Cheostian

As the OP I am going to throw more idea's into this thread. I had a few things I was thinking of responding to, but I think I'll just do some general responses to points I read. While my initial concern is still valid I feel, my initial suggestion in the post may not be the best option. I realized after that my initial post kind of didn't do anything as I suggested adjusting strength but also effectively normalizing the potential of -tu carrying at the start of battles. Anyways, it ended up likely equaling out. I don't think nerfing strength is necessarily the best approach as strength also determines throw distance which I don't think is out of balance at the moment. I am personally not a fan of anything that reduces or limits bag space. I think that arbitrarily adds an unfun feeling of restriction to the player. I think players should feel they have the option to make their own decisions on what combo of gear they outfit their soldiers with. The issue as was pointed out, is currently, what to pick doesn't feel like a meaningful choice for the player. When after a few missions the answer seems to be... well everything! Currently the ONLY reason to not load out heavy armor, is the negative to accuracy it incurs. As such the only unit I don't equip heavy armor on now is my snipers. As it's reasonable to assume they should be at least a bit less likely to be targeted and the accuracy is so important for their success. However, outside of that, the only other meaningful decision it feels like is what primary weapon choices do I want. As I mentioned, after about 4 missions with a soldier, they can afford a number of grenades, medkit, and stun with all the perks. I almost wonder if the game needs more "levers" to change for weapon and gear load out balance then it currently has. And some of the ones it does have, don't seem to be obvious to me as a new player with this game. For example, if I have a medkit on my soldier in the backpack and not in my secondary slot. I can swap it to my secondary slot and the soldier will be able to use it on themselves the same turn. But NOT use it on another soldier beside them. The number of TU's left for the soldier seem to not matter at all. This may be for a reason, but it's really confusing as a system. Yet, reloading a weapon "feels" like it's the same speed regardless of if it's a pistol or a heavy gun. Which brings me back to the start of the post. Gear weight doesn't feel like it demands meaningful decisions at the moment. Now is weight really the issue? I don't know, maybe it's something else with the arrangement that could be addressed. But at the moment, what you decide to take feels tied to weight.

Basically what the title says. after about 4 missions I feel like my soldiers can carry whatever the hell they damn well want to carry without concern. Pretty standard for one of my soldiers to have a rifle, two backup mag's, a medkit, a targeting assist, a smoke mask, a grenade, a smoke grenade, and possibly even a stun baton/stun gun and or an extra flash grenade, all while wearing heavy armor. The only exception to the rule is shields, they weigh lot it seems. My suggestion... increase time units and decrease strength for the soldiers. That way the soldiers either need to operate light to utilize their full time units or they operate with more gear but take the time unit hit to offset it. (with the average being a soldier expected to take a bit of a time unit hit as a standard) To represent this is normal for the player without making them feel like they are doing something wrong, I'd have a third colour degree. Instead of just green and then negative being red. I'd have maybe a green/yellow/red or blue/green/red colour scale. Where "underweight" with no tu penalty is the first colour, "average" weight with a small tu penalty is the middle colour, and "overweight" with a heavy tu penalty is the final colour (likely red) to discourage but not prevent, players from going that far. It's possible later gear and armor is actually heavier and I haven't gotten that far, but if the player doesn't feel good about the game balance 2 months into it, are they going to persist further in to see if it improves? Perhaps if that is the case that gear later gets heavier, add a powered exoskeleton equipment or something that can be applied (like the gas mask) to increase soldier strength or have a "stim" research or whatever to scale up strength when it makes sense to do so. Or make some story reason why the better gear isn't really much heavier perhaps. My 2 cents..

So, I've found the final cleaner base. It's day 58. Between the start of the game and now, I've shot down one I think unmanned drone ufo and one small manned scout ufo. Every other mission has been cleaners. I just got my second radar dish base going (one in europe and one in north america) I feel like cleaner missions should be stretched more than two months with a bit more meat with them. I want the first goal of clearing their base to feel a bit more important and special. Maybe add some toughness to them by giving them a few "boss" type cleaners in robotic exoarmor or they have like a tank or something crazy. I also think the alien missions should overlap with the cleaner missions more. It felt like I was getting to many cleaner missions. Maybe hide a few of those cleaner data desks in a couple of the normal alien missions like the downed alien ship happens to have a building with some cleaner data around once in awhile or something. Once again, just my impressions on it as I go.

