hotor23

So background, I started with games like Xcom enemy unknown, beat it with the DLC and LongWar. Beat Xcom2 and beat Xcom 2 with longwar of the chosen. Played the Xcom chimera squad game (didn't finish it, but also played it with harder difficulty mods). I've *seen* g ameplay of older Xcom and kind of been turned off by it. Saw that this demo was available watching some one else play, and I played it through to completion of the demo. Felt the demo length was fair (and was afraid I'd end up playing for like 20 hours) Thoughts/bugs/Critiques/Confusion I had in no particular order: * Air combat seemed stale and not very good, but then I saw people talking about how great it was talking about abilities I've never seen (after burners?) etc... and looked at videos of xenonauts 1 combat and it seemed interesting, and now I realized I just never understood how to do aircombat, and that's probably why I didn't think it was that great. * Not sure why I can't queue up research. * I can't shoot around corners, which was a bit jarring at first, but because xenonauts works on an action points system, instead of modern xcoms set action type system, it's not really *functionally* a problem, and you have way more options in general. I kind of got used to it after a bit, but I think this could be "improved" if you could make soldiers *look* like they were shooting around corners while functionally still moving one tile and turning the direction they need to shoot (so mechanically nothing changes, but visually it looks "cool"). In fact, on a side note, one of my biggest complaints about the art and graphics here is the lack of "juice", game feel, etc... I think this game lacks a lot in subtle minor details in art style, though I think it matches the visual style of older Xcom very well, and I never had a problem with the over all fidelity itself. * It's weird I can't change soldier class before the soldier arrives when I recruit. Doesn't seem to be a logical reason why I can't, and it's just annoying, since I can gear them up anyway otherwise. * Armor seems, weak? Doesn't really make sense to me. I'm still not completely sure what it does, does it actually remove part of the damage? The damage ticks I see on my soldiers don't make it seem that way, but the health taken makes it seem like it does something. Maybe armor is even *mechanically fine*, but like a lot of other things, there's not a lot of visual telegraphing helping me give an idea of what it's actually doing. Armor should be explained better, and there should be clear visual graphics on damage showing exactly what the armor prevented from affecting health. Also strange that aliens get a armor icon but soldiers don't? Are the mechanics different between the two? * Changing ammo costing TU seems a bit weird, and I wouldn't expect that to be an issue since I can use a different weapon with out TU cost. At the very least, some where there should be some indication that this action is not free. * Friendly fire is strange, I'm used to "fire, and explosions cause friendly fire, but bullets don't". Crouching doesn't seem to remedy the situation either, it's not clear when I'm at risk for FF, and the chance of being hit. I just realized, are the red percentages the percent chance that they will be hit? Because it's in the same place as the obstacle percent chance I couldn't tell the difference. I think they should be highlighted/outlined in red as well to make it clear (I also think a lot of visual indications should utilize outlined instead of merely changing the color on pre-existing visual elements and overloading them). * Suppression is likewise strange. I can suppress my own team-mate way easier than I can suppress the enemy. Merely firing near my teammates suppresses them, but I have to actually do damage to aliens to suppress them? That doesn't seem to make much sense. It's also not clear what the cone of suppression actually is, making it frustrating to even use. Also would be nice if there was some visual indication *highlight or icon wise* showing whether an alien was suppressed or not. * It's kind of confusing when I can get shot. Like there's that whole "if you have TU left over, and you have reflexes you're less likely to get shot if you move in front of an enemy" but then it's like, okay, so how am I supposed to know when an alien has enough TU left over to shoot me? There should be some visual indication that "can shoot me", even if not down to the TU level, because I bet the AI has access to this information from my side. It's just kind of confusing in general. * At first not having classes and upgrades for those classes seemed odd, but after a bit It became more appealing the more I appreciated the sheer freedom of load outs (want a dude to just carry all grenades? You can do that! Want only medkits? Can do that too!) I just hope we get interesting non psionic abilities too, even if those abilities only come from equipment (grapple, jetpack, camo etc... not necessarily those specifically, but as an example of things which could have abilities attached plausibly). * One nitpick I had for this system, If you're going to give us the freedom to not be restricted in class loadouts, make it so that we can have more