[Xenonauts 2 - Soldier Morale, Officers & Ranks]

Berserking: Should occur very rarely after losing a squad member. It should NOT be randomly firing at anyone in any direction. Every account I've ever read about soldiers going berserk either involved them killing a bunch of civilians that they somehow thought had caused the loss of their buddies (unlikely in our game situation) OR charging the enemy without regard for their own safety in an attempt to get revenge for their losses or because the situation appears hopeless and they want to take as many enemy possible with them. That's it. I've never read a single thing about berserk soldiers trying kill their own teammates.

In general, broken soldiers either cower and do nothing because they're scared or the run away from the fighting towards their own lines (in this case the chopper.)

[Xenonauts 2 - Multiplayer]

I could see multiplayer cooperative WEGO, but not human team vs. alien team. The thing is that if you want multiplayer you have to design it into the code from day one or least write the code with the proper interfaces to allow "orders" to come in from the network for later implementation. I'm not sure for this particular type of game it's worth it. There is also the "waiting" factor. Meaning that two players can't both be fighting a ground mission at the same time IF anything that happens on the ground will affect the strategic level of the game. Otherwise you simply have to have one player "waiting" while the other executes combat. One game that I know of that addresses this somewhat is Age of Wonders because you can at least let the other humans watch the combat even if they don't get participate instead of sitting around doing nothing. It also allows multiple players to fight in tactical if they have forces in the same area.

[Xenonauts 2 - Further Strategy Development]

I'm not sure this the place for suggestions, so please move if needed.

I'd like to see less but more interesting air combat and more types of ground missions (or even special air only missions.) I think one thing Xenonauts had a little bit wrong was the number of air missions required to win. I still think air combat should be important and critical to winning, but less of it wouldn't hurt my feelings too much.

I'd very much like to see pilot skill added to the air combat module. Air combat in the 70's was very much driven by pilot skill. Only recently has it begun to be somewhat replaced by technology. It could be tied to aircraft, so the aircraft get more skilled until it is destroyed (maybe a % chance that the pilot/experience is saved because the pilot bailed out?). When upgrades come you "move" the experience to the new aircraft.

As far as missions go, they had a lot of sameness after a while in Xenonauts even if the maps were nicely varied. There were really only five types in Xenonauts: UFO recovery, base assault, base defense, terror, and the final mission. I can think of a lot more if the coding could be done.

I'd also like to see some different types of weapons as in completely different functionality. Area denial (mines, proximity grenades, etc...), WP ammo for the rocket launcher and grenade, an expansion of the gas grenades to do something other than stun, and finally allow all the classes (ballistic, laser, etc...) to have a development path that would make them valid through the whole game. They ought to have very different characteristics and tactical synergies that make them "interesting" throughout the game.

I do like the idea that someone posted of having more JA2 way of advancing soldiers. Instead of simply moving stats up, a distinct skill could be added, like "Auto fire expert" or "Pistol marksman". That's a great idea IMO, it makes the soldiers much more varied and "personal".

It could also be applied to scientists and engineers too. For scientists you could have something like "Power Systems Expert" or "Biology Expert" those would give bonuses if they were researching that type of project like Alien Reactor and Alien Biology. The R&D people could start with certain skills then when research was completed their would be a chance that they'd gain or increase a skill based on what they were working on, so if a scientist was part of a group researching Alien Biology and it was discovered there would be a chance that scientist would move up in Biology. For Engineers, "Armor expert" or "Ballistic weapons expert" those would give bonuses in the speed or quality of building those items.

I could also see engineers doing the research to improve something that the scientists have already "discovered". Once a laser weapon is discovered the engineers would take it up to the next level until something entirely new is needed to make it better like an entirely different power source. That would make engineers more important instead of just factory workers like they are in the original.

The main idea is that you could build a R&D team that is really good at one branch if you wanted to OR maybe one that highly varied, but not as specialized, it would be all up to you. It would also emphasize the importance of protecting your research facilities because losing a highly developed scientist or engineer would be costly.

[Xenonauts 2 - Soldier Stats / Progression]

Soldiers with demolition gear or other specialized gear might have a use for backpacks. Perhaps using any backpack slots should give an encumbrance penalty and the time unit cost for accessing it would be much higher.