I thought this game was set in something like the 90's. I think it would be a bit early for general AI since we don't have general AI roughly 30 years later yet.

I didn't code this game, but I wouldn't be surprised if each base item is an object (in coding terms) with a bunch of variables and functions in them. One of the variables is likely something like "monthly upkeep" and when determining the monthly costs to deduct the game likely goes through the list of all built base components (base objects) and lists their description and then the monthly cost. I am mentioning all this because if they change the object description to "base maintenance" so it shows up nicely on the monthly maintenance deductions, then the item in the base design would likely no longer say "access lift" and instead say "base maintenance" as well. To fix this, they may need to add an additional variable to all the objects with the name to be used for monthly maintenance, then change the description variable that maintenance list was referencing as well. It's definitely doable, but it's not just a simple, change the text in one field and it's done type of solution likely. They may prioritize other things over something as small as this, though they may also see this as a "quick win" potentially.

The "access lift" upkeep is actually the representation of the core cost for the base itself. That's why it costs so much. You can think of it as the cost to maintain the lift, ventilation, surface access entrance ways/buildings, surface security etc. Then the cost as a comparison makes more sense.

Spoiler Alert! Don't read below if you don't want potentially to have content spoiled. So, I noticed I just achieved 50% clean network progress in milestone 2 which surprised me because I feel like I have barely done anything yet. I did the atlas base mission, captured instead of killed the General and some cleaners. researched cleaner corpse and interrogated a cleaner. I rescued two of the three soldiers in a mission, and just finished an ambush mission. I think I completed maybe one release hostage mission. It's 21 days in so far. I am just kind of surprised I've already got half the network finished when I haven't even made it to the end of my first month yet. I feel like that progress is really fast and somehow it should be expanded a bit or something. I am currently working on a engineering project to test weapons on cleaners, but I am now worried it was a waste of time as the network will be shut down before it's any use. Also they are already fairly easy to drop (which is okay at the start, I did lose a soldier or two so far). By the way I am playing on soldier (what I consider normal) difficulty. One other note. I felt like the ambush missions was interesting but to easy. I literally murdered them all and destroyed no trucks in turn one, still with one more soldier left unused with full tu's. I think an option would be to push the ambush deployment zone a bit further away from them to reduce accuracy and possibly add one or two more cleaners. I would expect to have at least a few cleaners survive to turn two of the ambush. Posting this for feedback to the dev's related to the recent changes in milestone 2

