[Personnel Recruitment Tweak]

Could you let us recruit personnel if we have enough living space even if there isn't any working space? Let us hire them, simply don't have them contribute to any research/engineering projects. This way we'd be able to hire personnel in time for them to arrive just as additional labs/workshops are about to be completed. Rather than having to wait for the lab/workshop to be finished before being allowed to hire more. Just seems strange that they require living quarters to hire them yet they're treated as if they're going to spend all their time in the lab/workshops anyways since they can't be brought in unless their respective working areas are finished. 

[Is the cover system and line of sight ever going to see an immense improvement?]

On 1/10/2025 at 9:48 PM, Chris said:

It depends what you mean by "immense" improvement, really.

Even if we fixed the issues you've raised in your post, it kinda sounds like the fundamental problem you have is that the game is using an abstracted tile grid rather than proper 3d shot paths that take into account the collision meshes of the target and any intervening objects. We did experiment with the latter at the start of development and ultimately we abandoned it because it has a lot of negatives, mostly related to how hit chances become incredibly unpredictable and the various knock-on effects that caused.

If that's the case then no, you're not going to see immense improvements. If you just want us to iron out some problems in the existing model, hopefully you will. There are some problems with the LOS / LOF mechanics we still want to fix. 

Fair enough. I mean, if this is your vision for the game then I'll do my best to enjoy it since it's the way it is intended to be. I have continued playing the game recently on Milestone 5 and been enjoying what's there. I'll try and provide more feedback on the official thread as I continue playing.

[Is the cover system and line of sight ever going to see an immense improvement?]

I want to get into Xenonauts 2, I really do but every time I jump back in and find just how rudimentary cover and LOS feel it just instantly kills my desire to play it. I thought these would be two of the biggest improvements we would see with the jump from 2.5D to 3D yet X2 still feels woefully poor when it comes to these things. See the images below for reference:

 

First two images a waist high piece of cover below my soldier who is a full floor above aiming down at a unit who isn't even next to said piece of cover is having his aim inhibited somehow. This is something I had made a post about all the way back in Milestone 3 or 4, not sure. Anyways, definitely needs to be looked at.

 

Second two images my soldier somehow gained LOS of an enemy that he definitely should not be able to see. I brought up the aiming reticule and it just further confirms how he should in no way be able to see the enemy. He doesn't even have a shot in fact.

 

These issues personally completely prevent me from taking the game seriously. It kills my desire to engage with the game at all because you cannot make reasonable, satisfying decisions about how to approach different situations when the game handles cover and LOS (something which should be immensely important in a game like this) so poorly.

[Game logic regarding LOS and cover]

4 hours ago, Chris said:

Thanks for the feedback. I think you've found a bug in the game there - if there's a string of adjacent cover with the same or less stopping chance than the original adjacent cover (i.e. the box), then it should all be ignored. In this case that means the wall should be ignored because it's adjacent to the box, which is correctly being ignored.

However it doesn't seem to be working here for some reason, so we'll take a look at what's going on.

Ah I see, that certainly makes more sense. I hope my post was helpful in some way then, even if just illuminating a bug. Thanks for taking the time to reply back!

[Game logic regarding LOS and cover]

I'm starting to enjoy the game quite a bit but I can't help but feel a bit concerned regarding how rudimentary and poor the game's logic still is when it comes to what it considers as cover. See the image below, my soldier is aiming over some waist high objects at a Cleaner. The box is next to him so the game goes "Ok, you're good there, no way that's blocking the shot oh but what's this? There is a waist high wall adjacent to that box and you are NOT next to it therefore, it might block your shot".

It's just a bit frustrating that even with the game's upgrade to 3D from X1, though obviously an immense improvement, there is still stuff like this that just doesn't make any sense and pulls me out of the experience. If the Cleaner in the image was crouching then maybe I'd see why there'd be a chance for the shot to get blocked but he's standing up 2 feet away from my soldier and he's completely exposed from the torso up, the box nor the wall should count as cover.

