Oktober

I'd actually be pretty happy just being able to adjust that ratio. Having served with men and women, my primary issue is that most people in the military are people I wouldn't want next to me in a combat situation. There were a handful of women who seemed like they'd hold their own, and that's fine! Cut that percentage down to 10% and it'd feel more correct, to me. Of course another problem I have with the issue is just that psychologically speaking, (and you can check sources on this), it's bad for men and women for women to be in combat. They're less likely to perform as needed in the heat of battle -- which, granted, can be an issue for men as well, though it tends to be less of a problem -- but more importantly, when women are injure in combat situations, men seem to have an instinctual need to abandon the mission in order to attempt to protect/save the injured woman. It's a hardwired instinct that compromises operational effectiveness. The issue of women serving on the front lines is less about their incapability -- which again, occurs with men, as well -- as much as it has to do with simple good judgment. By removing them from the equation, there's one less variable which can cause mission failure. It's just bad business management to chuck them in the mix too, just for the sake of "equality."

Well the Delta Force (much like "Seal Team 6") is kind of a murky organization. These names (to the best of my knowledge) don't really apply to a strict organization within the military, per se. They're more a pool of assets which can be called upon for specific missions, the members belonging to various other organizations until they're needed. But the Delta Force specifically, such as it is, does at least recruit from the lower ranks. I don't know if they have any rules about what rank is necessary before being sent on a DF-specific mission, but they keep an eye out for promising young soldiers and can (and do!) initiate the process of vetting these recruits pretty early on in their military careers. Bearing in mind that generally you're going to want combat-tested soldiers (or sailors) in your special forces units in general -- and also that a very low percentage of special forces operatives will ever be sent on high-priority missions -- you'll probably find that the assets are generally going to be at least E5 or above. (Also, the kind of person who is going to be successful in a special forces environment will generally make E5 within 3 years of enlisting, typically.) However, you'll find plenty of PFCs, corporals, and Spec 4s somewhere in the early stages of getting in to the various SF units across all of the services.

Wow, fancy! Thanks a bunch!

As far as I can tell, all that does is limit the pool of names which actually pop up. If you drop those numbers severely (the game crashes if you go lower than 1) then you'll just have an army of people that looks just like it currently does, but with a small handful of names recycled for everybody. I've been waiting for someone to figure out how to actually change real stuff, too.

This isn't accurate. The Navy Seals and SWCC both take applicants straight from boot camp (in addition to people that have been in the service for a while). The Army has a number of different units which fall under the heading of "special forces." Perhaps some of them have a requirement of having attained the rank of E5 or higher, and while I've never heard of such a thing, I guess I wouldn't be too surprised if it happened from time to time. Generally they want their Special Forces in their prime. That means opening the doors to applicants from the ages of 18 and up, and unlike the Xenonauts, the US military understands the value of having highly skilled men in their youth providing the muscle, while older, wiser men command -- even though they're probably not as combat-effective as the grunts.

Ah ha ha ha I've been trying this! I've found myself attempting to finish off Sibillians wounded by sniper rifle fire, grenades, machine gun fire...and even though they should be mostly dead, and even though I manage to pump 4 pistol rounds into them, they never die!

Yeah I think you're absolutely right, here. I guess my primary concern is that it might be a good idea to communicate to the player that spending all of your money right off the bat is a bad idea. Sure'll they'll figure it out eventually, but even keeping a constant eye on my budget, I still manage to spend all of my extra funds as soon as I get paid each month, and then hopefully I get enough crash-sites/terror sites to finance my emergency needs throughout the month. I think having some more built-in bonus money-generators would probably make me happy. Things are just so tight right now! And I only have like 20% of the airpower I think I need. (I want to have 4 F17s and 2 MiGs and 2 Chinooks at each base. Is that excessive?)

Also it's not like the player is going to be able to afford to build plasma tech until later anyway, so...I'd definitely be okay with this.

Okay a couple of questions: I chunked a couple of 'nades at an alien in a mission in the demo build. They had a 20% chance of landing where I aimed them. I guess they failed. They disappeared. What happen?! Secondly: when people walk through smoke sometimes they stop and cough or something. But I just click to keep going and they keep going. Am I missing something here? Is there like an AP cost for this kind of thing?

Yeah I kind of lost track of my point in that wall of text up there. My primary issue is that the game's level of punishment may be prohibitive. Forcing the player to re-load old saves due to minor mistakes is frustrating. Perpetually dangling a carrot in front of his nose is enticing. I'm just wondering if it would be worthwhile to introduce a "light at the end of the tunnel" mechanic which would encourage players to keep going despite losing important assets. Unexpected monetary bonuses, or just having a bit more money to play with from the start. Or bonus planes, vehicles, or soldiers -- perhaps recruitable soldiers in some missions? Planes/vehicles donated by nations who are particularly impressed with Xenonaut performance? Frustrating/rewarding vs frustrating/enraging is a delicate balance to strike. I wonder if it wouldn't be worth thinking about how to make it a little broader for Xenonauts.

Well I mean what has been mentioned is simply a morale boost. Playing with a system that's already in place. It has its risks and rewards like any good game mechanic. I think it'd be worth taking a look at.

I like where you guys are taking this!

Xeno-meatshield --> Xeno-toddler --> Xenonaut Junior Grade --> Xenokay --> Xenonaut --> Xenochief --> Xenoboss Ha. Naming things is hard!

