thixotrop

Nice setting, sounds interesting and thriller'esque. Your concept reminds me a bit of another "old" game: Syndicate. Though not in all aspects. In Syndicate your "mission" was to bring down corporations that were ruling the world. You had soldier upgrades (implants, drugs, mechanical prostetics and so on) and everybody was your enemy, at least after some time. There is another indie game dev team at this, see here. In general I always liked to have games with multiple game experience levels, though they will get pretty complex pretty fast. I guess a Xenonauts version with this will jump up in complexity once you take that path. If you then can still focus on the "real task" to defend your world against the alien invasion is a tricky balancing of game programming. I could imagine that when the game speeds up and you need to battle the alien that in that instant you base will be sacked by Council forces or your precious final missions "messed with". Nevertheless, in my youth a "dream game" would be a forced hybrid of civilization, sim city, railroad tycoon, battle isle or XCom/Ufo for combat (why not with vehicles too). But talk about complex...

Perhaps Chris doesn't like it because you can't see well when your soldiers are behind them. And the more storeys a building the more "shadow".

Funny I have thought of a very similar idea for a mod. But as I am not programmer, I can't put it into practice. Anybody who wants, can feel free to do so.

I have read in another thread that the engine does not allow real height changes, that's why there are no hills or similar. The only exceptions are houses with stairs, roofs, some rocks that are quite high and the ufos. When you develop buzzard armor you can get your soldiers to higher places otherwise unaccessible. The buzzard armor serves as a James-Bond-style jetpack, so no shooting while in air. I have used my sniper with that on high rooftops, works great. I have read there is also other armor that allows flying, but I haven't come across those. And I have never see that the aliens take advantage of buildings with stairs. Sometimes thy hide in buildings, but they never use upper levels.

I have experienced the same for some time now. I think this "shuttle craft" in the hangar should be low height, that's why you can shoot over but not go through. However, I have experienced some graphical errors when moving soldiers next to it. But then I don't know if it is fixed up to now as I wait for the next stable release to play again. My post is here.

No Mod! Xenonauts 2 !!!

Such things has bee reported for some time now, even with former versions of the game (see here). And as I have mentioned in that thread too, there was a workaround by BeornBlackclaw that may help you too.

Scientists will use the SI system because it is the international standard. However, as national differences exist other systems will remain. For engineers, being one myself with contacts with european, american and (other) international customers, it is usually necessary to convert to the appropriate system. May it be for reports, for understanding (because everybody thinks in the system they are grown up with) or for data exchange. Sure it is tedious sometimes, but also for those of the "other unit systems". If I could wish, the "metrics" as it was discussed here, should be the only system. Nevertheless some data will always be in "imperial" due to history. As an example all piping for water, gas, sewage, oil and whatelse is measured in inches (1/2"; 3/4"; 5/16" and so on). And this I think is also the cause for measuring the altitude of jets in feet and supersonic speed in mach. The speed of ships is in knots and blood pressure in mmHg (millimeter mercury). Yes I know some of these examples are not covered by the SI system.

Hehe, no you don't need to leave the discussion. We can end it here, as it seems it will be a lot of work to implement in the game. On the one hand due to all the possible events the soldier may neglect to throw, and on the other hand all the graphical work, the time unit calculation, programming and things I don't know are also necessary. I see what you mean with the imbalances and I understand that. Though I guess as long as the aliens can use the same tactic no advantage would be there. Unless you count in the human factor of adapting the own playing style (grenading everything without sense, avoiding enemies as soon as they are spotted, sniping aliens out of shadows and faroff corners and so on, smoke-bombing the whole way to the ufo and or to buildings). Even if these could be performed by the AI too, I guess the game would become unplayable pretty soon, or at least very frustrating. My original intention with "rolling grenades" and then "look around the corner" was to have more "freedom" in tactics. Now, if you want to look into a room with/without aliens inside and with/without knowing that there are some, your soldier is at a high risk to die by reaction fire for this. So the "sneaky look" (maybe short, maybe not the full room, maybe aliens are not visible anymore once this sneaky look is finished) at least would really help, even if no grenades could be thrown or weapoms shot in that direction. And I think that this will definitely add something to tactics, because you know that aliens are there but can't reach them from outside the room, so you have to think something up to get them without soldiers to die by bad luck (reaction fire). But I don't want to press the issue further as I have typed too much again already...I wanted to end it, wasn't I.

Absolutely right! It was always a valid solution. Always!

Yeah and lots of blood and gore everywhere. I can vividly remember the cows upside down and belly-open on that tables. Funny, just googled "ufo enemy unknown cow" and with pictures, it was the second hit. Here it is: But seriously, why not? The aliens doing all kind of juxtaposing tissue and technology, so they don't have an obvious "problem" with it.

