Mr.Xia

You just got off work recently, not caring at all for the world news, when suddenly, a UFO swoops down crashing and aliens start blasting their plasma rifles at your direction. You have several choices to do so, do you: A: Run to the nearest building and take cover and be useful? B: Run towards the downed UFO just to get a closer look at the alien? C: Run towards the nearest soldier in blue and block his line of fire? D: Run to the nearest building's window ignoring the door that is closer to you, crash into it, then hop back outside, and THEN running towards the downed UFO? 80% of the time its always D.

They do grenade your soldier to bits, but on occasion if they could not normally move and shoot at your soldier in a turn. A wraith once lobbed a grenade across a building just to turn my colonel into paste. I think its for the best that they do not increase in frequency.

As much as I like them to be more terrifying in outdoor missions, they already serve their purpose when in close quarters (i.e Alien bases) Balanced has to be considered when buffing reapers, they are a cascading terror unit that can snowball into a frustrating enemy to tackle if things got out of hand, so making them stronger might seriously make the map too difficult. If there is to be a change, I would suggest they spawn in windowless interior rooms (storeroom in a supermarket for example) and trigger their attack pattern whenever any human unit ventures within their detection range.

If you suppress the alien, it gives you a reaction free environment so your troops are safe to act, but you have to rush in and kill it before the end of turn, thats the mentality of suppression tactics, they arent to lockdown aliens not to act, but for you to rush in for the kill safely. And for aliens that could still kill your soldiers effectively even after suppression..... well I would blame turn-based RNG for that.....sometimes.

I feel that night missions should retain their difficulty, but have some situational circumstances that benefits the player. QOL features - Nightvision equipment To give more options for night play, nightvision goggles as equipment that remove the darkness penalty but reduces cone vision to simulate night vision goggles and their reduction of awareness. However adding new elements can accumulate micromanagement, so to prevent that, the accuracy module can by default be outfitted with night vision that provides a toggle on/off option with TU spent for soldiers to activate their night vision. - Choosing day/night battles Now this could be a tricky element, because the player can simply decide to attack at daytime only and nothing else, and the day/night cycle is an element for players to be more tactical due to missions having limited time, but if night missions are incentivised enough to be desired, then this would be a good feature. incentives for nighttime - Less civilians at night. Civilians might be more sparse in night missions, which if there is a bigger factor to prevent the loss of civilian life. If I recall in X1, there is an effect to whether you prevent the loss of civilians or local forces? Perhaps a gameplay element that having less civilian casualties result in better increase in goodwill, night missions would be perfect to minimise collateral damage in the field. - Alien strengths and weaknesses. If sunlight is a factor, aliens might provide some weaknesses at night missions. Regenerative abilities might be weaker or robot sensors have a smaller range for example. Or provide strengths such as more potent mesmerise abilities to strike true darkness in the hearts of the soldiers. - Subtle landing entries Nightime might provide some kind of shroud for landing crafts to land troops before the aliens could notice. If the starting positions of aliens are further from the landing craft, or are still bunched up around their crashed UFOs, that provides some tactical consideration. - Map variation Perhaps for an excuse to change map variety, the aliens might prop up mobile bases or scientific equipment depending on the time of day(solar plants in daytime if they actually used solar power, that provide cover and obstacles on the alien side) - Alien frequency Depends on the time of day, different types of aliens might be more frequent in the battlefield, which players can predict and adapt their tactics accordingly (reapers could be more frequent at night). Of course this will be limited to alien research or terror missions in the field, it would not make sense on crashed UFOs. If a player needs a specific alien to research this could turn their direction towards choosing the time of day to approach. - Weapons/armour changes I cant think of a realistic way of weapon changes on darkness, but perhaps armour might play a part. The stalker armour for example could be much more effective in areas of darkness. - Resources Perhaps nighttime would be ideal for clandestine activities to move alien research cargo or alien abduction pods for example. This provides a financial incentive for players to attack at nighttime, knowing that there is more chance of loot to be found, although that has to be balanced out otherwise, nighttime missions would be the meta for getting resources. - Story required night mission Perhaps a 'forced' incentive is to play a mission at night where a particular alien or technology could only be around at night.

Shields are a clutch for newer players to provide a get out of jail free card and are a great meta for experienced ones who wants to use unconventional risky tactics. It's best to retain the old system, I feel. Shields provide a different tactic than who can provide the highest reflexes, and its simplicity prevents it from spiraling out of requiring to balance everything to fit its role in.

The MARS to me is an early game clutch, designed to be an expansive soldier unit that has some perks(smashing through walls, godly sniper cannon) to make it highly attractive among a sea of privates that you have yet to rank up, but I do agree that the $250k price is just too much(its almost 2 MARS for a mid-tier aircraft). $150k seemed more reasonable as suggested.

@Chris Not sure if its asked before, but would it be possible to mod multi-tile units in X2? Some of us still liked the mini-tanks from the previous game.

I happened to noticed that too, whenever I throw grenades in UFOs with a 100% chance, there is a tendancy to turn my thrower into a pink mist, occasionally. Probably janky part of X2's mechanics(which the system is already jank enough). I should check it again and report the bug, when i have time to go back to updated X2.

The point is that the grenade launcher is too inefficient to have a good use case in any scenario. If the launcher can arc over a longer range than grenades to provide utility, has more different types of ammo to shoot, or just give it more range & accuracy seriously chris, bring back the rocket launcher. , then it makes sense for it to exist. Right now its outclassed by grenades/satchel charges or the MARS robot.

@doubleskulls I've noticed Alienkiller has been insulting people in the forums claiming his authority as a longtime beta tester for the games to belittle anyone who have any differing opinions than him. And I think I know where this thread this is going. Xenonauts isn't a conventional mainstream game that will offer paid cosmetic DLCs.... Mods would have already done the job much better and without the need for paid content. If the concern is funding for the next xenonauts game, the lead guy knows what he's doing to already have a sequel. I wouldnt worry too much on the money department. And paid content that isn't a gameplay expansion tends to piss people off, especially in a core PC game like X2.

Clandestine Icelandic military operations in a nutshell.

Never heard about the change, but I assumed that the fun factor with the current shields is that it provide immediate feedback. With a shield, your soldier is a death catcher(of at least 1 direct hit), with the high one-shot death rate of early gameplay, reflects its importance as an reaction shot trigger tool, to allow your other soldiers to move forward to attack without catching a plasma bolt and die just by appearing. And if the shield disintegrates, your soldier serves that role(and for balancing purposes to have that limited hp). It's goofy, I give it that, but for a turn-based high stakes ground combat, the current system works if you play it that way, instead of a mobile survivor unit, it is an anti-reaction dude coming in to pray that the alien doesn't burst fire his 1/80 hp shield. I assumed the new shield system(never was there before the change) was a damage reduction absorber and while that might make more sense to me, it is in the heart of an X-Com game, where RNG is the difference between a flesh wound and a one-shot death, which players encountered shield troopers dying to shots similar to unshielded ones, and find the RNG to be more grating than it should.

Civilians should: - Not run towards the aliens and back in a marathon - Not crash into windows and jump back out like professional schizophrenics - Only have a small amount of TU to move as to simulate panic instead of being headless chickens - Have a cower animation to simplify everything, static civvies are much more desirable.

If the launcher actually arcs I would have said "Oh yeah, this actually doesn't suck", a utility gun that needs the finesse of being able to hit things while behind cover would be nice. Then again, grenades do their jobs equally well, I only see the static 24/34 TU as a benefit to the launcher(if the newest updates didn't change it), and I still am an advocate to return the X1's rocket launcher, at least it serves a purpose of clearing obstacles safely from distance.