[UFOs & Being Horrible]

Umm, you pretty much had to assault ufos in original in certain ways(landed ones, shot down ones sometimes had broken down walls) until you got blaster bombs and weapons good enough to breach them... Unless high explosives can do that. I dunno, I remember trying and them doing nothing. Anyway, point is, even the original doesn't have "Complete freedom".

For me XCOM is about fighting variety of aliens(which can be cut up to learn stuff about their biology), stealing their stuff, researching their stuff, using their stuff against them and dying a lot while trying Oh and nice strategic layer and interception to an extent too, but mainly strategic layer + research + aliens. Plus immersion. Its not as much about deciding whether I blow up whole map with rockets or do it in normal way as much as its finding out best thing to do depending on situation.(And really, I want an option to blow up crashed ufos without mission without recovering anything, it feels crappy to let aliens go and when you are far enough in original game there are too many shot down ufos that doing them all gets boring D:<)

High explosives did nothing in the original, although xcomutil improved their power and allowed you to blow holes in the outer walls. This was one of the better improvements, I believe. Nobody really used HE otherwise and HE is dangerous enough that it takes a significant amount of time to set up something like that, so it had its trade offs and it's not as if you could just blow a hole and immediately rush in. Usually you had your guys at least a good half turn or turn of movement away from the future hole before it blew. Still it appears we won't be able to destroy the UFO tiles at all in Xenonauts. A shame, and while I don't agree with it, I can somewhat understand it.

Additionally, I will say on the subject of two part missions. Even the UFO:After* series, which, in my opinion, did the two part missions correctly, still broke the flow and didn't entirely make sense. And it also used them for every UFO mission. Consequently, I never finished any of those games.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

Another picture mostly made just for my personal fun without practical purpose, but also some proofs of\and concepts. It's 40x30x2 "quarter map" cruiser and there enougt place on farm map . I think is possible to make it 35X30

I tryed to look how it looks, and I see what you talk about, but I think it's normal if big ufo occupy most part of the map, in classic one it was same way.

I got some concepts when I tryed

These were the examples I remember.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

Another one () with lazy modelled but walkable roof

What point to make things bigger? Classical battleship was (by interior) ~ x0.70 smaller then this and has ~30 aliens on board and I don't think it feels too small

I wasn't entirely sure about the cruiser you posted earlier... but partially just because I couldn't wrap my head around the layers, but that looks pretty darn good... and it fits nicely on the map.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

EDIT: My reply from page 4 is below:

As has been mentioned above, the larger UFOs are massive. We've even got a cruiser model done up, ready to be painted over, that we're not going to use now and the thing is about 50x50 tiles. In order to fit the dropship in the map, along with some terrain that isn't just the cruiser you're looking at something like a 70x70 or 80x80 map. If you think that's a good thing, I suggest you create an 80x80 map in the level editor and see how long it takes to walk across it. Plus, the cruiser is the smallest of the alien capital ships.

First paragraph from the edit to the first post in this thread.

[Research Tree am I missing something]

Remember, a squadron is as fast as it's slowest plane on the geoscape. If you pair migs and f-17s, they're all going to fly at f-17 speed. To catch up with lone scouts, you're going to need one or more migs that don't have any f-17s holding them back.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

Assuming Goldhawk can change their ship designs at this stage.

I would imagine if they had to go and pay another artist to design new ships and get those designs into the game, including all of the overpainting that is done on the tiles and so on, something else would need to be cut to ensure the money was available.

We aren't talking about Valve here who can throw money at a problem until it goes away if they choose to.

The change is not one I am overly fond of.

I can live with it as it only really affects a few ships anyway.

The current ships and the medium sized ones can still work as they do.

The big ships were always planned to be done as levels in their own right, in the same way bases were handled in the original.

All that has really changed is those ships that fall between those two points.

I am not saying I will give up on trying to think of a way to get around the limitations Chris outlined.

However only he has access to all of the information behind his decisions.

When he gets back I imagine we will hear more about this, hopefully including more details on the problems and limitations encountered.

I would agree with you except that it was already mentioned they were going to have to throw out the cruiser as it is anyway and it's quite likely all the ships above that size either aren't done or are to be thrown out as well. They're essentially starting from scratch with regards to UFO design, with only a couple of exceptions, is what it seems. If they are doing so, anything goes as far as suggestions are concerned. Of course information direct from the devs is needed to determine specifically what is possible, but until limitations are placed, it's all simply brainstorming. And in a good brainstorming session even the most ridiculous things get written down in the hope they might form the seed of something more practical in the future.