About me: First game ever purchased was xcom:tftd in 1995 so yah, I am an older player, been playing a lot of games, also a programmer now by trade. First impressions of Xenonauts 2: I am really enjoying it and the direction, however I would caution to not get to hung up on restricting yourselves to what came before (Xenonauts 1, xcom etc.). They were great games but I would challenge you to use this game to not just reskin those games but to expand on them. Suggestion 1: Soldier Rescue Mission: I just did this for the first time and had a helicopter filled with 9/9 guys sent out. Mission didn't warn me until I arrived to start it that I needed 3 slots open to rescue them. I land, look at my helicopter and it visually appears to be half empty. Okay, I should be good to go I think. Nope, did the whole mission, post wrap up, shows my new guys etc it seems. But they don't appear when I am back at base. I think you need a pop up warning before launching the mission that three slots in the helicopter should be left open for rescue. AND a pop up after returning that person x, y... couldn't be rescued because there was not enough room on the helicopter or something. I like the idea of the mission though. Just doesn't feel intuitive. Also, what happens if you don't have room for the new guys in your base living quarters? Praise 1: I am enjoying the missions with time limits, rescue captives etc. I am glad there are not TOO many of them, but they feel exactly the right timing for turns etc. I often find I need to push my troops a bit faster than I kinda want to try and reach all objectives on the map before the deadline shows up or the enemies start spawning more etc. I wouldn't want it any shorter for turns, but don't feel the need for longer either. (I am playing on normal / soldier difficulty) Suggestion 2: Strategy layer changes: I realize the way the game is set up (and this harkens back to prior games of this nature) Building "wide" (multiple bases) was always an excellent strategy to maintain control over the spread out area's of the planet. I'd like to see an alternative strategy supported as well however. Building "tall" (one single larger base) There have always been a few issues with the nature of the game design that prevents this. Mostly, problem 1: UFO's are detected by radar which has a range, problem 2: fighters have a limited range for fuel, problem 3: base is limited in size. Problem 1 might be addressed by allowing the building of a specialized radar plane that can fly out to a player designated spot and hold station for an extended period of time providing radar coverage in that area, before returning for fuel. Problem 2 could be resolved by building some form of either in flight refueling or more slots as you've already added for extended fuel tanks perhaps. Problem 3 is a bit more difficult, but perhaps there can be a base expansion addon that can be purchased or a special mission that gives the player the option to expand the size of a single base they have or start a second base location as a reward. (perhaps that one off mission is the ONLY way to get the larger base in the game) If you can find enough balance between the two strategies it would add more replayability depth to the game encouraging players to try different options on later play throughs. Suggestion 3: Helicopter feels empty: I don't like the fact half my helicopter is always empty but I cannot add more troops to it (at least at the start of the game). I like the variable upgrade slots to the jets, let's add something like that with the helicopter's as well. Perhaps one upgrade could be extra jump seats to allow a few extra soldier slots or something. Suggestion 4: zoom in/zoom out of camera: sometimes I feel like I cannot see enough detail and would like the option to zoom the camera in a bit, or maybe out a bit from the base zoom of the game. To go along with this, I'd love to have the camera be able to change angle to more of a top down view at times as well. Sometimes all four directions don't give a good sight on an area. Suggestion 5: Fully customize soldiers: I often enjoy creating one soldier as "me" in the game. Giving them my name, etc. off the start of the campaign and then see if I can advance them and keep them alive. I also sometimes create other soldiers as well. I am happy we can change their names, but I'd love to also be able to change their country of origin, age, and picture. For picture you could give the option to pick from one of the other games portraits that matches a sprite. Or have them pick a sprite, then upload their own portrait image to go along with it. Suggestion 6: Multiplayer co-op: This I realize is pie in the sky big ask... But I have to try. When I first bought the xcom game, my friend and I would take turns at my house playing missions on the same computer. We ended up each making our own squad. I would love to have a coop option in the game. One way to do this is to have the players each control a base in the game at the start. Funds could be split, or ufo frequency could be scaled up with two players (or maybe a bit of both). When missions happen, one player would control part of the soldier and the other would control the other part. The players could choose who controls which (maybe player that controls that helicopter/squad could "gift" control of some units to the other player during the mission). Both players take turns simultaneously, then when both end a turn, the aliens go, then back to players etc. I really feel making it co-op would really up the interest in the game. Suggestion 7: button to reserve set amount of time units. (like in the old xcom days) maybe allow the player to set how many time units they want reserved. Suggestion 8: Allow me to jump into a soldiers specific "armory screen" by clicking on their side portrait in the soldier screen. I feel like I am constantly needing to navigate between these two screens when making decisions about my squad. Who's healthy or not, which soldiers should be in which roles by comparing the squads stats, as a result what gear I want them to have, or maybe I just want to change their names, but I cannot from the soldier screen. Suggestion 9: Soldier assignments (to helicopters from unassigned) feels clunky and slow for some reason. I don't know if I want the option to just click drag their names and drop them onto the helicopter or what. Removing from a helicopter feels fast and easy, but adding them to a helicopter doesn't feel as clean for some reason. Also, finding the screen to change their location in the helicopter seems like it should have a quicker option from the armory screen or something to modify. Suggestion 10: Magnetic weapons seem like a waste of time: Xcom had this problem I recall. You start game, you get option of lasers, you barely get lasers built and you use them maybe two missions and then they are essentially outdated by plasma weapons. In this game it feels like magnetic weapons are falling into the same trap. It feels like a actual waste of resources and time to invest into them at all, as you almost should always just skip over them to the next weapon type. Now, I haven't seen if milestone 2 stretches this time frame out more yet. But, what if you added more tradeoff's between them. Give magnetic weapons more of their own niche area where they are better than other weapons enough that you might want to still have at least one equipped in your squad, or have a backup pistol of it or something. Maybe they are really good at taking down a certain type of enemy that's hard to beat as they have some sort of natural resistance to the better typical weapons the squad would use later in the game. It's possible this is already the case and I just haven't reached that point to discover it yet. Thanks for an enjoyable game!