Hi folks. I'm 10 hours in now and just thought I'd add my voice before your early access release. Haven't read the forums yet, so apologies if anything here is duplicated. Just ignore me
I downloaded the beta as soon as I was able, but didn't have the brains to figure out what to do. I thought I'd give it a proper go again just recently and have some feedback...
First, I have quite a lot of hours in Firaxcom, and no hours in the original game or Xenonauts, so that's where I'm coming from. I'm currently at 10 hours played, campaign attempt number 5. Not got past the first terror mission.
Tutorial.
Apologies if any of this is included in the tutorial and I missed it. These points were lightbulb moments for me when I figured them out, and were mostly obtained from watching letsplays. But I only tend to do that when I want to persevere with a game.
1. Cover, LOS & Time Units: Cover is well explained, but most of the guided actions involve "move then shoot". This reinforces the belief that shooting is turn ending. I know it isn't, but it's ingrained in me to press space after shooting even if I have TU left. I also thought I could shoot round high cover, which I obviously can't. I think a tutorial action that involves you taking high cover, then using TU to step out, fire, and step back would be a great way to illustrate that you can do stuff after shooting as well as explain that you can't shoot round adjacent high cover. This aspect of the game is what sets it apart from the other titles for me, and is what makes it really engaging.
2. Friendly Fire is a real hazard, and also something I think should be included in the tutorial so people know about it, even if it's during the enemy turn, rather than making the player click through it. Also, grenades can miss quite easily which I found out the hard way.
3. Inventory isn't mentioned in the tutorial. I didn't even know it could be accessed from the tactical map until I saw it on YouTube. Maybe have a soldier pick something up or switch out a secondary weapon for a medkit? Picking up a corpse to return it for evac could also illustrate that hidden "10% chance not to die", which is a great feature I knew nothing about. Still don't know whether you need to take the corpse on missions where you evac (mission 2).
4. Right clicking to open doors, get USBs out of computers etc should also be in there. Had to watch a letsplay for mission 2.
5. Turning has a use. It's kinda covered as an aside in the tutorial, but it's not until you get to the tac map when you make that quarter turn to see an alien standing ten feet away in plain sight that you realise just how important it is to be aware of your surroundings by turning your soldiers. I'm now forever turning and scanning to see what's around me. Project Zomboid hat is firmly on.
6. Right click on a shot type makes it go orange (without having a target selected). I had no idea what this meant until I figured out that it restricts your movement to allow you enough TU to move and fire. Should be in the tutorial.
General.
On the soldier management screen, having a tooltip over each of the soldier attributes, reminding the player what they're useful for would be helpful. I still don't know what Reflexes are used for, so this would be useful for people that didn't absorb themselves fully in the tutorial.
A smoother camera rotation would be better than the janky rotation in place now. I have mine set to 30 degrees so I have fine control, so pressing Q or E a couple of times in succession is a bit jarring to the eyes.
Nice To Haves
It would be really good if Soldier "classes" could be saved to disk rather than the gamesave. For mugs like me, starting a new game as frequently as I do means having to re-organise how I want my loadouts to appear repeatedly. Similar to how Factorio does blueprints.
That's all I have right now. I think the game is very playable for early access. My only real concerns were over the tutorial. My first few games were a disaster as I learned those points. It's not a bad tutorial, it just leaves a few things out that Firaxcom players might rage over.
Good luck with EA and with the future of the game!