I understand what you mean, but then I did not say this method should be included just as I have told. Certainly there has to be adjustments to other events like those you have mentioned. And yes, I throw grenades to places I can't see clearly just because I have seen some alien going in that direction. Also places where I know a wraith will teleport to, because it did back and forth three rounds ago. About the waste of ammnition: This was mentioned to have something against the argument of "just use lots of grenades and throw them anywhere, why bother". I did not intend to prohibit throwing in that case, I think I overdid it there, sorry. I don't have a problem with the "sneaky look, step back and throw" tactic. But at it is right now you can't do the sneaky look around a corner. The soldier has to step out of cover and...typically get shot, even before he can turn around with its vision to see the room. I have lost a good bunch of soldiers due to that. Why not? So, they can throw something in. If you know that can happen, why not throw something out first? Right now I have experienced that an alien opens a door, sees my soldiers, fires some shots and retreats. Door is still open and no alien can be seen by my soldiers and suddenly an alien grenade comes hopping by saying hello. So in some way this tactic is already performed by the aliens. OK, now you can say this is because the aliens can see you before you can see them, but does that change the subject. I don't think so and don't have a problem with the aliens doing that.

Yeah, nice to hear that.

A very expensive Nasa Mars Orbiter was lost due to the mismatch of imperial and metric units in 1999. See here and here (search article for "cause of failure"). That was quite a laugh for me that day. However, I totally understand that such errors can happen. But then there is also

I did not have in mind to throw tons of grenades around the corner, just a single flashbang, smoke or other. If raining grenades would be a good tactic, all you need is a strong soldier who can throw far and seven other donkey-guys loaded with grenades like hell....boooring. What I thought was: Your troop gathers outside a room/around a corner. The room is not yet visible, i.e. you don't know the interior and/or if enemies are inside and where nthey are. Before throwing a grenade, the soldier has to risk a short glance into the room like poking the head around in a swift movement. Reason: There could be a wall directly behind that door, because it is not a room but another doorway, and the grenade bounces back. Would be fun to watch if my soldiers would perform a ducking/diving reaction movement to avoid that blast This glance-around-the-corner could be an own command and not related to the grenade throwing action, but it has to be done before the grenade is thrown that way. So with the short glance, some parts of the room will be visible and also if enemies are there. Then it can be decided if it is ok to throw something. If there is nothing to throw at the soldier should refuse to throw, best done with a small message on screen like: "No target, this will be a waste of ammo, pal!" (This somewhere at the side and not to be acknowledged, this would be annoying). This can be backed by general order in the mission briefing to avoid to much unecessary damage due to salvaging. This same refuse can also happen if the room is already visible and nothing is there to throw at. I think reaction movement is already part of the game, because when you guard a room, aliens enter and your soldiers reaction-firing the alien tries to move out again. This can happen when grenades are thrown also. Sometimes when I see a grenade coming to my soldiers I wished I could have an reaction dive with losing all th TUs just for survival. Aliens should have the sama ability.

Has been reported a couple of times I guess. Like here.

Maybe Him: damn why is there a thumbnail too...

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

Just to show how air combat can be resolved manually: This is not from me, but it was once mentioned in a post some time ago and for a former version. The "tactics" there are still valid. Myself, I have tried autoresolve a couple of time but I always lost all jets. So now always manually.

Xenonauts 2 should be made by Goldhawk. Why? Because now they have so much experience with the game, the nice-to-have content, the content that was left out due to budget or time reasons, the ideas that spawned during programming and were not realized and (hopefully) all the ideas, whishes, hints and mod-creations from the community (regardless if they were helpful, creative, crazy or utterly insane... ehm...the ideas not the community-posters, at least not the most of them I guess). So please don't throw away or lose all these background knowledge. Please... Therefore I wish you a huge success with the game, so you do want to do the sequel. (However, danger might be that Goldhawk becomes that rich with it that they stop working at all...hmm shall I wissh for less success. No.)

I have wished for rolling/bouncing grenades too. Sometimes everything in a room prevents a good arc of the grenade, but it is all full of tables to skid something across the floor. Like in some action movies where an ice hockey disc stops near the bad guys and they have a surprised look and...bam.

...and some neon green jelly stuff oozing out of alien machinery. ...and some weird looking alien plants that had suddenly spored near the ufo and that will bite anything that comes near. ...and some free stroling alien pets the captain keeps in his room. No, not fish! *cough* sorry, mind wandering....

I also have looked for the PNG files for the drones. Have the same that dmholt mentioned. There are no files for weapon-firing and crashing animation-sheets - unless the explosion file - as they are for other dying aliens. The Harridan warrior for instance has 128 PNG-files with all kinds of positions, with and without weapons and all in different zoom factors of the alien.

I had, at that time, verified the game data to see if that helps; but it didn't (for me).

Look here.