Also to note, the proposed changes make EVERY UFO that has an enterable interior a two part mission. This affects everything. The medium sized UFOs could potentially stay as they are, but that's not what was proposed.

I'll live with it if need be. I'm even willing to accept that I'm wrong if it turns out to not be that big of a deal. But in my experience, breaking missions up into multiple parts always has severe consequences to the flow of the gameplay and while it can be argued that it's necessary in some situations, using it in every situation is, in my opinion, sure to cause some significant problems.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

Anotherdevil:

Agreed J-L.

Also it depends how it it implemented. If the first room to breach is kept (with aliens taking defensive positions) in the first map, then you still get that initial tension. I imagine that is what will happen.

Also if the map is ready (or loading as you play the first half), then the second could start quickly, maintaining the momentum and not breaking the immersion.

Saying that this is going to break the game isn't so helpful. It's fine to think that, but perhaps try and think of ways to minimise any problems. Air your thoughts, but give the developers something to work with other than "you're making the wrong decision" or "doing this will suck"

=]

Not everyone is a game designer. Even so... there have been suggestions made, including my own, "Go back to the grey metal boxes if you have to."

In any case, making things more modular, even if not all the way back to "a half dozen wall tiles used for the exterior of everything", is a way to fix this. Rather than trying to literally fit a round peg into a square hole with these circular ships, why not just move to something a bit more square. It doesn't need to be nearly as blocky as X-Com was, but a basic set of legos with a few angled pieces can build some amazingly smooth and detailed things. Hell, look at what people do with Minecraft and that even lacks most of the angled pieces you'd want to include.

[15.1 Soldiers Resurrecting after Chinook is shot down]

I sent my soldiers to a particularly nasty Terror mission, all but one got killed, although the after action report said two of them survived, one with heavy wounds. On the way home, the chinook was shot down by fighters. It said 3 survivors were found...

I have those three still alive on my list and going on missions.

Minor bugs, in the grand scheme, but still notable.

Side note, I believe it still counts wounded soldiers who've been taken of duty while they were assigned to the transport as going on missions in that transport. I just appears that way though, can't tell for sure.

[UFOs & Being Horrible]

This thread got me to register and reply. Personally. I'd prefer to have the UFO interior be seamless with the exterior map. Redesign the UFOs if you need to. Hell, go back to squared off boxes like X-Com had if you need to. I don't have any problem with multi-part missions, as a rule, but I can't see any legitimate excuse as to why you can't have the interior of a UFO be on the same map as the exterior. Cutting it up like that just breaks the immersion and ruins one of the best parts of any UFO mission, the entry. If you're not allowed to choose when and where you enter a UFO(within your abilities), then what's the point? X-Com even had extra holes poked in the UFO if it were particularly badly damaged, giving you natural extra entry points... without special interior maps. If the devs can't at the very least meet the same feature set of a game that's nearly 20 years old, when trying to do a remake of that game, then there's something wrong. Now, I just seriously sat down to play the alpha a few days ago, I gave the kickstarter demo a try and loved it, that's why I invested in the full game just recently. And while I do love a lot of it, and love the feeling it brings back, there are still many cases where I find myself thinking, "Well, X-Com did this better..." It's slowly getting to the point where I might as well just go back and play the old one.

I'm just now getting to missions where I have more than 1 or 2 aliens to kill on a map, so I admit, my experience is still lacking compared to many of you on these forums. But just judging from the small and normal scout crashes. They generally feel right. Maps are a bit repetitive at times(Even worse than X-Com, but hopefully that's being worked on). I wouldn't mind seeing a few more holes in the hull of the UFO, but this is generally how an assault on a small, lightly crewed UFO should feel. I'll continue playing and continue waiting and while the current state of the game, at least what I've seen, gives me much hope, these forums put some fear into me that this is heading in a direction I won't like.

I also realize, this being my first post, and being critical may come off badly, I don't mean to be that way. I want to be supportive, I wouldn't have paid for the game if I didn't, I love anyone who has this kind of respect for the early X-Com games, even if their vision isn't the same as my own. I'm just putting my own opinion out there, one more voice among the masses that may or may not get listened to.

Edit: Missed the size part of the opening post, but if scale is a problem for the larger ships... then perhaps you're thinking a little too big...