Goldminermac

I'm about the play Xenonauts 2 the real way

I know the knife is a bit of a joke but maybe adding some melee options would add some variety. For starters melee weapons could have flat TU costs instead of percentage based ones to allow high TU soldiers to really use them effectively in combination with their higher movement, and there could be higher upgraded tiers of melee weapons.

To be fair even though you can't use weapons made by the aliens you can reverse engineer the technology used to make the weapons to make human friendly models (Like making accelerated ballistic weapons after reverse engineering alien magnetic weapons). I see no reason within the game's lore why you couldn't just study a psyon's brain implants to make some kind of primitive psychic device at the very least which would be fit for use by humans. I believe psionic abilities could be balanced and they don't even need to be an optimal tactic, just an option that is available to add some precious strategy. Also maybe mind control could be balanced by only working on panicked enemies so you aren't able to just snatch a powerful alien on to your side without doing some work first.

Is it completely against the design philosophy of the game to allow psionic abilities for soldiers? It would be an interesting additional form of strategy to add to the game and maybe psionic abilities could be balanced by having them tied to a specific armor with low defense and/or some other downside (possibly researched by interrogating psyons?), meaning your psionic soldiers would have to be highly specialized into psionics and you couldn't just give a psi-amp to everyone.

I don’t think we should just keep the old research system to be more like X-COM, but the new system just feels worse and we need to accept that this game is still a sequel to a direct remake of that game. Changes like air combat that improve the experience aren’t questioned but some things don’t need to be changed.

How attached are the community and developers to the game's current research system? I personally greatly prefer the first game's X-COM based one where you can allocate scientists in any way you like across different simultaneous research projects, as granting the player additional freedom creates more opportunity for strategy. While there are benefits to only having one project at a time, like the ability to more easily plan out you research order and being able to cut down on small underwhelming projects this system creates many annoyances. Only being able to research one topic at a time definitely reduces the desire to ever research smaller projects like autopsies and story projects for example, as you will feel the need to always be putting effort into the next tech that will upgrade your troops, aircraft, bases, etc. In the prior system, you could always have a few autopsies on the backburner with a tiny amount of scientists while still focusing most of your resources on the next armor or tier of weapons. Scientists have also been done really dirty, now only being worth a 5% speed bonus on top of a flat 100% rate. Individual scientists feel worthless now. I have some ideas. MY IDEA: Revert The System Just make it like the last game, multiple projects at once, and science working with man hours instead of the percentage system. While I don't believe this will be adopted due to there likely being a large amount of intent behind the current system, I do believe this would be an improvement and I want to hear the opinions of the community on the matter. COMPROMISE: Merge The Systems Remove the percentage system and make research work with man hours like engineering, making every scientist equally as important to research. While each base will still only be able to have one research project at a time, each base will still be able to choose independently, so while multiple bases can work on the same project they can also choose to work on different ones, allowing multiple projects at once. This would allow the additional freedom of the old system while still keeping a unique identity similar to what the developers have implemented so far.

