mangalores
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Posts posted by mangalores
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Can't say I like the idea of removing bases.
Overall it is what completely destroyed any sense of strategy in the Firaxis game. There is virtually none.
I do think you can overhaul base building overall but managing base infrastructure, costs and deployment (does that base have its own strike team or not, where do I move advanced interceptors, what base gets priority) were all important layers of the strategic level of the gameplay.
I would rather add reasons why the Xenonauts need to expand their infrastructure over the globe via radar stations, multiple strike teams, interceptor bases etc. than reducing the affair to one base.
If one takes that you play as either the Soviet or US version of Xenonauts you could easily explain it with both factions obviously only allowing their own soldiers to use that alien technology and get into contact with it. E.g. you gain influence in Brazil but to keep it you need to install a presence there capable to protect the country and these are radar stations and air bases.
As said, I'd rather increase the reasons to have multiple teams, than only one so you may need a South American combat team, a US team and a European one because e.g. deploying elsewhere takes more time than just moving from A to B (e.g. you need to move tons of material so actually you need to create a staging point from which a strike team can operate from outside a base's range and the entire affair takes several days)
The way I could see the above strategic aspect fulfilled and actuall remove _all_ bases is:
- Strike teams need staging areas which are in airbases around the globe. Air bases are either controlled by the US/Soviet Union or provided by local allies.
- Cities may grant science or production boni for various items so you want to control them and establish labs / manufacturing there. e.g. top scientist from New York has a breakthrough in alien lazer tech => science in that tech group is done there. Interceptors are far cheaper and faster to build in wherever Boeing has a production plant or whatever.
Thus installations in other countries would boost influence alot since they see it as prove that you consider them close allies.
- UFOs can only be found with Xenonaut radar and US/Russia don't feel like sharing => you need to establish local radar bases at military bases/air bases in the country
- Xenonaut interceptors have the best chances to intercept UFOs, they need to rent out airbases to be stationed in the area.
- Maybe make radar stations less potent and add a kind of radar aircrafts that need to patrol regions to cover them.
All of that should get priority targets by the aliens and create repercussions like losing a manufacturing base when aliens attack a city to take it out.
Make your laboratories and installations mission related targets you can actually lose for losing a mission so instead of hoarding them in one central base force them to be scattered over the globe.
So overall I agree with basebuilding maybe being tedious but I would consider if one should abandon base building altogether and create something else that creates as much interesting stuff on the strategic level.
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To get people to invest in different aircraft they need to see the roles of those craft as being distinct and useful.
If the Condor can be replaced by the Corsair without the Corsair being overshadowed by the Marauder then people will build it.
If not then why waste scarce funds in building a second rate fighter that you will soon be getting rid of anyway.
We essentially agree. As said I kind of like the idea of a good all purpose end game fighter but my thinking indeed would be as you suggested a role specific fighter at the stage where the Marauder comes around. I was just thinking to extend the research to another stage where you then get the last tier fighter together with the Fury, in essence extending the time frame in which you need something better than the Condor and there won't be a better equivalent right around the corner.
Xenonauts cut it out and the OG certainly didn't do it perfectly but one good reason to not go all perfect last tier craft would be if you really need salvaged resources to build and maintain them, a bit like the original concept of the Fury needing a supply of quantum singularity nodes to keep getting those "I win" torpedoes.
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The problem is then the effect being too powerful rather than the lack of LOS, Amaror. There's nothing wrong with non-LOS powers or relying on dice rolls (the game is basically all dice rolls).
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Not to be a pooper but I find that not so lucky thought concerning games. The game basically rolls dice but the gameplay is about what the player can do, organize, plan and react to these dice rolls. In essence the question should be what the psionic powers are meant to change in gameplay for the player to do.
The great critic about MC is that the entire tactical game is about unit dispersal, movement, location and identifying threats. It kind of wrecks that because you have no unit tactics to actually deal with it. Imagine chess where the queen could be randomly overtaken by the other player. It would completely mess up the game.