That's workable. I was trying to keep it simple. The best implementation I've seen of system for carry combat gear was JA2. It was really tied to the type of web gear and packs you bought more than anything else.

[Xenonauts 2 - Rethinking the Strategy Layer]

I read the first post carefully. In regards to the aliens attempting to raise the tension between the Soviets and NATO, I have a big problem with the whole idea. If this is a multi-national anti-Alien organization the ONLY way your whole theme would work is if ONLY NATO OR Soviet countries were running the organization (couldn't be both), right? I mean, if it was funded by all countries then it seems to me that the aliens trying to raise tensions would be fairly pointless as both sides would know early on that a third party was trying to manipulate them, right? Wouldn't the leaders on both sides question every single inflammatory event for possibility of alien influence? Did I miss something? Wouldn't the downing of alien ships cause a lot of talk in all countries? I mean a sudden increase in explosions in the sky and UFOs crashing in various places would seem to be a big Red Flag for any nation. Both the UFOs and the Xenonaut aircraft would have to be nearly undetectable and restrict their activities to isolated areas.

Perhaps the best way around this would be if the organization is completely none government funded. Basically, "We told them that aliens were about and no one believed us, therefore we got private funding and will have to do our best with the few talented people we manage to convince that we're not crazy." So, recruiting would be strictly a matter of convincing people to join secretly and/or outright buying of people that really don't care who they work for if the money is right. In fact, many of the missions could have to do with recruiting people to the cause or preventing the aliens from knocking off key figures the Xenonauts need to recruit. You could basically nearly do away with all aircraft at that point. The only aircraft you'd need are some type of stealth troop carriers for secret insertion of your special forces. The UFOs would somehow have to be undetectable by any normal method and have to operate only in very isolated areas where no one could eyeball them. No terror missions, no landing on military bases, farms, towns, etc...

[Xenonauts 2 - Weapons and Armour Development]

Another thought about grenades: another reason why grenade spam is a good tactic is that their range is pretty long compared with the maximum sight range of units. Indeed, grenades can be thrown as far if not further than the effective range of a shotgun. I'm not sure how you'd want to address that (if at all): I've had good (for me) results from longer sight ranges than vanilla but that's a larger change than maybe you'd want to make.

The grenade range "problem" was actually fixed in one early version of Xenonauts, but the "powers" that be decided to appease players that were whining about it being unrealistic that they couldn't even throw them one than one house length. Unfortunately, ground scale, drawing scale, and weapon ranges are grossly mismatched in Xenonauts. Same thing applies to pistol range. It's way too long compared to other weapons. You'd be hard pressed to accurately throw a grenade to more than about 1/3 the range of shotgun with 00 loaded. While a pistol would have about the same accurate range as a grenade.

[Xenonauts 2 - Soldier Stats / Progression]

Reflexes could really be called "Combat Instincts". I think you're basically getting harder to hit and more likely to get the drop on someone because you've learned tricks and what to look for. That should definitely increase with experience. I also think that bravery could go up with experience OR DOWN. It really depends on how successful you've been on your missions. People that have been shot tend to be more cautious than people that haven't ever been scratched. Bravery should be a factor in accuracy. If you're brave enough to expose yourself long enough to take a well aimed shot with a steady hand you're going to hit more often. As far as the progression of stats, I've always been a fan of curve system. Stats rise quickly for a newbie, but slow as they reach a mid-point than become very slow to increase once the mid-point has been reached.

As far as strength goes, I don't think it's really important. Maybe if there was a lot of hand to hand combat it would be applicable, but there isn't. How much stuff you can carry into combat should really be more of a factor of how many hands you have and how big the objects are (size vs. weight.) In my example of the LMG (in the weapon thread). No one is going to carry an LMG and another weapon that requires two hands (not in our Xenonauts type combat anyway.) It would be stupid. Just like no one is going to carry more than two boxes of machine gun ammo. You only have two hands. For other equipment is really a question of how many pockets/slots/belt loops your uniform has not how much they weigh. I have serious doubts the Xenonauts would actually have backpacks at all. There is really no need for them and they're impossible to access in a combat situation. Everything has to be readily at hand when someone is shooting at you. "Oh pardon me Mr. Alien while I dig through this pack to find another magazine..." I think not. You should simply set a limit of items that someone can carry. Possibly partly determined by what weapon(s) they're carrying. If you have a rocket launcher maybe that comes with 2 - 4 spare rockets, etc... After that it's strictly how many standard "slots" your Xenonaut has of each size.

