Jaran

Cool! Will try this then on my 2nd playthrough. Was looking for the info on 1st post because I've gotten bit paranoid with mods on other games like Oblivion. There modders enjoyed sneaking in changes to mods that affected gameplay and difficulty, ruining the game later. [/bitter rant].

Are these new maps the same size as the original maps?

Good point. Maybe not to best time to do a syndicate game. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5livesstudios/satellite-reign

I would play OpenXcom first for obvious reasons and maybe try Apocalypse too. Apocalypse has a ton of neat ideas, unfortunately they were not all completely implemented, especially the different factions. Aliens look like a joke and end game gets really boring, I probably never finished the game. What it has is brilliant environmental destruction, you could collapse buildings or set them to fire. There's no reason to use doors in that game. And I'm a heretic for saying this, but the option to play real-time battles instead of turn-based was done very well. The short and violent firefights that happened on real-time mode made collateral damage a very real thing, not just something that the player chooses to do.

I would like this feature. I remember in Rome: Total War how big battles created historic battle sites on the main map and how much I enjoyed that. Memorial room would be something similar for Xenonauts, good fit for a game where the player creates his own story.

Usually how FPS games approach machine guns is that they increase the reloading time. Reloading a belt fed machine gun takes so much time that the player feels he should be in good cover whereas changing a clip to a smaller weapon can be done quickly while crouching behind a simple cover. Longer reload times also give an important rhythm to firefights when players can flank and advance when they see their enemy is reloading. If it looks like xenonauts are not needing to reload at all with "big" clips like 30 rounds then I think the game has too high accuracy. Bullets should be flying. I like this thread btw. Of course it's mostly subjective chatter but it has had nice conversation about balance vs realism vs gameplay in general. Personally I'm not hoping for a realistic game. I liked original tongue-in-cheek UFO with cow abductions, over the top weapons like autocannon&blaster launcher and how these made the destructible terrain shine. I prefer this approach over Jagged Alliance. That said, I do very much agree what was said earlier about setting weapon balance base around normal weapons that everybody knows. And then boosting the alien weapons up from there. I might be wrong, but from lurking around I've gotten the impression that end game balancing is currently going on. This shows from trying to keep later weapons from coming too strong compared to early weapons. Also from the latest percentage based TU change, to prevent veterans coming too strong. I understand the motivation but just be a bit mindful about it. This is a single player game, completely smooth and balanced progress doesn't really matter. Personally I would go even as far as to say that end game doesn't matter. It has not worked on any of the UFO games so far and I have still loved them. OG broke with psionics and Apocalypse just had too long end game. When I have 15 to 20 hours of campaign time done I just want the game to end. It's okay to be too easy by that point. If I want more I can start a new campaign. It's better than all of the game feeling the same with only reskinned weapons. I'll be thrilled if you get end game to work but I won't mind if you don't. What I hope won't happen is that 90% of the game becomes too tedious and gets too complex rules so that 10% of the game feels a bit better.

Interesting. I can't say anything about Xenonaut's current status though, if any changes are needed or not. Only wanted throw in my 2cents to the discussion if firefights should exist in combat or not.

I agree. Interestingly on OpenXcom there's a setting battleRangeBasedAccuracy for addressing the too high accuracy issue of the original game. With the setting soldiers benefit greatly from having vision to target themselves and unless they flank and advance on the enemy, firefights will emerge. Even soldiers shot at when moving from cover to cover have at least a theoretical chance of surviving. I think reduction to accuracy makes the OG more interesting at least.

Good catch. Music, sounds and limited LOS were the things that made the spooky mood of OG for me. No aliens seen but shots fired from the darkness...

Great work! Generally I've been fan of the new original lighter tone UI. However, I really like the darker clipboard backgrounds on your base screens. Some of the actual image backgrounds are maybe bit too dark for me. Perhaps some variety in tone could work too, for example lab could have better lights and more white than maintenance. I've been liking the original new map UI with its washed out 70's colors, I think it's just fine. Somehow don't like your griddy map overlay. But mods are perfect for this since I don't believe that 100% agreement will ever be found.

