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Skitso

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Posts posted by Skitso

    [experimental 5.7. tactical] Soldier extraction mission briefing has wrong victory effects

    in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Kouki said:

    Yeah, the briefcase of cash is supposed to reflect on the monetary reward but the UI doesn't really work well for that. We're planning to change part of the UI to better accommodate rewards that come in items (like the briefcases), but that might come a bit later in time as our UI artist has a lot of work lined up for them at the moment!

    For the cash reward itself though, this might be a genuine bug, I thought the briefcases sold for 75k each? If it's selling for 50k I'll have to clarify it with Chris whether the briefcase rewards were changed or affected by difficulty

    Oh, now that you mentioned it, I'm actually not 100% sure any more about the briefcase value. *shame*

    Milestone 5 - Official Feedback / Game Balance Thread

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    11 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:

    2. mouse aim on enemy press c (to crouch), chance to hit do not change. You have to move mouse cursor to trigger re-count aim chance.
    ---- Make it automatic : re-count hit-chance after crouch without mouse move.

    Yes, this! I have meant to bring this up for years but never remembered. I'll even ping @Chris as this is actually very annoying small thing that really needs to get fixed!

    • Like 1

    [experimental 5.7. tactical] Ghost abduction tube

    in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports

    Posted

    58 minutes ago, Kouki said:

    Do you still have the GC save before this bug happened? I tried to repro it on my end but unfortunately couldn't get the visual bug, sadly

    Yeah, I tried to repro this multiple times as soon as it happened with exact same movements even, and alas, couldn't get it to happen again. And for that reason, no save unfortunately.

    My thoughts of the milestone 5 (ongoing)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    7 hours ago, Bookshelf11 said:

    If the cleaner arc is extended, cleaners should also have far more negative effects on you, since a lot of those mission rewards sound very powerful, especially anything like extra op points or supporters. Like you clearing the UFO and having to do essentially a wave defence against Elite Cleaners attacking crash sites or even actually Cleaners destroying them on the strategy map soon after they touch down to deny you the mission, infiltrators pushing governments to reduce monthly funding or operation point losses from them messing with logistics. Think UOO 1 type events, because right now you can basically do the cleaner base at your leisure. 

    One way I can think of making accelerated "good" is essentially making lasers simply not have some weapons in laser damage type but I'm not a fan of options being removed. Making it where you can actually upgrade them similar to how lasers and fusions get upgrades would be nice too but then again, gauss weapons are basically just upgraded accelerated.

    Honestly, having accelerated and laser being a combo research project like "Advanced Warfare" where researching that unlocks both at the same time, and having a natural synergy develop like accelerated having higher suppression values and actual appreciably higher outright damage than lasers so they're better for covering fire or outright killing power while lasers have better accuracy and cover/armour destruction. That's what makes fusion so good, it combines both of those types into one gun type. 

    They wouldn't be extra OP's or extra supporters. The whole system would be built and balanced around these missions: no (or very little) free OP's just trickling in, you would need to earn them doing these missions and collect extra OP by hacking computers and whatnot.

    I'm pretty sure we are way beyond the point of developement where doing this big changes to the game is still wise, but this is just something I envisioned when Chris told about adding an OP system for the first time.

    My thoughts of the milestone 5 (ongoing)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    The whole Cleaner arc seems like a missed opportunity with the cool new Doomsday mechanic and all. It just doesn't work very at the moment where I can just use 50op every third day to keep it from rising. Op's regenerate so fast it makes the doomsday clock almost completely trivial. (Unless you really mess up multiple missions)

    It'd be so cool to have a proper Cleaner phase where the game constantly spawns cleaner themed missions where player could choose which missions to take. Each mission would grant different rewards but the player wouldn't have time to do them all.

    Missions could give rewards like:

    • OP points (new mission type)
    • Doomsday clock reduction (Abduction)
    • New recruits (soldier rescue)
    • Money (ambush)
    • Cleaner intel towards HQ reveal (Intel gather)
    • Remove infiltrator (VIP elimination)
    • Gain a supporter (VIP escort)

    There could be simultaenous pack of 2-5 missions spawned every week with only 24-48h response times so the player really needs to think what rewards are needed and what missions can be reached in time. These missions could have smaller scale and easier difficulty to encourage player to save time by chain missions together without returning to base. This would add another gameplay layer of time optimization and would also solve the forever-issue of no one playing night missions.

    • Like 2

    My thoughts of the milestone 5 (ongoing)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    2 hours ago, Bookshelf11 said:

    But accelerated weapons, I don't think you can really make them a valid choice outside of making it a upgrade for conventional weapons, lasers are good for most of the game and accelerated are hardly comparable when at that part of the game, you'll want to ration out every bit of Alloy you can and not waste it. Lasers right off the bat have amazing cover and armour destruction, a accuracy bonus and they only get better with upgrades like ammo regen and extra damage. 

