TrashMan

a) have the game acknowledge you couldn't get there in time (it's simple to calculate) and not give a penalty b) actually allow more soldiers/dropships/bases, as it should be

I think the best weapon to handle this is to have real-time with FIXED pauses. The game auto-pauses in fixed intervals and you can give/change orders before continuing. This removes split-second managment, but retains the flow of combat. Check out Birth of the Federation combat on YouTube.

Remind me of special honors from the old Chaos Gate gate. Your marines could get special honors/medals for specific feats. Sequential acts of extreme accuracy would give the Marksman Honor. Extreme killing efficiency (a single soldier kills 10 enemies in battle) would grant the Crux Terminatus badge. I can't recall what you had to do to get the Imperial Laurel. I'm not sure if they all had any stat-boosting effect or if they were ssut cosmetic, but the Crux Terminatus DID have one effect - only marines that had earned that honor could equip Terminator Armor.

Seconded. I love having friendly AI on the map. Makes the war seem larger and more involved. Also, gives me a nice secondary goal (save my allies)

Saving the earth is not winning? What is? It is the final mission, it's supposed to be hard. What exactly do you want? Having the cake and eating it too?

Suicide mission? I recall killing every alien and retreating without any casualties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8EmBjDl_Pw

Storm clouds - may push the plane in a random direction, may cause missiles to loose lock (if lighting storm cloud). Ground AA - area where UFO will take damage if it flies (or is chased) into Things like mountain terrain, low terran, over sea having different benefits - flying over the mountains/hills reduces speed, but increases evasion. Watching any of the DCS videos by the Grim Reapers is very informative on how dogfighting works

There's no reason why it couldn't work in xenonauts. Other tactical squad games tried many approaches. I'll bring up the LEGENDARY Jagged Alliance 2 as a great example.

I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment Chris. While there is some luck/change factor, that's generally how armor works. You KNOW what it can usually take. You know modern kevlar will stop handgun rounds (unless you're using a hand cannon). If the armor is hit of course. If you hit in the face, that's a different matter. That is also why I prefer a more proper was of hit detection and shooting. ACTUAL bullet trajectories, actual collision detection, actual cones of fire, actual obstacles. Proper consequences (got hit in the arm? well, the soldier survived, but the armor is thinner there. Arm is unusuable, weapon dropped). But I digress.. What's the point of armor otherwise if the alien with a laser gun can hit in my 1 kill almost as easily as he could if I was naked? All the time and resources spent to make that armor and all that extra weight I'm lugging around. It has to be worth it. 5% more chance to survive a hit definitely isn't.

All Armor (in theory) works the same - by trying to absorb/deflect/disperse incoming energy. Both shields and body armor should have their own status. If the incoming energy is lower than it's treshhold, then the shield/armor generally take little to no damage. If it's above, they get damaged (but would still reduce damage the wearer/user takes), and the protection they offer lessens. Completely destroying the body armor/shield is bloody unlikely - you merely create holes/weakneses. So while I wouldn't have it break unless under super-specific circumstances (insane amount of damage, like getting hit by a tank), but have it degrade to a minium value (let's say 50%). I really want to see individual armor part tracking - front chest, back, left/right arm, left/right leg ,head

He is a fictional character. In movies you also have gun-kata, should we implement that? Pistol are backup weapons in RL. SMG and shotgun offer more firewepower or greater RoF and more ammo, so there's a reason SWAT and Special Forces use them. About the only thing you are right about it that the pistol should be very accurate at short range and easy to bring about.

Anyone play EDF? I'm thinking air raider. A laser marker or marker grenades that let's you call in support. And what support you have available is somewhat random (since it depends on allies in vicinity) Mortar/artillery strikes and gunship support (if you have a dedicated gunship with air-to-surface weapons deployed). It can always be balanced in terms of accuracy, collateral damage, number of uses and of course, enemy numbers.

