jkamcmillen

I can understand the technical issues related to multiple ports, but it would be nice to have some testing time on the Mac versions before they are released. Though Goldhawk has stated that there would be a Mac version "for" release so I'd assume this is their intention. As someone who paid to get a nice DVD case version, I'd like to have the Mac version on that disc as well, otherwise I guess I could have just done with the digital copy. The keepsake is nice, but nicer if it actually works for what I have. Unfortunately this is all guess-work until Chris or the other devs in charge of porting and the beta it's self give a statement on it or some kind of official word. Perhaps they might not be thinking about it until someone starts talking about it in the forums. Well I'm hoping to start playing the game. Hoping the official word on the Mac port will surface and hope that it will be a part of the beta as well.

Hey, I am a backer who bought the game specifically to play it on my Mac. I haven't ran a Windows system in just over a year now and wouldn't look back if you paid me. I'm just wondering who else out there that backed this game is interested in playing, or better yet TESTING the game in it's beta on their Mac machines. I think it would be great if we actually got some solid testing done so that the game will come out stable on the Mac just as much as it should be on Windows. Also how close or hopeful can are we in possibly getting a port to try and test of the game?

I'm just wondering when the Mac backers will get to try out the game in beta? I backed the game and flipped for the nice DVD case version however don't run a Windows machine. I'm also hoping that the DVD case will include a copy of the Mac port.

Balancing may have been an issue when it came to the original X-COM, but making a bit of profit was obviously not, as the person plugging in the values would have set the cost to either equal, or as was the tradition at the time, to sell it at a loss instead as a deterrent. As for my argument towards "exploit;" I was trying to explain that unless the developers of either X-COM or Xenonauts totally overlooked the values set for sale of manufactured items, you cannot exploit something that was put in intentionally for that purpose. If Chris and the others decide that "heck we're gonna let players sell at a small profit, but we're going to do this to balance it" then unless they overlooked something, there is nothing to exploit that was not intended to be exploitable in the first place. New features and alteration to tried and true game mechanics sort of require a bit of intention either way. Design choices made arbitrarily have a fairly high chance of failing to delight than something with a bit more thought out planning. I'm sure you'd agree. I would never suggest that any game developer implements anything without themselves giving it a bit of thinking before hand. In your case there would have to be a reason or circumstance as to why those pawns act like queens for it to make sense. Sorry, but I wouldn't buy either one of those scenarios personally. Both are too far reaching. Large secretive militant organizations would not be so easily stolen from in regularity. Especially after just recently gathering such tech that would probably be under the most secure lockup in Earth's entire history and have all your people's attention attached to it. That would be like trying to steal the sidewalk on Manhattan Square at during rush hour. And a military power does not give up their technological edge to anyone even their own allies at the best of times. It would take years and they'd need at least a new technology to replace it and the current threat (in this case aliens trying to take over) long gone all as a prerequisite. It would be too protected, too important to simply just happen. Having actual espionage attempt missions on your bases could be interesting though. Maybe failed nations trying to steal from you in a panic? UFO:Enemy Unknown had aliens actually attack your base and try to invade/take you out. It would be cool to encounter that again along with the concept of other 3rd parties who become equally hostile. Oh I'm chalk full of ideas when it comes to the X-COM series. Been a fan since it was released on DOS. (Yeah, I'm gettin' older... ) I just wanted to get the unpopular (or unknown) point across that totally removing the trade/profit economics portion of the non-combat areas of the "X-COM genre" (I believe this game still stands on it's own as a concept for the sub-genre) is not completely 100% "in the spirit" of the original X-COM game(s). I don't need other fans or even the developers of Xenonauts to agree with me completely, though I would be happy if there was a sort of compensation towards the loss of profiting as it was in the original. Something that makes sense of course, as we all like to have more believability our sci-fi these days. And more importantly something that is kinda fun. Anyhow some of you might just see me as "some annoying guy" who is suggesting "dumb things" for this great project. I hope I can offer more than that as I do love the project and kudos to Chris and the rest of the team for sticking with it. I don't usually go into such detail, but I understand that I sort of have to prove my ideas and thought process as likely noone here knows me from Adam. So I apologize if I have been overly wordy. I just don't want you good folks to misunderstand my intentions. Overall I just want to see the economic portion of the game be something more than a means to get cool stuff to take with you on combat missions. For me X-COM was just as much the management side of things as much as it was the turn based squad-based combat.

