lemm

Here's my idea for a movement preview feature which is just an extension of what @podbelski said in the second post of the thread: Player clicks on a soldier, hovers mouse over a distant square and presses Ctrl-Shift. The UI will show the path the soldier will take to get there like it does in X1 and a little window will appear next to the target square showing all the actions that the soldier will have time for. Now if the player CLICKS on one of these actions (while still holding down ctrl+shift), then the movement preview feature will deduct the number of TU that the selected action takes. The player can then click on a second square and in so doing create a chain of actions. This could all be represented by a phantom outline of the soldier moving along the planned route. Essentially, this is just borrowing the turn planning mechanic from Frozen Synapse, but unlike Frozen Synapse, you're never committed to keeping the full plan for the entire turn. If the soldier spots an alien while he's walking to his destination, then the player can just abandon the plan and take some other action. This is just a feature to help the player better plan his moves, and it doesn't need to be used at all if the player doesn't hold down Ctrl+Shift (and in actual fact, it would probably only be used in hairy situations and not for hurrying all your soldiers across empty ground to get the last alien). Regardless, I think that a flexible movement preview function like this is more useful than an XCOM-style TU reserve button because the player can throw in turning, crouching, or whatever he wants, which is something you can't really do with a TU reserve button.

Yeah I like the view cones too, but because they make the gameplay more complicated. I like that idea. You could even take it a step further and make every (or every other) square after the first three cost one TU fewer, essentially granting the soldier a bonus for running a straight line over long distances. It adds complexity without adding in separate movement modes.

If turning has no penalty then the optimal way to move anywhere is to move one square, spin around, move another square, spin around, and so forth. Which means you might as well not even have a view cone and just let soliders see in every direction like starcraft units. Personally, I've never used the time unit reserve because it's more trouble than just doing simple arithmetic and even if it wasn't, I wouldn't find it useful. I don't tell my units to walk in some general direction until they have just enough time for a shot; I want them to go to a specific point and if I know that they won't have enough TU to do what they want when they get there, then I come up with an alternate plan. In my opinion, the TU reserve was really only necessary for XCOM and TFTD because there was no time unit preview function like there is in Xenonauts. I think you could just get rid of the feature or at least not spend time worrying about it.

Seems like what you're saying is that there should be arm points (what you call action points) and leg points (movement points). I've been mulling this over, trying to figure out how it would work without requiring the player to do two parallel sets of arithmetic for both movement and actions because it sounds like a neat idea and because I like your cinematic reference . Introduction. Let's start with the simplest solution: every soldier gets as many arm points as he does leg points. Say Mr. Connery starts with 60 points per turn, and that firing a shotgun takes 20 arm points and 0 leg points because he can fire while walking. If he stood completely still while firing and reloading, then each shot would take 20 arm and 20 leg points. And if he did something like shoot while still, but walk while reloading, then each shot would consume 20 arm points and 10 leg points. Now, even if Connery can fire while moving, he is still not allowed to spend all of his arm points before he uses a single leg point. The reason is because his arms and legs are bound in spacetime. In the director's cut where he spends all 60 arm points and THEN spends all 60 leg points, his upper body is hovering in place firing shots while his legs are walking down the hall to greet the mafioso with a swift kick to the crotch (sadly, this version of the film was never released). Rules. Putting this all together we derive three rules. I'll go back to calling arm points as action points (AP) and leg points as movement points (MP). Both AP and MP are expressed in time units (TU). Actions always consume AP, and they can also consume MP if the action would impair motion, but consumed MP <= consumed AP because the action encompasses the movement and not the other way around. At any point, AP <= MP. AP can never exceed MP because this would mean that the soldier's upper body would be effectively lagging his feet. To perform an action, AP == MP. This is the corollary of rule 2. If an action were to be performed when AP < MP, this would mean that the soldier's upper body would be jumping ahead in time before his legs could have caught up (or to put it correctlier, that he is performing the action at point A when his body is located at point B) Example. Every soldier now has an AP bar located right under the MP bar. Let's say a soldier starts out at full AP and MP. He is ordered to move somewhere, and as he walks along, his AP and MP decrease in unison as per rule 2. He sees an alien and takes a shot, which he is allowed to do because AP == MP as per rule 3. He shoots a quick shot which misses, and some AP but no MP is consumed, so now AP < MP. Now he runs to find cover, and as he does, his MP decreases. He finds cover and lines up a second shot, but still, AP < MP because he didn't walk very far to find cover. However, he wants to shoot from this position, so the game forces him to dump excess MP so that AP == MP, thereby allowing him to take the shot as per rule 3. This time, he takes a fully aimed shot that costs MP equal to AP (which is allowed as per rule 1). The turn ends with his AP == MP (although it would have been legal to end his turn with AP < MP, because ending a turn is not an action). Comments. We have a third bar for action points in addition to those for hit and movement points. But I think it would be easy to get the feel of the action point system after a few battles because of how the time unit bars tick down in real time as the soldiers walk along. However, because one turn's worth of time is scaled differently for each soldier according to his MP, that means a rifle shot is going to take proportionally more AP for a more experienced soldier, and we really didn't solve that problem. So I don't know if it's worth the extra complication.

