ThoseDeafMutes
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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.
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On 30/10/2016 at 2:05 AM, Chris said:
Thanks. Looking at the screenshot I realise that I need to check if the font is set to scale up with resolution on the loading screen; I suspect it isn't intended to be that small. I'll look into it on Monday anyways.
EDIT - as a general note, doing a screenshot with resized text for the UI is a standing offer for anyone who thinks the fonts are too small anywhere. It's hard for me to know what the "correct" size is when enlarging fonts, because I'm perfectly happy with the default sizes.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I like this $120,000,000 painting because it both sums up my reaction to your post and illustrates the concept of personal taste
In any case, Xenonauts 2 is largely 3D so your personal tastes in 2D art won't matter as much as they did for Xenonauts 1.
More relevant version:
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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.
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+1
Points I especially like:
– Ballistic assault rifle remaining the most versatile weapon in the game. Weapon attachments and multiple types of ammunition would help keep it feeling fresh.
– Lasers deal little damage unless you focus fire for a long time, eating TUs. Perhaps pulse lasers could have really good armor penetration?
Reasoning:
Pulse laser
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate.[1] This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing a number of different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode.
In other cases the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up in between pulses. In laser ablation for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a work piece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, whereas supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point.
– Plasma having terrible range.
Because plasma weapons would have such poor range, should the aliens get other forms of weaponry for longer range things?
(Needlers?
)I don't like Plasma weapons for mainly realism purposes, but I understand most people will not be so pedantic in a game about an alien invasion in the 1970's, lol. The main issue is that plasma needs to be contained magnetically to prevent it from diffusing into a harmless gas as it expands and cools quickly due to the basic tendency of compact, hot things to do just that. If you propel it so fast that it can hit the target prior to expanding, then it's travelling at higher-than-bullet velocities (assuming range of hundreds of meters, as an assault rifle has) and will probably do more mechanical damage than thermal. If it travels at a slow speed, it needs to keep being contained at least most of its journey to the target. If you can project magnetic fields long distances, the question becomes why isn't your gun just a large magnetic field projector that rips your opponent's metal objects apart like you're magneto tearing up the X-men. Magnetic fields to contain super-hot plasma aren't weak!
The expected gains of such a weapon are pretty marginal. Lasers will also heat things, pulsed lasers will drill through them, magnetic weapons will penetrate them at very high velocity. It's a common SF trope, but not a plausible one.
My personal preference for "ultimate alien gun" would be one of two directions depending on how exotic/out there you wanted to go. Very exotic would be what I kind of mentioned above - remote force gun, rips things to shreds at a distance by manipulating fundamental forces remotely. It's not a gun in a conventional sense really, but it would be conceptually powerful. It's not realistic at all, but if you're explaining hyperdrives and such then you can feel free to include concept like this as part of a package deal.
Conventional "ultimate alien gun" would be something like a neutral particle beam (discussion and detailed information included). Particle accelerator fires a stream of particles at relativistic speeds. If you fire non-charged particles it will be less subject to deflection as it travels through the air, although it also makes it complicated to try to accelerate them. If sufficiently powerful, these could essentially make your targets explode like it's a Bruce Willis Movie and everything is made of TNT. Massive energy deposit, but also requires massive energy expenditure.
Pulsed lasers would act more like conventional guns for sure although there's not much reason why conceptually a gun couldn't do both pulses and beaming in one weapon. For that reason you might consider pulsed lasers an upgrade on beam lasers that comes later in the game, if you wanted to have that. They could still have the "extremely reliable to-hit chance that builds up over time" option with those guns if you wanted reliable damage, sort of like an "autofire" option.
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If you wanted to make the classes feel distinct we need to make them wildly different in operation, not just vary their damage and penetration bonuses.
Laser weapons have no recoil and can be used to ignite explosives and set small fires at very long range with 100% accuracy. They hit enemies with extremely high probability, but do little damage. If you spend two fire actions, they do more damage. Three fire actions they do even more again. The damage and penetration accelerates to represent the laser dwelling on its target and burning a hole through it. Spending your whole turn firing does lots of damage, but racing around a corner doing a snap shot doesn't do much at all. So while it is not strictly an "MG", this continuous beam laser would be best utilized in a completely different way to a regular assault rifle. Would there even be a "sniper" variant? Probably not, as the basic rifle is fairly good range and accuracy. Probably no shotgun variant either.
