skaianDestiny

Yeah I agree, the Marauder works waaaay better as something that looks futuristic and blended with alien technologies while also still looking like something that humanity could produce. The Gemini leans too much into...something. I think I understand it's trying to evoke a human-made alien craft but it just doesn't work IMO.

Some mission ideas to help spice up mission variety once the Cleaners are gone! Alien Outpost The aliens established a small outpost from which they're basing smaller scale raids from, increasing panic in the region it's stationed at until it's taken out. Assaulting the outpost will be attacking a 1-2 story alien building about the size of a larger UFO. Unlike a UFO fight, the outpost will be constantly calling in reinforcements every half dozen or so turns, similar to the earlier Cleaner missions. These reinforcements come from some quantum gate or whatever inside the base. Shutting it down is your primary objective, Victory results in a large increase in resources as well as a major panic decrease in the funding region. This mission would essentially be a Cleaner base assault but alien-themed. Bunker Siege Relief Your operations director received an urgent distress call from one of the funding nations: the aliens have pinned down some VIP (general, politician, etc.) in a deep bunker and are sending assault teams to wipe them out. Xenonauts will need to take out both the loitering UFO and land troops to relieve the beleaguered and outgunned defense force. This would require a unique approach. You need to send 2 interceptors to escort your transport, otherwise it'll be destroyed. While they engage the UFO (air battle optional), your transport will land your troops outside the bunker. The map would be similar to the other bunker missions, only this time near the back of the bunker will be a small force of friendlies that aliens within the bunker are attacking. This would be a soft time limit before the aliens breach the final room that guards the VIP, with the player having vision of the area around the friendlies to give them more info as to what's happening. Victory results in a major panic decrease in the region it takes place in. Reaper Infestation An alien UFO had dropped Reapers as part of a hit-and-run terror campaign. Problem? It turns out it happened a few days ago, meaning a large force of Reapers have infested whatever town or area they were dropped in. While the funding nation has firebombed the location, there may be still some survivors. Xenonauts' job is to go in and finish the job. While this would still be a relatively bog standard "kill all aliens" mission, facing only Reapers and a large swarm of them would be pretty novel mission to break up the monotony. Maybe have a "Reaper Queen" boss unit or something to keep things spicy, or have a bunch of weaker Reapers for horde chaff. Alien Collaborator Sting Your operations director has been able to identify a high ranking general or politician who's been colluding with the aliens. Her agents have given her the location of a meeting point between the aliens and their insider, which is a fantastic opportunity to take out or capture the hostile VIP. This mission would require you to capture or kill the human VIP as well as any aliens in the area. There is a time limit before the aliens teleport themselves and the VIP out, so you'll have to act quickly. In addition to the aliens, the VIP will have come with a small number of remnant Cleaner soldiers (maybe making up 40% of the total enemy force). This would be a fun opportunity to show how far the player has progressed past the initial Cleaner enemies they faced. Maybe arm them with plasma weapons to keep it spicy, but I think being able to steamroll the Cleaners present thanks to your tech advantage is a good thing for the player. Feel free to contribute any other ideas for alien mission variety!

Right click the tile you want them to face.

I'm wondering if we should have (another) more radical overhaul of the aircraft equipment system. Instead of just 1 universal slot type and hardpoints abstracted out as just another numbered stat, you'd instead have it laid out in @Skitso's example. Equipment slots have 2 types: large and small. Large slots have 2 hardpoints, while small slots have 1 hardpoint. Rough example down below: Here the Angel would have 1 large slot and 2 small slots, meaning it could mount 4 missiles, 1 cannon and 2 missiles, or a combination of . The Phantom on the other hand could have 2 large slots and 2 small slots, with the Gemini having 4 large slots. Payload would still be the weight limiting factor. Rough example of a Phantom loadout below. The cannon takes up both hardpoints of the large slot, as opposed to the missiles each taking only one. Other equipment such as fuel tanks or armor can either take up just 1 hardpoint in the large slot or take up both hardpoints similar to the cannon, while having increased bonuses compared to just having equipment in 2 small slots (for example the fuel pod in the large slot provides 50% extra fuel as opposed to 40% extra fuel from 2 fuel pods in 2 small slots). I feel like this would be fairly intuitive to learn and understand while still providing some depth to equipping your planes. It also gives more rooms for modders to add their own planes and give them unique characteristics depending on the number and type of slots they have. Of course, this would be a really big overhaul and I don't know how much @Chris and the team are willing to devote to this. Still, I think this would be a good way of addressing the issue Skitso raises.

