ThoseDeafMutes

I feel like there's solid potential for unlocking recon runs that last 1 turn as features for good funding relations with regions. I don't really like not knowing the basic layout of a city we just landed in though. Fog of war makes sense but a vague idea of building layout would help.

In OG X-Com, you could manufacture alien alloys. This is a feature that wasn't present in Xenonauts (I can't remember how nuXCom did it). This did get me thinking about whether it would make sense for there to be certain types of weapons that truly require alien resources, and certain types that can be "built" with domestic earth technology. For instance, you might be able to study Alien Alloys and this allows you to produce an inferior (but still quite good) "advanced human alloy" for lack of a better term. This would be the basis for the first tier of weapon plating upgrades, and would represent the kind of technology that can widely proliferate globally, because it does not require extremely rare and limited Alien Alloys that can only be found in UFOs. Similarly, I was thinking it might make sense to have the earliest tier of "proliferatable" technology be simply optimized human technology. For example, you study the first alien corpses and busted up equipment, and you are able to get to experimenting on what existing technology might work better than off the shelf stuff. This might conclude, for example, that feeding denser tungsten ammunition out of higher calibre weapons is better suited to fighting them. So instead of M16s with Steel ammo, you're now switching to a 7.62x51mm weapon with dense ammunition for your infantry. This then changes your ballistic weapons for "free" (because it's existing off the shelf tech for the most part) and act as your first basic upgrade on the early weeks of the game. It might also be interesting to have these maintained as kind of parallel research tracks - you're choosing whether it makes more sense to focus in on getting your elite troops equipped with the very latest tech, or whether it might make sense to take a research detour into upgrading local forces with some less powerful but mass producible technology. The Xenonauts could still use this stuff in some ways because your rookies may not have enough plasma rifles to go around. An example of the parallel research might be that top tier alien-based guns are Plasma, but top tier human-derived guns are Gauss, which may not actually be superior as it is in X1, but in fact a bit worse, but is cheap and easier for humans to make. Your rookies would be running in with mag-weapons and human-alloy armor, while your elite troops would be running in with alien based exosuits and plasma rifles.

In general, it would be best if the UI scaled to a percentage size on the screen, rather than to a specific resolution. That way even if someone in the far future using a 32k resolution monitor is playing, they'll be able to run it no worries. People range from 768p to 4k screens today, which is a huge gulf to cover. Vector images for UI elements are ideal, but even just primitive scaling of 2D assets is better than nothing.

In theory, DLC is most cost effective when you can have it out not long after launch, when the largest number of people are playing the game. In general companies tend to have artists work on cosmetic DLC starting when the game has gone feature/content complete and is in bug fixing mode, allowing them to keep working to produce content that can go live day 1 or possibly shortly after launch. On the one hand, I don't like a lot of DLC practices, but on the other hand, you're a small developer who probably needs a bit of a cash boost. As long as it's not too scummy, I don't think people will mind if you release a couple of song packs or bonus character models or something.

Hi Chris, Is there any chance that the game will be designed to scale to arbitrary resolutions in a variety of aspect ratios? Xenonauts 1 wouldn't run properly on my Surface Book because it is a 3000 x 2000 (3:2 ratio) screen. I could still play it on my desktop PC which runs 1080p, but it would have been nice to run it on the go without having to change desktop resolution and stuff on my laptop.

I loved the art in Xenonauts. I really appreciated that most of the people looked normal and that it went for a mostly realistic look. In a strange way it helps the game stand out against a lot of other games that are trying really hard to burst at the seams with personality and uniqueness.