Plasma weapons replicated by humans are shorter range and kind of "shotgun like" to represent the extreme blooming that is caused when you can't remotely generate magnetic fields to contain the plasma blasts. They fan out very quickly and become inert. Advanced plasma weapons might have longer ranges but the earliest ones you can create are very focussed on near term combat. Since their primary mode of damage is thermal they too have poor penetration, but fire in a more conventional way than the lasers do.
Mag weapons would lack rapid fire capabilities, but have extreme penetration and excellent accuracy. No auto-fire, not even on the AR variant. Also possible that the mags take a long time for their capacitors to build up between shots, and so you can only fire the AR variant twice per turn, and you can only fire the sniper variant once per turn.
There could be upgrades on the laser and plasma weapons - the Lasers get "pulsed lasers", which allow you to build lasers that do damage up front but don't get dwell bonuses. They have good rapid fire capabilities though. The plasmas get longer range variants as you research advanced magnetic containment technology. Mags get increased power generation and more juice in their capacitors to allow more refires per turn.
Each weapon would supplement, but not replace Balistic weapons. As I stated in a previous post, ballistics might have research to give you more effective ammunition fired from the conventional guns that are more optimized to penetrate and deal damage to aliens. That would be their "upgrade". The Ballistic AR would remain the most versatile weapon in the game. Rocket launchers wouldn't ever be obsolete although maybe they could get some kind of upgrade too. But your close range gunners would want plasma rifles, you'd want Lasers to set up kill zones (as you use MGs for now a lot of the time) and take advantage of environmental destruction, and mag weapons for long range precision work or overpenetrating cover. Then some enemies would be more vulnerable to thermal damage (Plasma, Laser), others to balistic damage (Conventional, Mags) to further differentiate.
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RE: Psionics via implants, I'd probably be most happy if all psionics required it. Like there is some alien technology to remotely generate small EM fields not powerful enough to physically lift and throw things but subtle enough to interface with other brains and possibly even computers remotely with sufficient software and user skill. Psychic powers as a technological invention that could not naturally evolve makes more sense to me than the usual vaguely mystical and unexplained conventional psychic phenomena. It's more like an effector from the Culture series than Uri Geller.
It could require both significant concentration on the part of the user and also literal energy from an internal reservoir to give the juice for the machine's operation. Replenished automatically over time or by consumable items, ultimately the designer's call.
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Probably not worth the effort since I'm the only person who cares, but the Chrysalid -> zombie -> spawns new Chrysalid thing always annoyed me in Xcom and now xenonauts because it seemed to act way too fast and defies conservation of mass and stuff. It's pretty horrific which is totally the point, but I always felt it would be more plausible if the gestation period for baby reapers was not on the tactical scale, and they just spawned zombie-type units instead of zombies that burst into other reapers seconds later. Lore wise it might take several hours to convert, which is still damn fast.
RE: making them their own race with pilots and such, I'm not sure that's necessary tbh.
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Personally I'd prefer it just be an outright remake of the first game. As long as the game is different and improved greatly, it does not matter if the story is not a linear continuation. Some of my favorite games are the Paradox Grand Strategy games, the sequels don't advance the timeline every time, they always cover the same events and mostly the same period with updated gameplay. That's a perfectly ok thing to do! These games are primarily enjoyed because of their gameplay, not the plot, which is merely a serviceable fiction designed as an excuse for why we're here fighting aliens. You can retcon and change the aliens, you can change the plot, but you don't have to be a slave to continuity.
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The feeling of being overpowered by the enemy even if they've not got a clear shot on you is kinda intentional. This isn't a gun fight, these are aliens, they don't just have advanced weapons, they have magic 'in your head' mind powers. If they are just shooting you then they aren't that fearsome.
I'm not commenting on whether or not its intention, I'm saying I hate it and hope I can overcome this through researching a technological device to protect soldiers from them. Or at least the soldiers with garbage psi defense but good stats otherwise. Berzerking or mind control is SO powerful when it happens, panic / terror is potent but not like a total disaster if it happens.