I'll take theorycrafting even a bit further since I haven't tried any version of Xenonauts yet (don't want to spoil it). Only been following forums actively and watching some let's plays. But I'll comment on few points anyway: 2) On first impression I'm against this, however your 45% evasion example doesn't sound too bad. Shooting from behind cover and flanking enemy's cover is important part of any strategy game though. Destructible environment is big part of any UFO game. Combining these two, maybe you could solve this cover issue by lowering the durability of cover instead? If you're planning to increase accuracy then it would mean more bullets are bound to hit cover objects, eventually destroying them anyway. This forces soldiers to move and makes the game dynamic while still keeping the strategy part. And adds some destruction to the map. 3) This sounds amazing! I was actually hoping for this many months ago. Definitely gives the soldiers more personality. Maybe you could experiment with some kind of gaussian distribution of stats to emphasis great stats even more, instead of making stats 100% random? Or perhaps that would be boring. 5) One of the many pitfalls that I've seen modern turn-based games fall into are too large maps. Perhaps this is because games are no longer held back by old hardware and thus game developers feel they can make everything just bigger in hope of it becoming better. Anyway, this causes problems for slower paced turn-based games. So if you are considering putting less enemies on the map then I'd be very mindful of this map size issue and how it affects your game pacing. But maybe you're already addressing this issue with the first item on your list, reducing movement cost. 6) I'm all for aliens inside buildings! Gives me an excuse to shoot the walls into swiss cheese.

Yes, I noticed this too which made me think he hasn't been reading these forums, at least not about how the maps are built. I am guessing he was just frustrated about the lack of variety on the maps. Of course there will be an actual review later once the game is published. It is a bit unfortunate that the preview was about an older version of the game but then again having only one page and no final score on the magazine makes it clear to the readers that it was only a preview of the game. Also, considering this issue of the magazine had a larger UFO extra which they also advertised on the cover, it makes sense to have Xenonauts in there too, even if a bit unfinished.

Downing an UFO One classic game of the past, whose recipe has been too difficult to reproduce, is UFO: Enemy Unknown. Possibly the best video game ever made. Many have tried, most recently king of turn-based strategy, lead by Sid the Great, Firaxis. Its reboot XCOM: Enemy Unknown was okay in theory but for a reason or two compromises were made that ended up being fatal. One would happily go to bed with the new XCOM and have a fun night but in the morning it would be clear that this would not be enough for a long relationship. For myself the biggest annoyance was adding enemies to the map and the free turn for enemies that followed. But now a new game has arrived on orbit to freshen up a classic game. Funded by Kickstarter and alpha funding, Xenonauts does not even pretend to be anything different than a loyal interpretation of the classic original UFO. Internationally funded (with pennies) Xenonauts are fighting an UFO invasion. Shooting down UFOs, killing their crew on the ground, collecting bodies, prisoners and technology. And at the end aliens are taught that revenge is a dish best served cold. Xenonauts has been accepted to Steam’s Early Access program, where customers can get instant access to a development version of the game, right after purchase. The alpha-like game has all its game mechanics in place but details and especially balancing is unfinished. They are tough! For most parts Xenonauts feels good. Music is very XCOMy ja graphics are crisp although a bit too clinical. UI works and everything feels familiar. At start my soldiers are champions of missing their shots and old veterans are soon loved much more than in modern work life. Xenonauts are kept busy, in addition to normal fights there are also night missions (and flares), terror missions and defence missions for aliens invading player’s base. The spirit of the original UFO is very strong. I am not sure if this is about unfinished balancing but enemies are much better than xenonauts. They have longer vision range, they shoot without negative bonuses and they can take way too much damage. Even bazooka shots are laughed at and hand grenades could be sold as fireworks for kids. AI feels like a placeholder, that shoots at visible ‘nauts but otherwise does not move a lot. Even reapers run past soldiers following civilians. Speaking of them, on first terror mission I almost cried. Some of the enemies were like stronger versions of Mutons. Five shots with a sniper rifle and lizard man was still charging forward. More smarts and less difficulty, but only just a little, and everything will work much better. Take cover! Ball is only dropped at terrain. Like in UFO: Extra-Terrestrial and in new XCOM terrain looks like it’s made of grids and blocks, like it should be. Like in these two games, Xenonaut’s similarities with the original only come as close as looking similar. Maps are not randomly generated so xenos and xenonauts always land on the same spot. For now it also feels like there are not enough maps. This has a crippling effect on replayability. Second of all, terrain damage is extremely modest. A wall can be destroyed or a window broken but it is like comparing a bar fight to the Second World Wars of original UFO or Silent Storm. Beautifully ruinable terrain was at least one-third of the appeal of original UFO. Terrain is also bland. Objects like houses, vehicles, fence, benches and other obstacles are thrown on a flat surface, but not in an interesting way that tickles my strategic mind. If you make maps by hand instead of random generation, then at least make them interesting. 3D graphics does not add anything, there is no zooming and no turning of view. What is so difficult about this? If 3D does not work then let’s go back to tile-based graphics! My prognosis for Xenonauts is good enough but still not something that replaces the original UFO. -Nnirvi

