TrashMan

Yes for a ground radar and at extreme ranges. The earth curvature does not apply in aerial fights, as missiles generally have a short effective range (10-30nm) No if you got an enemy aircraft searching for you. Also depends on the terrain. Flat terrain won't hide you from an air radar.

Missile info:

It makes you quite visible on radar. Look a bit into air combat mechanics. It's very interesting. I suggest videos like these (especially the second one). The guy explains a lot of things, especially near the end, when he does the battle overview, as he explains both combatants actions.

Altitude and terrain topography should be a thing. There should be cons and pros to high and low altitude. For high altitude, you're dealing with thinner air and clouds obstructing visibility. For low altitude, you're dealing with dense air and terrain. Flying low over water is a death sentence. Hilly or mountainous terrain makes it easier to evade. Flying low over sand desert makes heat seekers less effective. Etc. Tiny bits like that could be implemented in a simple way like "what type of terrain is the aircraft over nad what altitude? Ok, apply bonuses/penalties!"

If you study history, then you'd pretty much call half the nations stupid or lacking tactical thinking. There's thousand of examples of misscalculations, errors, terrilbe oversights, arrogance or just plain bad luck. The logical conclusion is thus, that humans are stupid. There's also circumstance to consider. The aliens might be forced to attack before they are ready.

I disagree. The enemy won't just stay still and let you take pot shots. While you are focusing on the enemy with best sensors/anti-cammo/detection range, others are moving in. Cammo reduces detection range, it doesn't make you undetectable - even less when the shooting starts. I see cammo more as something that lets you set up into good position.

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You are staring on the assumption that the aliens came fully prepared and informed with a full army. The aliens might be a fraction of an invasion fleet that got splintered/lost/whatever. They may have stumbled onto Earth without prior plan to invade and are underestimating human resistance.

I for one don't particually like the cold War aesthetics. As for why the aliens aren't using the heaviest units from the get-go? Could be different reasons. Perhaps they are a scouting force and have limited resources themselves? Perhaps more advanced units need time to bring in from wherever they are coming from? Perhaps those advanced units ARE there from the get go, but deployed in more pressing theaters. Xenonauts certainly wouldn't be a big enough threat early on to warrant such resource expenditure, especially since the alien wouldn't really know who the Xenonauts are or the extent of their abilities. If this is the case, the game should comminicate it trough messages, briefings, news reports, etc.. Make sure to not just mention, but also show in some way the world armies ARE fighting. Something like: "Commander, I'm sure you already read the reports about the crushing defeat of the 5th army corps? The alien invaders are deploying weapons and troops significantly more advanced than what we have encountered so far. Fortunately, they appear to have a limited number of them, and we can consider ourselves lucky our men haven't run into them yet. However, sooner or later it is bound to happen. I urge you to divert funding into weapon development to combat these threats. Trying to capture samples would be of great benefit, but bear in mind the risks involved."

The "cover up" thing really doesn't work when you have alien ships landing in populated areas, killing people and so on, all as a regular occurence. To accomodate something like that in a sensible manner, you'd have to re-write and re-make half the game.

You can kinda-sorta cheat by having them being static, like the tanks in JA2.

There never is. The question becomes how much is it worth and what are pros/cons and how much value do you place on individual pros/cons. You can go with randomized tech tree (Sword of the Stars does that), randomized research costs (so you never how long something will take), tech locking (selecting one tech disables another, so you can never have everything in a single playtrough). You can go with fixed research costs, varaible research costs, breaktroughs/disaster chances/rolls based on time spent and money allocated and scientists, etc, etc... Lots of options. Picking is the hard part.

A sort of escort mission? Reminds me of Chaos Gate. You had a few mission where you had to escort a techmarine to a terminal/generator or an apothacary to a specific individual (in this case, you broke into the enemy base to rescue your captured and wounded battlebrother)

Can you just use the same 3D gun model the soldiers use?

"They didn't change it, it sucks!" VS "They changed it, now it sucks!". It's a battle you cannot win so it's pointless to try. If more of the same, or a more refined formula doesn't do it for you and you require a completely new formula, then this game isn't for you.

A game has to look functional. Pretty is somewhat subjective, and all the fancy new effects and shaders often do more harm than good. There's a subset of gamers that I personally call "graphic whores" that only care about graphics and weather the most cutting-edge stuff is used, but those kind of people were never the core audience of X1 to begin with, so I wouldn't worry about it, Chris. Your game looks more than good enough.