    Accelerated weapons would absolutely be viable choice if the game didn't proceed so fast and push lasers to be available so quickly. If I only had ballistics and accelerated available for, I don't know, the first 100 days, I would definitely build at least some. Also, as you say, lasers are amazing for a large chunk of the game. Is it optimal (game balance wise) to have one weapon tier be so clearly superior, or would it be better to give lasers some additional disadvantages like not able to shoot through smoke or some other cool unique trait like that?

    My thoughts of the milestone 5 (ongoing)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    50 minutes ago, Bookshelf11 said:

    I think a good game length would be 20 to 30 hours but I don't think there should be a focus on making it longer when it doesn't need to be. 

    Measuring "a good game length" by hours played is not the right way to do it. The game needs to be as long as it has good and fun content for. Currently Xenonauts 2 has too much content for it's run time, and for that reason it feels too compressed and can't produce optimal amount of fun (weapon tech tiers become obsolete too quickly, Cleaners feel tacked on etc). 

    Milestone 5 - Official Feedback / Game Balance Thread

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    The first two researches (MARS and Aerial warfare) give little to no actual choice to the player so they might as well be unlocked at the start of the game automatically. Currently you have time to research both before you can make use of either.

    If you research MARS first, you'll unlock it just before second mission (abduction) but you wont have time to manufacture one before the mission expires. Researching aerial warfare first doesn't benefit anything as first aerial targets spawn so late that you have time to research it anyways. There isn't anything else to research before you have completed both.

    5.7.0 Thoughts on a Veteran-ish playthrough

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    1 hour ago, Beltorn said:

    Overall, I'd like to preface that I liked the game quite a bit, having finished the campaign on Veteran preset with a few changes to Soldier difficulty (no Increased accuracy on aliens, visible health)
    It took about 50 hours with save scum, recorded campaign time was 41.4 hours

    The strategy was to start in Europe at 1,250k cost (Closer to Kyiv on Kyiv - Budapest line to capture more of Africa and Soviet Union in radar coverage), get additional lab, training center, living room and go from there. 

    The highlight of Milestone 5 is the addition of Operation Points and Supporters to regions. The system feels really powerful, providing buttons that immediately resolve player's problems, including problems with resources. As resources are now somewhat limited due to 2 UFOs cleared per Type I found myself somewhat constrained in Alloys and Alenium, but barely constrained in money once the full funding kicked in. 
    Overall, I'd say we have too much money coming in, especially with Supporter bonuses and regional perks. Alenium is less of a problem and alloys are the most constraining

    To continue on the campaign report, third science lab was at start of month 2 and eventually I managed to get a second base in US (750k+200k Hangar+500k radar + Mig for it) before end of 2nd month, but afterwards, the money flow was easy. On Day 91, i had the fourth lab and once the full funding kicked in, I focused on building up bases and planes for them, including a second training center in Month 4. I found myself alloy constrained to build more Phantoms and Geminis, but once all bases had 2 Gemini, the resource constraint was solved. Second workshop was created around month 6, when Gemini became available. 

    For spending OP, i focused on Europe figuring out that improved training rate is rather important to have better soldiers, then focused on US to finish forming the squad around months 4-5

    Gameplay-wise, the Cleaners period is definitely too short. It doesn't detract from hunting the aliens, if anything,
    I'd be quite happy to see an expansion to this and I'm surprised the aliens don't continue using cleaners after the cleaners HQ has fallen. I imagine, aliens would find ways to using humans in their bases in some way, no? 
    Same with Infiltrator advisors, it appears, if the player is too good and intercepts the UFOs effectively, aliens fail to place more infiltrators. I've had one added only once, which feels just too little. 
    I'd be quite happy to see missions to get that infiltrator captured - like we had with Cleaners VIPs.

    I have to say that currently, gaining and spending OPs feels too gamey - you only get OP from a counter per day and the system is self-contained and gives the players only bonuses
    For buying supporters with OP, it raises the question of Xenonauts having separate relations trackers with each region and regions giving out requests for specific items? Provide equipment or tech, dead or alive aliens, our VIP is threatened by alien infiltrators > pls save them. That would give OPs points in a better way then just a number of points each day.
    Lastly, it feels like there should be a base building that would allow focusing on relations strategy as part of the game instead of just getting numbers going up.
    Taking out computers from cleaners bases doesn't provide OP points, which is strange, we are directly unlocking their activity which is something that feels like OP-related material.

    Btw, it feels like there is only one edge case when spending 100 OP to get 20 Alenium or 40 Alloys or 500k money is useful, when we can spend 60/80/100 on a UFO mission and get much more of each resource, plus funds from the loot in one go.
    Maybe the numbers of resources provided should go up as countries around the world get more (based on the number of UFO sites passed to them or just based on time)?