Maybe a Reaper is a good example for having some similar factor but well dealt with. It's a one shot kill weapon that can really murder your team, in that way you could say it is overpowered and can be frustrating. But with a Reaper you can assess it being there (Sebillions around, big mission => there may be Reapers), your men slow to a crawl you check all corners, you preserve reaction shots. Then you could have Buzzard/Sentinel jump suits you move soldiers into safety, put vehicles in front etc. etc. etc.
So you have this overpowered melee unit (since no other unit nor your men can kill someone by touch) but there is plenty to be done to manipulate the odds of these dice rolls.
Imo the important bit aren't specifically the algorithms of those psi powers but the question how do you introduce gameplay to the "psi warfare".
E.g. one pretty crude but possibly fundamentasl change would be that MC doesn't kick in the turn the soldier gets controlled but next turn. That introduces one simple thing: The player can react to this change in the tactical situation. That's imo also where the LOS idea comes from by others. It essentially moves psionics somewhere where you can identify and neutralize it fast instead of being hunkered down in the UFO. It creates gameplay because you can react and adjust tactics.
I just wanted to add that imo that aspects goes beyond some formulas and algorithms but to a question of game mechanics and that for a player to accept getting thrown a curve ball he needs to get a reaction time to deal with it.
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Rather than adding another aircraft back in you could remedy the situation you mention just by reducing the dogfighting capability of the Marauder....
Well, it is kind of nice to have the top of the line be an allrounder good at everything. That's where I'm coming from when suggesting to have another specialized craft in between. Other than that the current Corsair is only on the level of a Foxtrot which also limits its necessity to those old craft.
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We already can't seem to find a truly useful role for one plane, I don't think adding another one back into the mix would improve that situation. We'd probably just end up with two planes we don't build instead of just one.
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The problem with the one plane is that it's the one that gets replaced by a better allrounder. If you specialize you need enough specializations, not essentially just one general purpose replacement (not counting the Fury which is a bit a super weapon). If the Marauder couldn't dogfight and you have a superior dogfighter coming after the Marauer you'd give a greater halflife to the Corsair instead of the Marauder being the immediate top fighter for everything. You obviously could also switch around, have the Saracen be the next as a long range interceptor and the Marauder still be the supreme dogfighter later on. That doesn't matter.
In essence keep the MIG/Condor divide, thus you need a torpedo pendant to the Corsair instead of a replacement of all other types immediately afterwards coming before the Corsair has even become necessary ( as heavy fighters and interceptors aren't that common when a Corsair becomes available).
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Mangalores, there are also several situations where Corsairs can kill more than Condor. With laser/alenium weapons a single Corsair can kill a trio of Heavy Fighters where a Condor can at best 2 for 1. Less skilled players will probably also find the Corsair much easier to use.
I'm still unconvinced that Corsairs are truly worth using, but they're at least useable now. Before you were pretty much crippling yourself by using them because they were so bad.
I've only played v21 stable because when Steam updated to experimental the game became extremely unstable so I rolled it back.
I'm not really argueing for or against it, I just can say in v21 I found the Corsair a real hassle. I mostly autoresolve because things take too long otherwise and found that in most instances the Corsair will get shot up badly where the missiles guarantee that a Mig-31 will be your mainstay until the Marauder. The number of fighter escorts seem pretty low until the Marauder so the two Corsairs I built in my latest game saw minor actions and were essentially outdated when large or massive UFOs with fighter escorts appeared because a triple of one Marauder and two Foxtrots were far better at their job.
I wish they'd kept the Saracen in and by having several airframes allow you to better balance your forces and you can get such variation of loadout. I think the one complaint would be that the Corsair is "sold" (in description and appearance) as an evolved aircraft which in any world should mean it works like its precedessors do.
They probably should have done such deviations / specializations in the mid/late game with the Marauder, Fury and possibly by adding the Saracen. Aka, Fury is the ultimate Mig 31 replacement, the Marauder more a heavy tank without combat roll that can soak up damage but can't evade and the Saracen as the knife fighter.
Possibly the Corsair is just misplaced in the tech tree and the description is outdated for the idea it stands for.