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Adding them is fine, I just hope there's a way I can just get "psi shields" to put in my dudes inventories so I can just ignore them for the rest of the game lol. I hate hate hate getting berzerked, it feels so random like there was nothing I could do to defend against it if my dudes end a turn in sight of an enemy.
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Cross posting from the weapon thread since it relates to scale:
The 4 weapon tiers is fairly simple and straight forward conceptually, although I've never been happy with plasma weapons in the xcom and derivative games (because I'm aware of how impractical they are in the real world) and in xenonauts specifically with how it ranked magnetic accelerator weapons as the top tier. Not that I think they should be bad, it just felt odd to outstrip the aliens after replicating their technology so fast.Conceptually, I think an interesting progression might be as follows:
You begin with conventional human ballistic weapons (obviously). We then split into two trees of weapons
1. "Unlimited" weapons. This group consists of weapons that the xenonauts and humanity in general have the technological capacity to replicate without access to rare resources.
1.1 Optimised human weapons - Requires autopsies to unlock research. Basically consists of earth technology using non-standard calibres and special kinds of ammunition (perhaps using more expensive but effective metals) specifically tuned to killing the aliens we're facing, rather than humans.
1.2 Magnetic weapons - Requires mid-game research into alien power sources.
2. "Limited" / reconstructed / frankestein weapons. This group requires limited alien resources, or are constructed themselves using alien weapon parts.
2.1 Laser weaponry - Requires alien weapon power sources, but actually use a lot of human technology too. The alien weapons refuse to work for humans and will usually self destruct, but the use of alenium as a power source allows for much more powerful power generation required to actually destroy targets with energy transfer rather than momentum (as in the magnetic technology).
2.2 Plasma weaponry - Requires in-tact alien weapons and later research. These weapons are essentially "rebuilt" plasma guns from the aliens, de-constructed and put back together to bypass their security features and put human ergonomics on them.
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A rough idea for the tempo would be - Optimised human weapons first, then Lasers, then mags, then plasmas. You may or may not actually need to construct the OHW / MAGs, they could actually be straight upgrades in the same way that new explosive technologies magically upgraded all your missiles without needing the engineers. The limited weapons would be used for your elite soldiers, and would need to be constructed using highly limited resources at your disposal.
A semi related idea is that part of the Xenonauts duty (and the increased scale of the game) is to share some technology and help the countries of the world defend themselves against the aliens. To that end, replicable technology like the mag weapons would eventually proliferate into the hands of local forces to give them a boost.
The R&D team should be preparing the rest of the world while they're developing technology to help the Xenonauts themselves. That way, we can help some of the internal logic stuff in the game, because as stated in the OP, you're just the elite strike force, not the whole world's only line of defence. Developing less effective tech that can be used just with human materials helps the world a lot more than developing supersolider armor for 5 soldiers on your squad does, and will help the world keep pace with the escalating alien threat.
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Yep happens for me too. No idea why. On Win 7 and Win 10.
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The 4 weapon tiers is fairly simple and straight forward conceptually, although I've never been happy with plasma weapons in the xcom and derivative games (because I'm aware of how impractical they are in the real world) and in xenonauts specifically with how it ranked magnetic accelerator weapons as the top tier. Not that I think they should be bad, it just felt odd to outstrip the aliens after replicating their technology so fast.
Conceptually, I think an interesting progression might be as follows:
You begin with conventional human ballistic weapons (obviously). We then split into two trees of weapons
1. "Unlimited" weapons. This group consists of weapons that the xenonauts and humanity in general have the technological capacity to replicate without access to rare resources.
1.1 Optimised human weapons - Requires autopsies to unlock research. Basically consists of earth technology using non-standard calibres and special kinds of ammunition (perhaps using more expensive but effective metals) specifically tuned to killing the aliens we're facing, rather than humans.
1.2 Magnetic weapons - Requires mid-game research into alien power sources.
2. "Limited" / reconstructed / frankestein weapons. This group requires limited alien resources, or are constructed themselves using alien weapon parts.
2.1 Laser weaponry - Requires alien weapon power sources, but actually use a lot of human technology too. The alien weapons refuse to work for humans and will usually self destruct, but the use of alenium as a power source allows for much more powerful power generation required to actually destroy targets with energy transfer rather than momentum (as in the magnetic technology).