The HEVY launcher is in a bit of a weird place right now. It can’t do anything standard grenades can’t despite requiring you to specialize a whole soldier into it, it requires line of sight instead of firing in an arc, and to add insult to injury, when fired at ranges beyond a standard grenade it has accuracy so poor it is almost unusable in any serious situation. Here are my suggestions to rework it into proper weapon to build a role around. IDEA ONE: Make it an upgrade to grenades Grenades in this game are immensely powerful, and their strength comes from extremely high accuracy and therefore reliability, and not requiring line of sight. As is the HEVY launcher removes both of those factors in exchange for a dubiously useful range increase. As the role that uses it is titled grenadier, a good way to rework the launcher would be to market it as a straight upgrade to grenades, at the expense of having it replace a soldier’s primary weapon. The launcher should fire in an arc, allowing it to surpass obstacles, and maintain good accuracy at longer range than thrown grenades. This way using the launcher is the same as throwing grenades, but is effective for a much farther distance, removing the need to get a soldier up close to enemies to use grenades offensively and adding strategic use for specialized grenadiers. While the main downside from this is needing to have a soldier dedicated to only being effective at using grenades, grenades are still very powerful and it could be further balanced by keeping the high 51% TU cost grenades normally have instead of the flat one currently used, as the range buff is a significant boon. IDEA TWO: Ammunition Variety The HEVY launcher just does smoke and terrain destruction, both roles fulfilled by smoke and demolition charge grenades as is. A good improvement would be to add a larger variety of ammunition types, possibly filling niches not met by grenades and others that are. -Anti Personnel Rounds: Basically a frag grenade round, maybe with a larger blast radius even though that buff may not be necessary. A way to deal proper damage with the launcher. -Shock Rounds: A flashbang that also deals stun damage along with suppressing enemies. A reliable way to stun enemies and a good source of suppression from long range alongside the machine gun, and an anti robot weapon. -Stun Gas Rounds: Creates a colored smoke cloud that blocks line of sight and deals much more stun damage from inhalation than smoke normally does. Another way to catch enemies alive and should be unique to the launcher without a grenade equivalent, possibly requiring a research to unlock. -Corrosive Gas Rounds: Creates a colored cloud of smoke that blocks line of sight and deals heavy damage to any units and terrain within. Could be used as a long term area denial tool still capable of damaging enemies who don’t breath smoke like cleaner soldiers or robots, at the expense of being equally dangerous to your soldiers and obliterating items and corpses. Should also be unique to the launcher and not available as a grenade, maybe needing a research to unlock.