It's funny how the term exploit is used in such a negative way here. If your squad has a tactical advantage in either throwing or shooting accuracy would you not want to "exploit" that? I don't think that the sell price of good produced through manufacturing in the original X-COM was an oversight. I think that the developers knew well that you were playing the game as the CEO of a corporation/agency and that it's within the nature of corporations to turn some kind of profit and in this (well "that") case to sustain operation capability. I think the more important issue is more the balancing and how Chris and the rest of the development team wants to guide the gameplay. If they don't want people to make alien gun farms then they'll have to balance accordingly. Frankly the players are going to play however they choose as long as you give them options. The more options given of how they will enjoy playing, the happier they'll be in general. However after testing, if you are able to gather enough data, you can see what everyone will inevitably do with the game as given. From here they will decide what they like or not like about it and adjust the next revision accordingly. I'm hoping to have some real gameplay value in the economic side of things. Other X-COM clones/remake attempts have failed in my eyes because they tried to simply copy only what they understood from the original and didn't fully understand it beyond the squad-based combat. There was much more to it than that. A game that had so much going for it, well before it's time. Game mechanics-wise. Something that rings in my brain throughout this debate though is for the cost of sale for newly developed tech that only exists in your people's hands, would that not be worth much more than the development value? And also what about the economic value of goods that you sell? Surely other nations would love to get their hands on your tech and would pay top dollar. And to that end, would they not also want to develop their own tech? IDEA WARNING: That last point also makes me think of my time playing a game called Master of Magic... why? Well, even if you don't know it this should makes sense; It was a turn-based game and while playing at the start of later turns you'd get these periodic events that came up with an offer to buy special items for a decent price. What if, in a way to make the world interaction a little more in-depth, from the rare time to rare time you had some of the nation's government agents "find" some alien tech (for sale?) or clues and are able to share that with you and your organization? The price could be money, goods, personnel to work with these agencies... This could be a way to make the other non-combat aspect a little deeper and create a whole other layer to the non-combat ecosystem in the game. Success could help improve funding from specific nations (that you make deals with) and help them individually hold back alien influence keeping that nation "in the game" for longer periods of time. Also... did you guys ever think about WHO is buying these things you sell? Mysterious Buyer #42? The Alien Junk Depot Inc.? When you sell goods, they go somewhere. When you sell anything it's because someone has a need for it. And in the case of alien tech, I'm more than sure that other nations are using whatever comes out of Xenonauts Fine Interplanetary Antiques Ltd. to develop their own stuff which would change the "supply & demand" skew over time. So... how does this sound as a solution to the profiteering of alien riffles problem? The more you sell, the less they sell for? Simple solution? You can make a teeny tiny profit at the start, (which allows them to circulate amoung the world nations) but then after you've done that a few times, you'll notice that the cost of them has gone down as each one you sell has altered the supply/demand scales and tech that was once very rare, every school kid in Liberia has one at home to play with. You can even mark when the first distribution of a specific tech has been sold and decrease over time as well. It'll be simple math equation from there. Factors: - base cost - date of first distribution - total number distributed from you - number of "stable" countries remaining I dunno this seems like something that's easier to balance than a clean cut static price on each.

I can appreciate you not wanting to have your players "cheat" all the time, however... I don't see how having a way to tilt the financial scales a little bit would break the game myself. I never went completely nuts with this in X-COM, however I did actually make a base for primarily producing new tech for sale, but I never let that get in the way of trying to succeed at every mission I could. Actually I found that I couldn't actually properly win each combat scenario over time as the funding from the governments was never good enough and I couldn't stay ahead, equipment-wise of the invasion curve unless I tilted the scales a bit with some kind of extra funding. (How many of you have actually played at anything higher than beginner in the original??? It was tough!) And I was playing by the rules of combat, much like I was taught myself in the infantry. Most with riffles, a couple with heavy weapons(2 heavy guns + 1 rocket launcher dude) and each had 2-3 grenades to throw to clear out buildings, plus a couple of guys with med-kits when I learned them. Glow sticks, etc for night missions. I always tried to get every man home. As a former soldier myself, I am not overly comfortable with not having at least a chance of doing so. You get a tiny bit attached to these guys. lol However I guess sort of see it like this; In the original you were a corporation so the economic setup worked, like it or hate it that's what it was. I'm not 100% aware it seems of what this organization is all about. Government agency? Independent company/organization? International agency/coalition ala NATO, etc? I can rationalize to myself that the reason the game doesn't behave like X-COM and remains in the same "spirit" simply because it's not a corporation you are running, it's an agency of some sort that runs ONLY off the funding from the nations. That would work, however I do miss the original's concept and love the fact that that game was obviously WAY ahead of it's time. I personally want to be able to make only a minor profit (not for the sake of cheating or focusing only on the economics of the game), but and I won't mod the game to do it. That would unbalance the whole game and would defeat all the work being done by the whole development team. So lets not waste our time suggesting that as I have no interest in hacking the game, just playing it. An idea; you could have a toggle to allow or disallow making a profit from sold manufactured goods. Call it "Profitable Manufacturing" in the game options menu... Then you can have it off by default and both sides of this can be satisfied. As you don't want to have it as the norm, you could just turn it off by default. Plausible compromise?

