looking at the Base Stores, I’ve no idea if it’s safe to sell certain items. I’ve got alien corpses piling up – should I sell them? What about the Cleaner Data that I collected? The Funding Report has a “NEXT” button that doesn’t seem to do anything. There’s a surprising lack of tooltips on the Base screen. Should I build a missile battery? Not sure what it does. Knowing the mission objectives during the loadout screen would be useful for best equipping your team. Update: perfect example, the briefing is saying that it’s better to capture than kill the VIP. Had I known that, I’d have packed some stun weapons. It’s too late by the time you know the objectives. Could flashbang grenades be buffed a bit? Maybe someone stunned has reduced TU for their next turn? At the moment I think they just stop overwatch. They feel a bit weak as a result. Regular grenades are very useful, in contrast. Update: some of my soldiers were just suppressed and have started the turn with reduced TUs, so maybe what I requested is in the game already! Perhaps the flashbang grenade explanatory text could be updated to reflect this? It makes it sound like flashbang grenades are really for breaching UFOs. Does the amount of stun damage keep adding up? Can you make enemies unconscious by chucking a ton of flashbang grenades at them? Can you reduce their TUs for the next turn to zero? I get that you shouldn’t overkill aliens, as then you gib them and don’t get useful resources. But is it different with the Cleaners? I think they’re just using human weapons. I’m blasting them with grenade launchers! For these Cleaner missions when reinforcements arrive after a certain number of turns, could there be a countdown so you know how many turns you have left? I just accidentally friendly-fired my MARS. It was a single shot from a sniper rifle. The word MISS appeared, but also a red number 15. Did I miss, or hit and cause 15 damage? I have a solider with a clear sight to an enemy, but all the alien head icons are orange. Shouldn’t one be red? The seagulls on this level are really loud! Oh wow, I just looked through the controls and saw that you can zoom in and out with Page Up / Page Down. This is so useful. I don’t think it was covered in the tutorial. It feels like the difficulty has shot through the roof. I identified the VIP (I think, it’s an alien), but there are so many Cleaners about. My entire team got wiped out and I only landed a few hits on it. And zero out of 18 data files retrieved. I think this is a good time to quit – it feels like it’d be hard to recover from that slaughter, and the difficulty spike has dented my morale somewhat! Overall I’m really impressed with X2. I’ll admit that the “what’s new in X2” forum post made me think this sequel would be a bit underwhelming as nothing too radical was listed, but having played it I’ve changed my mind. All those new additions add up to a game that I think is in a different league to the original. What I’ve played through was almost universally really good. I think that the new mission types are particularly effective, and I’ll end by suggesting again that a mission type where you’re controlling local forces, along with a skirmish game mode (perhaps unlocked after you complete the game) could help set X2 apart from its peers. (Forum post about these ideas here). I hope all that was useful, and I’m happy to clarify anything that doesn’t make sense because I was typing it in a hurry -- I was eager to get back into the game!

Hi all, long-time lurker and occasional poster here. I regularly read the development updates and am happy to hear that a new mission type -- killing an enemy VIP -- is being added. And if I recall there's also now a mission where you have to rescue civilians. I suggested these a while back but the response then was a no, so I'm happy to see that opinions have changed, as of course often happens during development. The reason I'm posting now is to gently dust off a few of the other ideas I had back then, in the hope that they might be useful if the developers are now more open to different mission types. This was a post I made ages ago with lots of ideas: For context, Chris' original response is at the top of page #5 here: And I maintain, even after all these years, that the following would be awesome! "My main idea is to have a new mission type where you’re exclusively controlling local forces. The situation could be something like an allied military bunker is under surprise attack by aliens. There’s not enough time for the Xenonauts to get there, but there’s a radio link set up so you (the player) can command the local forces. Imagine controlling a large team of troops armed with basic weapons (rifles, shotguns etc.) against a horde of Reapers. It could lead to great Aliens-esque missions with a dash of Space Hulk. The odds of your team all getting wiped out are high, but in contrast to regular missions, it’s not a game over / rage quit situation if that happens. There are a lot of ways in which you could use this kind of a premise. Maybe if your troops hold the base’s hanger for x turns, then your main Xenonaut troops turn up as reinforcements and take the fight to the enemy. Or if the aliens take the radio room and / or reactor room then you lose contact and it’s mission over. Basically, I think this could be a way of mixing up the gameplay as a sequel arguably should, and adding more variety in a way that hopefully isn’t a huge burden from the development side of things (i.e. it would use existing assets such as character models). As an aside, it could even lead to a skirmish-mode of the game, where you can play one-off missions. Choose a map; select an alien "army"; choose a pre-made human force, or you customise the force; choose different criteria (e.g. "humans have ballistic weapons only"). I think that'd be awesome. Personally I could see me playing that kind of thing more than the main game! Especially if modders make custom maps with interesting scenarios. I get that some of these ideas -- especially the mission type where you're controlling local forces instead of your own troops -- are quite a radical departure from tradition with these games. But if they're used well, I think they could really spice things up." OK that's it, I hope these ideas are useful

Depends on the mission of course, and balancing, but some initial ideas include: Improving relations with a particular country. Cash bonus. Stash of equipment (e.g. 10 packs of C4 or equivalent). New Xenonaut recruit (could be a high rank). Unique weapon (maybe just an existing one but with improved stats to avoid new artwork). Armour. Revealing location of alien base. Research boost. Instant research on a particular alien species. Temporary manufacturing time reduction. Preventing a country from defecting for x days (buying you time to reduce panic). Temporarily stopping UFOs flying over a particular region. Gaining more AI allies in ground / air combat in a particular region. New scientist. New engineer. etc.