TrashMan

How do you figure that? Since when can Diablo be considered turn-based? There are no phases in it, no turns, no breaks in the action or execuation.

I would be against it. There is no sense to having them. Dogs have no reasonable way to damage an alien that has armor resistant to rifle rounds. They also have to close the distance which would just result in dead doggos. And I absolutely cannot stand that. I still have flashbacks to DogMeat. Dogs just have no place in combat scenarios. In various support roles, sure. They can be used for therapy, guard duty, detection of dangerous substances, search and rescue. But all of those come AFTER the area has been secured. As for scouting, you have drones for that. Especially todays tiny flyer drones. Dogs have no way to relay back information. Unless you want to stick a camera on their head, but even then you cannot give them instructions on where to look. As much as I love dogs, I just don't see a viable and rewarding way to add them.

Most air defenses today aren't static sam-sites, but vehicle mounted systems. They can move around and are not tied to a specific location. So no issue there.

There are several fan-made projects to make a sequel. You might want to look at Supremacy or BOTF2. I haven't look at them in a long time so I have no idea what state they are in. And I hope Chris considers this. This method, or back to real-time with pause with proper dogfighting. It's actually far simpler than people think, as there is a limited set of things you can do. It also depends if you long-range fighting or dogfighting. So it boils down to: - your planes strengths - the enemy planes strengths - type of battle (high or low alititude, long range or short range) For example: The F-14 is a long-range interceptor. It excells at long-range missile fights, since no plane can match it's AVG-9 radar and AIM-54 missile combo. While it is a big airplane with a lot of thrust and great fuel efficiency, it was not made to dogfight. But it CAN dogfight real well if it plays to it's strengths - at low-speed and low-altitude it can turn REALLY well, and it's high trust and variable wings means it can climb well and high loop better than most fighters. How do you fight it? Let's say you're a F-18. If at high altitude, missiles have longer range so it WILL be able to shoot at you LONG before you can shoot back. To beat the missile you dive down into denser air and notch (try to move at 90° to the missile) - this will slow the missile down, require it travel a greater distance and make it have to correct it's course more often, robbing it of energy. Also chaff. You can out-turn the F-14 at higher speeds and you try to keep the fight higher up. All of this may sound complex but it can be easily simplified into several stats and manouvers.

Turn-based is defined by having fixed turns, by having specific actions phases. For example, in D&D a turn is EXACTLY 6 seconds. Simply having the abilitiy to pause doesn't make it turn-based. Hell, I can play Baldurs Gate right now and "pause" but it's almost meaningless, since all orders are only carried out within those 6 seconds (meaning I can order my guy to cast a spell, but he will wait his turn before he does it). Basically, real turn-based not only gives you as much time as you want to think about what you are about to do, but both you and the enemy fight in very specific phases. While real-time with pause does give you time to think, it does not have phases.

It's not different, you just want it to be. So the "don't argue for the sake of it" goes right back at you. Ground play is turn-based. Geoscape is real-time. Fact. Air combat in X1 being more time sensitive is irrelevant it's still the same time system. And if you say "because it makes sense" then I'll say it back to you. Because it makes sense. In geoscape the happening time is in hours/days/weeks/MONTHS, and the game auto-pauses when important things happen. Otherwise an UFO might raid you base or bomb a city before you can react. So yes, a fraction of a second can be REALLY important evne there. And in air combat- it's air combat. You damn right a second can make or break a fight. But to offer a solution to YOUR problem - partitioned turn-based combat. If you ever played Birth of the Federation you'll know what I mean. For those that never played that game - it's basically a mix between turn-based and real time. The game auto-pauses every X seconds and gives you the opportunity to give new, broad orders (flank, evade, assault, circle, Charge, etc..). But within those X seconds you cannot pause or give orders (to individual ships or groups). Different manouvers have different strengths and weakneses and ships have strengths and weaknesses that makes for an interesting battle. All of this could be applied to fighters in a simplified way. You can order a fighter to perform a specific manouver, or let the AI handle it (higher pilot skill picks better). As fighter have different performance stats, you can get engaging results. One fighter might excel at low-altitude turning at slow speeds. Another might be a great climber (making it a perfect candidate for a vertical loop manouver). There are several basic fighter manouvers and methods than once you understand them, you can model an actual dogfights in simple terms. It doesn't take much.

While I ADORE dogs, I don't see the value of a K9 unit here. They are used for searching for contraband and light support roles, not front-line combat. And since most aliens will wear body armor, a dog would be just a short-lived (literally) distraction. Lastly, I don't wanna see doggos getting killed. I have enough of RPG's forcing me to kill wolves.

So does the geoscape. Are you suggesting we get rid of it? Or make it trun-based? What you are describing is NOT mechanical inconsistency. Why should two different game parts, that take place in completely different time scales, have the same mechanic?

That's like saying don't make games hard because people will complain. And since when it does not fit? By what logic? If the issue is repetition, then there is no solution other than autoresolve. Besides, if you're complaining about repetition, try doing 20 attacks on small UFO's. Everything can become repetitous easily. The thing with air combat is that there is no cover in air, no things to spice up the battlespace. Unless you fly low altitude. I can think off a few things to spice things up, like 3D combat. DCS TacView style. Example: TacView starts after 3 minutes

Don't automate it. Leave in player hands. Like I said, right mouse click or mouse wheel adjustng cone/AP would work best.