Mind control made xcom and tftd a cake walk. It's a fun mechanic but if every soldier or alien has access to it then it ruins the game because it becomes neither fun to wield nor to play against. Only 10% of aliens and soldiers should have full mind control abilities if it's included in X2. Edit: And to address the OP, yes, any soldiers that happen to be under mind control when the last alien is killed should be returned to your command.

Yeah this is a good point. Morale wasn't very interesting in the original XCOM because as you say, either everything was fine and dandy until one too many of your guys dies, and then suddenly everyone starts panicking and it's a downward spiral from there. And when your squad members do start to panic, you can't really do much about it. I think that the morale system might be more interesting if its effects weren't so pronounced. Like maybe a panicking soldier would not lose all of his TUs, but be impaired more slightly (like he is unable to run towards the aliens, he's unable to throw a grenade but can still shoot a gun, and so forth).

I bought this and I liked it. What I liked most is that the game is very conservative-yet-efficient with its use of randomness. Combat doesn't depend on dice rolls except for two specific situations (power grid damage and unit spawns). Like FTL, weapons deal damage in small, integral values which makes combat feel more like chess than XCOM. The rest of the randomness is at the level of the geoscape (which maps spawn and what rewards drop after a zone is saved), and this macro-level randomness has more of an impact on the game than the randomness in combat. I didn't really like the atmosphere. Everything is really dreary and all of the pilots look depressed (except for the Margaret Thatcher character ). Neither did I like Into the Breach as much as I enjoyed FTL. I think this was because there was no feeling of adventure that FTL had. In FTL your ship goes on a little journey and there are events along the way, so each run is like a little story, whereas a playthrough of ItB feels more like a chess tournament.

I haven't played this game in ten years or so, but from what I remember, the cult of Sirius was little more than a minor annoyance and the rest of the other "factions" didn't really matter. I agree with jamoecw that it had a lot of neat ideas that weren't really that well polished. And like the other DOS XCOM games, as soon as you could produce the wonder weapon (the toxin gun in this case), then the game just became a cake walk. Anyway, if I made apoc2, I would remove the capability for XCOM to research or produce its own equipment so that the espionage and economic aspects of the game would be more important. Instead of building the facilities in your own base, you would outsource that work to existing laboratories and factories owned by other factions. Also I'd get rid of the real time combat.

$100-$200 tier: you get to design a humorous billboard prop that will show up in city-themed maps. The donor provides the billboard content (slogan + design) and the art team makes the prop for it.

Okay, I have two things to say about XCOM and Xenonauts. 1. In these turn-based tactical games, when a human is facing an AI opponent, I think that tactical situation becomes easier to process for the human player as the turns get more granular. By "more granular," I mean that a player (artifical or human) gets more opportunities to add input per turn. For instance, Frozen Synapse and Lethal Tactics allow you one chance to per turn, and both sides move simultaneously. It's basically the most granular form of strategy. On the other hand, in UFO:EU and Xenonauts, one particular action consumes a fraction of a percent of a turn; the turns are very granular. New-XCOM is somewhere in the middle. I hear a lot of people saying that they think the simplified movement system in New-XCOM makes the game less complicated, but I think they're not looking at it from the perspective that I've just presented. In fact, they added all of those time-based missions in XCOM2 so that you couldn't just scoot your soldiers along, square-by-square. It really makes the game more interesting when you're not always allowed to run behind a corner as soon as you spot an alien. I know I've echoed these sentiments in a bunch of different posts in the Xenonauts 2 Suggestion forums, but after thinking about it, the input-granularity really is what really defines the tactical layer of a turn-based strategy game. (At least in my opinion.) 2. In Xenonauts 2, I think that right after your soldier makes a round-ending kill, there should be a close-up shot of him delivering a cheesy line that you might see at the end of an action movie from the 80s, right after the bad guy is killed. You know, something like Charles Bronson or Bruce Willis might say. I am being completely frank when I say that this one little feature could catapult Xenonauts 2 sales from Indie to AAA-levels.