Looks like I stirred the pot a little. You guys make some valid points and I do agree with many of you that the main focus should of course be the combat missions, that's the goal of the game to defend the planet from the alien threat. However, I do believe that there is still an "economic factor" that should not be ignored in this specific game sub-genre. Selling all tech at a loss just doesn't make practical sense. (to me) Perhaps some tech at a loss due to extra costs to manufacture early technologies, but later tech should at least have some (and I agree with Arturius on this) sort of minor profit. Not to cut out the need for funding from nations, as this is important, but to help take the edge off a bit. Or at least let the player go down the more corrupt road a little for the extra bit of freedom to experience the game world a bit more. Further balancing from the development team is probably the key to this I think. Actually if you lose all funding from all nations there should be some kind of contingent that you loose at some point since the planet in theory should likely be completely invaded and all hope lost. The original X-COM had it's own balancing issues, fair enough, but I liked the concept that you could do a little more economically than just making an overly complex weapons and equipment shop system. The original X-COM was obviously made to be deeper than that and no other attempt to recreate what they did has met this one aspect of the original since then. No matter what individual feelings on the each of us are on the ability to turn some kind of profit (big, small or next to nothing) on manufactured tech Xenonauts has the chance to be something a little bit grander than just another X-COM clone attempt and I'd like to see that happen. Completely trimming down the economic aspect to a way to produce more alien goods in my honest opinion misses out on a great opportunity to capture the same spirit of the original in all aspects rather than just the combat aspect which has already been done and done and done many times before. Some may not see this from there experiences with X-COM, but I loved the way that X-COM allowed you to manage your forces with that added bit of flexibility and allow you to generate your own "style" of military management. This must appeal to many others, no?

A regular army platoon (3 sections of approx 6-8 men/women paired into fire teams) would have all NCMs and one officer commanding them called the "Platoon Commander" as his position title separate from his actual rank. Sgts would lead each section as a "Section Commander" (and have their own "2IC" for each section who would be a Senior Corporal) and a senior Sgt would generally be the "Platoon 2IC" as his position title. (and/or the rank of Warrant in the Canadian military) who would be under the officer to take care of the men while the "Platoon Commander" focused primarily on the mission at hand. As problems and other issues occurred men of other ranks would "fill in" to pick up the missing ranked personnel to fit in these positions. That's the hardcore, by-the-book way that it's normally done in a somewhat vague nutshell. In a special operations unit such as what Xenonauts would have, this sort of regular structure would go out the window in much the way that US special forces groups like the Navy Seals, Delta Force and so on would. Instead they would probably go off combat experience instead, however each would still have their assigned positions/jobs within their "squads". X-COM didn't really define a commander or 2IC, they just let you do this via equipping the troops and moving them as you choose. If you did want to add some added layer to promoting or moving personnel up into higher positions you could allow for such assignment. Then again, allowing for vague definition would allow the player to assume this all on their own, just by familiarity of their own people after using them from mission to mission. Just some food for thought.

I don't agree with this! I've played the original many, many times and none of the other (cheap in my opinion) clone attempts got this right. They took the same approach as what Gauddlike (and others?) suggests and it only caused the game to fail in my (arguably seasoned) personal opinion. The fact that you can supplement your funding from other countries, by manufacturing and selling weapons and equipment only helped keep you afloat a bit longer so that when the game got more hectic you were able to afford enough decent equipment and weapons you needed for your squads to function properly. This extra money to fully equip your squad to have a higher chance of victory in all these missions that if you had not the money to buy them, you'd probably just get by with the shirt on your backs if even that. It made a huge difference to be able to do this in smart fashion. Otherwise I found that it was just a steady linear spiral down trying to win missions with less and less equipment until eventually you got overwhelmed. Honestly removing the ability to make money off researched equipment and weapons (considering you do need to gather the materials from missions) would only lessen the spirit of the original game as this was still a huge part of the original if you want to admit it or not. Manufacturing researched tech for profit would never allow you to fully fund your forces, but it helped take the edge off. Ignoring this aspect would make the game far too linear focusing only on squad-based combat. And this is where X-COM was always different because it was not just about squad-based combat, but also the economic aspect as well. Ignore that and you end up with a cheap wannabe clone that misses the mark. Further to this I personally feel that the player should have the option of being able to choose their balance of these two mainstay aspects of the X-COM DNA. Something that past attempts have foolishly focused only on the squad-based combat and missed the point of the genre completely. I'd like to hear from one of the actual developers on this rather than just the fans and other backers. Is this something about the gameplay that is being considered by Goldhawk?