You don't make a game and make it moddable after, you create the game, the data and file structures, the classes, the game logic WITH modding in mind from day 1. Anything else is backwards and promises a world of hurt an a whole lot more work.

I'm in no position to argue that, given that I don't know the size of the x2 research tree. But does it technically need branches? Just the abiltiy to do multiple projects at the same time, with an optimal number of scientists/funds (where going over can help or not). On another hand, you can expand the tree by splitting research. Instead of researching laser weapons, you research each gun individaully, with a discount the more things from a family tree you researched (the first laser weapon, you get nothing. The second you get a 20% research bonus/research reduction. For the third you get 40%, etc..) This is all theoretical of course, but interesting food for thought. I like thinking about different mechanics and implementations. Oh, one more thing. Please tell me there is actually going to be varriance and soul to the weapons/tier, not just re-skins with +1, +2 stats. If I see a laser shotgun again, I'm going to scream.

I don't get the "every campaign different" argument here. As it is right now in 99% of such games, there's always the same research path, because most of the tree is linear and offers little choices and because there's obvious best picks. With a simultaneus research system, it never feels like artifacts and research is just waiting there. Does it make sense to you that anti-gravity is put on hold because you're researching lasers? With more reasearch, less optimal paths (less linear upgrades, more utility) and a system like this, where what scientists you get may affect your research choices AND where research funding is fluid (you can dump more money into research to TRY* and speed it up), it just gives the player more options. As for running out of research - that can happen by the end game in the regular game too. There's no real solution for it, other than adding generic research (something like Xenobiology 1, 2, 3, 4, where each rank grants you a small % bonus damage against an ayyy or something). In other words, things you can research after all the main items are done, but is generic and doesn't have as much benefit. You can create many research projects and items and put a time limit on the game (enemy fleet comes in 2 years, we have to defeat them by then to stand a chance or something), so the player simply cannot research everything. That works too. Master of Orion had a system where research items were semi-randomized and you could only pick 2 out of 3. You could NEVER research everything in a game, and what you have available may be slightly different the next game. Interesting mechanic, but one I'm undecided on.

Research and how it's conducted is one of the things that always kinda bugged me. Partially because scientists are treated like omnidisciplinary geniuses that can tackle anything, and partially because of the way research was handled - you research one thing at a time. A far superior way to handle research is that multiple projects can be researched at the same time, but you are limited by fields. Research into computing, high energy particles, bioengineering, construction methods, etc - they are completely separate fields. Sciences are divided into branches in RL for a reason. So, how I would envision it is that the labs you build are just nerve centers that coordinate global efforts. Scientist you hire would have a field of expertese that would limit how many projects from a branch you can tackle. If all you have are scientists that specialize in organic/biological research, then that research will progress fast, but other fields will suffer. The idea is that 1 project (of your choosing) from every branch is researched at the same time, and the progress depends on your distribution of resources AND staff. Every scientists in a field adds to a the research speed in that field (passive, you influnce this by hireing scientists with specializations). And additonaly, funding is put into projects (with diminishing returns). So something that is basically a mix between THIS: and THIS: With you allocating funding percentage and perhaps personnel (although that could be passive)

Yes. How moddable a game is is a big thing. It extends the lifetime and appeal of a game. Also, allows people to tweak actual gameplay (and mechanics to a point) to their liking. To set new limits, conditions. For example - adding weapons that have requirements to be equipped (like power armor). Changing the tech tree. Etc...

@Bobit - up to a point. I prefer a more flexible and natural system. I also detest the idea of perfect knowledge/info, since that is exactly the opposite of what a real commander would have to face.

It's not supposed to be fair. You're not inviting people to a honor duel, you're fighting for survival of your species, being "sporty" is for losers. And as I said, there are ways to balance it. By making it only available sometimes (artillery has to be brought into position, you need friendly assets nearby), depending on conditions, with costs involved. Again, if aliens bunker up in the UFO, how can you use artillery? You'd destroy all the equipment. And unnecessary destruction of civilian buildings would not be looked upon favorably (use of artillery could have a negative impact on mission performacne and country disposition)

Again, game X implementation not being good is not a good argument against a mechanic.

I disagree. Especaily on the soulful part. With actual cover and collision detection, you have full control over how covered you are. Standing, crouching, going prone or hunkering down (no return fire possible) and you position relative to the cover all dictates how covered you are and gives you great degree of flexiblity. It's not as clear cut, it doesn't give you hard numbers, so you need to think and use your head to judge. A static 50% chance to hit reduction is the epitome of soulless and brainless.