[Xenonauts 2 - Cover System & Crouching]

I don't suppose there is any chance our troops could go totally prone ala JA2???

[Chris! Xenonauts Original Development and Funding]

I have a few suggestions:

Do lots of planning, play testing, story boarding, requirement documentation, get independent reviews of your game concept before you even start coding anything. This is critical and will save you a ton of time and money down the road. Building software is like building a house. The further along you are when you decide to change something that isn't working out, the more time and money it will cost to fix it and the greater the chance for even more problems later. Imagine being halfway done building your new house and then deciding you want to move the location of the kitchen. It's a BIG deal.

Try to find someone that knows how to design and code game software to mentor you. If you try to learn this by just doing it you're bound to fail unless you have many years of time to learn everything necessary. There are books about writing game software you can read too.

Unless you have a lot of artistic talent you'll want to find someone that can do the graphics and music/sound work. I can code fine, but any game I did would still look like crap without a lot of help from someone that can draw more than stick figures. Most of the development staff in big game companies are artists not coders.

Make sure there is actually a market for your game concept. A very nichey game about an obscure topic that you enjoy isn't going to sell many copies no matter how good it is. SimParticleAccelerator might sound great to you, but only 1% of the rest of population is probably going to even be interested in it.

Finally, keep in mind that getting the game coded is only about 1/2 of the battle. You still have to market it, create user documentation, set up a sales channel of some kind, have fulfillment system, accounting, have some type of user support and post-release patches. Your not just creating a game you're setting up a business.

Make sure to read Chris's write-up about his experiences developing Xenonauts.

[Xenonauts 2 - Crafted Weapons / Armour]

For some reason this whole line of thought kind of reminds me of high level magic weapons in D & D. They're hard to come by, you can't build or destroy them and they usually have one or two "special powers" like dragon slaying or decapitation. "Hand me my +5 Laser Rifle of Sebillian Dismemberment" "Here you go Governor".

[Xenonauts 2 - Crafted Weapons / Armour]

I like this idea. BUT, if this is the way it's going to be I certainly want the option to repair weapons damaged or destroyed in combat. There has to be a way retrieve lost equipment. Complete destruction should be a very rare event. Even the loss of your entire force (unless it's an alien base or some other completely inaccessible spot), shouldn't necessarily mean the all equipment is completely lost. A follow-up mission/local forces should be able to get some or all it back.

[Xenonauts 2 - Update]

Well, I don't think the genre is "saturated". Xenonauts and the new X-Com series by Firaxis are very different. They may have a similar theme, but that's about it. It's kind of like saying the ground combat space is full because we have ARMA III and Modern Combat 5 and COD:Black Ops 3.

[Xenonauts 2 - Strategy Design (V3)]

Ah, so the teleporter's battery will recharge slowly over time then. That sounds alright, but you will get people asking why bigger and better batteries can't be researched. What thoughts do you have about resolving events in a non-gc manner? Didn't see anything regarding that in the OP.

Maybe research/purchase into more powerful reactors too? Perhaps that could lead to other developments in Xenonaut gear? Actually, either could. I like the idea of "Connections" like the old documentary show.

[Xenonauts 2 - Strategy Design (V3)]

OK, in my 3.5 beer state, a big YES to the teleporter. I believe that it and your starting base should be in Iceland, no choice on that one, to match the lore. As far as air combat vs. ground combat...well, I actually liked the larger role it played in Xenonauts. However, I understand that many players thought it was not "proper" in the X-Com universe. My two cents is to figure out a way to make them equal vs. air combat heavy in Xenonauts. That requires the player to have two paths of strategy to constantly consider. In fact, if you could figure out a way to make a player have an air option and a ground option to weigh in some or all of the missions that would very cool. Even better would be having some missions require both. This not X-Com and enlarging the strategy is not a bad thing. I'd even toss in naval strategy if I could think of a valid reason why it would matter ( I suppose you could have mobile airborne interceptors ala UFO.) Anything you can do to cut down on mission grind is, of course, good.