I didn't find a press forum yet, so I'll post this here instead of Offtopic as this is Xenonauts related. Finnish game magazine Pelit had a preview of Xenonauts. I translated it below to best of my ability. Normally I don't follow press so much, however Xenonauts was previewed by Niko Nirvi who is a long time gamer, strategy game fan and has listed original UFO as his favourite game as well as written columns where he has positively compared game mechanics of original UFO to more modern games. Same magazine (08, 2013) also had a six page article about the history of original UFO game as well a two page review of OpenXcom (scrore: 5/5). Given this context I thought it was an interesting preview of Xenonauts. It is unclear which version he played. Based on the preview I would guess he got the game through Stream and has not been reading these forums. Finnish preview

So how many spots does a hunter take? 2 or 4? If only 2, then wouldn't it be an okay compromise to increase starting personnel slots to 10 and increase hunter's size to 4? This would leave tank+soldiers combo the same but would make only soldiers strategy bit more manageable.

Thanks for reply. It's good to hear that there is still enough differences between soldiers to justify different roles. That is what I was after. And yes, your last comment about elite fighters makes perfect sense. However for me personally, in this case I would happily sacrifice some realism to gain more interesting gameplay experience through exaggerated skill differences. But like I said, I haven't played the game yet and after all this doesn't sound like an issue. Great!

I haven't tried the game yet because I don't want to spoil the experience for myself. But I did see part of let's play video on youtube where someone was playing start of the game. One thing he complained about and I noticed too was that there really wasn't much difference on skill levels between rookies. They all looked pretty good, or pretty bad, however you want to see it. Not sure if it is still so, I just remembered this when reading about putting heavy weapons on everybody. Making soldier's skill levels more varied could help with forcing the player to use different weapons. There's no point to put heavy weapons on someone unless he's really strong or sniper rifles on someone who can't shoot. More varied stats also creates personality for your soldiers. Some of them are strong, some fast and rarely some of them you just want to protect because they're so talented that they're great at everything. And losing someone like that really hurts...

I see. That's unfortunate.

Any thoughts about finished game? Could imagine that this game finds fans on gog.com for example.

I love the new geoscape! Here's why: When I think about Xenonauts, it's cold war. So it has a bit of retro theme to it. This makes me think of a real map with a bit washed out colours. Not some digital map from the Matrix like old geoscape was. New geoscape looks pretty much like the one I would imagine. Colours look just fine, at least on my current monitor. Maybe I would make night a bit darker and I like the idea of city lights. But these are small details. Good work on unifying the game art!