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You can also do serious damage to cap ships with two cannons. Ib frequently use them that way if I don't have enough foxtrots to finish the job.
Not sure how the new version deals with autoresolve but the basic problem in my view was that the Corsair would always get shot up even against enemies a Condor would simply use its missiles and never get a scratch. So it would spent far more time in repair than essentially any other aircraft. In manual combat guns are also more longwinded than missiles.
Also when fighter escorts became a real problem the Marauder came around. Until then the MIG31 is the sole killer out there again because of range and lethality of missiles.
I'm fine with trying to specialize the different weapon platforms and I haven't played v22, yet, it's however that the Corsair as a supposedly evolutionary aircraft is actually more specialized than any other aircraft but the fury.
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Corsairs used to have the same weapon loadout as the Condor, but the problem was that there was no reason to ever use a Corsair. Anything you could kill with a Corsair, you could kill with a Condor for a fraction of the price. That led to them being turned into mostly-worthwhile dedicated escort killers.
Ammo amounts don't affect autoresolve at all (unless some has been used already). The values for autoresolve are sat in the XML files.
Why would a Corsair with two guns be better than a Corsair with one gun and missiles in the anti escort role and thus become an option vis a vis the Condor for cost efficiency? With two missiles you kill one fighter and the other with the gun = killing two fighters with two guns. Difference being that advanced missiles will also hurt bigger UFOs.
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Well, I disagree with the fact that yesterday I had a rocket trooper that was a major not only miss a nearby target, shooting his comrade point blank in the back of the head. An arming distance would certainly be nice! Oh, and the soldier firing the launcher was the only one lost on the mission. He was a little blood spot on the ground. When the mission ended, that bloodspot was listed as recovering for thirty or so days in the infirmary. Oh, logic. Such a wonderful thing.
Well, you knew it was an XCOM clone, right? Wouldn't be the same kind of game if you couldn't see a Major throw his grenade like a girl killing half a troop of soldiers.
Never allow anything to be between the rocket and the alien, particularly another soldier.
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Didn't occur to me someone might try that
EDIT: Ninjaed...
On a similar note: I'm not sure it makes sense that a dropship on its way to a landed UFO will just casually engage the UFO when it flies again, the pilot knows he has no weapons onboard, right?
Shouldn't a dropship disengage from aerial threats and run for the hills (if the UFO decides to give chase and destroy it fine, but currently the dropship just runs into the UFO oblivious of the threat)?
I guess the behaviour might have been with the idea of having late game ships as capable fighters like the Avenger which routinely was the best combat ship as well.
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So I was wondering if there is anything more planned for the late game. I essentially struggled through the phase where battleships and carriers become the mainstay UFOs and raking in tons of cash I ended up with 18 Maurauders in three bases and just waiting for my workshops to go through the plasma equipment.
One battleship and I ended up with the final mission. What I wondered if there will be come more content for that late game. Overall with said air power, two strike teams and plasma rifles it was only a matter of me wanting to get to Sentinel armor etc. before starting the final mission. The last tier of weapons (singularity weapons) seemed sadly rather small and underdeveloped and there isn't reall anything I need it for.
I know the game is in its cleanup phase and possibly I just had a bit wonky narration because essentially the first battleship I saw I instinctively used shock grenades to knock out the boss alien and thus opened up the final mission.
Maybe the aliens should turn more aggressive against Xenonaut bases in this stage to push you back when your tech has reached more than parity than the aliens at least on normal diffculty?
I just wished there would be one round more of content in research and discovery before unlocking the final mission that's all. Maybe the whole strain of PSI powers and defenses against it and essentially upgraded armor/weapons though I know the later is unlikely to impossible.
What do others think?
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I gave up on using rockets a while ago. The troopers carrying it are slow, they are only of mediocre accuracy so firing close to friendlies is a big risk. You lose the equipment drops from the dead aliens plus destroy any cover you could use in follow-up turns. Combined with the fact that the aliens almost never cluster together enough to make it worth firing (i.e. getting 2 or more kills), it makes it more of a hassle than it is worth. I'd rather have another trooper with a rifle and grenade than a rocket launcher. Honestly it was the same problem in X-COM: UFO Defense. Rocket Launcher had a lot of power, but too many drawbacks to make it worthwhile.