2.2 Plasma weaponry - Requires in-tact alien weapons and later research. These weapons are essentially "rebuilt" plasma guns from the aliens, de-constructed and put back together to bypass their security features and put human ergonomics on them.
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A rough idea for the tempo would be - Optimised human weapons first, then Lasers, then mags, then plasmas. You may or may not actually need to construct the OHW / MAGs, they could actually be straight upgrades in the same way that new explosive technologies magically upgraded all your missiles without needing the engineers. The limited weapons would be used for your elite soldiers, and would need to be constructed using highly limited resources at your disposal.
A semi related idea is that part of the Xenonauts duty (and the increased scale of the game) is to share some technology and help the countries of the world defend themselves against the aliens. To that end, replicable technology like the mag weapons would eventually proliferate into the hands of local forces to give them a boost.
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I supported the first, and I would support a second.
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Vis a vis making the invasion feel bigger, there could be strategic ground operations in addition to the normal tactical ones. By which I mean there would be missions on the "geoscape" which require the allocation of large scale conventional formations. The US army deploys two combat divisions to fight off something going on that the small elite Xenonauts team is not designed to face. Imagine if "attacking the Alien base" consisted of both a strategic and tactical component - you allocate a mechanized division to draw out the alien forces in a frontal attack, while the Xenonauts team infiltrates the base to destroy it from the inside. That kind of thing. It would be extremely abstract and more like a resource management component with you moving a few counters around on the big world map for different missions.
It wouldn't need to be super complex, but it might be neat. It would give oyu something to do while you were just "waiting for UFOs to show up" or "waiting for research to finish". Strategic formations would move on the broader map and be allocated to things like "locate base" duty, or sent along the border with other countries as a show of force to increase influence. If the aliens infiltrate a country and sign a treaty with them, you may be required to allocate some of your strategic forces to "invade" them, which ties down those formations and takes funding over a fairly long period in game. I mean I'm just spitballing here, and this is waaaay beond the scope of the original game. But if you were inclined to include a strategic system like this it really would feel like a global invasion. When I won my first game of Xenonauts it was like "Number of casualties: a few thousand" or something absurd for a legit invasion of the globe
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ANDRONS (sorry for shouting I'm using crappy metro IE right now and autocorrect refuses to shut off) could be made more visually distinct rather than just being humanoids. Since they are not infiltration models there is no reason for them to be shaped exactly like a human really. You could make them more like walking tanks if you wanted. Designed for maximum efficiency in armour (boxy shapes have higher volume to surface area ratios than irregular, spread out shapes like human bodies, meaning less armour to protect more internal mass, ammunition etc). Think less T-800, more AT-ST or Gecko from Metal Gear Solid. It's ultimately an art decision though and I know that nobody is going to draw a cube with legs and think "wow, this highly efficient but completely ugly design is just what my game needs".
If you want some interesting aesthetic decisions you could make for aliens, I have a few options to consider. The first is abandoning bilateral symmetry for a species. The following images are artists renditions of the "Moties", the species from the brilliant SciFi novel "The Mote in God's Eye". I highly recommend reading it in general, although I digress.
http://abload.de/img/motiedemonmoteingodse0oluk.jpg
http://abload.de/img/motiepensketch9bann.jpg
These species were once more conventionally shaped, but engineered themselves into specific castes over successive generations and modified themselves to deal with technology. The two smaller hands are supposed to provide precision and dexterity while the larger hand is for strength.
In the general case I would recommend reading this utterly fantastic and endlessly fascinating resource, "Atomic Rockets", whose page on Aliens can be found here:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php
Background research and food for thought on linguistics can be found on this page:
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/lingo.html
Obviously I understand that you're not going to include whole fictional alien languages. But it can provide a bit of flavour text for research / interrogations and such, with the briefings acknowledging the challenges of mutual intelligibility.
The same author has a database of different kinds of alien physiologies / shapes here that may be inspirational also:
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/exo/
Hopefully this has been at least slightly helpful.
(Side note: I would be happy to see no psi powers making an appearance, ever. I know it's just SF and its a common trope but they're constantly irritating and I also hate them from a science perspective).