It sounds like progress is much more rapid than it was for Xenonauts 1, which is great to hear! It's also good that you're making the game playable while it's in alpha. I think this will really help to make the finished product more strategically interesting, especially if the community makes a commitment finding the quickest and most reliable way to beat each alpha version.

I think the art in Xenonauts looked very drab and schematic, but not "bad." The same is true for the UI, which was tidy and flat in comparison to the original XCOM, which had gaudy, bevelled buttons everywhere. hmm, what about low-poly-nauts

I like the idea of aliens gaining resistance to weapon-classes. It think that this single mechanic should help to substantially differentiate each playthrough. Doubly more-so if each class of weapon isn't just a different flavour of rifle, but has its own characteristic with regard to engagement distance, spread pattern, on-hit effects, and so forth. Along with the troop teleporter and the base power, I think this is one of the best features that's been proposed. I like the system of renting out research facilities, because I think it could be the prime source of strategic volatility to the Geoscape. I see a couple of ways by which you could tune this system. First, what is the number of research buildings that the player will have under his control at any time? Two, six, a dozen? I'd opt for fewer, because I think it makes fighting to keep one more impactful. Secondly, what is the penalty for losing one of these facilities? Do you lose the money that you paid for it, or are you renting it out turn-by-turn? Do you lose all research progress on an item being research in a facility that is captured, or is the progress (partially) saved? If the geoscape game ever doesn't seem exciting enough, I think that nudging these two variables to the "all-or-nothing" direction might liven it up a bit. I also really like the part about "choosing an acceptable rate of attrition." A hard timer is often necessary in complicated strategy games like this, simply because the player can usually beat any AI if he's just given an infinite number of turrs. I think this is what motivated Firaxis to include such a high proportion of timed missions in new-XCOM 2, compared to the original new-XCOM. I suppose that the original XCOM and Xenonauts had a timer of sorts, because in both of those games, you can't reclaim a territory once it has been lost. Still, the way you've presented this idea makes losses seem a lot more fine-grained than losing an entire geopolitical bloc. Hopefully, Xenonauts 2 will be balanced so that you can't ever reach a point like you can in pretty much every other XCOM game where it's impossible for the aliens to make any further progress. Recently, I've been playing a lot of Brogue, a roguelike that is notable because almost every non-consumable piece of equipment in the game can be upgraded at the cost of a scroll of enchanting. What's interesting is that the power of an item increases quadratically, or even exponentially, with respect to its enchantment level, so it's often the case that dumping all of one's enchantments into a single item is far better than spreading upgrades over a few items. Because of this, I think you get a lot more variety in playstyles than would be the case if upgrades provided diminishing returns. Basing playstyle around a single, powerful item leads to a lot more volatile situations than working with an arsenal of moderately powerful items. Of course, Brogue is a game that takes 3 hours to complete and in which even the best players die about half the time; such a design choice might not work so well for a game that takes ten times as long to play through. I just mentioned it because I thought it was an interesting way to design an upgrade system.

New trailer. Looks sort of like XCOM Apocalypse.

I don't think that they could make this very impactful, because the fact that aliens can always see you in Nu-Com is the reason that the Nu-Com battlescape so much more balanced and difficult than XCOM and Xenonauts were, imo. I've only played XCOM 1, but I like the idea of this. Weapons that allow the player to abuse the geometry of the map like this are fun, even if they're farfetched.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/10/frozen-synapse-2-announced/ http://www.frozensynapse2.com/ The sequel will be "open world," unlike the first game, which was a series of missions.

w00t

Well you could just as well argue that turn-based strategies could become the next craze, similar to this recent surge in popularity of indie "roguelike-likes" such as FTL, Spelunky, Convoy, etc. EDIT: On second thought, just call it a rogue-like and it should sell well, regardless.

It's great to hear that Goldhawk is investing in the long term by programming its own engine! Would your engine be able to support simultaneous turn-based or even real-time tactical games? And will it have multiplayer capabilities? Will your engine be able to be compiled to javascript so that we can play Goldhawk games in browser? I think that this would instantly make your game more accessible to prospective customers.