One other thing: Have you considered any type of space based defense/weaponry/recon? I always thought the original UFO was very awesome in that they had a moon base and SID. Man was on the moon in 1969 (yes, I remember this.)

[Xenonauts 2 - Weapons and Armour Development]

I'm a little leery of making one weapon tech the "ultimate" tech. From what you've written, it sounds like you're trying to make sure there isn't a dominant strategy for the game's research tree. That's really good. It means that the plans you use to win may be different each time you play.

I agree. I think the direction the weapons and armor seem to be taking is really good. I'd much prefer the weapons to have different properties and abilities, same with the armor, soldiers and even the aliens. This will make the game very interesting as you try to create winning strategies by using a combination of things to achieve better results than a one solution fits all strategy. Very promising.

[Xenonauts 2 - Update]

When can we pre-order?

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

Fourth stage would not suit a TU reduction for me. If things have gotten so desperate that running away is the most suitable response then removing half of the units movement range would hurt their chances even more. I know Stellar said that this is not the same as broken morale but I think in the game that is an adequate representation, especially if continued suppression has a morale draining effect as I suggested.

Actually in stage four assuming that they are not "broken" they might "run" in any direction to seek cover. It could actually be toward the aliens if there is better cover available. In some games as in real life soldiers might actually gain TU for the sole purpose of moving to cover. We're talking about an adrenaline filled sprint to save ones life here.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

I'll have to think about that one. The main problem is that you'd have to give up some control to the game for your troops to move without your input. Something that I've only seen a couple of games do. For level 1 and 2 you'd have reduced TUs. For 3 and 4 the AI would have to move your soldiers to the nearest cover even if you didn't want them to. I guess for 4 you'd also have to give up all ability to fire until the requirement of cover is met. You could treat an explosion like a level 3 or 4 "event" within a certain radius.

It's probably worth saying unless the alien suffer similar effects this will obviously put the humans at disadvantage and you can see the huge advantage that a mechanical unit like an Andron has. They basically skip all suppression effects because they know no fear.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

I think the effects of being shot at are very situational. But, generally, based on personal experience, reading, and the way other games created by knowledgeable people have handled it you can break it down into three or four distinct sets of actions that are influenced by training and morale. From lowest suppression to highest:

1. Slight slowing down of movement, but still carrying on pretty much as normal (this happens whenever gunfire is even heard/seen nearby.)

2. Severe slowing down (fairly well pinned down), but still trying to make progress to the objective. This would be low crawling or sprint then prone movement to the objective.

3. Completely pinned down. No movement and soldiers seek the nearest cover/concealment to protect themselves. Trained soldiers are still shooting at the enemy though, but probably at a reduced accuracy and volume.

4. Fire that is so heavy soldiers break and run away to the nearest cover/concealment without regard for orders or simply are frozen in place. Shooting back is secondary to getting to cover.

I should point out that any type of explosions are EXTREMELY suppressive (specially artillery or airstrikes.) Something that wasn't modeled accurately in X1 IMO. They'll stop everyone in large radius for a bit. I'm not talking about just flash bangs either (a flash bang is really just a kinder gentler explosive.)

Keep in mind that 3 and 4 aren't the same as broken morale. It just means that they aren't going to follow orders to move until something changes. In the Army they train soldiers that #3 and #4 are fatal IF no one takes initiative, that's where bravery comes in. Someone has to get up and do something. The first step is to shoot back and try to pin the enemy down. Against humans, that should reduce the amount of incoming fire.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth on this.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

Wouldn't that just make the LMG into a more accurate weapon rather than a more suppressive one?

It depends on whether or not Chris decides to take into account how "close" a hit is for suppression purposes.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

I think the comparison should be between burst from an assault rifle and single shot from an assault rifle. I would think the former would definitely be more suppressive. Either way I think the mechanic should be the same just the stats should change to differentiate the weapons.