    Ground combat:
    Squad build was 2 shielders, 3 assaults, 3 rifleman, 1 sniper on Chinook > 2 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 2 snipers on Dragonfly > 4 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 4 snipers with Pegasus

    Form 2  or 4 teams and sweep the surroundings, clearing out aliens. Assaults are the most immediately useful and powerful as shotguns can one-shot everything short of Cyberdisks.
    Not sure if bug, but Androns only started appearing for me once I made the first UOO incursion mission and without them, Wraiths and Psyons feel heavily lacking in tough enemies. 
    5.7.0 change to Wraits, admittedly, made them only easier to deal with
    Armored enemies are too easily solved by demolition packs, demos completely outclass grenades - should weigh more (8 or 10) and have smaller explosion and throw radius. Each soldier was carrying two concussions grenades and two demos, at least one smoke grenade. 
    Frag grenades, I used only twice across the whole campaign, which feels wrong. 
    Most soldiers were always in heavy armor, with the most useful armoring method being upgrading to Warden, then to Stalker, then to Exo. The penalty for Heavy armor seems a bit on the low side as with increasing accuracy for soldiers from training, it lead to just accepting the minor penalty. 
    I didn't find a use for Colossus armor and MG weapon as both are too limiting
    I didn't find a use for the Grenade Launcher
    I didn't find a use for Auto-med, as more grenades are more useful
    I didn't find a use for Psi-shield as Psionics is not working at the moment.
    I didn't find a use for Mars/Ares as their stats are too weak, especially Ares, though their armor is super-high, but being alloy constrained forced me to choose soldiers first.
    Please consider allowing, one/two free Mars/Ares slots on Dragonfly or Pegasus respectively so that players would be incentivized to construct/deploy them?

    The combat feels to have the following phases: Surrounding sweep where half of aliens are, then UFO entrance with a couple of guards to clean up, then clearing the top room and the last one is what makes least sense to me
    There is no real urgency, nothing prevents setting up perfect breaches, especially on story missions like UOO assault and final mission. 
    Spawn tables feel a bit mixed with alien scientists being out in the open (too eager to get their claws on on the material so to say?), instead of inside their respective UFO rooms and no Psyon or Wraith Engineers on their respective UFOs.

    UOO assault (the second UOO mission) is really-really easy in the teleporter phase - 3 soldiers on each side were able to clean each wave, but the big one, then I added one more soldier on each side and the side teleporters weren't used, which would force me to spend some TUs on moving between rooms. It is okay to make the mission more challenging by allowing aliens to portal to either of 7 (yes, including the initial one) rooms and forcing the player to spend one/two soldiers out of 16 at that point to block addition teleports via some sort of consoles. I.e the soldier has to stand there and spend 75% of TUs to activate the console to prevent even more from porting in.

    The Harvester (third floor) and Battleship (fourth floor) both show a dark floor that can't be accessed, I initially thought it to be a bug, but seems this is by design. 
    The Battleship's layouts are strange and admittedly, I really dislike the top floor - unless there are wall-breaking robots, it is super-easy to breach the command room as i've said. 
    Btw, could you please consider updating Androns to have wall-breaking move as an ability, instead of constant. It is really immersion breaking to see them walk and destroy walls when there is a door one tile next to it. I imagine the aliens are like - it's the xenonauts, break out the Androns and deal with structural walls missing later, but frankly, it's just amusing at first and then immersion-breaking for me.

    Please consider making end-game aliens a bit more unfair than right now, my soldiers died only to the randomness of the damage roll which feels worse then my own poor judgement. Shouldn't they have launchers, explosives and so on?
    The damage rolls being reduced to 50-150 is nice, but please consider going to 75%-125%, there is still too much swing to my understanding.

    I'd be really happy to see Psionics to be greatly expanded, making Sectons/Psyons and Rulers more powerful. No cases of mind-controlling soldiers so far, and Mind-war wasn't that strong ( only halved movement)

    Please consider adding stationary turrets to all alien bases and big UFOs, so that they would be a significant defense and roadblock point around which the aliens could rally and have a defense.
    Mentarchs are described as having energy shielding, so maybe some sort of regenerating armor that is resistant to explosives is okay to add to tougher alien vehicles and/or soldiers? 