Yeah. I think we're on to something here! This is a good compromise.

And yeah, as far as names go, perhaps I would prefer just a totally different type of rank-identifier. My brain is hardwired that officers and enlisted should behave a certain way. If they went from "Xenogrunt" to "Xenopro" designations (those being simply placeholders, not real suggestions), it would be unique enough to skirt the issue, I think.

Caveat: I realize we're in alpha, and this is a balance issue, so I don't expect things to be perfect, yet. That said, I just want to see what your thoughts are on the subject. So. Taking some other players' advice from another thread, I started a new game (prev build...10.2?) and immediately started creating my 2nd base right off the bat. It worked great! By the end of the first month I have two operational bases. Only one Chinook team, but 2 F17s and 1 MiG in one base, and an F17 and a MiG in the other. Not too shabby! I have Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East pretty well covered in the east, and much of North America and South America protected, as well. So! Fancy shmancy, at the end of the first month, I get a slight budget increase! Lots of happy countries! (Oddly, North America went down, but several countries in Asia boosted their contributions.) So things keep going pretty smoothly. I get a Chinook team in my 2nd base, build a couple of more hangars, and I'm pretty comfortable. Through personnel hiring and construction I burn through my non-maintenance budget pretty quickly, but so far I've managed to keep a small buffer in case of emergencies. (I did just lose a couple of jets, so we'll see if I manage to find a way to replace them.) However, now I've researched everything through Heavy Laser weapons, and have managed to work up a few alien grenades and a couple of sets of wolf armor. I can't really afford to do much more. On my next play-through I think I'll cut back on hiring scientists, since clearly my research outstripping my ability to pay to build equipment is a sign that I'm getting ahead of myself. Obviously the budget itself is designed to be a sort of soft guideline as to how much stuff the player should be trying to accomplish. But it's tricky, because if you don't spend a lot of money fast to build a new base, you find yourself in a downward spiral that it's hard to get out of; and the game is so effective of generating a stressful environment that the player always feels the need to be pushing forward and getting new stuff to try and combat the escalating alien threat. I guess my biggest worry is that any kind of relatively minor setback (losing a chinook full of troops; losing half of your jets, being unable to respond to a significant portion of UFO sightings due to a lack of resources) may just force the player into an endless series of re-loads of previous saves. As the game has an iron-man mode, that's clearly not how the game is intended to be played. We're supposed to cut our losses and keep trucking. So far I've been able to do that in this play-through, but if I lost even a one more jet than I currently have, I think I'd have to just re-load and try again. Should the player have access to more money? I see pros and cons there. Should the player's ability to rush into research be limited? I could see this working. (For instance, don't let the player have more than X scientists initially, therefore the fastest the player could get to certain technologies would by Y-time, and by Y-time player should have enough of a budget surplus that he'll be able to afford to build equipment without breaking his bank.) See what I mean? I don't know the best way to go about this. I do expect that veterans have simply played the game enough to know what works and what doesn't. Maybe limiting the option to shoot yourself in the foot as much might ease entry into the game for newer players?

I think he read that part here. Frankly, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say, anyway. Just that there are some variation in rank names between various services, from nation to nation? None of which really has much to do with my suggestion. Behind those title-variances, the same general arrangements and chains of command exist. My issue is with structure more than title, though seeing as how the real world has provided us with plenty of examples of how it operates, I don't think it should be too difficulty approximating a viable structure within the game. (Also, I don't know what this means, or what you're trying to say. The US has 4 distinct Admiral ranks, excluding Fleet Admiral, which is a rank only used during times of war -- declared by congress -- and has only been used 4 or 5 times in the history of the US. Are you saying that Brazil calls their regular admirals Fleet Admirals? So what?)

If you say so.

Well seeing as how female soldiers are now part of the game, wouldn't messing with how they're implemented be a "female mod?"

Okay so I've been messing around in the assets folder for a while, now. Deleting stuff from the soldierimagesfemale folder renders them invisible. Changing the "chance=#" to in the soldiernamesfemale folder breaks the game. Setting them all to 1 doesn't have an impact on the regularity with which female soldiers are assigned to the team. It just gives them a very small pool of names from which to choose. I thought I was on to something with the gameconfig folder, but despite the fact that it has a "SOLDIER GENERATION VARIABLES" section, the only thing under that heading is the soldiers' age-range. There's a way to modify the cost to recruit soldiers in there, so I may be able to just cheat my way around the issue by dismissing female soldiers and just hiring tons of them on the cheap until I have enough male soldiers to fill out my ranks. I'm needing to uninstall and re-install, though. All my monkeying around has rendered the whole thing pretty unstable. I can't shake the feeling that it's somewhere in there and I'm just not finding it. I dunno where else to look, though.

Hmm. There's some spoilers in this stuff. Whoops.

Ah ha ha ha okay so this is kind of fun! I'm in the wrong folder, looks like. I messed around with that soldiernamesfemale folder and I only succeeded in limiting how many names they have to choose from! Half my team is still missing their Y-chromosomes. I just need to find the right folder, I think...nothing is standing out, yet, though.

Well then lemme in the room!

Did you click "Start" in the lower left-hand corner of the screen?

Just saying I think it'd be fancy if the cockpit of the Chinook had people in it.