gG-Unknown

I wish I could delete double post. << delete me

Coloured armour sounds very Marvell'ish. I do not want turn Xenonanuts into a super-hero comic, in tight spandex gay jumpsuit colored as rainbow. No, No. Proposal is taken from reality, colored tapes onn solid armour are used for identification betwen armies. So in game, id tapes could be used to help differencite "clases" or better roles, or better load-out.

When all soldiers use same armour then it is a bit bleak and boring to see. On top it is confusing to determine who is who. Recently I watched some vids from actual war, and get idea - lets use coloured tapes on fixed places to differentiate soldiers. Lets say, one tape around helmet, and two tapes on each biceps. In the screen Base-armoury player can set a colour for each load-out. 2 Colours can be set separately for helmet and the arms. e.i. I can have a "Assault" load-out who use green tapes. then "Assault+" with medpack who has greeen tapees on arms but red tape on helmet. Color selection uses familiar dialog tool like this : Here are examples of tapes usage : ( photos are used for illustration only, I dont know which side they belong, or I am not involved in any propaganda) https://cdn.punchng.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/27193050/rsz_1img_20220227_182428.jpg https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AP23086795783477-e1680208730850.jpg?resize=770%2C513&quality=80 https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/000_32JU8ZG.jpg?resize=770%2C513&quality=80 I believe that coloured tapes on armour are engine-doable and would be nice QoL for all players.

"couple of additional 3D artists" it looks like we could see more animations good. Game is turnbased so certiain feeling of frozen time is inevitable.But game in general should not look like a screenshot - deadly static. I mean, when you look at new Jagged alliance their trn based combat screen is very live. Lot of ambient movements, dashing, rolling ... . I hope you could do similar, make it more action packed. Make soldiers shout each other, or point at enemy, peak over cover, screaming and holding wounded arm. I could describe dozen of these in ten minute, I believe yours new animators could too. :-)

Of course that crossbows are used. Ask SWAT or similar strike-special forces. Horses were common part of artillery unit at WW2 beginning. Horses are used as we speak by border patrols or special miliitary. And of course police force. New generation of weapons-equipment has some better attributes, but not all. Some attributes could be even worse. For example: Maxim a machine-gun from WW1 can shoot longer bursts with higher accuracy than modern Machine-guns used by current army.

Weapon balance is about offer various weapons with various advantages. Of course that most of advantages come with some disadvantage. That is the word balance came from. An example : motorbike is better than bicycle, then car is better than motorbike, then armoured car is even better. However armored car is also heavy, slow, expensive and large and need at least 3 people to make it work. So even armoured car is "better", efficient army will own bunch of motorbikes because some tasks are better suited for this "old tech".

Lasers should be range limited weapons, where dmg is falling down with distance, each square of distance counts. Also max distance of lasers should be about 90% of balistics. It also means, no Laser Sniper rifle, it can no work. Or the weapon would be too heavy. I would make it so, the ammo for all lasers are once time use "sort of super-capacitors", which means >> heavy and takes large of space in bag. Here comes balance - lasers are more precise AND no recoil (laser MG is true beast) BUT laser ammo is 3x heavier than ballistic and dmg goes down with range. So the player need to think about weight management > get more kill power with lasers for price of light armor ? Sniping with lasers is no, no. Therfore player will keep range advantage until some plazma snipe canon comes.

Did you consider tune amount TU needed for release ? When TU rise, and aliens AI are set to defend tubes (keep close, silent, and reserve time for overwatch), suddenly new gameplay is here. Each tube would need coordination of at least two soldiers, one is working on the tube, second over watch. Or perhaps you even need smoke self to be covered while working on tube. Second thing is civilian interaction - their running around feels random. It would be better give player to certain amount of control over civilans, but not overwhelm player with too many characters to control. Lets say make Civilan AI set to several states : 1. Stand on spot. (he could crouch at will, or shoot if he has weapon) 2. Fallow me (fallow the soldier 1-2 tiles behind, position themselves as soldier is between civilan and alien or unknown space) 3. Run to Chopper (civilan AI use player "heat_map_of_danger" and choose safe way back to chopper) 4. Do as you like (basicalzy current AI behaviour, also work as reset for all AI variants above) Xenoanut could "switch" civilan AI from distance up to 2 tiles. Interact same way as "table_with_data" then OSD popup dialogue appear, so player can choose 1-4 to interact. That way, player get more control over battlefield. Feeling of cooperation.