Cleaners are a great idea. They serve as a simple introductory enemy and help further the cold war theme of the game by representing the fears of infiltration and subterfuge associated with cold war hysteria. As is they hardly accomplish these goals, being only found in a rare few scripted missions and not being particularly different from any other enemy. I have a few ideas on how to fulfill these goals. IDEA ONE: "Cleaning" UFO Crash Sites Why are the cleaners called the cleaners? It seems like their purpose is to hide the existence of the aliens from the world, so a great way to do this would be by having them interfere with UFO crash sites. For the first day after crashing, UFO crash sites remain the same as now. On the second day however the cleaners have arrived. The local forces and civilians spawn as corpses, and there are several cleaner agents spawned around the level according to difficulty making the mission more difficult. On the third day the cleaning is almost complete. The aliens have been evacuated to safety by the cleaners, with all alien enemies replaced by a large number of cleaner soldiers and all alien corpses and technology removed. The disappearance of the UFO after three days can be explained by the cleaners dismantling the craft and removing evidence of the crash. This change would add urgency to responding to crash sites perhaps motivating players to not always wait out night missions, as waiting a whole day would add agents to make the mission harder and waiting two would remove most of the rewards besides alloys and alenium from the UFO itself, meaning there will be no tech to research or aliens to capture or kill for autopsies and interrogations. This change would also give incentive to eradicate the cleaners, as doing so would permanently end cleaner interference at crash sites. Finally as cleaner soldiers are likely easier to deal with than aliens, this could allow players who have lost all their valuable equipment/good soldiers to possible be able to get back on their feet by taking down mostly cleaned crash sites, which would give them raw materials to build more equipment at the cost of gaining no technology progression. IDEA TWO: False Flag Attacks Cleaners could also make combating the aliens more difficult by serving as a distraction and pitting humans against each other. Cleaners will randomly create false flag attacks, especially in regions with low panic. These would serve as mini terror missions taking place in cities, military bases, arctic outposts, etc where you must accomplish tasks like disarming bombs or eliminating all cleaners, or some other unique objective, in a limited amount of turns to prevent a large panic increase and/or regional funding decrease due to the cleaners framing a human nation or faction for the attack and creating a diplomatic incident, distracting the region from their commitment to the Xenonauts. These missions would create varied conflict outside of scripted story missions like the current cleaner missions. They would also fulfill the niche of missions that can occur even if you are shooting down all the alien UFOs as your air superiority won't have any effect on cleaner activity. IDEA THREE: Search Teams and Base Defense The tutorial sets the precedent that cleaners will attack your bases and that you need to stay hidden from them. An interesting way to integrate this into gameplay would be through the cleaners setting up search teams. Randomly cleaner search team headquarters missions will appear in regions with Xenonaut bases, where the cleaners have set up a headquarters for a field team that will counter Xenonaut activity in a region. If the mission is not responded to within a comfortable amount of time (10 days to a month, nothing that urgent), the location of an unrevealed base in your region will be revealed to the cleaners. The Search Team missions themselves are simple, where you have to storm a small cleaner compound in a city, the wilderness, a harbor, etc and kill a VIP. Doing so successfully will end the mission and your base will not be discovered. The usage of the VIP elimination mission type also makes that objective able to appear repeatedly throughout the game instead of just in a few scripted missions, building variety. Cleaner base attacks will function differently from alien ones. While aliens attack as retribution for shooting down UFOs, cleaners will attack any base they know about without provocation. This means bases without hangars are not safe which gives you an extra incentive to respond to search team missions that might reveal them, and also to build defenses and station soldiers at every base you have. IDEA FOUR: More Cleaner Enemy Types Cleaners are supposed to just be regular humans, and an interesting way to use this concept would be to have them mirror the Xenonauts in their combat style. Cleaner enemies could come specialized into the general roles available to the Xenonauts. While cleaners would stay as one enemy type they could be equipped with a wider range of weapons. Cleaner riflemen would make up the majority of cleaner forces and be the same as current cleaner soldiers. Cleaner snipers would stay still and keep a distance from enemies. Cleaner shotgunners could throw smoke grenades and shoot your soldiers at close range. Cleaner heavies could wear heavy armor and use a machine gun to suppress your troops with low accuracy fire. Cleaner grenadiers could destroy cover used by your soldiers to force you out of position. Cleaners with shields would throw lethal grenades and need to be flanked similar to a cyberdrone, but without automatically turning on hearing sound. Finally a MARS like vehicle operated by the cleaners could serve as a boss type enemy with a cannon or rocket launcher and autocannon. Finally to emphasize their mind controlled nature cleaners could be immune to morale failures when an alien serving as a commander is nearby (As a reference to the VIP cleaner cell missions where aliens are in the field giving orders to the cleaners), and most major cleaner missions would have a Psyon present serving as this commander, with the weakness of having very low morale when a commander isn't alive, giving incentive to pick the commander off early, and making cleaners in minor missions without commanders like UFO crash sites easier to deal with. These changes would help to make cleaners a more varied enemy to fight and a proper faction in their own right distinct from the aliens. The cleaners with special roles would be rare, making up only a small portion of cleaners in missions who would still mostly be the default rifle goons for simplicity, and would be introduced gradually with the cleaners gaining their whole arsenal of troops around the beginning of the midgame, as cleaners are supposed to serve primarily as early game enemies. IDEA FIVE: Cleaner Data While slowly revealing the cleaner cells and then the cleaner base that you can take down to end the cleaner threat for good is a solid idea, progression towards ending the cleaners is automatic and doesn't feel very rewarding, more like waiting out a timer than making progress. A solution to this is to make the cleaner progress only increase upon the acquisition of cleaner data, and to have cleaner data present in all cleaner missions. The starting office mission could remain the same, with getting cleaner data as a mandatory objective and to introduce players to the concept, but cleaner data could be present in all cleaner missions. Search Team Headquarters mission maps will have optional cleaner data items accessible from computers. Alternatively, cleaner progress can be increased directly if you capture cleaners alive and then interrogate them for a small progress bonus or capture and interrogate a Psyon cleaner commander for a much larger amount of progress. The final mission would function similarly, becoming available after reaching 100% cleaner progress, but an interesting idea would be to make it a two part mission like the final mission of the first X-COM game on Cydonia, with one mission on the arctic surface and the second portion in the underground facility, as the added difficulty would match the increased significance of ending the cleaners once and for all due to their increased importance.