TrashMan

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.

Heck, lets get a bit more detailed. Air combat (and dogfighting) all rests on a set of simple rules that could be simulated, but that also requires roughly modeling plane performance. It all comes down to speed, detection, manouverability (a broad category) and range. What manouvers you want to employ and at which range you want to engage would depend on your an enemy craft and capabilities. Capabilities of an aircraft would be things like nose authority (how easily/quickly you can bring your nose up), turning speed (air speed and air density at which your aircraft turns the best), climbing speed, endurance, thrust/weight ratio and weaponry. If your aircraft has long-range missiles and good detection, you want to fly high (in thin air, good for missiles) and lob missiles while maintaining distance. IF not, you'd want to close the range while evading missiles (by going low, pulling the missiles into dense air where they will loose energy fast), and so on. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't, as there aren't that many factors that go into it. Anyone who puts a few hours of research into how air combat works could make a decent and interesting system.

If an "optimal solution" made playing games pointless then no one would paly anything. There's always an optimal choice. Complaining that there is na optimal solution seems very weird to me. Of course there will be. There are ways to spice it up visually and tactically (I talked about it before), but at the end of the day, there will always be an optimal approach. Same holds true for ground combat. Should we drop ground combat completely because of that?

It makes no sense to sell for one simple reason - the countries of the world are already financing you, they are your boss. Any piece of alien tech you recover is already theirs. Why would they buy it from you? Sending excess items to a country for bonuses makes sense. Selling does not.

Why not simple send some equipment to a country for a boost at the end of the month (which would not only be a money boost, but also boost the AI soldiers from that country/block?) Makes more sense than selling.

You can apply logic to a game that has logical mechanics. For example, why NOT allow multiple dropships/squads? Would make a game too easy? Only if you're unimaginative and don't program the alien response of them responding in kind. As long as you make sure that are prices to pay for everything, and consequnces, you can go really wild. Your appeal to authority/number falls on deaf ears here. Especially YouTubers that usually have the attention spawn and skill of a goldfish. The idea that having a single supremely optimal solution contradicts the notion of experimentation with different setups. Not building proper teams for you major bases is a failure on the player side and is indicitave of poor human resource managment, not a failure of the game. After all, resource managment IS what a proper commander would have to deal with. Simply removing the need for making such choices rewards lazy players with no attention spans, since they will always have everything they need (personel and materials) available at all times - this is in complete contrast with the basic concept of logistics AND in complete contrast to the whole "global strategic defense simulator" Base attacks were the least fun? Sez who? You jus have to do base attacks good with variosu degrees of severity, and not having it be an instant game over. I belive I posted a decent proposal of how to handle it, but so oyu dont' have to look for it, here: Every base should be attackable by the enemy. And not just by troops, but also air bombardment. This wouldn't destroy the base outright (since most facilites are underground), but would damage it, take it off-line for a while. Either the entire base could be unusable for a while (burried entrance?) or there could be a random dice roll to see which buildings were damaged, depending on how strong the attack was (how many alien craft and of which type were involved). Some buildings like hangars and airstrips would have a higher weight to get damaged, since they are more exposed. To me this seems like a good balance as it's not TOO punishing, especially early on. You could also make it so that a base can be fully destroyed if bombed twice (again, giving the player time and opportunity to stop it with air intercepts) EDIT: WTF is it with this forum and constantly messing up quotes? I can't even edit them after. Why can't I see the post in code, with tags?

So you want small attackable bases and a single main base that is unattackable? How does that make sense? Why would the alien refuse to attack the most important place? Seems to me you just want an easy mode that does look like one. Every base should be attackable by the enemy. And not just by troops, but also air bombardment. This wouldn't destroy the base outright (since most facilites are underground), but would damage it, take it off-line for a while. Either the entire base could be unusable for a while (burried entrance?) or there could be a random dice roll to see which buildings were damaged, depending on how strong the attack was (how many alien craft and of which type were involved). Some buildings like hangars and airstrips would have a higher weight to get damaged, since they are more exposed. To me this seems like a good balance as it's not TOO punishing, especially early on. You could also make it so that a base can be fully destroyed if bombed twice (again, giving the player time and opportunity to stop it with air intercepts)

Teleportation was a solution to the terrible 1-base decision, since you had to reach every apart of the globe from 1 location. If multi-bases are in, then teleportation is not needed. I despise teleportation, not only because of narrative and world-building reasons and the the massive can of worms it opens, but because of the mechanical implications. (Also, Stargate turned to trash, the only thing saving it was good cast chemistry and banter. And the elder race tropes are in my opinion generally terrible - anything that treats science as magic is) X-Com games have NOT been just about squad-level tactics. If that is what one is after, there are many games that do it a LOT better (Jagged Alliance 2 for example). Planning and logistics on a grander scale are - to me - the defining aspect of X-Com. Hence, when such is trivilized with magitech teleportation that makes logistic utterly irrelevant (base location does not matter, travel time does not matter, local resource managment does not matter) it leaves a poor taste in my mouth. Also, having a single base, a single point of faliure is a really bad idea for any military group.

Now that you mention it, this should be a mechanic. Lower-level soldiers get an EXP bonus when deployed with higher-level ones. Like mentorship. Makes sense and would make recovering from losses easier.

I don't see a need to centralize research, since scientist working in different bases can easily coordinate over the internet. Ergo, dumping all research into one base yields no real benefit. I guess what you could do is have it so that labs and engineering rooms are affected by a region or give a bonus to a region. A lab in Asia might increase the speed at which new tech is researched in a region, and engeneering could increase it's spread (so ally solder might get laser rifles sooner and have more of them). Or placing a lab there gives YOU a bonus of somekind. Or both. Additionally, you could make it so that 1 engeneering bay can only make 1 thing, thus stacking multiple in one base does not increase the speed at which you build that thing, but you can build several of the thing. If it takes 5 days to build a laser rifle, it takes 5 days. Throwing more money and men wont' speed it up. OR you could make aliens target the biggest base we have, even bomb it from orbit at some point, making sure that putting your eggs in one basket is a REALLY bad idea. Ideally, even a good player should loose a base or two, but the game should provide a good player with enough resources to be able to bounce back. The fight should feel desperate.