[video=youtube;l2Cjc3fWFvs] Has anyone bought this? It's a visually appealing simultaneous turn based tactical game, (i.e. frozen synapse + good graphics). It only has a skirmish mode at the moment, though you can play it online against a human opponent. This is my favorite turn-based tactical model. It's far more exciting than the XCOM model to me, and I think it's more difficult because you can't just immediately run back to cover once you see an enemy. Would be a good model for Xenonauts 2, IMO

I enjoyed Xenonauts throughout its development and in its finished state, but for your own sanity, do you really want to spend another 2-3 years to make the same game over again, considering that everyone and his dog has made an XCOM clone before you? Personally, I think it would be a waste of your creative efforts. Anyway, to answer your questions: Would you buy a Xenonauts remake? No, I don't think I would, unless you made it sufficiently different from Xenonauts 1. I enjoy single-player games partially for their novelty value, and there won't be much of that in a remake of a remake of XCOM. I'd much rather play in a different setting, like underwater or on a giant space station, or even as the alien faction. However, the vanilla, terrestrial-surface setting would be acceptable if the combat system or the tech tree were radically different than that in the original game. I need something new, and a graphical face-lift just isn't enough. Besides, what you're describing sounds essentially like UFO Afterlight/math/shock. What annoyed me most about Xenonauts? I think that the combat AI was the most lackluster aspect of the whole game. It wasn't terrible, but it never seemed like the alien squad was working as a cohesive unit. I wonder if it would be possible to make the computer learn from games between two human opponents (assuming that you had a multiplayer mode). Oh right, the missions got monotonous after awhile. Yeah there were a few base raids and terror sites now and then, but 90% of the game was the same thing. You could definitely be more creative with regards to mission types.

I like the idea of a less linear tech tree. But the game should give you hints as to which research path you need to go down.

I looked through the discussions and stickies, but I couldn't find any explicit mission statement for the community edition. Is it just supposed to be an enhanced version of the vanilla game, a whole new game, just a toy that a few people tinker with, or what? I did read that it could be used as a base for modding, but I didn't see any definite "end goals."

The US army has a microwave gun that it can be used for crowd control.

I second Gauddlike's opinion in that I don't think that the battlescape needs to be aligned to a grid, and a grid definitely doesn't automatically make the game simpler or quicker. A grid works well for Xenonauts (which is essentially a fancy board game). For a 3D world, however, I think that an aura that highlights the ground to demarcate the maximum range that a unit can move on its turn allows for a more natural-looking environment. Of course, the 3D-world can be aligned to a grid (either hexagonal or rectangular), but the art and level design has to be more carefully crafted in order to support that decision. Another important point is that a well-designed battlescape allows the player to move units quickly when there is no action, but it also allows for a decent amount of complexity and precision management during the big engagements. For example, TFTD had horrendously long missions, partly because the player was forced to move units one-by-one until the last alien was eliminated. In contrast, JA2 and Xenonauts got around this by allowing some form of simultaneous unit movement. The new XCOM does away with time units altogether, which I believe was a good design decision. I hope that the "Big Game" has a more well-developed geoscape than either Xenonauts or XCOM did. Xenonauts was an improvement over XCOM in terms of logistic simplification (i.e., not having to ensure that your base didn't run out of ammo, grenades, and paper clips), and Xenonauts was FAR more balanced than XCOM, thanks in part to the amount of beta testing it received. But I think that there were a few critical issues that reduced the depth of Xenonauts, mostly at the level of the Geoscape. Of course, the game was supposed to be a spiritual successor to XCOM, so this linear style of gameplay was justified. But, I digress. Every game of Xenonauts (and XCOM) plays out identically. You always start with the same base (optimally positioned in the Middle East), and then you're besieged by the exact same waves of increasingly beefier aliens, whose equipment you salvage in order to progress down the same, linear tech tree. And to top it off, the final showdown is always the same thing. In order to improve the depth of an XCOM-style game: - The geoscape could be randomized for every game, as it's a sci-fi setting and you're no longer restricted to fighting over the entire Earth. - The research path could be vastly expanded and furcated so that the player is no longer able to get everything in one game. Perhaps, instead of just laser guns and jackal armor, there are three types of tier-one weapons and two types of tier-1 armor, each of which has its own unique strength and weakness. - There could be different types of missions, each of which would require a different distribution of types of operatives or weapons. Finally, I hope that some form of a multiplayer mode is added. At the minimum, a deathmatch style mode would be nice, but there is a lot of opportunity for creativity in making a massively-multiplayer-campaign-mode that takes place in a persistent universe. For example, two teams of ten players could wage war in a game that takes place over the course of two weeks. I'm inspired by the concept of the (imaginary) board game, Risktego, the game of Risk where every battle is decided not by throwing the dice, game of Stratego. To translate that to an XCOM style game, the decisions at the geoscape level would have to be made communally or by a team captain, but each battle would be assigned to a single player, and battles would have to be able to be played out concurrently.