For disadvantages, perhaps it only has the dexterity for heavier weapons? So you'll still need lighter armor for utility stuff or things that don't require an HMG.

I also think this is a great suggestion!

Fusion is the final tier, right? Does feel a bit weird to skip over plasma weapons in an X-Com game, but I won't argue too much about it.

FUCK no. Console is not the fucking home for an X-Com-style tactics game at the complexity Xenonauts is trying to have. There's a reason why console ports have always been second-class citizens for any XCOM game. Lobotomizing the complexity of even the aerial combat minigame just to shoehorn in console support is shooting yourself in the foot for nothing.

God I absolutely agree with this wholeheartedly. It's incredibly annoying how some people keep throwing out shit like "BUT REAL SOLDIERS CAN CARRY 50 KITCHEN SINKS AS PART OF BASIC TRAINING" or inflating the soldier count to some absurd number like 3 dozen and never actually give out how exactly it would improve the game and or result in meaningful choices by the player. It's always some vague high minded concept about "being more real" when all it results in actuality is tedium or flat player choice.

You could add it as an option on game start up, for the people who want a more consistent start/roleplay reasons.

Given it loops in on itself and we can't shortcut using the poles, I instead suggest it's a cylinder.

Absolutely agree with this.

Angels have 3 slots instead of 4 to let there be a more immediately visible upgrade to Phantoms having 4 slots.

I don't want to spend my time searching through those. Just write up what the issues are.

That's not how game balance works.

Here's the save file with that. auto_strategy_before_combat-14.json

Initial playtesting for a couple mission impressions: Definitely loving the new variety in missions for the Cleaners! Although I did find a bug with the convoy interception where after placing all my troops and pressing end turn it just immediately completed?? No idea what caused that but it was funny. Heavy armor toggle is good! Definitely more variety for armor going forward. It also makes it more obvious each tier of armor is a direct improvement on the previous one. Interceptor changes are looking promising! Definitely a lot of room for improvement but I think overall it's got more potential for future development. I'd say yes to restricting the Angel to 3 slots. It makes the Phantom having 4 slots a more immediately visible upgrade. I'd personally try to balance the weight and damage values for weapons such that an Angel can carry 2 missiles and 1 gun (with the obvious downside of having poor range and survivability) or 2 torpedoes and no other weapon, with both options being viable for different UFO types. You could probably also play around with the lances weighing more than the miniguns? I haven't gotten far enough into the prototype but I assume there is or will be things such as improved engines as a module for Angels? Which would make them a bit more capable of intercepting the later game faster UFOs at the cost of survivability and weaponry.

Sooo if anyone's been paying attention to game development or gaming in general for the past few days, I'm pretty sure you'd know the bullshit that Unity is pulling regarding payment and purchasing. If you haven't, the tl;dr is that the Unity company is planning to change their licensing so that game developers have to pay them for each and every install of a game developed in Unity above a threshold of 200,000 installs. In some cases, especially with free or very cheap games, this can end up with developers owing more than they actually made with the game. If that wasn't bad enough, Unity wants to make this apply retroactively, and if someone reinstalls a game, they're counting the original and new install as separate installs for pricing. Needless, this is causing an uproar in the indie game development sphere and gaming sphere in general, with many devs making plans to migrate to other engines such as Godot or Unreal. Given that Xenonauts 2 is being created in Unity, I'm wondering what @Chris's plans are regarding this in the worst case that Unity goes forward with these plans regarding not only Xenonauts 2 but any future games Goldhawk develops.

