Solarius Scorch

I feel a lot was said already about how much most of us dislike the immortal fighters system, and those who don't simply aren't interested in the air combat aspect of the game (which indeed is stronger than usual, excluding UFO: Extraterrestrials and particularly the UNIMOD). But what about other changes, that hasn't gotten any attention yet? Are they good? Do they make any impact? I haven't played the experimental build v. 3 yet, because I like my current campaign in v. 2 too much, but I'm very interested nonetheless. And yeah, Bioware had some messed up history, but is not uniformly evil like some companies. I still value them for titles like the first Mass Effect, although to be honest I've always disliked most of their games for various reasons.

I was under impression that it's not making money on the game itself, but on the franchise and general reputation of the company. Microprose, which released the original X-Com games, is still remembered by me as the best, nicest and awesomest gaming company ever, because it gave us these games as well as several other all-time favourites, like Master of Magic for example. Nowadays Blizzard enjoys similarly good reputation, because their products (games, support, customer relations) are always of the highest quality, regardless if you like such games or not. And regarding the air combat and indestructible fighters... I seriously feel that it'd be better to drop the element completely instead of forcing the indestructible fighters on us (despite the fact I like the minigame). Luckily, we'll be able to disable this.

There already are several solutions in this thread and actually are are valid. Personally I'm leaning the most towards the original idea, but with one additional condition: only fighters made of alien alloys should be recoverable. Landing an F-17 on a corn field is just silly, the plane would turn into a long strip of charred parts. Later fighters, however, are as sturdy as UFO's, so controlled crash is a viable option. Bear in mind it'll also make a bit more sensible to use Corsairs over Condors, which nobody does right now (because Corsairs are expensive and mostly useless).

Thank Mytheos, that's really nice to hear. After all, that's why we're all here!

DNK is right that the general difficulty should depend on the chosen difficulty and not the player's performance. Game too difficult? Try harder or start again at the lower level. Game too easy? You seem to have outgrown this particular difficulty, why don't you play insane. However, I don't like the auto-resolve feature for ground missions. some of the reasons were explained by others, but I think the biggest one is that Xenonauts is a tactical simulation game. Removing or diminishing this element is simply not right; that would be like playing Sim City where only 30% of your time is spent building stuff and the remaining 70% is minigames with vehicles and such; these features add a lot, but it's a city tycoon dammit. Having said that, I vote for an auto-resolve of air battles. Precisely. I wouldn't like to sound too aggressive, but I haven't seen a single post that agrees with this or even considers it a somewhat viable option, while there were many protests. Which is a strong indication that most people probably don't like this idea; I certainly do not. I'm not an expert, but I think enabling playing aliens in quick battles (as opposed to a real campaign) should be easy. However, I can't see how the gathered data can be effectively used to improve the AI. Analysing data from thousands (or millions) of battles would be an enormous task and Goldhawk has neither resources nor time to do so. I think it'd be a very interesting experiment though.

Technically it is, but in my opinion it makes the game much more tedious for no reason whatsoever. I wouldn't feel proud of myself for moving every soldier separately and carefully, because when they aren't engaged in actual combat but simply march from point a to B I just like pointing in the general direction, cycling through them with the mouse wheel quickly, efficiently and comfortably. I know this probably raises hair on heads of obsessive controllers (and most strategy gamers are obsessive controllers ), but it never gave any trouble with any such game before (all X-Com titles, Jagged Alliance, UFO: After[X], UFO: Extraterrestrials), but in Xenonauts they keep walking into fire like retarded cows because I missed a burning tile somewhere. This is just annoying and gives nothing in return. Oh, I don't do this, I'm not that stupid. Fog of war is not an issue for me, but it could be for someone. Still, while playing this way would be silly and ineffective, the danger should come from actual threats like aliens, not because a soldier randomly wandered into a lava pool. Heh, thanks. I made it when I wasn't very sober and then decided to leave it be, hoping it won't make me look too silly. By the way, it comes from by Vlad G. Pohnert, one that every X-Com (or Xenonauts) player should watch.

But somehow it was never a problem back in the old days. You tank gets stuck, you won't use it this time, doh. Have fun with your 6 troopers against the alien terror.

Yeah, exactly what I thought, to the last word.

I understand, but what exactly would you like to see instead? Just a text? In this case you can do it yourself by disabling the hidden movement screen as described above in this thread (third post by Stinky), which will only leave a text saying "Alien turn" - or something similar - and a greyed out screen. I think you can also edit this text, but I never tested it. BTW, the original X-Com was somewhat over 10 MB, not 2 Terror from the Deep was even bigger.

I'm playing build 19v2 and I can confirm that the fire spreads very nicely! Of course it depends on the environment, but grass and wooden buildings have poor life span estimations when I load up my rocket launcher. I hope they'll bring the flamers back. I loved them in UFO: Extraterrestrials. For now, I'm planning to add inferno grenades, but never got around to do it yet (I'm too focused on testing the minigun, heh heh).