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I'm not sure how I feel about strike team vs strike team combat, or rather the idea that the USSR and USA would come to blows while there is such a vast threat going on. The competition aspect is very plausible, but it would be that - competition for preeminence in the post-alien world, analogous to the same struggles that the two sides faced in World War II against the common Nazi threat. There was direct cooperation on matters of intelligence, technology, war material and so on. They did not fully cooperate as much as they could, and both kept some cards close to their chest. This makes sense. In the late war years, they also were deliberately positioning themselves to "liberate" as much of the world as they possibly could, and were trading territorial spheres of influence to their own advantage. For example, the USSR agreed to stop at a specific point in Korea during their eastern offensive, on the understanding that doing so gave them more political leverage in Europe for the postwar settlement.
Perhaps USSR vs USA direct combat could be more of a late game thing, where the defeat of the Alien threat has either happened or seems plausible / imminent?
On the subject of technology and timeline:
It would be nice if the game could run for longer. It feels super weird that in the space of 1-2 years we've gone from zero to reverse engineered alien supertech and UFOs etc. X-com and Xenonauts are reminiscent of the Stargate series in that way (yes I understand the game came before the TV show). I'm not totally sure of the specifics but it would be cool to have a rebalancing so that it took longer to fully understand some of this stuff and replicate it.
Regarding technology, it would also be super sweet if each country had its own technology level and research going on. Only the other major power would make a lot of breakthroughs, but occasional small breakthroughs might happen in India or Yugoslavia or Nigeria or whatnot. There could be a sort of "technology spread" mechanic, where breakthroughs that happen are sort of semi-globalized. This would also give a more plausible feel to how technology is developing - it's not just coming from 1 or 2 specialised team, people the world over are working on some of these problems. Technology developed by the Xenonauts themselves could be sold on the market to countries, even to their Superpower rival, but while this engenders good will it also makes it impossible to keep this technology out of the hands of your superpower rival.
I guess you could also theoretically split technology into "Directed Research" and "Theoretical Breakthroughs". Essentially, tell a team of scientists to figure out some crazy alien gun you found. They will find out how to operate it, and will learn some things about it. But they will not crack its fundamental principle of operation. However, after research on Antimatter and this crazy gun have been done, and three or four months have passed, some genius scientist in a random country that had access to this research makes a theoretical breakthrough that lets you fully understand the operation of the weapon and the power source. This allows you to help control the pace of breakthroughs, and prevents you from beelining the best techs straight away even if you have the artifacts you need. It also gives an incentive (in terms of defeating the aliens) to share some research more broadly, because the sum total of public knowledge increases the rate of various theoretical breakthroughs and allows humanity as a whole to fight more effectively.
Sorry if I'm rambling
Other thoughts:
- What if the USA / USSR invaded countries that made pacts with the Aliens? This is internal human fighting that drains resources from the cause as a whole, and therefore you want to prevent it from happening. On the other hand, maybe you want this to happen in a country that the other superpower has a stake in if your country is in a position to invade.
Nah probably too convoluted / complicated.- Cooperation vs Competition as a theme of the game. Joint ops with Soviet and American forces in some cases would be a possibility. Joint ops with various other local forces too. You'd have "hawks" and "doves" championing both causes in your country perhaps.
- Please delete references to "Clips" and replace with "Magazines" for human firearms. I know this was raised in development for the first game but for the love of doge please don't torment me so
- Gauss/railguns as the final tech felt a bit odd.
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In my opinion sebs are regenning too much health ATM. Although come to think of it... BRB must perform SCIENCE and exploit game mechanics.
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.
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The question you need to ask yourself though is what would night vision goggles do to change that?
It would either make night missions into just another day mission, or just reduce the night effect slightly.
The first is boring, the second is much easier to do as a balance change, just by tweaking the darkness effect.
Either way how would that also effect the aliens?
Should they automatically ignore darkness to compensate for those times when you bring night vision?
That also makes night vision goggles essential or night missions become even worse when you don't bring them as aliens see (and shoot) you from well outside the range you have any chance at all to react to them.
If aliens are still relatively blind when you have night vision then you will be shooting fish in a barrel.
Either way the balance is completely broken.
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.
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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.
>_>
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in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
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.