More relevant version:

The time limits and pod system are directly related to each other. The pod system encourages extremely defensive overwatch camping because catching the enemies in your sights like that is powerful, while activating multiple pods in the process of offensive manouvering is extremely dangerous. The time limits exist to force you to play more aggressively despite this encouragement to play defensively. If the game was balanced around the idea of the aliens operating as a coherent team overall, rather than as a series of tiny pods that it is optimal to tackle one at a time, then this would be a non-existent issue. The foot note here is that a more mechanically complete system would be able to handle stealth outside of a binary concealed / not concealed switch, and that could be a real boon to an X-com style game. Would be cool to have a variety of missions where you could plausibly stealth them to achieve an objective, or use late game alien communication jammers to isolate enemies and prevent them calling reinforcements or throwing up an alarm. I mean these aren't stealth games implicitly, but that's one take you could do on the genre.

Yep happens for me too. No idea why. On Win 7 and Win 10.

I supported the first, and I would support a second.

Sebillian regeneration is ludicrous, I tossed two plasma charges into the bridge of a UFO, hit everything, killed nothing, by the time I stormed in next turn they were all back at nearly-full health like I hadn't done anything. You could probably halve the regeneration rate and the game would be better for it.

Night vision could have been an equipped item that takes weight in your kit, and does not perfectly replicate day vision, but significantly reduces the vision penalty. But really, think of it less in terms of how it's different from a day mission for your men and more in terms of the design opportunities you might have had for aliens. Certain species could be very effective at night, and less so during the day and vice versa. Smaller scale "night" stuff could have been replicated by using building interiors to cut the power for flushing out aliens. This is by no means easily moddible, I'm just trying to give you an idea of the sorts of ways that night time and darkness could have been approached outside of just reduced vision. I don't think it's boring to not have night missions actually, btw. When playing the '94 X-Com I use mod stuff to actually remove night missions from the game because I think they're so awful.

ARRRG. I come to this mission kitted out in full capture gear. There is a tooltip at the start of the mission "woah there's a leader!" Storm the ship. Leader corpse is already lying on the ground. >_>

Thanks. So it's only two races that get Leaders. I'm pretty sure I've blasted one of those before without realizing it was any different.

There was a tooltip or something that said you are 20% harder to hit while crouched. I've never noticed a major difference in survivability personally. It certainly doesn't feel like you can "crouch behind cover" to actually conceal yourself or anything like that.

I'm an X-Com vet but I'm having trouble finding an Alien Leader. How do I tell when I've found one? Officers are clearly different, do they just look like Officers but a different colour or something? Do I have to raid a base to find them? I thought I did capture a base leader alive but it wound up being an officer I'm feeling pretty F'ing stupid that I can't seem to work it out. And just to clarify, are electro grenades working properly? I notice they also do some real damage and I'm worried I might be killing people rather than capturing.

I hope someone mods it in, night missions were always terrible

I dunno, why do people sometimes not use burst fire in real life? There's nothing implicitly wrong with burst fire being the default firing mode for the rifle. Maybe single shot for precision work at long range so as not to waste ammunition. The game would still work if you'd designed it the other way around with burst fire in mind.

My first terror site actually appeared in Tokyo, and Indochina was about to pull out. It was a hail mary, so I sent the transport, but it got there like 4 hours after the new month and I lost indochina ;_;

And flares / incendiary weapons could almost act like flashbangs to them. But realism is less important than game balance. Although I find Sebilians really annoying because their allegedly poor eyesight doesn't seem to stop them from sniping my guys miles away, and apparently the most elite fighting force on Earth in the year 1979 doesn't have access to night vision goggles.

Day Xenonauts

As you can see, it's reporting a negative number on the unassigned screen. Previously it was reporting only 4 unassigned when I had 6 unassigned in truth. I'm not sure if this came before or after I told two soldiers to transfer from another base but I think that could have caused issues since they haven't arrived yet.

Nearly my whole library is on Steam, so I'll be playing the Steam version. It's just simpler when I don't have to log into multiple services to get access to my collection. Plus, I get steam overlay in game by default and it tracks how long I spend with it.

I support the change to Magazines where appropriate. I'm consistently shocked with how many games, movies etc still get it wrong, given that Clips vs Magazines is practically an internet meme at this point. I will pay 10 dollars for DLC that alters the game to correctly refer to them as "magazines". Not even joking.