Are there any improvements or fixes being worked on for things like this? Or is it just going to be something I have to put up with as long as I play this game? I think a basic fix would be to somehow take into account distance and whether or not the target is crouched behind partial cover objects. It might already work like this, I don't know, but I think waist high objects should only provide half their cover bonus if the target is standing, just to alleviate the issue a bit (So that in the situation depicted in the image below for example, there would at least only be a 20% chance of the shot getting blocked rather than a whopping 40%). 

When it comes to the distance, I think waist high objects' cover bonus should vary highly depending on the distance between the shooter and the target. Obviously if I'm standing next to their cover, it should work as it does now, no way the shot is getting blocked. But I don't think it needs to immediately be considered a full low cover block the instant there is an extra tile in the way. It should be like a 5% chance for the shot to get blocked, then increment that slowly the larger the distance. I think overall that would make low cover way more interesting and also only reserve shots blocked by low cover in those types of situations as utter catastrophes rather than common occurrences.

(With the stuff I've mentioned here, the situation below would make the waist high wall a 2.5% chance that my shot gets blocked, 5% divided by 2 due to the target standing).

 

I hope this feedback makes some sense and I hope I didn't come off as too presumptuous, I'm not a game dev of course so maybe you guys have some good reasons for why things work the way they do but I personally feel like the changes I've mentioned above would make the game way more satisfying and "logical". Thanks for taking the time to read!

[Are there any plans to revise accuracy a bit?]

Primarily close range bonuses? I was hoping this game would be more of a return to classic style xcom style gameplay which it mostly is except for how accuracy works. Especially now that we're in a post Phoenix Point world, a game which has a lot of its own issues of course but one which made its shooting a hell of a lot better, I just don't really see why this game thinks it's alright to be right in front of an enemy with a shotgun and only have an 86% or so chance to hit?

At least in the Firaxis games you could get the high ground on enemies, holo-target them, and utilize certain perks as well to grant flat chance increases to your hitchance. This game doesn't have any of those things (nor should it) but I feel like once my soldier is close enough to put the barrel down the alien's throat then they should have a 100% to hit.

[Feedback regarding abduction missions + some miscellaneous stuff]

To start off with, I'd just like to say I'm really enjoying the game so far and am real excited for the finished product.

So feedback; I think abduction mission civilians need a bit of tweaking as currently they have a high chance of just getting shot once rescued from the abduction pods which is just a bit weird since the game doesn't acknowledge this in any way and still considers those civilians saved (even though all you saved them from was some probing). To begin with, I think civilians should not count as saved if they are killed during a mission, at the very least there should be a penalty. However to reduce the chances of dumb civvies getting murdered there are a couple of ways to make this less likely:

1. Either have rescued civilians drop unconscious once saved meaning explosives and the like could still kill them but this is far less likely than them stumbling into an alien and getting shot.

2. Allow us to control civilians we save meaning it's up to us to actually keep them safe for the duration of the mission once we have rescued them.

3. If this isn't within the scope of the mission then just have rescued civvies disappear after they're saved so they don't just get murdered.

 

Now for some miscellaneous stuff:

1. It would be nice if gas masks appeared on soldiers' battlescape models if they have one equipped. It adds to the game's visuals while also preventing having to double check soldier inventories again and again.

2. I don't know if I just couldn't see it but the post-mission breakdown doesn't seem to show you which soldiers got kills, this would be nice to see.

3. I'd much prefer a to see the current date in the Geoscape rather than 'Days passed', I just think it's cooler.

4. This might be more of a bug than a design issue but I don't think waist high objects should interfere with shots when your target is several feet above said waist high object. (see image below)

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Psionics,and why humans should (eventualy) get them]

With Psionics though, they just turned into a chain reaction of you taking control of one alien, find another with that alien, take control of him etc. etc.