Just, more missions with Cleaner presence in them, for one? We only have the 3 or 4 bespoke missions with them. The suggestion that leaving crash sites for long periods of time results in more Cleaner presence (for example, replacing each civilian spawn with a Cleaner one) on the tactical map is a good one; it provides incentive for the player to do a crash site quick and weigh having soldiers rested up/certain equipment or tech unlocked or manufactured vs more enemy presence in the early game. I made a thread with some Cleaner ideas here, with varied mission ideas that could also be adapted for the more alien-focused late game: I feel the tetris sort of thing that the Milestone 1 modules encouraged was really neat and I'm not sure I'll like the changes. The extra armor toggle mentioned is fine and means it has continuity with the MARS's "heavy armor" toggle, but making modules exclusive from a dropdown feels like a downgrade. I'd actually suggest the opposite and lean far more into the tetris juggling thing and make every module have a unique shape on the inventory box instead of just having a 2x2 box. Have modules of the same type but different sizes, letting you choose between having more inventory space for ammo, grenades, etc. or getting a really good buff from the large module. For example, make the exoskeleton take up a 3x4 space in the inventory, which means the player now has to ask "is the extra strength worth losing so much inventory space?" instead of the no brainer of of "can my soldier carry 5 more grenades and heavy armor for the low price of a tiny 2x2 box?" Maybe there's a small 1x2 medical module that consumes itself to give a minor heal to your soldiers (perhaps only healing wounds), with the Milestone 1 medical module taking up a full 2x5 space, providing the full suite of automatic healing and wound treatment. This easily lends to a fun bit of tech progression where you eventually replace the older, very clunky module that takes up a 4x3 space with the sleeker, more technologically advanced successor that takes up a 3x2 space. This system also implicitly means certain modules will be mutually exclusive with each other, which adds to the element of tradeoffs and makes module choices much more meaningful. For example, the big medical module and exoskeleton would still fit in the current 5x5 grid together, but you're barely left with 3 spaces for the rest of your soldier's equipment like grenades or magazines. Maybe the aiming module takes up a 4x2 space, meaning you cannot mount both it and the medical module at all. You could argue the drop down menu accomplishes the same sort of thing, but you have a grid inventory system, it's much more fun to actually use it and let the player wrack their brain trying to fit every module they can while keeping their soldiers with a reasonable amount of ammo and equipment. Otherwise you might as well scrap the whole inventory grid and just make the entire inventory system a list or drop down menu. There's a reason the Resident Evil 4 attache case inventory system was a thing people fell in love with (and even inspired some indie games that entirely revolved around it) while basically every other inventory system is mostly forgettable or barely worth mentioning.