    Air combat:
    The air combat hasn't changed that much as no techs were added to it, but developing air defense on Veteran+ has changed. 
    As we don't have as much money at the start. we have less bases and Migs, and we still get Phantom and Marauders/Gemini techs rather quickly so there is no time to build-up Mig force.
    This immediately changes the value of the MIG engine upgrade - the upgrade is less effective when you have at most 2/3 Migs compared to when you have 6+. It's still a good investment, but to make it better, I suggest considering spacing out Phantoms and Marauders further and maybe changing Gauss Cannons to be less effective overall, especially against armor.
    It would also be a nice change if the Engine upgraded increased Mig's Payload by one so that they could carry two lasers 
    Phantoms might be a good idea to appear around Observers/Abductors and giving them techs that put them at current tech level after having downed at least one Fighter
    Gemini seem like a good tech to appear around Cruiser/Harvesters era, after having downed at least one Interceptor as a pre-requisite. Most likely, Harvesters as those unlock best armor.
    Gauss cannons reign supreme against anything up to Harvester and it's very easy to get into Cruisers blind spot and down them. Overall, Cruisers don't feel to be a strong air combatant despite their supposed role as such, adding missiles from Interceptors (or equivalents) to them, might make them more challenging and interesting.

    End-game we still want to have Two Gemini armed with Fusion cannons and best armor plating as end-game pre-set for each squadron.
    Putting a Gauss cannon + two Fusion torpedoes leads to too much damage taken against single Harvester/Battleship and they can't have one Fusion Lance + Two torpedoes + armor. Without the armor, the plane takes absurd amount of damage

    I'd like to ask a review of current air superiority missions - it's too easy to snipe the 3 attackers, just position as close as possible to one side and attack from there. Then Do a barrel roll immediately to evade the initial missile, watch how the alien "superiority" fighters are mowed down by twin cannons on Phantom or Gemini. Positioning the middle UFO to the back would prevent this tactic being as cheap.

    Please also consider least aliens spawn at least double the current Air superiority missions to draw out and exhaust player's air forces and having more planes would be of some use. Overall, I'd like very much to have an expanded air war component in the game with pilots being their own characters too, instead of being attached to the plane and would require living space and have their own roster. 

    Right now, air combat is a means to having ground combat, so it's serves its function, but I really wish we had a more developed AC as that's something I'd like to play even more than GC - with AWACS/ECM packages, actual dynamically formed squadrons (Current Air combat window doesn't check if there are allied planes in the vicinity), more powerful UFOs, escorts and missile play, including alien air attacks on our bases. 

    Thank you very much for the game. 
     

    Great post. I agree on everything, but especially:

    • Short cleaner arc
    • OP system too gamey
    • Demo charges too good vs frag
    • Heavy armor needs more penalty
    • Command room beach being too trivial
    • Too few air superiority missions
    • Like 1

    My thoughts of the milestone 5 (ongoing)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    Saw Chris' post in discord concerning balancing the game length vs. the amount of tech and other content...

    IMO Goldhawk shouldn't be afraid of padding the game length a little bit. I'm pretty confident strategy players in general favor meaty campaigns and aren't put off by slight repetition.

    X2 already has the required amount of varied content. X2 currently uses only ~half of the cleaner mission types per playthrough and there's tons of crash site maps in very variable biomes, so making the game a tad longer would't really break anything.

    Just keeping the more meaty cleaner arc you had before MS5 would make accelerated weapons feel more viable, and balancing the game for 3 crash sites per UFO type would make everything feel much less rushed and I still wouldn't say the game would suffer from repetition - even for a more casual player.

    • Like 1

    Maybe Tune it down a bit...(let me explain)

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Skitso

    On 1/14/2025 at 6:26 PM, Chris said:

    Yeah, we're looking into terror missions being far too hard at the moment (those start appearing at about day 120 and seem to be causing a lot of problems).

    Hmm. Not every terror mission is too difficult though, and in a way they need to be relatively tough. It's just that the difficulty level varies way too much depending which map and alien race combination you happen to get. Too aggressive AI doesn't help either.

    The more open maps with wraiths have been the toughest for me, while sebillian terror sites are easiest. Haven't tried the latest patch tough.

    Milestone 5 - Official Feedback / Game Balance Thread

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Xeferah said:

    I set all my soldiers next to the teleporters, finish the turn and let one soldier step on the teleport with a flashbang. He makes one step, shoots if he still has TU and then the rest of the gang follows. Risk free and I always finish it in the same turn?

    Well that's the issue. There's no tactical problem solving to raid UFO command rooms as you can cheese it just as you described there.

    Milestone 5 - Official Feedback / Game Balance Thread

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    On 12/30/2024 at 7:47 AM, gG-Unknown said:

    Teleporter usage ; balance

    - cheasy play of teleport-in shoot, teleport-out is poison to gameplay.

    Fix : a soldier ( or any entity) can use any teleporter just once per turn

    Yes, this is something I've also proposed long time ago. I think a decent solution for this would be that all teleports can function only once per turn. (Once on player turn, once on civilian turn and once on alien turn)

     

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