Mew

Well, that is a relief. As much as I like the idea of being able to buy games online, one of the big reasons I've refused to use Steam is the unability to actually own the games bought on that platform. (with some truly horrid examples being games that you buy in the stores, with full CDs... only to find out that the CDs are basically just empty, linking you to Steam and requiring you to play the game streamed, meaning the physical copy is 100% useless. In fact, you don't even get to keep the .exe files on your computer, making the physical copy doubly useless)

Will it be possible to get the game *without* Steam? I picked up the Desura copy specifically to avoid Steam and because I hate Steam's "you only own the ability to download streamed files as long as the service hold" system ; I do like having the .exe on my computer and knowing that if my internet goes down or if Steam goes down all my purchases won't turn into thin air. Just want to make sure that the announcement does not mean that the Desura purchases is no longer valid and merely allow you to get a free Steam copy (which I do not want).

The one thing I've really been wondering for and waiting for, release-wise... When will the final mission/victory condition be implemented (if it's not already in)? I guess it will probably be put in last and determine which release is the final/'retail' release but basically, I admit this is the one thing I've been meaning to wait for. As much fun as an arcade / endless mode might be, I admit I've been waiting for the story / beatable mode (though the main difference between the two is probably only the presence of an unlockable game winning mission via research & built items and, maybe, a couple of extra missions if relevent).

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

-I'd have just deleted this thread and its posts but this forum does not allow one to delete threads-

Frankly, I am much more satisfied with dev logs than with deadlines. Having worked in the industry on occasion and having been thoroughly disatisfied with the horror that is deadlines, I find that Chris releasing dev logs give a much better idea of how close the game is to completion and actually reveal *why* the game is not being released. A "oh dear, we must redo/rework that point" log entry is far more informative to me than a 'deadline extended by 8 months for no reason' entry. The only really sore point I see is that there is no checklist showing how close to completion he is. But this is deliberate, from what I understand ; he wants many features to remain secret. So he mention his progress but not what is the 100% state shooting for. This make for better surprises and avoid the SSBB dev log disaster but it also remove the reference for how close to completion the game may truly be. As it stand, as long as he can give consistent logs (showing he hasn't dropped/stalled the project), I will be happy.

Frankly, I feel the opposite. Actions may be easier to learn but Enemy Unknown's are so utterly limited that after a while, I was really wishing for Time Units to return. Time Units are hard to learn and I think that visual aids to indicate to a player how many Time Units a sequence of actions will cost would help a lot but the flexibility is worth it in the long run. What I'd really like is a Time Unit system that give you a permanent indicator of how many units your current course of action will cost overall and the ability to reserve as many Time Units as you want for each unit. In short, merge the two. ... or if one go with Actions, don't have it as utterly limited as Enemy Unknown. Xenonauts is frankly quite good on that aspect, with a number indicator that tell you how many time units you have left if you make your chosen sequence of actions and color-coding the paths. The only point I'll really fault is that it doesn't put label the ducking button to show how many TUs it use up but apart from that, it's actually very easy to pick up and play. Once you understand that the number indicate the amount of TUs you will have left once at that spot rather than how many it will use up, the interface is very intuitive.

The Seekers, or more exactly this particular Cerberus faction (Seekers that go rogue are refered by their peers as 'Cerberi', called after a faction of rip-offs that gave them huge amounts of trouble in their beginnings), were created for a X-Com/Xenonauts setting. The actual Seeker species was technically made independantly, with many of its Clans (the species is nomadic and fragmented) acting as protagonists in various separate stories. However, in the process of writing and setting up a X-com/Xenonauts story involving a Clan trying to forcefully colonize Earth and then, when that fails, going rogue and trying to kill everything, I ended up basically redoing every trait of that faction, making it radically and distinctively different from the baseline species in basically every point. For example, the 'canon' Seeker actually look far less mechanical and is more life-like, with a generally cuter appearance. In the process of making this particular faction, I changed the looks of the basic Seeker, making it more mechanical to fit in with the esthetics of X-Com/Xenonauts-like settings. Also and most importantly, 'canon' Seekers use mostly a single all-purpose Drone model for everything and their technology is more mechanical. This new faction has a more organic-machine mix look and a large variety of specialized units, based off Outsider DNA they gathered (normal Seekers don't use Combat Forms, for example). I admit that one of my first thoughts when I came on this forum was to post the full story, adding drawings & xenopedia entries on the faction's units as the X-Com/Xenonauts organization defeat and research them in-story. But since the forums lack a proper fan stuff sub-forum and I didn't want to clutter this forum with my material, I decided to just post those three drawings and descriptions.