As it stands the Cleaners are a neat idea similar to EXALT and ADVENT from the nuXCOM games, but they're fairly underutilized. Their presence is limited to 4 missions (5 if you count the tutorial): the mission where you steal 10 data sticks, the 2 regional command VIP assassinations, and then the final assault on the Cleaner base. They've also only got the 2 enemy types: the suited agents and the hazmat-wearing soldiers. So here are some suggestions on expanding not only their presence in the early game but also mission variety: VIP Rescue Mission Your Operations Director identifies a heavily guarded compound where a certain VIP is being held by the Cleaners. Her agents are unable to infiltrate or extract the VIP, thus it falls upon you and your heavily armed soldiers to perform a prison break. As the VIP is being held at the facility for only a certain window of time, the mission has a time limit on geoscape. The compound would have a mix of Cleaner soldiers and agents as guards, with reinforcements incoming as with the regional command missions. The VIP would be held in a similar cell thing as the civilians in alien abduction missions, and once you free them they can be ordered around like your soldiers. Optional objectives could be gathering more data sticks and perhaps rescuing other identified Persons of Interest. Victory is when you extract your team along with the VIP and any PoI. Rewards would be panic reduction in the region the mission is in, increased with each PoI rescued. Sting Operation/Convoy Interception Mission Your Operations Director's agents either located the route a Cleaner convoy carrying valuable alien equipment is traveling through or set up a trap for a Cleaner strike team. Either way, there's a limited amount of time to intercept them. The enemies would be a large amount of Cleaner soldiers, with the convoy perhaps having a few lower ranking aliens like Sectons or Sebillians hidden away. Like base defense, you would be able to set up the position of your soldiers within certain areas and had the entire map revealed as you have already scouted out the area and set up the ambush, however you would still have the first turn. Victory is from killing or incapacitating all enemies, with the rewards being either some alien alloys and alenium from a convoy interception or a regional panic reduction and Cleaners network progress for sting operation. Cleaner presence on crash sites Right now the Cleaners not only don't really live up to their name as "Cleaners" but a crash site with 1 hour left on the timer is no different from one with 2 days left. It would make sense that the Cleaners clean up the crash sites and make it so delaying a crash site has consequences. Perhaps for each day that passes, there is more Cleaner presence at the crash site, with more of the ambient civilians replaced by 1 or 2 Cleaner soldiers. This would go away once the Cleaners' base is destroyed, but adds some more urgency in the early game to take on crash sites. Cleaner Heavy Simple, a Cleaner soldier that uses a machine gun (same stats as ours) and is heavily armored. The look can borrow from EOD uniforms or other heavily armed military gear such as this, this, or this. They'd only appear on missions with a heavy Cleaner presence such as sting operation or convoy interception or the Cleaner base defense, or perhaps as part of later reinforcement waves to really force the player to extract. Would like to hear others' thoughts and suggestions along these lines!

Yeah especially compared to how tactical the other armor designs look. You can still have the idea of more skin hugging stealth armor design without losing that, like the Chinese stealth armor from Fallout:

I'm pretty happy with the armor sprites in general, however it feels rather weird putting the stalker armor on the female soldiers? With the other armor sets, the amount of body armor and general tactical gear made sense with how it hides the body's form, and how you wouldn't really see the difference in body type, which is something I appreciate. However with how much the stalker armor appears to be hugging the body it looks a bit off on the female soldiers. I'm not saying it has to be skintight latex fetish suit, it should have their curves be more pronounced compared to the other armor types. It's even more egregious since the actual 3D model reflects this. Actually, comparing the armor sprites more, it feels like the stalker armor has different leg proportions than the other sprites? They're longer whereas the other sprites look shorter with how low the crotch/waistline apparently is. It kinda increases how off it feels. The jetpack's leg straps also don't line up with the stalker's legs too. Ultimately a minor thing that shouldn't be a priority, but definitely raised my eyebrows a bit when I saw it.

Been a long while since I've played the original Xenonauts, so seeing the sequel out in Early Access is neat and I'd love to try it out even in such an early state, however one thing is holding me back at the moment. So I've learned that unlike the previous game, the commander is given a portrait and some dialogue, but the portrait is of some generic older white guy and is given no name. Is there going to be any form of customization even from just picking a preset portrait? Because I know it's an extremely minor and petty thing in the grand scheme of things, but I as a woman do not want to play as some old dude. :P Either have the commander be completely faceless (having dialogue is fine) or let the player have even a tiny degree of customization if you're going to put a face to the commander but not have the commander have a real personality. The whole point of these games is that you self-insert as the leader of an extraterrestrial task force; having the insert character be given a face that the player has no input on is counterintuitive.

The singularity core was changed to a gravity bomb that is researched from the Cruiser IIRC. So yeah, this is meant for a fresh run, like any mod that heavily edits the tech tree.

Well you could always recruit another dude and roleplay that Xenonauts recruited the farmer.