Wait for Sebilian terror missions. It sure felt very assuring to simply nuke every alpha reaper showing up on the map.
Overall all explosives are mainly a way to stop an untennable tactical situation from killing you. I find they work fine for that, including rocket launchers who don't have anything specific to hit to murder it. As said, even very distant aimed shots just had to hit within a few squares of said reapers to kill them. Far safer than having everyone line up to take potshots or get eaten.
Rocket launchers are similar to grenades a specific tool to make a specific kind threat go away. In case of grenades that is if you get swamped aka a lethal threat appears too close for comfort and for rocket launchers the same goes to destroy a threat before it emerges.
Late terror missions can have ~20 elite Androns + 3 heavy drones + snipers. I essentially nuked a street crossing to prevent such a force from flanking me. I sure as hell would use the rocket launcher to reduce the number of enemies before taking chances with individual shots by the rest of the team to thin out the ranks. If you are worried about enemies not clustering together, in such missions they do and you better be ready to waste multiple explosives to ensure whatever you aim at dies quickly.
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I think it's only too long when compared to how quickly you build advanced aircraft like Corsairs, Maurauders etc.
Otherwise I'd think anything that keeps the workshops busy is kind of a good thing similar to how it would be bad if the research labs would have no projects for extended periods either.
Also forcing me to have evolving strike teams (aka where you only slowly replace equipment) feels right.
I guess you could reduce build times if you had consumables (e.g. ammo and similar) so that your workshops still needs to prioritize between different aspects of your base management
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Overall imo the question should be: How is the player supposed to play the game to counter PSI attacks? What kind of measures are available to him and what advantages and possibly disadvantages should they give him?
As is a bunch of reapers or a squad of elite Androns with heavy drones is a scare because you as the player are expected to somehow tackle the tactical situation against those odds. This might include anything from excessive use of explosives to running away. With PSI attacks I do not see the gameplay aspect aka what am I as player to do about it. It's essentially too random atm.
The morale degradation might be fine as just another tactical aspect (though I still don't see much to do about it) but e.g. berzerking against friendlies or mind control just does stuff.
I'm just in that phase against Caesans and praetors and I essentially use every gamey trick in the book because gamey tricks are the only thing you have as tactical options against PSI attacks. I didn't feel that need even against a swarm of Androns.
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In some older Psi-thread I had suggested a "counter".
It can't be too easy or the whole psi thing would lose it's scare.
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It's not really a scare, It's plain annoying because you can't prevent it nor do anything about it. As is you can only do the chicken dance by having everyone drop their weapons at the end of the turn which is not really very immersive but rather gamey (and just hope the AI doesn't figure out grenades).
It hopefully gets better when the LOS problems are fixed but a message popping up that you lost a guy to mind control doesn't add much to the gameplay if you couldn't plan to do anything about it. It's not even throwing dice because you don't even hold the dice.
There is a reason that in the OG you started to weed out your troops for high psionics only. It was plainly annoying as hell to bring anyone else from a certain point onwards but at least you had that counter. I think my rookies were relegated to second tier troops and mortar teams in late game while the A-team breached the upper floor with blaster bombs and flying suits to kill the commander.
An additional problem is that Xenonauts has a bigger alien crew than the OG so carriers, landingships and battleships will easily have three or more psionics onboard. That means three guys MCed every other turn without a way to do anything about it because currently it can hit everyone, more importantly the only threat is he doing something on the aliens' turn or your guys reaction firing him on the aliens' turn. In any case you have nothing to do or decide because when your turn restarts you leave him be because he will be back with you next turn.
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I find the item destruction already preempts me from using grenades excessively. When facing a dangerous situation I will use grenades to neutralize the biggest threat but against most other situation a combination of single shots seem to work fine. Admitedly I play on normal but to me that should be the most balanced gameplay.