I agree. A stat like "Deviation Added per round (DAPR)" would suffice. For an LMG the DAPR would be much less than for an assault rifle.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

I'm of the opinion that longer burst should be more suppressive even if they are less accurate overall. It makes sense. It was the same in JA2 also, so we're not the only ones that think this. The obvious downside is that you'll go through a lot of ammo, but that might be OK if the battle has reached a critical stage. I'm really not that attached to suppression increase per round by assault rifles because they are either limited to three round burst OR they go through a magazine so fast and inaccurately due to barrel climb that there wouldn't be a noticeable difference between three rounds and 30 rounds. If you want to suppress with assault rifles you better use a bunch of them or be real close. The LMG on the other is a much more accurate weapon for burst fire because they are mounted which prevents barrel climb.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

The suppression aura / radius isn't the same thing as the scatter pattern for missed shots - are you sure you're not confusing them?

No, I'm just thinking that if you don't calculate suppression based on the actual impact points (per bullet) then just changing the suppression area from a straight radius based on the targets location to an oval based on the targets location is still an improvement. I guess you should also still scatter the shots in an oval too (even if suppression isn't based on where the bullets land.) The math is slight more complicated, but that's about it. If you look at the link below you'll see that auto fire tends to be oval shaped.

"c. Beaten Zone. The beaten zone is an elliptical pattern formed by the cone of fire as it strikes the ground. The beaten zone is always about 2 meters in width."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/23-65/Ch6.htm

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

Hmm, I'd not fully considered the suppression aura / radius. I guess we do need it, but the suppression damage should fall off linearly with distance from the centre. Hopefully that will mean that shooting next to be target would generally cause less suppression damage than shooting at the target itself.

The problem with the actual projectiles causing suppression (rather than the target and those nearby suffering it) is that the accuracy calculation is performed in advance to determine whether the shot hits or misses. If the shot is a miss the bullet just scatters somewhere other than the target, but as the accuracy calculation is more a factor of the 2d tile grid rather than the actual intervening 3d space I think you'll get incongruous behaviour if you start calculating suppression based on where the 3d raytrace says the bullet ends up.

A good example of this is the Shot Miss Roll - for the target this is a numerical value that can range from 0-99 calculated by how much you fail a random roll out of 100, but for anyone else nearby you'd have to measure how close a bullet is passing to them in 3D space (and to which part of their body?) and then somehow try and convert that into the equivalent figure out of 100.

Dealing with miss shots in 3D is always going to be a bit of a kludge, tbh. I'm not too keen to base many game mechanics on where they end up!

Could you at least consider changing the suppression aura to an oval?

[Xenonauts 2 - Air Combat]

I like having squadrons gain experience. How is that going to effect their performance in combat? Will there be ANY technological improvements that can be made to aircraft like better missiles or sensors?

[Xenonauts 2 - Weapons and Armour Development]

I like the idea of plasma weapons being dangerous to use (a bit like in 40k). I'm not quite sure how we can manifest it, but I guess we could have them start "leaky" and prone to damaging the user or something like that.

I have an idea for this: A blob of plasma moving through the air could occasionally become "unbalanced" or lose containment and go in a complete random direction. Super scatter so to speak. It might even come right back at the shooter. Obviously this wouldn't happen all the time and probably you'd scale the "badness" so massive scatter is less likely than moderate scatter. You could even make the plasma ricochet off objects (even the ground) occasionally. It would also be a good tech tree branch to improve your plasma weapons by reducing the instability. The idea is that moving ahead of troops actively firing plasma weapons would very risky.