[Xenonauts 2 - Weapons and Armour Development]

Weapon Classes

These are the classes of weapon in Xenonauts:

[*]Pistol - these are pretty well balanced, but perhaps the game needs to generate more situations where using a 1-handed weapon is advantageous

Add burst-fire to pistols. Machine pistols have been around forever. Realistically, I can't imagine why anyone WOULDN'T carry one if it was available vs. a regular pistol. They aren't much bigger or heavier. This one addition will make them much more appealing. They would also gain suppression like an assault rifle at close range, REALLY close. Of course, the accuracy would be crap at anything other than point blank range, BUT that could be very useful for small rooms. Maybe increase the reflex bonus and lower the TUs even further, while also dropping the damage.

[*]MG - I feel these need some work ... if you're a beginner, MGs are pretty rubbish. If you're an experienced player who knows how to use them properly, they're by far the best weapons in the game even before you get your hands on the Predator. I think replacing them with a LMG that uses the same caliber round as the rifle would probably help balance.

Either reduce the damage per hit to the same as an assault rifle (like the SAW), but retaining a high firing rate OR make the ammo so heavy that a second person is required to crew the LMG and it takes one full turn of setup before it can fire. A "real" LMG is really a two man weapon. But, compared to an assault rifle it should have nearly twice the range and a lot more hitting power, however, they are HEAVY and the ammo is HEAVY. If you go with the HEAVY option they should do about the same damage as a sniper rifle per hit. A SAW is useable by one man because it uses assault rifle ammo, but it still works like an LMG as far as firing rate and accuracy (mostly.)

[*]Rocket Launcher - these also need some work because the auto-upgrade nature of their ammunition means they upgrade for free, unlike every other class of weapon.

Pretty good now, however, the ability to fire smoke and white phosphorus rockets plus what they have now would awesome. It will would also make them more useful than the current version. A white phosphorus (WP) rocket would be combo smoke and fire rocket. However, the fire part would be limited to random hexes in the smoke radius. This would also give us type of flamethrower without having to actually add a whole new weapon. Maybe this would partially negate regeneration? You've already got fire mechanics in the game so this wouldn't be a lot of code.

[*]Grenades - underpowered and overpowered at once; they don't do as much damage as you'd expect but they are AOE weapons and you can carry a lot of them so they're actually very effective if you spam them en-masse

Add white phosphorus (WP) version. Consider a proximity grenade OR some other type of area denial weapon that a soldier can place, drop, throw. You could also add a proximity fuse to a demo charge, that would make them far more useful.

Ballistics:

[*]Alien materials can be consumed to give them damage upgrades (although they'll never rival more advanced tech in terms of damage)

So, maybe an alien metal bullet that has better penetration against armor?

Lasers:

[*]Much higher damage than ballistics but have a high TU cost to fire. Disagree, should do less, but have incredible accuracy at least in the earlier versions. In later versions obviously damage will be much more OR maybe firing rate is really high so it does a lot of damage a little bit at a time. Also, lasers probably won't have much suppression ability since the enemy wouldn't know they were under fire unless something nearby is hit and they see or hear it. Also, getting hit with laser is more like having a small explosion on the skin of the target. Maybe give them a chance to stun, blind, or knock target down? I think laser tech should upgradable throughout the game and should be able to rival MAG, but with entirely different combat characteristics. Also, laser should have good chance of starting fires, but not causing immediate incendiary damage like plasma.

Armour:

Consider adding upgrades that allow the soldier to see, hear and fight more effectively, in addition to strength, protection, and movement effects. Some type of sensors would be a great addition to armor. Like a built in proximity detector, night vision, sound detectors allow you to determine a rough direction of targets or maybe even a "sniffer" that allows you to detect enemy "footsteps" that are fresh. These upgrades would be separate from the actual armor, but once researched would be added to all armors from that point on.

Chris: I've added some comments for my thoughts.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

Reapers can be baited by flying soldiers, or soldiers on a roof. The stupid bugs come running to get you even though they can't reach you. If that's not an option, don't spread your soldiers, keep them together and watching all possible directions, sometimes its better to wait for them to show up and take reaction instead of moving forward and find them in a terrible position.