Well, I understand the OP quite well in that the random maps are desirable. I'll even go as far as to say that not having them in the name of something like "game flow" is a major BS, no need to look for pretty words (I've been playing for such games since for at least 15 years, more than any other genre, and I know what I'm saying). However, I also look at the game as it is now as a project in a state of flux, where more or less random maps are still a possibility. If this doesn't happen, I'll make them myself or (more likely) use random maps made by other, more talented community members. The game already has a great engine, so any player-editable content is secondary - we can do this ourselves, while we basically can't write the core of the game (code, GUI etc.). And the core is why Xenonauts are such a kickass game - it works and works very well. Play it, man!

After more than a month, I guess it's time to introduce myself. I am a 33-year old sociologist, currently living in Cracow, Poland. I've always regarded the original X-Com as the best game ever, despite also playing its various clones to a frightening degree (well, UFO Aftershock is a close second), so how could I miss this one? With Max Smirnov here, the two of us form a modding/design/creative group known as Nocturnal Productions. Our greatest project so far is a complex mod for Civilization: Call to Power, which you can find by following the link in my signature. That's it really. Let's get back to the game!

This is a very ambitious project, containing a lot of difficult, new features, like the mobile base. It'll be very interesting to watch your progress, so good luck! I thought about My Little Pony, because this **** is everywhere.

It's all sound thoughts, Mytheos. I believe we are looking at two discreet problems here: 1) Global AI for the alien command. This is generally how they react to the changing circumstances, especially to Xenonaut performance. Mytheos' post and similar posts earlier (notably DNK's) are all about this. 2) Ticker: what ships get unlocked when and how aliens can win the game. This was discussed earlier in this thread, including my recent post. I feel that in order to balance (and generally finish) the game, both questions should be addressed - and separately, since they are only loosely connected to each other. I'd love to hear what the devs have to say on this, since there is nothing more important in this project.

Agreed. Even if it's not implemented as such, it provided us with some excellent reading material! And I admit I'd like to see a little more socio-political background in the game anyway.

And this would give me wargasm of the millenium. Perfect idea. Your entire post is very reasonable - it proposes simple yet effective solutions. I really hope this will be looked upon favourably by Our Devs, Who Are in London.

...haha... Well, I'd go with the 3/4 option. I always pay attention to where the soldier's route ends, but not necessarily to all the transit tiles. Especially when I'm moving the entire squad across the map: click -> mouse scroll -> click -> mouse scroll -> click -> mouse scroll -> click -> SHIT I DID IT AGAIN!

Would it be possible to add more ranks? I think the current system is a bit flat. By the way, excellent work!

I believe I'm repeating myself over and over, but: - It's not my decision when it happens at random. I want to have the ability to make that decision, that's why I said soldiers would enter fire if we tell them to (click on a burning tile), which is especially useful when I have the equipment, but I don't want to get burned repeatedly over and over because I miscalculated/didn't notice a fire. Which happens a lot. Call me clumsy or whatever, but it still happens, even when I think I am careful enough to avoid this. Anyway, this is not a complicated matter of balancing or changing the game. I'm asking for a very simple addition to the pathfinding procedure, to make the soldiers automatically avoid fire and gas. This will likely be beneficial to civilians and aliens' AI too. What is there not to like?

DNK, your letters are absolutely fabulous. However, your balancing ideas are quite sound too, and I feel that's more important to the discussion.

Um... No. Exchanging a few AUs for 20 HPs is hardly economical.

Niestety, muszę powiedzieć, że dobrze nie jest. - "Broń żołnierzy"? Czołgi i samoloty to też "broń żołnierzy", a przecież nie o to chodzi. Chodzi o broń ręczną. Zresztą brzmi to bardzo niezręcznie (tak samo "Broń lotnictwa"). - "Laser rozpraszający"? A co on rozprasza? - "Commander" to nie polski "komandor" (kom.). Komandor to po angielsku commodore. "Commander" oznacza po prostu dowódcę, ale na pewno nie w stopniu komandora (bo to pułkownik w marynarce). - Po "mjr" nie dajemy kropki, ponieważ widoczna jest ostatnia litera skrótu. (Chyba, że to jest jeszcze oryginał - wtedy przepraszam) To wszystko wyciągnąłem z marnych kilku screenów, które tu leżą. Nie chcę cię zniechęcać, Duchu, ale to naprawdę trzeba gruntownie poprawić. W razie czego służę pomocą.

Well, I'm not THAT bored of air combat. However, I wouldn't mind having the option to do so. Still, the possible combinations are many, since it's not just the number and type of your and enemy crafts (which already is a very large number of combinations), but also that your planes may have different weapon configurations. I think a file containing all this would be too unwieldy for the engine.

I agree! They did it like this in the UNIMOD mod for UFO: ET. It was awesome. Actually, they had a semi-darkness setting too.

I love these icons, Aufklarer. They're beautiful. The only problem for me is that the Heavy Support looks too much like a rifle; I know that's how a machine gun looks like, but you could go for something more bulky to make it more distinct. Anyway, I really, really hope that more icons will be available, since I definitely have more roles. Please?