Thus far I only went out all grenadier style when on a terror mission where three heavy drones and tons of red Androns attacked one flank in droves. That were three soldiers who threw about four grenades each to kill the tanks and a couple of the Androns which came too close (they were also mainly a breach team aka had no weapons for mid range and couldn't stay out of cover to shoot at their targets with all the heavy weapons and snipers being nearly cut off from them).
I only earned 150k for that mission (compared to ~250 for a carrier or a cruiser) but given the threat level I found it worthwhile. I essentially sacrificed money to ensure my soldiers could survive the onslaught.
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A lot of good points and I would agree to the point that the main difference of psi attacks is you have nothing to develop to counter it.
What I wondered as a possible route would be that some sort of med pack/stim packs allows you to "treat" psi attacks by essentially drugging the soldier. The negative aspect being possibly reduced TUs and a big drop in accuracy so you may just want to do that to individual soldiers since they will be far less capable for the mission.
So you have some way to deal with a single soldier getting hit when with a group but if he's on his own he'll get easily mind controlled.
Or maybe going with the stim pack idea these stimulants only last one or two turns so you have to bring along an entire drugstore if you want to keep your soldiers fortified against psi attacks all the time it will be at the expense of other equipment and you constantly spending TUs on keeping the effect.
My current v21 impression was that only some individual soldiers in a group will be hit the hardest so having a way to keep them sane but neutralizing them as an asset would seem sensible and balanced (plus occupying other soldiers like a bleeding wounded soldier will occupy at least a medic). In essence a way to either protect, treat or neutralize them being the target of psi attacks.
Just a thought on how to deal with it without changing everything. However some research fields to deal with PSI attacks if only to point out that you have to screen your soldiers for weaknesses would be nice.
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I admit it's a shame that you can't blast yourself new entryways. More hatches like with the Chinook might be also nice on some UFO's and maybe switch the soldier aliens from passive to aggressive when your team is mucking about at the doors? The landingships seem to have that but you can set up in the cargo room before they trigger. Only once I saw a team of Sebilians defending an open door.
Side hatches on bigger UFO's might create some variation and flanking opportunities so instead of rushing the front door, gathering and attack you might have to keep watch over the side doors as well or rather use one with a better entry than a guarded front door.
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Just a stupid thought but base defenses in Xenonaut and the OG seemed pretty underused. How about the aliens start bomb runs on X-Com bases even more regularly to knock the hangars out or giving those defenses an defense perimeter on the geoscape (a certain radius in which the base itself can engage an UFO)?
Probably too much hassle but more uses for these things might go a long way to actually use them.
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I once had a soldier getting zombified and shot him to pieces and he still survived. I found it a wee bit a stretch that the poor fella returned to combat duty though.
Might be a nice flavour to have a KIA and crippled aka too wounded to return to duty option.
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I would say the main trouble is building a base in the US or Europe and then finding that the UFOs all spawn in South America or Australia where you can't reach them. Or worse you get hit in your main area constantly so expand that base thus not having the funds to go elsewhere.
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You're a little late to the party. The Corsair was changed to 2 cannons a while ago, and a discussion on this very point has already happened. Chris is sticking with 2 cannons (with some changes). If you want to change this state I wrote a post here on what to look at.
I had a long hiatus and just started playing again with v21 stable or something. Searching the forum for corsairs but somehow didn't have that thread pop up. Weird. I'll check again.
I was mainly surprised how badly the aircraft performed it seems to me that my Condors are running around with plasma missiles while the Corsair is stuck with pewpew laser guns so a Condor can kill stuff without getting shot thus not needing the turn rate and armor of it.
But you point all that out in your thread.
Thx for the Excel edit, I was messing around in there but not seeing the weapon slot vars.
EDIT: I took a look at that wiki. This is not the wiki made by Chris: this is I believe that was Steelpoint who produced that wiki, both are horribly out of date.Well, wikia is kind of the first address in many games and I mainly wondered if I remembered wrong so an outdated source was kind of supporting my memory that it was once different.