No, not yet. But color-wise... Seekers are variable in colors but males tend to have green-ish/blue-ish colors while females alternate between pink and red. Combat Forms are snow white with red tentacles and dull grey machinery. Emissaries are red. I actually have a full set of aliens for this faction, including the UFOs and guns they use. I had writen Xenopedia, autopsy, and interogation entries for them but lost them. I'll eventually rewrite them. I plan to post the drawings I made of each of the aliens I made, alongside with basic descriptions like I did with the first three ground troop types.

Some custom aliens I made... (linked to a custom alien invader faction, not to the usual X-Com bunch or meant to be linked with the Xenonauts aliens. More like three types of aliens to be linked with the custom faction) Seekers (left: male / right: female) The Seekers are a mechanical species that was designed before the dawn of time by an extremely advanced, now extinct civilization for the purpose of acting as a vanguard against hostile intelligences both native and from outside the fabric of space and time. Most of them are benevolent, travelling in moon-sized motherships, looking for enemies to defeat and for civilizations to defend and nurture... ... but sometimes, one of their Clans lose faith in their never-ending mission. Most of the time, they simply abandon their technology and settle down on some remote planet where they fade into obscurity. But sometimes, some Clans become corrupted by their powers. After all, as the ultimate weapons, shouldn't they rule the Universe rather than serve it? Such Clans are known as 'Cerberi'. And wielding technology based upon the 'base code' of the Universe, the ability to warp the fabric of reality with their minds, and holding technology that can create from nothing and destroy in an absolute manner, the Cerberi quickly become indistinguishable from the monsters they were designed to destroy... In the year 2008 of another timeline, one such Cerberus Clan has decided to make Earth its target... This is a Combat Form. Having decided that morals no longer apply to them, the Cerberi have used the nanobot technology which compose their bodies and modified it into a plague. Those plague clouds, once released over human population centers, quickly enter the bodies of victims and twist their bodies into Combat Forms, removing organs, adding implants, and destroying whatever mind once occupied the body. All that is left in the wake of those clouds are hordes of Combat Forms, unreal mockeries that mirror the Cerberi's own twisted minds. Thankfully, although gruesome in shape, the Combat Forms are little better than the human beings that they once were, relying upon weapons, both local and given by the Cerberi, to threaten the world. Being mindless husks controlled by Cerberus intelligences, Combat Forms are relentless and fearless. Thankfully, due to this, they also have a low level of autonomous intelligence relying on weight of numbers to be effective. Still, Earth operatives should be careful not to be swamped in bodies. Emissary In few other creations of the Cerberi is their decadence better reflected than in the Emissaries. The Emissaries are three meters-tall toned-down clones of the Outsiders that the Cerberi once defended reality from. Although far smaller and lacking the sheer power of the originals, Emissaries are still capable of exerting their will upon the fabric of reality in a limited manner. Most of this influence come under the form of telepathic powers, Emissaries serving as control nodes that allow the Cerberus hive minds and Command Units to remote control their various Drones without communications lag. Emissaries also serve an offensive role in the hallucinations, panicking attacks, and mind-control they can unleash upon victims. Despite being surprisingly resilient and capable of warping space to tear apart targets if directly threatened, Emissaries are aware that their fancy powers are slower on the draw than a gunshot and as such tend to hang back and attack from within cover or from the air, using Combat Forms as 'spotters'. Emissaries are priority targets ; should one be destroyed, all Combat Forms under its control will be struck by a psychic backlash and be destroyed with it. However, caution should still be used as the psychic backlash, although only lethal to minds under its control at long ranges, can cause pain, brain damage, and even death to operatives who do the mistake of killing an Emissary from point blank range.