Drones are useful, but the problem comes from jamming/hacking. The only way around that is to have AI (actually an Expert System, there is no true AI) so the drone/android accepts no commands from outside until the mission is complete. This comes with it's own problems, as now you have a drone/android that even you cannot stop until specific condition is achieved. The best condition should simply be time (no commands accepted for however long a mission would take). Also, the AI will be limited and unflexible. So yeah, they are already used, so why not. The question is in what roles would you use them. Personally, scouting/recon sounds the best. Even drone fighters for long-range combat (missile lobbing, not dogfighting)

Which is exactly why you want to get to it quickly. It still relies mostly on people to destroy sensitive stuff, of which there is usually only a few really interesting bits, and it takes time. Now, consider that for an alien ship, literally every single bit could be useful means that destroying al of it takes quite a bit more time and effort.

And JA2 is the greatest team strategy game to have ever been made.

Cyborgization is totally unnecessary and a waste of fund. Everything a cyborg could do wan be done with cheaper equipment that ISN'T premanently glued to a person (and would thus always be with him, which is problematic). When your soldiers goes home on leave or to drink in a pub, he leaves his exoskeleton and guns at the base armory. Your drunken cyborg would have it on his person all the time. BAD IDEA.

So? Suppresive fire can also be done with aim but doesn't have to be, and given that the cone would depend on actually AIMING, then you can have both. A wide cone when not aiming and just spraying, and a narrow when you do. The way Jagged Alliance 2 did was the best - the more AP's you spend, the more tighter the shot. As your mouse hovered over the enemy you got an aiming circle shooting AP cost. With a right click you could increase (cycle trough) the cost and the circle became smaller, indicating fireing. You basically had hipfire/no aim, fast aim, aim, careful aim. With mods it's gotten even deeper (and better). As far as I'm concerned you don't even need a % to hit displayed at all. Something simple as "good line of fire/visibility" / "bad line of fire/visibility" indicator would be more then enough, but I feel even that is unnecessary.

The total number of aircraft you will be able to hold at one of your bases is not only not final, but also depend on how many hangars you build. Although, if you ask me, airfield/hanger should be a separate geoscape building. Your base should only hold hangers for the transport, and fighters would be stantioned in fighter bases that you build. Those would be simple pre-fabs. an airfiled with hangers, supplies, pilot barracks and simple radar. You can upgrade the airfield to hold more planes and pilots, and upgrade the radar. This is simple, frees up slots on your base for important things, and neatly separates fighters and pilot managment away from your base. Also, it makes sense for an airbase to be a separate site.

1) nope. You have state-of-the art hardware that doesn't have self-destruct. B2 bomber? F35? Newest aircraft carrier? All may have newest tech that you wouldn't want your enemy to get. None of them have self-destructs. True, the tech difference is not that big, but the point stands. 2. Who sez you can't get a large enough fleet?

Nah. Phoenix Point has the cammera move to the gun POV so you can see how good the LOS is before taking a shot. Works easily. The whole "hit percentage this is not even really needed. All you need is LOS and the soldiers accuracy and you can guesstimate.

You had one job. One job. Why does (almost) no one bother to do proper projetile simulations anymore? In a 3D game it's trivial. Especially turn-based ones. Accuracy is basically the size of the fire cone. Fire projectile and see if it hit anything.

If my memory serves me right, Jagged Alliance 2 had infinite (well, across map) sight range, but obstacles could block it. Also, things like darkness and cammo could make someone harder to see. You could ambush unsuspecting patrols from behind the bushes (if you're next to it you can see trough, but enemies cannot really) Worked Wonderfully there.

But what if you can't? The Skyranger might not be fast enough. You might have been late in noticing the aliens. Why would more tactics and involvement in geospace be bad? As for micromanaging, it can be handled as easily as assigning permanent escort or groups/wings. Basicaly, in the base set up two fighters to escort your transport, and as long as those fighters are able they will launch with the transport automatically and escort it. Hell, it can work for any craft.

How many planes you know that have a self-destruct button? OR tanks? Or ships? It's common in movies, but it really isn't there. Even in WW2, they way to avoid capture was scuttling - usually by opening all comparments and letting the ship flood (that still make it recoverable with gear, and it's useless for alien spaceships) or blowing up the ammo maganizes (for that the vehicle must use high-explosive weapons to begin with. And it also leaves enough pieces to study). Self-destrust enver was a standard, and properly making sure nothing of value remains is time-consuming.

I just want to add something. You probably already considered this, but in terms of flexibiltiy (in general) and modding, how is damage of a weapon tied with ammo? IMHO, the best way is to have damage of a weapon defined both in the weapon itself AND in the ammo, with the ammo values (if defined) overriding the weapon values. Which means that it makes it easy to balance and create different weapon types, while still having different ammo types. So you can have different power cells for lasers with different capacities (but same damage.. or not), different ammos with different properties and values.

"Modeling properly" in this context means to make it work as intended. You don't really need super-accurate simulations for that, just approximations. And unless I'm mistaken, in Xenonauts 2 every projectile is fired in a cone and the hits and collisions are calculated (as it should be), which means shotgun should work properly with minimal effort

Doesn't matter if it's human or not. All technologly must fallow the basic laws. But let's not go further, this is de-railing the thread. To make any such mission more interesting, you can have variations, depending on type of craft that was downed, time that has passed and some other factors. The more time passes, the less rewards you get. There is a chance an alien craft will arrive at the crash site (you should be able to see it on geospace and intercept if necessary). If it lands it would speed up crashsite deterioration. Depending on size and type of the craft, when a Xenonauts force is arriving it may drop additional hostiles and leave, or try to intercept (escorts matter), or try to bomb the site (greatly reduces loot from site, but also reduces hostile count)