This is also solid advice. I should point out that flying soldiers aren't available for a while, but you can still put soldiers on a roof the old fashioned way.

[New player, got quite a few questions...]

I find three bases to be sufficient. With three radars installed and between three and six aircraft at each base you can control most of the Earth effectively.

[Xenonauts 2 - Strategic Scale]

Chris: I like this line of thought. The idea of a "hybrid" XCom like game has always appealed to me and it's completely logical. If you going to go with a strategic scale this large I suggest that you add naval forces to the game (carriers to handle interceptors) and ground based AA systems (missiles and artillery) to guard cities, bases, etc... Obviously, standard tech systems will be mostly ineffective against anything much larger than a scout ship, but it's better than no defense (until they are upgraded with tech breakthroughs.) Using the Xenonauts as elite special forces to carry out the "final mission" and recover aliens/ships for tech research would still be great, but you'd also have the big picture to keep in mind. Also, I think the loss of areas should cost you production and research "points", but it should be possible to win them back too (maybe by sheer force or destroying the regional alien command center with Xenonauts?) Breaking the map down into many more regions so the world can be lost or saved gradually would be excellent also.

[Unable to Breach UFO Fighter w/o heavy casualties..]

Gaming mechanics 101:

You can issue orders while the grenade is in flight. Thus, if you are quick enough, you can close the door before the dirty xenos scum get their chance at a reaction roll.

Yes, Commissar Cheater, you can do that too...

[Unable to Breach UFO Fighter w/o heavy casualties..]

First, carefully arrange your team so you have a light machinegun set up (and behind cover if possible) to fire straight through the doors when they open. Have troops with shotguns, pistols, and flashbangs ready go from the sides of the doorway. Wait at least one turn everyone has full movement available. Next, have one of the side guys with a pistol or shotgun open the UFO door then either step back or charge in off to the side and take cover. Third the light machinegun fire a burst at the aliens standing near the doorway. This should suppress or kill most of them. Have one or two of you guys throw flashbangs at the aliens that aren't suppressed yet. Finally, have the rest of your guys charge in shotguns and pistols and kill the aliens. Even if you can't kill them all on the turn you breach the UFO you should be able to get in can take up covered positions to continue the fight. The main trick is to make sure the breaching action starts with your troops having their full movement allowances available as close to the hatch as possible and using suppression to prevent the aliens from reaction firing.

There is an example of this on a smaller UFO in my beginners guide:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/45esdbi8ns...nners.pdf?dl=0

Just keep in mind that for larger UFOs (cruisers, etc...) the tactics are a little different. On those I general blow the doors with C4 and engage from outside before I even try to move inside the UFO. It destroys some internal equipment, but it's impossible to sweep a big UFO in one or two turns, so you have to approach it differently.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

New to this. How do I deal with reapers at night?

Rule #1: Never take a night mission unless there is absolutely no choice. You can usually wait (even on a terror mission) to time your arrival at the crack of dawn.

Failing rule #1: Your best bet against Reapers day or night is a vehicle, IMO. They are completely immune to reapers. You just have to keep it alive through the mission. Using a vehicle to spot and possibly kill Reapers is definitely my recommendation.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

In my opinion, that's would partially true - reaction fire right now is a harsh dose of 'reality' to players. As a game mechanic it's rather unfair though because it is generally useless to players, and only useful to aliens.

Thank you for not dismissing the entire writing. Please note that if you look at the text I specify that HIGH reaction soldiers should be given high reaction fire weapon (perhaps indirectly I will admit), like shotguns and pistols. Reaction fire does work even in the early game IF the soldiers have the good reflex score AND a reaction multiplier weapons like a shotgun or pistol. In the early game an alien that is dumb enough to jump out of his ship WILL be shot by someone with a shotgun or pistol and a good reflex score standing outside the door.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

I agree with him on a lot of these points though. You're surely gonna have a really bad time positioning your troops out of cover like that, and relying on reaction fire. On Insane difficulty, you don't even want to take cover. If you're seen by aliens without smoke then you're pretty much dead. Your only hope of surviving is staying out of alien LOS, even if it means clustering up your troops (of course, the risk of being grenaded is real - but that depends on some other situational conditions too.)