You know... reading this thread, it suddenly made me think of the original X-Com and how it dealt with this. Don't know how relevent my opinion might be but well, here it goes. Basically? You were fighting an actual enemy who was setting up slowly in the original games. You did not run into a range problem (or very rarely) because the aliens begun by sending scouts who scouted the entire planet, looking for a suitable location for their own initial base. Then after setting up bases or getting enough scouts downed by the player, then they start attacking the countries with terror ships or begun looking for your bases (if you got a good enough score downing scouts). Likewise, alien bases meant supply ships, which flew in from various directions and could also be caught. In short? The aliens had plenty of reasons to swing by the player's airspace and you could predict the aliens' base placement and targets via the type of ship sent and where they tended to go, allowing you to guess where new bases had to go. In short? Why make it so complicated with random chance and what not? We're talking about early game, where you have F-serie fighters with short ranges and a slow Chinook as a transport. Have alien scouting forces that go around the world looking for a fight and that thus will run into your radar unless your base is in the middle of nowhere. As for the new recruits thing... Having to raise a rookie once more is a big part of the 'using veterans' risk/reward thing and a cornerstone of X-Com's meatgrinder dilemna (do I use expandable suicide squads that may run out of meat before the end of the mission or elite teams that *will* get the job done but whose fatalities cannot be undone with just a few clicks?). I personally think this is an element worth keeping. Besides, it was pointed out that the superior weaponry is already a new advantage for mid/end-game anyway. If all else fails, I see HWPs being a good cornerstone ; a selling point of them is that they don't need levelling-up. So although they use up many soldier slots in vehicles, they serve as a crutch while your rookies level-up.

Well, if that's the feeling... Frankly, I'm being diplomatic because although the game is pretty mediocre, it did do a few things well and on first playthrough, it does a decent job. I must stress that the 'panic meter' point is something that I'm baffled took this long to be implemented in a X-Com game. It would have saved me a ton of trouble in the original games if I knew how close to pulling the plug the various nations were in the older games instead of having a rather vague 'Excellent-OK-Average-Bad-Terrible' rating that doesn't mean anything really. And the 'one base' point worked surprisingly well. But those two points alone do not prevent the game from suffering from event-based gameplay (aliens appearing in vacuum), cheating AI (enemy get a free turn when spotted. Cannot destroy cover. Cannot target opponents you don't directly see), and shallow tactical depth (no ammunition shortages, weapons are class-limited, the likes). They said 'streamlined'. In truth, it's actually and truly dumbed down. I have to side with the haters on that point.

Well, I've checked it out and Desura is the best option ; you actually truly download the game from it rather than a permission to redownload the game whenever the service feels like it. Hopefully, the 'download the whole game' point will remain for the final game. As this is a Desura option, I suspect it will likely stay (unless it has filesize limitations regarding that point).

I've given the Xenonauts alpha a go and took a look at the UI shown in this thread... My biggest concern is accessability. And it has led me to two things that I've been wondering about: -where is the option to buy Earth-made equipment? Or is it like in Enemy Unknown where you automatically have such equipment in an infinite quantity? There does not seem to be an option to buy anything, only sell stuff. Since the game has ammunition management and customization of soldiers, I thought that the option would be there. -One of the few things Enemy Unknown did well and that I think was nice was a 'situation' screen that indicate the worldwide level of panic and quickly show the level of coverage you have over the planet. I think that it would be handy to have a screen that show the level of alien infestation in different zones and that quickly show your short-range and long-range radius for all of your bases at the same time. In short, a screen that show you how satisfied or disatisfied each region of the world is with your organization right away. Note that if either has already been addressed, I apologize in advance.

Thank you. I really dislike Steam due to the fact that it's a "you play only if we feel like allowing you" type of service. AKA say I want to play a game I paid for ten years ago but still find fun to play. Well, tough luck, even if my computer is still compatible. That and the potential problems it cause with mods (even though I'm not a big modder/mod-user, I do appreciate the possibility of it and have played them occasionally). If Desura allow me to actually own the game and play it even if it go offline/stop supporting the game, I'll get Xenonauts that way (this is important for me since my internet connection is unstable so even if I didn't have my philosophical problems with Steam games, I'd still have problems with them).