EDIT: Apparently I plainly searched the wrong forum...
thx!
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So in my current playthrough I started to get Corsairs but after building them I realized they just have cannons? Is this intentional because that kind of means they are worse than Condors who will get upgraded with Alenium and Plasma missiles before the Corsairs will have anything remotely in the same ballpark in terms of punching out enemy UFOs before they get into range.
Checking the http://xenonauts.wikia.com/ it kind of indicates that at some point it indeed was an advanced Condor type fighter aircraft with 1 cannon and 2 missile hardpoints, in my install it only has 2 cannon hardpoints.
I downgraded from an experimental build to the stable v22 so I'm not quite sure if that change is there for balancing purposes or my install got mixed up or something.
And if it's intentional should one wait for plasma or later weapons to build them? As is the only advantage is speed and range but in sheer firepower a Condor will seem better in terms of cost effectiveness against most targets.
I was mucking around in the aircraft.xml but that didn't take any effect. Can one change the weapon loadout via config tuning?
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Hi, just returned to Xenonauts after a long hiatus (after trying out the Longwar mod and still being less than impressed with anything but the tactics map reducing the game to a skirmish mode).
I like how things progressed but I wonder if there are still plans to improve the UI? My main gripe is that particularly soldier management is very fiddly and annoying, particularly if you want to cycle through roughly a platoon worth of men at some point so everyone gains XP.
In various places you need more clicks than really needed. These are just minor things but they are where most of my time is spent so I find that these are areas that really should do with improvements. I'm not sure it's on your radar but I just thought to give the feedback. Ponder, read or burn it to your heart's content.
1) Role assignment for soldiers takes three clicks when it should only take two (or incidently one click and a hover menu)
2) Similarily assigning role equipment should take one click, not a menu
3) Roles should be changeable in the soldier lists, maybe highlight soldiers who have a role but lack equipment
4) Assigning soldiers to the dropship is fiddly as hell in the soldier list, particularly with a scrollbar you jump back up out of position after selection, and sometimes it doesn't work right. This is the most important thing to train all your soldiers equally, particularly with wounded, role specialization etc. I really want to easily switch soldiers. Not sure if the checkboxes are planned for bulk actions (e.g. assign all selected soldiers to a dropshop). Would be nice.
5) The equipment screen only does it marginally better but lacks the stats concerning the soldiers capabilties.
6) The soldier list has no indication of how many soldiers you actually have (or I missed it). At best there should be a bar with green (combat ready), yellow (wounded but combat ready) and red (hospitalized) bar with a total number to show you how fit your unit is. But something you know if you need more back up would be nice.
7) Interceptors returning from mission have indication of refueling and rearming in the details screen but no message when they are actually combat ready again. This can be annoying in the heat of battle of a wave attack where squadrons have to sortie back out as quickly as possible. At worst a popup indicating combat readiness would be nice.
8) The team placement screen is pretty well hidden and gets completely reset when you switch teams making it kind of annoying to use.
Nothing of it is game breaking but there are places where I would like a more polished UI and better accessibility to do stuff.
Otherwise I like the new pace of combat missions and the aliens show more signs of being lively than last year.
Thanks for your hard work and the nostalgia I get playing this...
Xenonauts 2 - Further Strategy Development
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted
Not sure about limiting the teams to such fixed numbers. To me it was the tactical freedom to bring 32 cannon fodder soldiers or just a team of 8 to a mission. If you want to make it hard, add reasons why more than 8 soldiers are a stupid idea.
Where does the limit of 6 come from anyway? Firaxis came to the same limit and I found it baffling. Ultimately why it worked was because Firaxis' XCom is not a planetary defense simulator but only a skirmish game lacking any strategic depth. The strategic level is just a mission hub. I'd be worried if Xenonauts chooses the same route instead of doing what the original did which was a unique hybrid of high level strategy and economic management and low level tactical gameplay.
I can see replacing the skyranger with simply deployment routes, aka as would be expected units fly to a destination via cargo plane and go the last hundred of miles by chopper but you don't have some special aircraft for it.