Though since this is meant to be for beginners, I can still see a lot of its merits on lower difficulties.

Well, I do note that it's OK to bunch up if you have good cover like behind building. Also, the V formation was supposed to show you a way to move across open areas. That really wasn't as open as I wanted, but I had to have a map to play on to do the screenshots, so I made do with the one that came up. You are right that I wrote this for beginners doing the first couple recoveries on a light scout. I assumed a beginner would probably play on veteran level or less. It was never intended to cover anything beyond that. Once the maps get harder I usually rely on vehicles to do my scouting so the need to move across unexplored open ground with troops is greatly reduced and I can adopt a much more cover to cover approach for movement. My approach and choice of weapons is completely different for terror missions than it is for a recovery map just as an example.

I would like to see how other people play sometime though. The way I've learned how seems to work for me, but I'm sure there are other ways that would surprise me if I saw them in action.

[Ground Combat Guide For Beginners]

Well, I only lost one soldier on the mission that the graphics came from and that was because I was trying to create a manual and not paying strict attention to everything I normally would. So, I don't know what to say about your comments. I rarely lose more than one soldier per mission and a lot of the time I don't lose any.

[I'm Not At All Good at Xenonauts :(]

Have three bases (including your starting base), one in Egypt, one in Cuba, one in Japan and make sure you have at least two Condors and two MIGs at each base. Each base should have three radars. This will take at least a couple months. The first additional base can usually be started in month one or the beginning of month two, the second will take longer. Shoot down everything you can with your large air force. You don't need to go to every crash site. Getting your air force up to size ASAP and running a smart air campaign to maintain air superiority is key to maintain good relations with the funding regions. You should be shooting down over 2/3's of UFOs that come down. I've come close to 100% by month four (it gets a lot harder after that, but 2/3 is still possible.) They don't care too much about how you're doing in ground combat. Air strike at least 1/2 the crash sites specially the small UFOs you've already researched. This adds to nation relations. In fact, you can get by with only recovering the first model of each type of alien ship AND taking any landed ship, corsair size on larger in ground combat to capture materials. Of course, you must respond to any terror sites if it's at all possible.

Also, once you've lost a funding nation you can't get them back, ever.

[I need ideas for realistic base names and locations.]

US bases are usually named after famous people or nearby landmarks, so it should be pretty easy to generate US type names just by looking at a map or list of famous people.

[Leonard Nimoy crosses the Final Frontier]

I prefer to hear my shows in the original Klingon!

[[v1.5 Stable CANDIDATE 4 - Ground Combat] Gassed Soldier Wakes Up?]

When you say wounded, you mean any loss of health points, or do you mean a critical wound where there's a loss of 5 health per turn?

I have, on desperate occasions, stunned a Xenonaut to save him from alien attack, and then later revive him to continue fighting in the same battle.

Any loss of health points. You used to be able to spend action points healing a solider with no wounds, so if he was stunned you could revive him. Now, I think, it's no longer possible to spend points with the med kit on a soldier that isn't physically wounded. So, no, I'm no just talking about bleeding. (But, a bleeding soldier by default has to have taken physical damage.)

[[v1.5 Stable CANDIDATE 4 - Ground Combat] Gassed Soldier Wakes Up?]

V1.5, candidate 4

I have been unable to treat stunned soldiers with medikits. This was not a problem prior to Version 1.5. Anyone else experiencing this issue? (Or am I doing it wrong? )

I think you are right. I believe if the soldier isn't wounded it's no longer possible to spend action points using the med kit on them. It is a bug.

[How often do soldier hires cycle?]

One thing to keep in mind about all this is that the first set of soldiers you get is above average, so you need to keep them alive if possible. The ones you hire later won't be as good on the average.

[Our Next Big Game: Pathfinders (Working Title)]

...We do have a relatively playable prototype but we won't be releasing that...

That's still pretty impressive! Someone has learned a lot!

[Has anyone played JA2:Flashback, if so, what is your opinion?]

I have played it a little but not really long enough to form a proper opinion.

So far I have enjoyed it though... Not much to add until I get more than two or three missions in

Thanks. Please post when you have an opinion. I'm interested in buying it, but the comments I've seen so far haven't been too favorable.