freedom in the emblem designs (in game emblem editor, maybe something simple like how stellaris does theirs). * Would be nice if there was a better visual indication that move + preview shot will not happen with the amount of TU left over (there is an indicator, but it's not that obvious?, maybe colored highlight of spot?) like the color of the actual targeting reticle should change or it should **straight up not allow you to take the preview shot move**. * smoke is *way* more powerful and IMO fair than XCOM, actually can block shots completely, not just a flat 20% hit chance reduction. I actually like this. * Can smoke knock players out though? I couldn't find any thing in any tutorial or help that said it can, and randomly my characters would be "knocked out" in the smoke, and I couldn't figure out why. had this happen like 5 times. * Saw some T posing mantids and bigger big headed aliens, sometimes it was difficult to tell if somebody was dead because of this, did reload in that map, maybe that was the problem? * Levels/height z layers of the map that are otherwise visible, should not be black just because you haven't scrolled up to them, it's really disorientating and confusing. I may be confusing two different applications of black, but that just proves my point, something strange is going on with the 2.5 d orthographic view and the black fog of war. * the whole 90 degree FOV thing initially was strange, but I eased up on it, it allows you to sneak up on a unit, and do other things not possible if there's a constant fixed radius of vision. I do think, *hypothetically* that maybe it could still reveal the map with out you explicitly having to rotate your unit around like a doofus to look at it (ignoring objective items) in some fixed radius regardless, but it's not that big of a deal, then again you wouldn't be able to figure out what you've explored and what you haven't. * On maps where you were required to kill every alien, it's a bit annoying when you wait forever and can't find them for several turns because they are stuck on the one black tile you never thought you'd see an alien at. Xcom had the whole "sound came from this direction thing" if you couldn't see them/hear them for a while, not sure if that's needed, but this not being an issue would be nice. * Medkits are kind of confusing to use on downed members, still not entirely sure how to stop someone passed out from bleeding out. * Would like the little guys at the bottom of the strategy layer to be animated some how, maybe some air traffic control ambience here, and a different sound rushed when you speed up the time. Maybe extend more tiny background animations to other areas, like lights blinking in the back of the science room, engineering showing an animation of some sort of claw moving about moving random boxes. I don't think otherwise the characters representing these tabs need to be animated. * Sound effects for different tabs (it's kind of there? just very faint, and like a blip for engineering and science?), like construction sounds and crowds in the main base screen, blips and computer beeps in science, welding and drilling in engineering, "attention hut" sound in the soldier screen or marching or something, cocking gun sound in armory screen, VTOL plane landing sound in hangar screen, and then some soft ambience for each screen afterwards (so that the main music doesn't get drowned out). * I found the xenopedia images to be good. * Guns kind of don't sound that great. I think different tiers of weapondry should have slightly different sounds at the very least (magnetic should sound more metalic meaty) to contrast the greater "power". Right now they just have different skins and different stats, but feel functionally the same. * There should be squishier sounds for getting shot, and shooting other things, like aliens should sound squishy when shooting them. Mantids should sound like your breaking a crabs shell, especially when you finally kill one. * Tracers of magnetic weapons and likewise all weapons should be visually different from one another, even if it's only a muzzle flash color difference. * Performance while in the shift predict shot mode either gets bad or just stop the camera when you over over an enemy, * load times are mildly... strange for this game? I have a PCIE gen 4 NVME SSD with 5000MB/s read write, and really good specs overwise ( and I have a 7950x, and a 4090.) the loading in this game should practically be instant. Loading into a game/encounter I already started takes about as long as starting a new encounter though, so I'm not really sure what the deal is, something like 15 -> 30 seconds. * Had one instance where loading got stuck at 90% when loading into a new encounter. Was not able to replicate. * Verticality was kind of lacking, but I will say that I did often have a need to at least get to a second floor. * ironically what *I* can shoot and where is way more straight forward and intuitive than modern Xcom, even though the mechanics behind that are technically simple. Despite this long list of suggestions, it's pretty much all quality of life, tutorial, combat telegraphing, and minor audio-visual tweaks. I had a generally positive feel after completing the demo.