I made a mod, but haven't bothered to check if it's still out there. Can't even recall how I named it. I'll have to check. It added more weapons of each type with altered balance. Also new planes and a minigun.

A machingun cannot suppress everything. You can only keep it pointed at one point at a time and if the landing zone is sorounded, you are in a pickle.. A Machingunner can keep the dropship safe-ER, but that doesn't mean completely safe.

Primary goal? You mean supression? Because machineguns are rather sub-bar in terms of performance. Having one or two that can fire once a turn in a limited range doesn't sound like it would influence balance or difficulty much. Especially on bigger maps. And there are many ways to balance it - limited ammo, limited rang, enemies that keep their distance (no baiting), more enemies, etc...

+1

The way I see it, dissasembly can be done in 2 ways: ON THE LOCATION - you send scientist/engineers to the UFO, kinda like a strategic operation, but you can assign the number of people. Simpler to implement, but raises issues - you are sending people out of the base and the aliens can attack and destroy the UFO, since they know where it crashed. STORAGE - the UFO is recovered and stored in a safe location (UFO Yard, guess it could be a facility like a radar station/sam site). THEN you dissasemble from there. I guess scientist/engineer could be transfered to the yard to work there like it was another base? OR the Yard could work like a permanent Strategic Operation Location?

UFO AI just hada simple "dissasemble" project (you would select which UFO from the UFO yard you want to dissasemble). Naturally, the time necessary would depend on the number of engineers and UFO size, and the materials you get would depend on the UFO

Alien UFO walls should not be destroyable by small weapons fire at all. Having said that, when it comes to cover, if you're having a 3D engine and a turn-based game, but are not using actual 3d projectiles and collision detection to work with cover (and hits in general), you are doing something wrong. The only downside is calculating chance to hit, but I never considered that important since I can guesstimate (and real soliders don't know their hit chance either)

You are wrong on all accounts. Putting all your eggs in one baskets is what makes no sense. Dispersion/redundancy is what militaries these days are aiming for. And guerilla style warfare with decentralized/spread out resources is the main way to fight a superior foe. - Aliens have to find your bases first, and if a base is hidden it won't be easy. And given the sheer number of military baes around the world, the aliens have a LOT of work to do. - if aliens are capable of detecting lifesigns the neither a) the secret base wont' be hidden for long, so a single one makes even LESS sense, or b) the bases will be hidden within populated areas to mask their presence - a global defense effort against an alien invasion will require a lot of personnel anyway. Given the sizes of real world armies and miltiary budgets, especially in such a scenario, it is not only doable, but necessary As for the other points: - people will not gossip to aliens. And things like the A-bomb project prove that you can have big bases that remain secret. - how can aliens tell apart a xenonauts base from a standard military base? I suggest you quit LARPing as some military expert, since you are clearly getting everything wrong.

You bring up a good point. Ideally, you wouldn't get the materials upon securing the crash site - you'd get the UFO that needs to be stored and then dissasembled by your engineers. I like how UFO AI is handling it. You have a UFO storage as an installation type (can be bombed by aliens if they find it) that can store a specific number/volume. Then you assign your engineers to dissasemble them for usable parts.

They are both geoscape and tactical/strategic attributes. Or are you arguing that weapon range and detection range are irrelevant on the tactical map? Pistol vs. sniper anyone? While your ground radar can detect an UFO, the fighters own radar and missile range are what counts in combat.

If you're talking about programing knowledge to make a game, yes. If you're talking about phsyics, no. You don't need PHD's to understand the basics or air combat.

That came off a bit differently than I intended. I meant mechanically (as in, planning, paper gameplay model), it doesn't take a lot to figure out the basic dogfighting rules, as in itself it is not as complicated as most people think. I mean, in a way it IS complicated, but you get down to it is really isn't. For a simple (not 100% accurate) simulation - several variables for fighter performance and knowledge of basic dogfighting manouvers. Finding the best way to implement them and programing it in takes naturally significantly more time.