[Xenonauts 2 - Suppression / Burst Fire]

If you're going to penalize accuracy as the burst goes on it's important that you count every round (even the misses) as a potential suppressor of ANYONE where it lands. Example: You fire at alien A and miss with all five rounds of the burst, however, upon calculating the landing zones of two of misses one hits behind Alien A where his buddy Alien B is hiding behind a crate therefore you conduct a suppression check on Alien B because it's close enough to "scare" him. The second miss goes off to the left of Alien A and lands close to Xenonaut C, he also gets a suppression check and so on. This means that long burst of autofire have the potential to suppress a lot of units, but probably isn't going to hurt anyone but the primary target. I also think that you should be able to select short and long burst on weapons that have that ability. The M-4 is limited to three round bursts while the LMG/SAW is not, but a trained LMG/SAW operator can/will fire short bursts (or even single rounds) as the situation dictates. I also think you should change the shape of the scatter pattern to be an oval instead of a circle. Burst fire tends to miss along the range axis more than directional axis. That means where you position your LMGs will become important. Crossfire becomes more useful, etc...

I'd really like see you add a pause based system for reaction fire too (like Laser Squad and JA2 have). This will keep our Xenonauts from shooting each other by accident (or at least give you the option.) It makes your job easier too, as you won't have a bunch of "did he accidentally shoot his own guy" type logic in the game. Either that or you'll need to improve the friendly fire avoidance logic you have now.

[Some quick questions:]

Just as a side note: You should wipe out every alien base you find. They are really bad for the relation points in whatever region they exist. So, after you've captured your pet Praetor, destroying the ships that try to build them is a good idea. Also, they are high casualty places to take down, so it's better to prevent them from being built whenever possible.

[Xenonauts 2 - More Alien Aliens]

I am curious, has anyone experimented with the Xeno 1 AI by trying to reverse this? What if Wraiths were able to teleport and move, shoot and then teleport, but not teleport and shoot? If anybody has I'd be interested to try it out in the first game

Maybe instead of teleporting they could simply become immaterial enough to walk through any barrier? Obviously not continuously, but with some type of cool down timer. They would also have to "re-immaterialize" before they could fire any weapons. They would also not be invisible, but would be invulnerable to damage (or at least somewhat protected) while immaterial.

[Xenonauts 2 - Soldier Morale, Officers & Ranks]

I think the bravery score for soldiers should be able to move both up AND down over time. Soldiers can become battle fatigued over time and useless as well as calm, dedicated killers. It would probably depend on how well they've done on previous missions, if they win a lot and suffer few casualties they'll probably become braver and more likely to follow orders because they know they have good leadership, skills and equipment. On the other hand, if they're getting slaughtered on a regular basis the survivors are probably not going to be to enthused about the next mission.

Also, one thing I really liked about the original XCOM was that the aliens had morale too (at least the sentient ones.) It was pretty funny and rewarding when they were the ones that were panicking and cowering.

[Xenonauts 2 - More Alien Aliens]

I'd like to make the aliens in Xenonauts 2 more alien than those in the first game.

[*]Androns - these guys worked fairly well, but they needed to be more obviously robotic and they weren't different enough to Sebillians in terms of being tanky (tough because of HP vs. tough because of armour)

Androns:

[*]I like the idea of a robotic Terminator-style alien that advances implacably with no regard for its own safety, but in practice this overlapped heavily with the Sebillians.

[*]Immunity to suppression is a good ability, and not using cover is a good disadvantage.

[*]As they do not have regeneration, I think we can make Androns the toughest enemies in the game ... but we need something to represent incoming fire chipping away at their defences and making them less effective.

Maybe the Androns just keep getting slower to move and fire as the damage increases? Seems easy and reasonable. I suppose once in a while a critical hit could simply kill it outright or cause it to self-destruct. They would definitely be more interesting to deal with if they blew up when they "died." Also, I don't think the code ever really took full advantage of the fact that they could walk through weak cover without slowing down. They should be able to walk right through doors, wooden walls, etc... I would imagine only armored walls, thick concrete buildings, etc... would stop them. I don't remember ever being surprised by an Andron walking into a building through a wall.

[Xenonauts 2 - More Alien Aliens]

It might be interesting if the Sebillians or some other alien species could inflict poisoning, have highly corrosive acid blood, poison gas breath, etc...on your guys. That would increase the value of good medics.