OK... I think I will add my two cents in. Enemy Unknown's problem is that it oversimplified. Some of what it does are definite improvements but the problem is that it wants too much to be 'streamlined' and in doing so, remove depth. Let me explain. Reducing from time units to actions can make sense. Many tactical games use actions instead of an overcomplicated time unit system and it works great. The problem is that actions are too limited ; you can only move-move, move-shoot/use item, or shoot/use item. What they should have done is have a larger pool of actions, reduce their potency, and have some 'harder' actions take up more actions (or be counted as more than one). In short, there is a balance between the incredibly complex and nigh-impenetrable time unit system (which works wonders given you can master, true... but this is given you can master it, that is) and the overly simplified, limited 'move-move' action system. But what truly annoyed me is the unability to fire freely. That was my true beef. You cannot destroy cover, create your own, or even just target foes that you don't see. Likewise, foes always have that silly 'OMG! Aliens here!' cutscene and then get a free turn. Every time. It can be compensated for but it seems like an artificial limitation. It must be noted that the 'enemy only attack when viewed' point is actually exhagerated ; the dumber aliens do so but once you make it to Mutons and Ethereals, the 'get to cover when spotted' things is actually revealed for what it is: the enemy get a free turn upon first contact. This can become extremely deadly and frustrating as the foes will flank you from the dark and then get a free turn, allowing them to crack your defense not because you made a mistake but because the mechanic allow them to play twice in a row. But the above are admitely minor compared to the Geoscape. My REAL beef with the Geoscape is not that you don't get extra bases. Functions in-game would make them redundant. The only really bad thing is how little the workshop and lab extensions do (just new engineers) and that although the game allow you extra interceptors, it do not allow extra skyrangers for some odd reason. And this brings me to the real problem of Enemy Unknown. In the old games, you were actually leading a real war against an unknown enemy. Aliens sent scouting forces, identified targets, placed bases, and then deployed terror and attack ships to destroy X-com's funding. Putting pressure on them meant their ships begun to get escorts and that they'd try to locate your bases and then attack them. But in Enemy Unknown? You get 1-3 random UFOs per month, one terror mission, maybe one request by the council, and that's it. It's just random events with every base attacks and what not being only story missions. Not that story missions are bad ; I don't think anyone will complain about the Cydonia, T'leth, or Alien Dimension missions in the old X-com bases. The real problem is that there is no actual strategic element outside of base management. And that is what truly hurt Enemy Unknown on the long term. You cannot ever truly get overwhelmed by the aliens nor can you truly ever pressure them. The only measure of doing well or not is the panic meter for the nations. The panic meter was one thing that Enemy Unknown wasted, in particular. A bad element of the original games was that you didn't know the panic level of nations. Enemy Unknown show you a clear, fancy display of how every nation felt about you. The problem was that since it's all event-based and the game force the panic meter to rise constantly in an artificial way (via not allowing you to build more Skyrangers to deal with all terror sites), it become little more than a game over timer. This is especially sadening that Terror from the Deep actually did a similar concept (forcing you to eventually move on with the plot via worsening odds) much better than just stopping you from dealing with terror sites. I could go on but I won't. In short? Enemy Unknown did many things well, it did many things badly. One should learn lessons from the points where its streamlining worked and avoid the pitfalls it caught.

Well, first of all, the game appear very interesting. However, I have been rather worried for a few reasons. To summarize? Although I am not against paid downloadable games, I am strictly opposed to Steam-style games (where all you buy is merely a permission to redownload the game every time you want to play and where you must have an internet connection at all time and the second the support vanish, you just wasted your money). So I want to know if Xenonauts will have an option that allow you to, you know, actually own the game. Thanks in advance. (P.S. I apologize in advance in case the question was already asked.)

Salutations, new user here. Fan of X-com serie, has played a lot of the games, and although I initially was excited about Enemy Unknown, I felt that it was far too simplified when I learnt about it (random events instead of the aliens actually building bases and spreading, no inventory management, random specializations instead of levelling-up abilities via use, squad sizes reduced too much) and I was also disappointed that it was linked to Steam no matter what and that you could never truly actually own the game (I hate being at the mercy of a server that can cut support whenever it wants, making my purchase pointless). So I'm intrigued by the idea of a remake that expand on the original's concept instead of cutting content. I'm also a writer, like to draw, and have involved myself into game development (both indie and pro) in the past. I'm hoping that I will be able to interact with people in this forum and bring interesting contributions (instead of just registering and lurking). See you around everyone!